____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Friday 07 December 2007 20:42 : \____
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:44:53 +0000
> <3337236.tqpa8AJY9x@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> ____/ Mark Kent on Friday 07 December 2007 14:36 : \____
>>
>>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>>> Gutsy Gibbon versus Vista Ultimate
>>>>
>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>| Thanks to using the Moomex themes for both Compiz and Gnome, I haven?t
>>>>| lost any eye candy either; its appearance is just as high tech and
>>>>| elegant as that of Vista. The other new installation I?ve made was to put
>>>>| on the Swiftweasel Browser. This has proven to be incredibly fast - far
>>>>| outstripping Firefox on Vista.
>>>> `----
>>>>
>>>> http://www.linuxextremist.com/?p=115
>>>
>>> The sad thing is that people are paying for Vista in order to remove it.
>>
>> Vista may be the umbilical cord of computing.
>>
>
> Well, considering that (AFAICT, since I'm not an expert
> in neonatal development) the baby is born once it starts
> to run out of oxygen (it basically becomes too big for the
> life support system, starts to generate certain chemicals
> that say to Mommy "I want OUT!", and Mommy expels it), one
> has to wonder when Microsoft will be unable to deliver.
>
> So far, Microsoft has delivered -- or, more precisely,
> Microsoft has yet to fail to deliver, in the mind of the
> computing public; they delivered Vista and that's more
> or less it (beyond a few souls who actually look at the
> details of the product on the computer, and not just the
> pretty box it comes in or the shiny disk that goes in).
>
> In other words, Microsoft's Vista bombed and no one thus
> far has noticed beyond a grumbling in the streets...is that
> grumbling enough to cause the majority to switch?
>
> I wonder.
>
> There's also the DirectX10 fiasco, in which someone in
> Marketing (dunno if it's Microsoft, or someone else at
> this point) out and out *lied* to us regarding graphics
> capability. One can and should, of course, euphemize
> this a bit, and DirectX 10 does apparently bring some
> improvements, most noticeably in the area of smoke
> generation/clipping, given what I've seen while Googling
> thus far. However, that's not quite what was portrayed
> in the ad; among other things, one can see whitecaps.
> Allegedly.
Read the following recent article:
Microsoft, Flight Simulator developers use images to paint misleading picture
,----[ Quote ]
| We received this set of screenshots ages ago from Microsoft itself, which
| used this game heavily to promote the beauty of DX10 and how necessary is to
| switch from Windows XP to Vista. These two screenshots ended in quite a lot
| of mainstream magazines, and were all over the place in specialist IT media.
|
| [...]
|
| Nobody buys explanations about why Flight Simulator runs so slowly on
| quad-core processors and most powerful graphics cards, as we concluded in our
| review.
|
| FSX is rendering practically everything, forget about any modern 3D feature
| such as Occlussion Culling, Occlusion Querry and Z-buffer compression and
| putting a bitmap cockpit on blanked alpha texture, while everything else is
| being rendered.
|
| This procedure just kills performance and we could not imagine any game past
| DX7 utilizing such a concept.
|
| We cannot avoid the thought that this plot might have been done deliberately,
| in order to spark interest about the game itself and boost sales of a product
| that usually has a limited customer base.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/26/flight-simulator-developer
I said this about a year ago, but Microsoft produced just a small set of images
for press purposes. These accentuated the differences in all sorts of
unnatural ways. These were just promotional tools, like those gals and guys in
the "buy today and get one _absolutely_ free" adverts for some 'ab crunching'
gym equipment.
Other articles and benchmarks that are older:
Vista Offers Nothing to Gamers
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/01/vista_offers_nothing_to_gamers_uk/index.html
Crysis DX10 Fraud Exposed - DX9 to DX10 Patch
http://haleyshothouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5159
DX9 and DX10 performance compared
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41958
Inside CNET Labs: Lamenting DirectX 10
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9750536-1.html
Adding DX10 has "done nothing"
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41043
Hacked DX10 for Windows appears
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39095
Valve questions Microsoft's commitment to PC gaming
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/12/valve_questions_microsofts_commitment/
> Of course now I can't find the dratted picture. Google is
> such a pain at times, and its Image scanner shows me a
> picture of two young women (among many other unrelated
> flotsam and jetsam) when I search for "Microsoft DirectX
> 10 graphics deceptive advert". (They are holding what
> Microsoft says is 'the first Xbox 360 games console in
> Ireland', and are identified as models Glenda Gilson
> and Roberta Rowat in the blog. The deception might be
> whether they're holding an actual Xbox or just a colorful
> candy-coated shell, but that's not what I was looking for,
> pretty as those two are...)
I can't imagine searching the Web for USENET messages (the Web browser is 7
virtual desktops 'away'), but I think the images will appear in some of the
articles cited above. There's one with a forest and one with a lake. It's the
equivalent of those 'sexy' photos that you have of a MacDonald's hamburger.
Sadly, it never looks quite so good coming off the steamer in a
production-line 'sweatshop'. One good shot can change perception.
> Of course, someone was bound to notice eventually, and file
> a lawsuit over "Windows Vista Capable" being confused with
> the implication "can run Aero in all of its gorgeousness",
> and apparently intentionally so.
>
> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/03/183251
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/310004_msftsued03.html?source=rss
Yes, it's nice to see that Microsoft is receiving some taste of justice. A
class action was needed to be able to just face Microsoft in court (affording
to keep up with very deep pockets, unlike SCO's).
> I wasn't looking for this specifically either, but kudos and
> good luck to the filers for noticing. :-)
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "All your archives are (sic) belong to Google"
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 27.4%us, 4.4%sy, 1.0%ni, 62.5%id, 4.4%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
http://iuron.com - semantic engine to gather information
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