>>> Copyright ReactOS Foundation 1996-2009. Yeah right...
>>
>> Wikipedia claims the first release was in 1998, so I guess it's 
>> *plausible*...
> 
> Except for the copyright violations, at least. I strongly suspect there 
> was no clean-room development going on there.

Well, again, Wikipedia asserts that the entire thing was done using 100% 
clean-room development, and that they've done extensive internal code 
audits to make sure everything is legal.

All of which is of course completely irrelevant, since every single tiny 
aspect of all M$ products are covered by 80,000,000 patents, so if this 
product ever starts actually working properly, the developers will still 
be sued off the face of the Earth.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 6/22/2010 7:59 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>
>> Cute... It pretends to be windows, but isn't...
>
> Cute or horrifying, depending on your point of view. There are some
> things about Windows that you wouldn't *want* to copy!
>
> Even so, many things look very similar yet not quite right. (E.g., that
> command prompt has a totally different aspect ratio.)
>
That aspect ratio issue is entirely dependent on font. You can change 
that even in Windows, and, stupidly, some of the *sizes* are based on 
.FON fonts, which have a completely different ration than the .TTF fonts 
used for the other sizes. It doesn't scale them, or otherwise allow you 
to set an arbitrary size, but is purely *fixed* to what ever internal 
sizes exist in the font definition files. Got to be the stupidest, and 
most annoying, aspect of the whole damn thing, especially if you planned 
to have a "small" copy open, to look at something, but still have it 
legible, while working in other, also open, windows, without having to 
alt-tab between them. Hint - the small enough one for that, isn't 
legible at all (well, unless maybe you had a display 40 inches wide..).

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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>> Even so, many things look very similar yet not quite right. (E.g., that
>> command prompt has a totally different aspect ratio.)
>>
> That aspect ratio issue is entirely dependent on font. You can change 
> that even in Windows, and, stupidly, some of the *sizes* are based on 
> .FON fonts, which have a completely different ration than the .TTF fonts 
> used for the other sizes. It doesn't scale them, or otherwise allow you 
> to set an arbitrary size, but is purely *fixed* to what ever internal 
> sizes exist in the font definition files. Got to be the stupidest, and 
> most annoying, aspect of the whole damn thing, especially if you planned 
> to have a "small" copy open, to look at something, but still have it 
> legible, while working in other, also open, windows, without having to 
> alt-tab between them. Hint - the small enough one for that, isn't 
> legible at all (well, unless maybe you had a display 40 inches wide..).

Yeah, it's no secret that the Windows command prompt thing isn't 
brilliant. (The number of people who complain about it not supporting 
ANSI escape sequences is staggering, for example.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, again, Wikipedia asserts that the entire thing was done using 100% 
> clean-room development,

Huh. Interesting. It's odd how they managed to get every little look pretty 
much exact.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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>> Well, again, Wikipedia asserts that the entire thing was done using 
>> 100% clean-room development,
> 
> Huh. Interesting. It's odd how they managed to get every little look 
> pretty much exact.

Well, if you get somebody to disassemble the code, write down the 
*exact* rendering parameters, and then give just the parameters to the 
guy who writes the new code, then you have "clean-room development", yet 
it looks pretty identical.

But take a closer look: Notepad has a line/column count. The command 
prompt has a different aspect ratio. A lot of icons are completely 
different. And so on. (And let's not forget, a lot of the very basic 
Windows stuff uses quite simple layouts, probably thrown together quite 
quickly.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 6/22/2010 11:18 AM, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:16:53 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
> spake thusly:
>
>> Check out the shutdown message. What's with that?
>
> They Live!
>

I recall a similar quote from Duke Nukem 3D.

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On 6/22/2010 1:12 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> All of which is of course completely irrelevant, since every single tiny
> aspect of all M$ products are covered by 80,000,000 patents, so if this
> product ever starts actually working properly, the developers will still
> be sued off the face of the Earth.


How long do software patents last? I would guess that in the same amount 
of time hardware and virtualization speeds would have increased so much 
that you might as well just run the *actual* OS in VMWare or whatever.

-- 
http://isometricland.com

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On 6/23/2010 8:56 AM, Kyle wrote:
> On 6/22/2010 11:18 AM, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> And lo On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:16:53 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
>> spake thusly:
>>
>>> Check out the shutdown message. What's with that?
>>
>> They Live!
>>
>
> I recall a similar quote from Duke Nukem 3D.

Yep, it's Dike Nukem.

-- 
http://isometricland.com

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On 6/23/2010 10:19 AM, SharkD wrote:
> On 6/22/2010 1:12 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> All of which is of course completely irrelevant, since every single tiny
>> aspect of all M$ products are covered by 80,000,000 patents, so if this
>> product ever starts actually working properly, the developers will still
>> be sued off the face of the Earth.
>
>
> How long do software patents last? I would guess that in the same amount
> of time hardware and virtualization speeds would have increased so much
> that you might as well just run the *actual* OS in VMWare or whatever.
>
lol More like, for so long, at this point, that you could build a VMWare 
version that "mimics" 4 core processors, while running it on 64 cores, 
while using only 2GB or the 16TB of memory available to your 5 year old 
computer system. The patent system is that screwed up, from what I have 
seen.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On 6/23/2010 1:43 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> lol More like, for so long, at this point, that you could build a VMWare
> version that "mimics" 4 core processors, while running it on 64 cores,
> while using only 2GB or the 16TB of memory available to your 5 year old
> computer system. The patent system is that screwed up, from what I have
> seen.
>

That sounds like way too many cores. AFAIK multi-core CPUs are just a 
temporary "hack" to resolve heat issues. There's only so much room on a 
motherboard, and with 64 cores you may run out!

-- 
http://isometricland.com

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