News & Opinions
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August 28 2008
Microsoft Outlook 2007
breaks HTML formatting in certain cases, all because microsoft wanted the outlook rendering engine to match word 2007's engine. Ok. Great.
As a software developer who has to build transmittal systems (automated email for transfering documents), this is really a kick in the guts from microsoft. A lot of my automated emails use generated HTML coversheets, just to include important things such as signatures, company logos, shop drawings, etc. So now anyone who has outlook 2007 are going to see some really stuffed up emails, and of course they'll blame the developer- not microsoft.
I know that technically this is old news, but its just been constantly coming up for the last few months with my work and its beyond a joke. How could microsoft make such a huge mistake? I mean this is one of the stupidest design screwups ive
ever heard of from a major company like microsoft.
But then again, i guess its consistent with the growing list of stuffups that microsoft are doing. Take Office for example, just 8 years ago it was becoming a nice and intuitive product.
Office 2000: Used about 10-20 megabytes of memory and had a simple interface that was easy to follow and had everything in a logical place- anything to do with viewing was under the "view" menu for example.
Office 2003: Used about 20-40 megabytes of memory and basically just took and improved Office 2000. Interfaces were cleaner and more elegant, there were loads of new features and ultimately it was more stable and easier to use.
And Now: Office 2007: Uses about 100-200 megabytes of memory while doing nothing. Throws out almost all the interface designs of the earlier versions and replaces it with a confusing (but nice looking) "ribbon", which has all of its options
in bizarre and wacky places.
Office 2007 seems to break the fundamental software development paradigm- "each version up should be better than the last". Why then has Office 2007 managed to screw up so much? The answer is open to debate: bad research by microsoft,
bad development planning or just bad management in general. Personally, im inclined to settle on bad management as the reason. Ever since Steve Ballmer has become the Chief Executive of Microsoft, the company has been systematically making bad products. Vista, .NET, Silverlight, Office 2007. All of these products have been rushed out the door and they all have backward compatibality problems (except silverlight, which is new- but even that gets stuffed up with different versions). The reason why these products have such major issues with backward compability is actually due to fundamental shifts of power inside Microsoft itself. This article explains it quite well actually. Its amazing to realize that microsoft only managed to corner so much of the market, because individuals were determined to improve the products. And now, with those individuals gone or being ignored, the products are getting worse and pointless.
It will be intersting to see what the next version of Office brings- misery or despair?
May 9 2008
AMD is in trouble- and now they're desperately trying to recover some credibility. The CPU manufacturer is in dire straits,
after consecutive quarterly losses it looks like they are going to start breaking up their company and offloading costs (ie: sack people and close down/sell off fabrication sites). None of this at all suprising,
considering how fickle AMD have been with their customers in the past with their product 'roadmaps'. AMD is now promising to clean up its act and begin meeting their goals, however im more inclined to watch
pigs fly. Perhaps they can recover, but not until they have a total change in management and that is probably too late.
January 23 2007
The first prediction for 2007 has already become a reality. Vista needs a patch- and it hasn't even be fully released yet.
January 17 2007
2007 Begins:
Microsoft is set to release their long awaited Operating System VISTA in the next few weeks. My bet is the first patch will be released before the O/S is even available for sale.
AMD/ATI will be set to release their highly anticipated R600 graphics chipset. It will be the first major release for ATI on a DirectX10 platform.
Unreal Tournament 2007 is set for release. The game will show-off the Unreal 3 engine and its new graphics/physics features.
Video cards may already be starting to merge with Physics Processors, with the new G80 nVidia GPU apparently more like a CPU than a Graphics chip.
Keywords for 2007: VISTA, DirectX10
May 14 2006
John Carmack- developer of cult games like Wolfenstein 3D and the Doom series- has updated his web blog.
He talks about game development of mobile phones and the sense of nostalgia that such development reminds him of
early PC game development. His earlier entries in the blog also make interesting reading - if you're interested in
graphics technology and programming development that is.
Link Here.
October 30 2005
Half Life 2 developers Valve Software have just released a technology demo title "The Lost Coast"
for Half Life 2. The demo is available for free for Half Life 2 owners and shows off some very
advanced new features for the Source engine, such as High Dynamic Range lighting and bloom effects.
The demo also introduces a new concept for game design, an ingame commentary system that can reveal
some interesting facts about the game development process. Be warned however that the system requirements
are very steep, with a MINIMUM CPU speed of 2.2Ghz, 1GB of RAM and a 256MB video card required.
More available here.
September 9 2005
Windows 2000 users have another reason to be annoyed with Microsoft's deliberate attempts to force them
to upgrade to Windows XP, with the demo of the new Microsoft game Age of Empires III being only
usable with Windows XP. Its been pointed out that since a majority of non-Microsoft backed games ARE compatible
with Windows 2000, it's a little strange that only Microsoft is unable to deliver compatability.
More available here.
April 6 2005
Anti-Spam laws have been used for one of the first times in Australia, with a Victorian automative company receiving
a $6,500 fine for sending SMS messages to people informing them of their services. The company used mobile numbers that
were taken from newspaper advertisments. The ACA (Australian Communications Authority) hopes that the action will act
as a warning to other companies hoping to utilize spam for marketing. Similiar laws in the US were introduced last year,
but many believe that the laws will have little effect, as most spam is sent from countries with relaxed communication laws.
More available here.
February 24 2005
512MB video cards are just around the corner, according to The Inquirer.
The first card to have 512 Megabytes is likely to be the ATI Radeon X850, a hyped up version of the standard X800 cards. ATI is apparently
offering some free Radeon X850 cards to people at the Texas Gaming Festival.
It will be very interesting to compare the ATI 512MB card
against the nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB version being developed by Gainward.
Currently nVidia seem to have a lead in the high end market
of video cards, with their GeForce 6800 cards being built to support Scan Line Interleaving (SLI) mode. SLI mode allows two video cards
to be linked together and share the load of rendering a complex visual scene.
ATI have developed their own answer to this, a mode called
AMR (ATI Multi Rendering), which basically does the same thing as SLI but
reportedly without needing any hardware connecters between the
cards. More on this story when exact specifications are released.
February 15 2005
All roads lead to Avalon, or so it seems if reports
about the next generation graphics engine of Windows Longhorn are true. Windows Longhorn (the next version of
Windows Operating Systems to be released in 2006-2007) was originally promising a breakthrough file system (WinFS) but
since that seems to be getting watered down, all eyes are turning to the Avalon User Interface engine. Basically, the
engine will allow software developers to create their own interfaces and add special effects such as reshaping windows in
3D and even lighting effects.
Actually, Microsoft has already released a Public Demo of the Avalon engine
here. Beware though, the download is very large at over 200MB.
Although it is yet to be confirmed, it seems likely that DirectX 10 will actually be Avalon, especially with Windows Longhorn less
than a year away.
February 10 2005
Well, the almighty software giants, Vole, have released some new patches for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
These patches come after months of complaints that some of the vulnerabilities have been known since
August last year. No doubt these patches will save us all from the damnation of virus hell, but
we have to ask just how many more "vulnerabilities" are going to seep out of this system? Since I installed
Windows XP years ago, the sheer number of critical patches (which are rarely delivered in a timely fashion)
are truly amazing. If fact, I lost count a long time ago.
But what am I saying? At least they're releasing these patches, which is always a good thing.
February 7 2005
According to this report Valve Software-
developers of the mega-hit PC games Half-Life and Half-Life 2 could
be in serious legal trouble. The problem stems from the fact that Valve didn't declare their
game registration system (Steam) in the EULA agreement. The agreement is basically used to protect software
developers from being sued for damages that their software causes. The problem is, since Steam wasn't
mentioned in Half-Life 2s agreement, technically it shouldn't even be required to play. But it is and that
is why Valve may face some serious headaches over this.
Personally, I hope Valve learns from this mistake. As a steam user, I have to say that it is one of the worst
file delivery systems that I have ever seen. Much of the User Interface for Steam is awful- with vital bits
of information lacking (such as what is being downloaded and how much).
I really enjoyed Half-Life 2, but it would have been a much more enjoyable experience with out this horrendous
system choking my internet bandwidth and chewing up my memory resources (40 Megabytes when doing nothing!)
The first rule of quality control is give the user what they want. Valve really need to remember this in the future.
Hardware Quickglance
Gainward GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB Video Card
This marks the first DirectX10 compliant video card that I've bought, and from my initial impressions it is one powerful piece of hardware (not suprising since it
has an almost obscene 681 million transistors!). When setting the card up, there were some initial misgivings about the sheer size and power requirements of the video card,
but they were quickly put aside when The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was started up. The dramatic improvement in texture quality and rendering speed left me with no
doubts that this card was well worth its price ($964 AUD).
What makes this card even more fascinating is the fact that it is apparently highly programmable, meaning
that it may be able to feature ongoing enhancements, such as Physics Processing.
Now to see how ATI/AMD Responds to this.
Conclusion: Extremely powerful video card that supports DirectX10, but also needs a lot of space and power (450W). A high-end enthusiast card.
Card Specifications
Core Speed: 575 Mhz
Max Core Speed (with Normal Fan):
Memory Speed: 900 (1800 DDR) Mhz
Max Fillrate:
Equation for Determining Fillrate approx for new Unified Pipelines: Fillrate (billions of texels) = Core Clock * (Pipelines / 2000)
You can download drivers for the
GeForce 8800 GTX card here.
Leadtek GeForce 7900 GT 256MB Video Card
While this is undeniably the most powerful video card I have bought to date- there are significant problems with the card that prevent me
from calling it "the best valued" card I have ever bought. Firstly, the default core speed is 520Mhz, but in order for it run properly, I was
forced to lower the core speed to 500Mhz. The card simply overheated at speeds higher than that. Considering that it was supposedly tested and
designed to run at 520Mhz, having to run it at a lower speed in simply unacceptable.
Secondly, the current driver support for this video card is simply laughable- NVIDIA have easily got the worst driver update record I have ever seen.
ATI release drivers every month, Realtek ALSO release drivers virtually every month. Even my old Gigabyte motherboard has had more BIOS UPDATES than
NVIDIA has released drivers. While many will claim this is because NVIDIA "gets it right" the first time around, such a claim is arrogant and ignorant.
Only a handful of modern games run "perfectly" with this video card (as in it only crashes once every two hours rather than ten times).
On top of this, almost every online benchmark I have seen () proves that this card is simply not good enough compared to ATI's competition.
In retrospect- I donot recommend this video card.
ATI's Radeon X1900 is currently considered to be the best video card out there- easily beating the 7900GT in almost every benchmark.
In a month or two I'll probably end up buying one myself.
Card Specifications
Core Speed: 520 Mhz
Max Core Speed (with Normal Fan):
Memory Speed: 720 (1440 DDR) Mhz
Max Fillrate:
You can download drivers for the
GeForce 7900 GT card here.
NVIDIA donot release drivers regulary- so I wouldn't bother checking more than once every three months.
Legend Radeon 9800SE 128MB Video Card
This is the best valued video card I have ever bought.
For $240 AUD, this video card is about $100 cheaper than
the Mid ranged video card Radeon 9600XT and over $150 cheaper than the
mid-high end video card Radeon 9800 Pro.
The reason why its cheap is because it is theoretically slower than the Radeon
9600XT. I can tell you from experience
that this is not true. The Radeon
9600XT has a 128-bit memory interface,
while the Radeon 9800SE has a 256-bit memory
interface (like the 9800 Pro).
The 9800SE is basically a 9800 Pro that has had 4 of its 8
rendering pipelines
disabled because
production analysis detects that those 4
pipelines
may be damaged. However, the analysis is carried out in batches and thus it
isn't always correct. Some 9800SE cards are actually fully functional as 9800 Pros! I used a special
modified driver for my
Radeon 9800SE video card that unlocks the hidden 4
pipelines.
So, for $240 I managed to buy a $400 video card!
Card Specifications
Core Speed: 378 Mhz
Max Core Speed (with Normal Fan):
Memory Speed: 297 (594 DDR) Mhz
Max Memory Speed (Normal): 330 (660 DDR) Mhz
Max Fillrate:
You can download the modified drivers for the
Radeon 9800SE card here.
The website updates whenever new drivers are released (usually once per month around the 16th), so check
them regularly.
My System Specs
CPU: Intel Duo Core E6850 (Running at 3 Ghz) with 4MB L2 Cache
Motherboard: Gigabyte Mainboard GA-EX38-DQ6 - X38 motherboard
Sound: Creative SoundBlaster SB X-Fi
Video: Gigabyte 9800 GX2 1Gb Memory
Memory: 2048MB Corsair DDR RAM (1066Mhz)
Drive(s):
Seagate 750GB w 16MB cache SATA-II
WDC 160GB w 8MB cache SATA-II
Maxtor 160GB w 8MB cache SATA
Seagate Barracuda 80GB w 2MB cache PATA
Lite-On DVD-RW 16x
OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 (+patch number 9,342,241)
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