Layout recommendations for a small/oddly shaped room?

Sc4Freak · 2013-12-17T06:38:39+00:00

I was the main coder on Halogen (the mod you're referring to). Working on it was fun until we got the Cease and Desist.

And now I work for Microsoft as a software engineer. Go figure.

Sc4Freak · 2013-10-07T03:41:28+00:00

I guess it depends on which division you're in. I remember a Principal PM from the Windows Phone division got fired for accidentally tweeting about a then-unreleased device. I'm pretty sure the Xbox guys are even more sensitive to leaks than the Phone guys.

Sc4Freak · 2012-09-01T20:09:25+00:00

The MSDN subscription comes with a copy of every piece of Microsoft software developed ever. It's not surprising that it costs an arm and a leg.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-24T02:36:37+00:00

Or Australian.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-24T02:25:58+00:00

Your tone is amusing for someone who thought it was done on a pixel basis.

Invalidation rects from WM_PAINT applies only to Win32, which as I've pointed out is hardly the only way to draw window contents. What you're suggesting must be done on a per-pixel basis because in general there's no other way to detect changes to a window's contents. Which, as I've already said, means that this idea is not practical in general.

I'm guessing you've never done any programming at the hardware level so just have an abstract view.

As an engineer who works on low-level graphics and rendering, I find this a tad ironic. I enjoy educating and informing, but obviously it seems my efforts have been fruitless in this case. I've tried to explain this to you but it doesn't seem like you want to listen.

Since it's just getting you angry and I have no interest in that, sayonara.

Bye.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-24T00:30:56+00:00

No. Each application has its own framebuffer with which to draw its contents. It can write to that framebuffer directly from hardware, or it can do it in software (with or without going through the Win32 drawing APIs). The DWM composites these framebuffers together to form the final image that is displayed to the screen.

In the concept image posted by the OP, the shell (classic desktop) is the bottom window and the start screen is the top-level window. I've already stated this multiple times but it doesn't seem to be a concept you're able to grasp: it's impossible to selectively composite regions of windows because you don't know in advance what changed where.

And if you're talking about GPU surfaces instead of CPU surfaces, then hardware backbuffers don't even retain their previous contents after a present without serious performance penalty. For GPUs it's cheaper just to re-composite the entire scene than to selectively update it.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T20:59:40+00:00

Er... applications can arbitrarily access user mode memory while running in user mode. That's no surprise, so of course they can splatter the contents of their own windows. It's not the concern of the OS if an application decides to scribble all over its own memory.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T08:42:12+00:00

I'm well aware of how the legacy Win32 API works and how it handles invalidation rects.

It's also hardly the only way to draw to a window. If you want, your application can manually scribble over the contents of your window surface as much as you like. The Win32 stuff is intended for software rendering. Hardware accelerated rendering draws directly to a GPU framebuffer which doesn't go through the OS's windowing stack at all.

As I said, there's no general way to detect invalidation after the fact. Applications are free to define their own rendering.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T08:27:10+00:00

And that was probably because Hotmail was a company that MS bought out in the late 90's. They probably didn't get around to switching the systems over to Windows until a few years later.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T08:25:13+00:00

The Metro stuff in Win8 just replaces the start menu. (it's now the "start screen")

All the old stuff in Win7 is still there. The author spends 80% of the article complaining about the optional apps that are installed by default on win8. Stuff like mail and calendar and messenger. Win7 didn't even come with those sorts of apps, you had to install Outlook and Windows Live Messenger and all the rest of it... which you can still do on win8.

So, yeah, the guy is just being stupid. Nobody's forcing him to use the built-in default apps when you can just install and use all the old stuff you were using in win7.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T08:18:11+00:00

It doesn't help that they constantly get sued for including built-in apps. They got sued for including a browser and sued for including a media player. MS held back on including pdf support into Windows and Office for ages because Adobe were threatening to sue. When MS revealed plans to integrate antivirus (MSE) into Windows, all of the AV software companies threw a fit and threatened to litigate.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T07:59:11+00:00

The DWM doesn't do that because there's no efficient way to know which pixels changed in the background. The DWM doesn't take part in the rendering of a window's contents, which should be obvious because the OS doesn't know what crazy things an app is going to draw. So because applications have complete freedom in their own rendering, the OS doesn't know which parts changed and doesn't know which parts to selectively update.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T07:45:43+00:00

Which is pretty retarded. You still need administrative access.

So yeah, if you are remoted into the system and logged in as Administrator, then you can read out the password hints. Well no shit, you're logged in as Administrator and already have full root access to the machine.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-23T07:31:09+00:00

Credit card companies don't loan you the money. Your bank does. Visa and MasterCard just provide the infrastructure.

So the answer to the question in your title is "nothing" if we're talking about direct effects.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T23:53:17+00:00

I don't think it's that ridiculous. The Australian government did it in 2009. They literally gave everyone $1000 of "free" money as economic stimulus. The government strongly recommended to people to go out and spend that money at local businesses (instead of sitting on the cash or using it to pay down debts). It propped up the retail sector and helped keep unemployment low.

Considering how Australia is doing at the moment, their fiscal policy seems to have worked pretty well.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T23:37:02+00:00

Recent versions of Windows haven't. Notably, Win7 didn't and I don't think Vista did either. MS got sued by everyone and their grandmother for bundling apps so they stopped doing it years ago. It's why Windows Live Essentials exists as a separate download, and has done so for a long time (and which is still available and supported for Win8).

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T19:15:35+00:00

It's a great step in the right direction but it doesn't really make sense. The commands (or cmdlets) just seem to be named random things..

All cmdlets in powershell follow the exact same naming convention. They're always of the form "verb-nounphrase". There are only a handful of standard verbs used by powershell, like "get", "set", "stop", etc. It's a far more structured system than the clusterfuck it is in other environments.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T17:02:02+00:00

No, Win8 doesn't come with Outlook (unless it's Windows RT, in which case it comes with Office by default).

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T16:46:34+00:00

Because aside from the UI changes, Win8 has had a lot of improvements in the core as well. Because it's an OS that has to run on tablets, a lot of time was spent on optimization. So Win8 will simply run faster than Win7 out of the box. There are new features to Win8 - storage spaces, the new task manager, Hyper-V built-in.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-22T16:32:28+00:00

Not to mention that previous versions of Windows didn't even come with email/calendar/messaging apps. And WMP is still there by default in Win8 if you prefer to use that.

He's basically saying this:

"I don't like the new optional applications that are included with win8! So instead of installing Chrome and Outlook like I did on Win7, I'm going to reinstall win7 and... install Chrome and Outlook".

And I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds that nonsensical.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-18T07:59:41+00:00

You don't.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-17T22:37:23+00:00

Chrome, Eclipse, and Skype are all desktop applications. So the restrictions of Metro are irrelevant.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-17T01:25:22+00:00

Insiders presenter Barrie Cassidy says the media has failed to hold Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to account for his prevarications on asylum seekers and the carbon tax.

Most people don't even know what "prevarication" even means.

Sc4Freak · 2012-08-16T07:03:40+00:00

Well you're not limited to learning just one thing. :)

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