I've migrated to Windows 7

I hope to see a video of Tepples dancing a jig as a result.

That is all.

Edit 2015/02/11 -- HA HA HA: I LIED! :P

Despite the lack of accelerated surface, have you:

-Enabled classic mode theming
-Disabled cleartype as well as anti-aliasing
-Set the taskbar to small icons, don't combine unless full
-Enabled run in the start menu
-Disabled desktop gadgets
-Set the desktop icon size to "medium"
-Set the control panel layout to a non-categorized one
-Disabled UAC

?

I'm just naming things that I do on firstboot of a Win7 install...

While I don't use Windows 7 on my own computer, I don't expect to need it can't you still use WIN+R to open the run dialog box anyways? However, the thing I always do when working on such a computer is to enable underlined ALT access keys.

Conglaturation !

While I don't love any Windows version in particular, I don't regret moving from XP to 7 (which I did 3 or so years ago). XP is badly outdated, not even being able to use all the RAM and other resources we have available today. It is a 14 year old OS afterall.

I wish I had the balls to switch to Linux, but my experiences with it so far have been pretty frustrating. I can't install new drivers even if my life depends on it, and when I do get everything working, the OS will randomly break and become unusable after updates.

There is no need to "switch to" Linux, as it's common to have both Windows and Linux on the same machine, then you can boot whichever you want. Actually I setup most of my machines like that, I use Linux mostly for work and Windows mostly for leisure.


I had the same issue with Fedora, actually the OS couldn't even update itself back when I tried it, but anyway even without updates tit became broken and unusable as I installed more programs and especially started to disinstall some I didn't need to get extra disk space (this was not a good idea).

I installed Gentoo recently and while the process is much longer and more troublesome than any other distro, I must say the result is surprisingly usable so far. I don't know in the long run though. Someone (I don't know how trustable he is) told me Gentoo has the best update system, as it does not uninstall anything and cause trouble like other update system does.

I was overwhelmed with the amount of registry hacks required to make 7 into something I could use on a daily basis, and gave up and reinstalled XP =( Having everything default to "Libraries" instead of my root drives made many tasks take much longer than they should have. Ugh.

Not that I'm in love with XP, but it ain't broke yet, and the FLP version is pretty nice.

I was a die-hard XP user until only a year ago, when I was also forced to change.

I'm a big fan of http://www.classicshell.net/. Adds lots of customization options for the start menu and explorer so you can make things work the way they're "supposed" to

You'll have to make do with me playing In The Groove and someone else playing a StepMania song.


I don't know what monitors other people use, but I myself use all LCDs, and subpixel rendering looks better to me than 1bpp fonts, especially with freeware fonts that aren't well hinted.


I left UAC on for the same reason that OS X and Ubuntu use "sudo"-type structures to distinguish "things you do as an administrator" from "things you do as a normal user".


Not if your keyboard lacks a Windows key. Some gamers pry off the Windows key or buy older keyboards that lack it so that an accidental press of the key between Ctrl and Alt doesn't cause the player to lose the DirectX context and consequently either the progress in a full-screen single-player game or the connection to a multiplayer game.


Most of the time in GNU/Linux, you don't have to "install new drivers". The included kernel is supposed to automatically recognize your hardware and enable the appropriate drivers.


And lose your connections to IRC, Skype, etc. for five minutes.


I don't know if it's a result of having installed Classic Shell, but on Windows 8.1, Win+E opens File Explorer to "This PC" (formerly "My Computer").

Based on installing Windows 8.1 some weeks ago (got a new computer), I find UAC isn't too bad nowadays. It was terrible in Vista. I guess it depends somewhat on how much legacy software one has to use.


Uh, so there are games out there nowadays that don't handle DirectX context loss? (Not a quip, I honestly don't know since I don't play many modern games.)

A number of 'gamer' keyboards have a function key to disable the windows key.

Even if it's handled, that doesn't mean your character won't get a bullet in the head while you're getting back to the game.

Still on XP for me... Waiting for Skylake before I upgrade. I wonder how much faster than Merom it will be.

I'm laughing right now -- all of these things are the same things I change too. There's a lot more I tweak than just this, sadly, and I really need to keep a list of it because the list is quite long compared to what I tweaked on XP (or maybe on XP it's just second-nature to me by now).

The only one in your list I hadn't gotten to was disabling gadgets, which AFAIK Microsoft decommed anyway citing security concerns. I'll have to do that.

I had to resort to using Aero. All my testing (weeks/month) on a VM showed that Classic or Basic worked fine, but on actual hardware etc. it appears that Classic/Basic has a problem with "excessively refreshing/redrawing" portions of an application window when something in that particular object/text changes. You can actually see it flicker. In Aero, with the same app: doesn't happen. *sigh*

The disable ClearType + font smoothing (which are separate things) settings I do too, but I spent almost 5 hours yesterday fiddling with web browsers and trying to get shit to render/look like it used to on XP (i.e. GDI). I found way too many Stackoverflow + Reddit posts talking about this exact problem, and nobody has a good solution other than "turn on ClearType" (I'm not doing it, period. I HATE text looking blurry). And the thing is, the behaviour varies per browser. I use Firefox (or Pale Moon) for personal stuff, and Chrome for work, so those are the only two I cared about.

The biggest problem I have is with downloadable fonts. Sites like Google+ are a great example -- they use a font called "Roboto" which is apparently designed around ClearType or subpixel whatever, so when you don't use that it looks like complete dogshit (see picture on left). That's how a lot of downloadable fonts look in Firefox too. So this is what I managed to use as a workaround for both browsers, when ClearType is off + font smoothing is off:

Chrome 40 -- chrome://flags then disable DirectWrite (note that the toggle is called "Disable DirectWrite", so to disable it you actually have to set the setting to "Enabled")
Firefox 35 -- about:config then set gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled=false

The result in Chrome is good -- downloadable fonts look like they did on XP (which to me was tolerable). The result in Firefox is also good, but the downside is this: there are tons of sites that use downloadable fonts with special Unicode glyphs within those fonts (usually for stupid things like little arrows, emojis, or whatever else -- Wordpress.com's editor is a great example), so by turning off downloadable fonts, on Windows 7 those now just appear as a box.

To be honest going to 7 is pretty awful. I feel like I've taken a serious step backwards in usability in a lot of ways. There are other things I do like, like how disk I/O is insanely fast compared to XP (even with an SSD + AHCI on XP), and the taskbar improvements are nice (I'm used to those from my old job), but there are a lot of other things that make me cringe and I'm just going to have to force myself to adapt.

Oh, the one last thing I'm fearing having to deal with because I don't know what the hell Microsoft did with it: figuring out what exactly happened to "My Documents". On XP, you had a "My Documents" folder which defaulted to C:\Documents and Settings\accountname\My Documents. If your desktop was set to show that folder, you could right-click on it and change internally where that pointed. And I always did -- I reassigned it to D:\Important Documents because my C: drive is "sacrificial", meaning an OS reinstall (format, etc.) would lose all data on C:. So pointing it to a folder on D: makes a lot of sense.

On Windows 7 I have no fucking idea what they did to all of this. Now I'm left with a folder called accountname on my desktop, which apparently is some kind of "Library". I have no clue what that is, how to manage it, etc.. The reason this concerns me is that I have games that have save files, important documents (taxes, PDFs, bills/debts, etc.) that I store in a centralised place (see above), and now I have not the slightest idea how I'm going to centralise all of that onto my D: drive. Why Microsoft changed this is beyond me. I see absolutely nothing good from it.

Edit: Oh, and because I use small desktop icons, I had to use this registry tweak to make the shortcut "icon/overlay" arrow much smaller (like on XP), because otherwise the shortcut arrow ends up covering practically 1/4th of the icon:



Microsoft!!! *shakes fist*

Still works. \Documents and Settings is now \Users. Right click on special folders, go to the Properties -> Location tab.

Ah ha, didn't know about that. Thank you!

But I'm going to have to do this for every single folder in there (excluding AppData)? E.g. Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, Favorites, Links, My Documens, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, Saved Games, and Searches? And what if an app/program makes a new thing in there (say, "My Snakes")?

Bleh. I see what they did. Instead of keeping things like My Pictures, My Videos, etc. under My Documents, they broke everything out into separate folders (out from under My Documents) so now you have to micro-manage many things. I bet this is what Asaki was talking about earlier.

I never knew you could change these paths! Thanks. I always ignored these special folders and just used my D: drive.

More things to add to my registry tweak crap on 7... *sigh*

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... windows-7/

My congratulations, or consolations, or both, perhaps.

You might be interested in Ultimate Windows Tweaker. It's a standalone program, nothing to install. Like TweakUI of yore, it lets you change lots of hidden UI settings (including Aero Shake )

Might as well throw this on the list, you'll wish you had it eventually. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to remove your ability to manage file types in any sane way.

As for 1bpp fonts not having hinting instructions, those fonts are dead to me and I have no desire to use them. However, with directwrite disabled in Chrome it at least does some amount of greyscale AA to make it presentable enough instead of the jagged mess you get with cleartype or on Linux (with AA off, hinting on). Thanks for the firefox flags, that makes it a lot more usable (I recommend turning the font fallback delay all the way down).

I got to know C:\DOCUME~1\ and the like for things as when I had XP I'd run across stuff that was obviously ported from the 16-bit days that refused to work any other way. That, or Adobe Photoshop CS2.

When I was about ten years old I learned enough command prompt to run things with command-line arguments and to figure out 6CHARS~ resolution for entry names, but I didn't learn dir until about a year later. I'd look at things in Windows 2000's explorer (loved 2000!), memorize the path, then open the command prompt and approximate it that way. Gosh.

I think 7 did that too, but any time you tried to open or save a file while using a program, it always tried to default to "libraries" and you'd have to scroll past all of them to get to your drives.



Basically, yeah. Even in older Windows, I only ever used My Documents for stuff I was too lazy to find a proper home for...but now games and applications try to save files hidden deep within, and 7 broke it up into tons of extra folders...I just want my stuff on a different drive (non-sacrificial, I like the sound of that), nobody else even has login accounts on any of my machines...and I hate having to use ctrl+f any time I want to back up videogame saves...

Well, chances are I'm going to go back to XP. This marks (I think) the 4th time I've tried to move to Windows 7 and just cannot deal with how Microsoft has essentially destroyed something usable (and for those who are OS X advocates -- I had a MacBook Pro + Retina about a year ago, returned it within a week because I couldn't get anything done on it, spent too much time fighting with the OS. I can get things done on XP easier. But the screen + hardware were wonderful!).

So... how do you guys tolerate text looking like this? This is what text looks like on some web pages if you have ClearType turned off and font smoothing turned off. These are pages that use downloadable web fonts that are never tested without ClearType/subpixel stuff or font smoothing (i.e. whoever is designing these fonts needs to test fully or stop making fonts). The ones I've seen so far that look like this are "Open Sans" (pictured) and "Roboto" (Google's infamous font).

ClearType makes text look like blurry-rainbow-shimmery-crap, and font smoothing makes text look like blurry crap. On Windows 7 anyway, turning on/off ClearType also turns on/off font smoothing (while on XP they seem to be independent to some degree -- but I hate them both anyway).

Last screenshot. Just look at it! Who tolerates this?!?!? And look at the screenshot with ClearType enabled -- specifically look at the edges/borders of the monospace font (notice the coloured subpixel crap). NO!

Browsers act differently based on that setting, along with if they're using DirectWrite or not, plus if you're using Direct2D (not a typo) or not. Chrome "sort of" behaves okay, but Firefox is particularly awful about this (I spent almost all of Monday night screwing around with settings, hour after hour, to try and find something that worked. Failed).

Pages that look like dogshit:

Open Sans -- https://www.relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-e ... e-matchers
Roboto -- https://plus.google.com/

So how do you guys tolerate all of this? I seriously cannot get used to text looking either a) like smudged dogshit, or b) like blurry rainbow-edged crap. On XP yes, the fonts tended to look "jagged" or "pointy", but that's better than these weird smudgy letters. And since these are all pages on the Web, it's not like you can sit around micro-managing all of them with a bunch of forced stylesheet overrides...

To me, ClearType looks beautiful. It resembles the printed word much more than Windows 3.1-era 1-bit rendering ever did. One problem I have specifically with GDI ClearType, not so much with other subpixel rendering implementations, is that Helvetica's 'm', 'n', and 'r' aren't hinted for the extreme stretching that GDI ClearType applies to letters. I can post samples if you want.

Get used to ClearType, is all I can say. Fighting it is too much trouble, you'll never get it working 100% without.

You probably know this already, but make sure the RGB order is right for your monitor, or you will definitely have blurry-rainbow-shimmery-crap. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14800/us ... windows-7/

That look better than this? (See attachment) This is the same browser (Firefox 35), same settings (ClearType off, font smoothing off), but under Windows XP. The difference is night and day. Monospaced font looks clean/crisp like it should, and the Open Sans portion looks more than decent, especially when compared to this.

Oh, and here's the hilarious part: supposedly in Firefox on Windows 7+, to get "GDI rendering", you're supposed to set:


...except the results look the same as the non-ClearType/non-smoothed screenshot. So clearly rendering_mode=2 doesn't get you "classic GDI rendering mode" of text at all. Don't believe the hype, unless you like that sort of visual result. Me personally, I can't stand it, it hurts my eyes.

I can't wrap my brain around what these font engines are doing to screw up text so badly with ClearType and smoothing off. XP obviously did something different. Why that was discarded I have no clue. And how people tolerate this is also beyond me.

My best guess? Completely ignoring hinting. I can't fathom how else they'd screw it up that badly.

Subpixel rendering is an abomination, a decision to throw away decades of best practices (such as meaningfully paying attention to hinting) for the convenience of a lie (that the printed form and on-screen can use the same hinting, i.e. none). Never mind that the very premise ("We can convey extra spatial information by pretending that the pixels onscreen are all the same color") is disingenuous, and has to be masked by an explicit blurring stage: as we consume more and more content on-screen, we're moving away from the relevance of the printed form anyway.

Nevermind the travesty of when one enlarges any content already afflicted by subpixel rendering. Huge rainbow jaggies, blurred over my whole screen!

My only hope is that we get to meaningfully high resolution (not just high DPI) screens soon enough that the places where I care (when a glyph has an area somewhere below about 300 total pixels) that I won't be able to see the luma-into-chroma crosstalk. (Even on my ~240dpi android phone, subpixel antialiasing is still obnoxiously visible for glyphs of about 100 pixels area)

About you wanting higher resolution images and whatnot, I find it a bit saddening that the supposedly "uber-advanced, 5% more powerful!" new consoles are just now being able to render games at 1080p, when it seems that 4k is starting to be the new "HD". (I guess they will always be a step behind. ) This is a whole another story, though.

This demonstrates how important it is to match the AA method to your monitor. On a CRT, grayscale AA is truest to the original forms of the letters. On an RGB LCD monitor, subpixel AA looks smoother than grayscale AA and has noticeably less visible fringing than no AA.

And when 1080p TVs came out, consoles could only do 720p. By the end of the generation, Xbox 360 games were routinely doing 1024x576, which isn't even as many pixels as my netbook, in order to use more sophisticated pixel shaders.

Can you demonstrate what XP does with that page? Is it actually capable of rendering it without aliasing, but better than that third screenshot in this post? Or it is just not using the specified font and substituting something that works better without aliasing?

It's been my understanding that ragged looking fonts like that are unavoidable, except by finding some way to disallow that font in the context and substitute a better one. Firefox has an option to disable custom webpage fonts entirely. Alternatively you could also target specific fonts with a scripting add-on, though.

I think koitsu is trying to pin the blame on font authors who don't include instructions for 1-bit rendering in their fonts anymore. "Instructions" in TrueType are programs stored inside a font that align control points of font outlines to the pixel grid, sort of like a primitive vertex shader. They're time-consuming to make, and quick-and-dirty instructions leave line widths uneven. The instructions generated by ttfautohint work well for AA but not for 1-bit. From How It Works:

There is one exception: The autohinter no longer tries to provide good hinting for monochrome rasterization. Instead, it expects anti-aliasing with 256 gray levels, which became standard with Windows 98.

And the shaders still looked terrible. I remember when Skyrim came out and in my middle school, and everyone was making an overly big deal about the game (keep in mind, these are middleschoolers ) and said how "lifelike" it looked and whatnot, but whenever you looked at the shadow of something, you could have sworn it was a translucent 32x32 texture hovering over the ground. I think it's sad that after over 8 years, these artifacts are still easily noticeable. I mean, seriously, what did they do for that long? The space in between the N64 and the Gamecube was only 5 years, and the difference between "last gen" and "current gen" doesn't even come close to comparison. I don't want to hear that "the games look so real that they couldn't possibly look better" because there are still plenty of graphical disasters that need to be attended to to make the games look "lifelike". For how many polygons these systems can supposedly push, there sure is an unhealthy amount of bill boarding found in these games. half of the leaves on trees and clusters of grass in all these games look to face you whenever you turn and it looks terrible. It was always humorous how everyone criticized the Wii U, saying that it looked "past gen" and then they saw that the Xbone and BS4 didn't look much (and I mean really didn't look much) better, so they just kind of kept silent after that. Seriously, hardware developers really need to get off there lazy arses. Instead of increasing processor speeds, they instead add ludicrous amounts of ram. I mean seriously, are you playing 3 games at once? I'd like to see how the next new consoles would look, but I don't even think they'd be out by the time I had grandkids.

Sorry about my rant there. (Then again it kind of seems like that was the purpose of this thread. )

You know, this sounds crazy, but I always thought it would be cool if solely 2D dedicated hardware still existed (sprites and BGs) with all the modern CPU speeds and RAM sizes and whatnot. I'm honestly not sure what you'd do with all that power, but it would definitely be interesting...

Why does it have to be solely 2D dedicated? What we've got now works plenty well for 2D. I think we hit overkill for 2D with the PSX (e.g. Symphony of the Night). It's also been part of the rise of bullet hell shooters, for example.

Yeah, I'm really not thinking... I always thought it would have been cool to see what would have happened if the game boy line had kept going and the DS didn't come into existence. I would have liked to see what they would have done if they didn't switch over to 3D, because, for the most part, I feel like important publishers aren't making 2D titles anymore and that quite a bit of the people who are aren't very good.

I agree. However, if I was designing modern 2D hardware I'd definitely get rid of BGs and just allow thousands of sprites. If you want BGs you could just simulate them using sprites, the other way around is not possible. I'd also make the sprite roto-scalable in a mode 7 fashion, making it easy to simulate basic 3D using sprites.

Modern CPU speeds and RAM sizes could be useful for AI or simply to simulate 3D graphics on 2D hardware. But if you are going to have a powerful CPU and lots of RAM, then I don't see much point in supporting something else than plain bitmap in hardware, since the CPU can handle all the real-time rendering all by itself fast enough.

We could even go a level further and remove any kind of hardware support for graphics, letting the CPU have a timer that regularly sends an interrupt to order the CPU to send a pixel to the screen.


I think it's incontestable that the DS is the de-facto successor to the GBA.

DS is just a name. It's an evolution to the GBA as much as the GBA is to the GBC.


As long as it can still do 2D graphics, they're not taking anything away by implementing 3D graphics. It just makes the system more versatile. Also, they'd probably have gone 3D even if they kept the Game Boy name.


There are more 2D games now than back when 3D graphics were new and hyped to no end, I think. But I agree that companies in general aren't as good with 2D as they were back in the 8 and 16-bit days. Even the GBA has a huge number of games with mediocre 2D graphics that severely underutilized the hardware.

Would "the games look so real that they couldn't possibly look better on any practical budget" be more honest?


Same effect as seen on the trees outside Peach's castle in Super Mario 64?


BS4?
(sarcasm) So did they make a fourth version of the Satellaview (BS-X, BS2, BS3, BS4)?
(sincerity) I've read "XbOne" plenty of places, but I don't know how I managed to avoid "BS4".


PC CPUs have't increased GHz for a decade either, just threads and possibly instructions per clock.


I thought one of the advantages of consoles was that you could run four players' views on one machine, as opposed to having to buy four machines for four players.


With modern CPU speeds, you'd end up software rendering. Faceball 2000 and Wolfenstein 3D already started pushing toward this, and Super FX games pushed even harder. (The Super FX, aka GSU, was just a RISC CPU with an efficient "write one pixel" instruction.)


Again, software rendering. Doom was ported to GBA, for instance, and there was even an attempt at a Grand Theft Auto clone titled Payback. All software rendered.


I wonder how much of that is Sony Computer Entertainment America's fault. In order to distinguish its platform from the more 2D-heavy predecessors like the Super NES and Sega Saturn, Sony wouldn't let a publisher release a 2D title unless it has already released a 3D title on the same platform. That's why we got Mega Man Legends before Mega Man 7, and why we got the Mega Man X7 in poorly-executed 3D before Mega Man X8.


If you really give the programmer thousands of rot/scale sprites, the sprites will end up used as polygons for 3D character meshes. That's what happened with the Saturn.


Technically, correct. Politically, not so much. If a platform is capable of 3D, the console maker may tend to reject projects whose graphics are perceived as dated. Likewise, when Nintendo introduces a new input method (touch on DS, motion on Wii, touch on Wii U), the first year or so of games are required to include a gimmick that uses it.


With only three and a half years before the DS came out, there wasn't much time to utilize the hardware fully. It's not like the Xbox 360, where developers had eight years to wring as much out of it as possible.

There's no way to "demonstrate" this due to the inability to look at the inner workings of XP and what it's doing under the hood. But the following is factual:

1) The site in question uses CSS as so: font-family: "Open Sans",Trebuchet,Trebuchet MS,Arial,sans-serif, as well as <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400,300,600&amp;subset=latin,cyrillic-ext" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">, which indicates this is a downloadable web font (unless the person has the font installed on their system).

2) The systems (both XP and 7) do not have any font called "Open Sans" installed, therefore the downloadable version is being used. Disabling downloadable fonts causes, on both Windows 7 and XP, one of the alternate (system-installed) fonts (see above) to be used. It's very easy to tell what "Open Sans" looks like in comparison to these other fonts.

3) The issue is not limited to the site in question. It affects many other fonts and sites, the prolific of which are Google-owned sites like Google+ and others, where they use "Roboto" which suffers from the same issue. I could give you links to several other sites that use this same methodology + different fonts that look equally as awful.

4) Disabling downloadable fonts as a permanent solution is not viable -- MANY websites today (Twitter, Wordpress, Github, Trello, etc.) use downloadable fonts solely for the purpose of referencing symbols or emojis that are used throughout the web page, and this is becoming more common as a way to use "symbols" as ways of navigation, i.e. instead of using images, they now use some Unicode glyph that is in some special font. By disabling downloadable fonts, these characters show up as either an empty box or a box with hexadecimal characters in it (varies per browser and OS), destroying all usability.


Like I said earlier: micro-managing that list is impossible because there are just too many sites that do this. Furthermore, using things like "adblockers" to stop access to sites that have web fonts on them (e.g. blocking fonts.googleapis.com) does not help, because more and more sites are becoming "obfuscated" in their methodologies. For example, Google+ doesn't use fonts.googleapis.com any longer -- it did in the past, but it doesn't now. It uses some "gstatic" site, where the URL for a font download is strangely twisted/obfuscated, and is EXTREMELY hard to find in their massive HTML/CSS/JS (the last I looked (Monday) there was a 1.2MByte JS file downloaded -- I'm not kidding).

The only thing I've managed to find that semi-combats all this is this addon, which in a roundabout way is the same thing as disabling downloadable fonts (particularly with regards to #4 above). It allows for Google+ to become readable, but as a long-term solution for everything I just don't see it being feasible.

I'd just really love to know what the hell happened either between XP and Vista, or XP and 7 (not sure which), that made font rendering look this crappy with ClearType off + font smoothing off. XP obviously did something different that was much more visually acceptable. loopy's comment about basically having to bite the bullet and enable ClearType is a very depressing and sad reality, I think.

So here's another example (and I'm laughing because this is a Google site using "Open Sans" -- hey you should be using "Roboto" cuz GOOGLE! Har har har):

https://www.google.com/+/learnmore/?hl= ... dfriends#2

<link href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300,400,600,700&amp;lang=en" rel="stylesheet">

Attached are 3 screenshots of the above site, all with system-wide ClearType disabled + font smoothing disabled + there is no Open Sans on either system:

1. Firefox 35 on Windows 7

2. Firefox 35 on Windows XP

3. Chrome 40 on Windows 7 -- with DirectWrite disabled inside chrome://flags, otherwise with DirectWrite enabled the results look the same as Firefox (really)

You'd think that from these results, the solution is to disable DirectWrite everywhere, including in Firefox. Well here's the kicker: DirectWrite by default is disabled in Firefox (according to about:config gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled=false). So how on earth it's rendering text like this is beyond me, but given what they've done over the years, I would not be surprised if there's some ridiculous inner design decision where they enable DirectWrite for specific cases. There is an about:config option called gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.use_for_downloadable_fonts, which defaults to true, but toggling this changes + restarting nothing.

So again we see overall that the results on XP are "more ideal" when ClearType+smoothing is disabled -- the glyphs don't look horribly misshapen/like someone smeared an oil painting.

Welcome to the future: where unless you enjoy your text looking blurry universally, everything will look like shit. :P

And no, using Chrome is not an option -- I use Chrome as my browser exclusively for work (it's all we use at work, actually -- so I kinda don't have a choice), and Firefox exclusively for personal. If working at Microsoft taught me anything, it's segregating work/home as much as possible is a Good Thing(tm).

By "demonstrate" all I meant was screenshot.

So... that second screenshot from XP is clearly applying sub-pixel anti-aliasing to the font in question. I thought you had been saying that XP has better non-AA renderings of fonts like this, but as far as I can tell you've just not managed to turn it off for that font?

You can't have a line a pixel and a half wide without making things blurry. Nor can you have a truly diagonal line on a rectangular pixel grid without making things blurry or stair-steppy. What would be your preferred solution, other than to spend a lot of money hiring expensive experts to produce 1-bit hints for all of Google's web fonts?

I don't care "what" Firefox on XP is doing -- it obviously deals with this situation better than Firefox on 7.

The question then becomes: what the fuck Firefox is doing on Windows 7 that makes its rendering of this font look like dogcrap in comparison to Windows XP? Because from what I can tell, there doesn't appear to be a way to make it look like XP. Earlier post in my thread clearly says 1) Firefox supposedly doesn't use DirectWrite on 7 by default, and 2) even if you enable DirectWrite in Firefox on 7, and tell it to use rendering_mode=2 ("GDI"), it doesn't look anything like XP (pure GDI).

Remember: the settings between the two browsers (Firefox 35 on XP vs. Firefox 35 on 7) are identical, and the ClearType+font smoothing settings (in the OS) are identical as well.

So how would I have managed to "turn it off" for anything? What's making these decisions is something in Firefox or something in Windows, not me.

Have you tried asking some of these questions on Super User?

Koitsu, I can't tell if you're taking my tone as adversarial. I'm certainly not trying to argue you into liking Windows 7 (why would I care). I was just confused because I thought you were saying XP had better looking non-AA font rendering than Windows 7. So... thanks for taking the picture and clarifying that it doesn't.

Personally, I turn off font AA everywhere I can, and I live with the stupid ragged web fonts (which weren't really a thing when I was still using XP). The only place AA remains for me is in window titles and the start bar, and even those I could probably eradicate if I dug deep enough.

Palemoon uses an earlier version of Firefox's text rendering, does it have the same problems?

Pale Moon 25.2.1 -- looks the same as Firefox 35. That's with hardware acceleration disabled and no other adjustments in about:config. Changing any of the other settings I mentioned earlier in Firefox also has the exact same effect. TL;DR -- Pale Moon is no different in this regard.

I read somewhere that they can't get much more speed from a single core using today's semiconductors without everything overheating and dying (not unlike a certain Microsoft console). Heck, even most laptops from the past 10-15 years are overheating to death.



"Attempt"? Wasn't it released commercially in Europe?

It was a certainty that the physical limitations of the current technology would be reached.


Maybe he's referring to the attempt to clone clone GTA, meaning it's not a good clone, rather than an attempt to create/release the game.

I don't know where misinformation like this comes from (Not the first bit, but the latter about Xboxes and laptops "overheating" to death. Almost every intel CPU since at least the Core series has implemented shutdown from critical thermal events, and even before that they slowed themselves down to prevent them from cooking themselves. The Xboxes suffered the "red ring" issue from lead-free solder balls cracking due to poor quality material, improper application, or a number of other reasons. The quick rise in temperature may accelerate such mechanical stress from thermal expansion/contraction but the processors are not dying from overheating.

Basically, A Neo Geo with a bit of SNES thrown in on ultra steroids. That would definitely be interesting...


It's definitely the successor, but I always thought that the whole point of the GB series was to be solely 2D. I know that the original GB was obviously in a time where 2D was dominant because the hardware wasn't quite strong enough to pull off 3D, but the time the GBA came out, Nintendo could have probably at least given the GBA some sort of primitive 3D hardware, but they didn't and several publishers still tried to make 3D games for it (and they looked a lot worse than if they were in 2D). I also feel that by the time the GBA was out, publishers stopped knowing how to make good looking 2D games. In fact you can even see that Neo Geo games made after 2000 started to look worse. This is probably mostly due to SNK breaking up and reforming, but my point still stands. I just see so many GBA games that do stupid stuff like making something like a life counter and 7 numbers for the score into a whole BG layer when they could have easily been made with sprites and freed a BG layer for more parallax scrolling.


Yes. however, everyone I know says "it looks so real that it looks like little people are walking on the screen". What I'm deadly afraid of is hardware developers deciding that the systems look "good enough" so they wait 8 years to release a new system that doesn't exactly "knock your socks off" just because its time collect an extra $500 from people.


Yes. If these machines could supposedly push 3 trillion polygons or whatever, I'd expect every leaf on a tree in these games to be it's own polygon. I wonder if part of the problem is if the people taking "cutting corners" when they are creating the environments, or if the hardware really can't handle it. It's a bit saddening that practices that were used to put less strain on about 20 year old hardware are still in place today.


Yeah, I never understood what BS in BS-X was supposed to mean, but let's just say that the name wasn't very well thought out... About "BS4", my ranting levels were exceeding reasonable limits and I came up with it. It may not be clever like XbOne, but I'm a bit shocked that the name hasn't been used yet, because somebody had to have thought of it already.


Yet, with online connectivity, split screen seems to be a thing of the past with developers. Because, you know, people never have friends over to play video games.


Wait, so all the "3D" characters and the environments in Saturn games are actually just thousands rot/scale sprites? That seems a bit unorthodox, to say the least. It is a bit funny to think that the Saturn had to piece a bunch of sprites together to simulate 3D, while the PS used front facing polygons to simulate 2D. You know, if the Saturn uses sprites for 3D, does that mean that there are still limitations like sprites per scan line and other things. The Saturn seems like an interesting piece of hardware.


I agree with this 100% percent. I can't even think of the last major run and gun game. (Metal Slug 3, released in 2000?)

You know, if I'm derailing the thread a bit, I could create a new one.

Oh yeah, one last thing, people are going to think I'm crazy for asking this, but what exactly is a "core"? Is it like multiple processors in one? In that case, wouldn't they all have to divide the address busses? What's the point? Why not just have multiple processors?

Payback was released. It was just hard to get sellers to ship to the USA, where I live.

In BS-X, BS stands for St.GIGA's Broadcast Satellite system. The "PS-X" in the "PS-X EXE" header of every PlayStation 1 executable file stands for PlayStation Experiment, a project within Sony to rework the "Play Station" CD drive to work without a Super NES host machine after Nintendo dumped Sony for Philips. The PlayStation Experiment produced a console released in the mid-1990s under the name PlayStation. Sometimes I make bad jokes about MSX, BS-X, and PSX.

"Because, you know, people never have friends over to play video games."
If some Slashdot regulars are to be believed, only kids have friends over, and after-school is a mature market niche that Nintendo already thoroughly owns. After graduating from high school, single adults have a life, and they play either single-player or online because automatic matchmaking with strangers (or with friends previously met in-game as strangers) is more convenient than real-world matchmaking with friends who have moved 300 miles/500 km away.

A "core" is one of several processors in one IC package, usually on one die. One advantage of putting multiple cores on one die is that they can share highest-level cache, the memory controller, and the like. Another is that several publishers of proprietary operating systems and applications charge per socket, not per core. So a system with four single-core CPUs needs four licenses, while a system with two dual-core CPUs needs two, and a system with one quad-core CPU needs only one. Windows XP, for instance, needed an update to treat systems with one dual-core CPU as having one CPU.

This has to be a joke. (I don't know what Slashdot is, but if this is true, their logic has some holes in it.)

I'm back on XP. There were other oddities I was witnessing that were driving me crazy, but the font rendering thing discussed earlier just takes the cake -- it's too major a thing for me to just to blow off. I was already tolerating enough with the UI change, but that was just too much. I guess that marks the 4th time I've tried to convert, and like the time before, I lasted about 3-4 days.

Curse technology today. CURSE IT.

I "can't wait" to see what Windows 9 is going to look like...

It won't look like anything because it won't exist.

You can try it out in advance if you want. However, when Microsoft announced it, their stock dropped by 12-13% (here's the chart; click the "1m" (1 month), look at January 27th market open).

The only reason I "care" about Windows 10: I own MSFT stock, and while stock is just monopoly money to me (until cashed out), I honestly felt sickened when I looked at my portfolio and found that I had essentially "lost" US$4500 that day. I knew I should have sold everything I had back in November at its peak. *sigh*

Seriously, what the heck is up with Microsoft naming things? I'm sure they the marketing department wrote this down on a whiteboard in one of their conferences regarding the next Xbox.

Xbox + 360 = Xbox360 + 360 = Xbox720 XboxOne.


That's a bit sad that that would be the reason you would be excited for it. (Not on your part, but on Microsoft's.) $100 says that money went straight over to Apple because people are impressed by shinny white things with an "i" in front of it.

My apologies. This has nothing to do with koitsu's move to Windows 7, but someone said "GBA", so here I am.



It's more like it wasn't feasible to put dedicated 3D hardware into a portable (at least Nintendo felt that way) until the DS came out, not that the GB series of handhelds was always meant to be 2D. Remember, the GBA was released in 2001, meaning Nintendo was developing it with late 90s era mobile technology. Of course Nintendo dropped the GB moniker once they moved to the DS and stuck with it, but that doesn't mean they dropped it because it was natively capable of handling 3D graphics (I think its Dual Screens had more to do with it). Nintendo gave the GBA about as much 3D capability as the SNES ever did (you can emulate Mode 7 with BG scaling/rotation) and probably more (beefier CPU for more software calculations, making complete software rendering possible). I don't think Nintendo was aiming to close the gap between the GBC and say the N64, but rather push the GBA to basically act like a portable SNES on steroids. In light of that, dedicated 3D was a "do-it-next-gen" item on their checklist.

As I see it, the DS was really meant to close the technical gap between Nintendo's handheld hardware and the N64, but it maintained a lot of 2D functionality. The DS is essentially the GBA times two, with a larger resolution, if we're talking strictly about 2D games. They really just copy+pasted the way the GBA does 2D graphics into the DS. Even so, looking over the specs, you get the feeling that Nintendo intended it to be a half-and-half kind of solution. It gave developers the option to go near complete 3D*, completely 2D, or mix and match the two (like New Super Mario Bros.)

*I say this because you'll most likely end up using sprites for something, e.g. menus. Sprites would save developers from having to use some of the DS' limited textures for that.



Never saw that reflected on my GBA though. Megaman Zero (1-4), all 3 Kirby games, both Golden Sun games, both Metroid games, Yggdra Union, Riviera: The Promised Land, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and all of the Sonic Advance games looked amazing to me. You just need to play more games man



Doesn't mean there wasn't a reason for not adding in another background. It could have been coding or ROM space constraints that limited the number of backgrounds they could play with. Do you have a specific game in mind?

Hope this isn't going to turn into a completely separate discussion now... my bad.

But... don't they realize only the odd versions are any good?

Espozo: Slashdot is what we had before Reddit. And these are some of the replies I have to deal with.

Matchmaking with strangers allows you to play with whoever is available.
Split-screen is for kids.
What are you, under 21?

@Koitsu : There is many things I could understand as complaints about Windows 7 (especially about the terrible "aero" UI and the default layout of the taskbar/startmenu and desktop), but fonts ?! I never touched any settings about fonts and they render just fine on all my PCs.

Whatever.


I think Castlevania : Aria of Sorrow looks amazing. Golden Sun games looks good, too, especially in battle where they use an original way of faking 3D. The last 3 "Battle Network" looks really great too (although the first 3 looks average in my opinion).

Most laptops that I've had overheating experience with, it was never explicitly the CPU that was causing the problem, but just poor heat distribution in general. My current laptop, the heat pools around the hard drive, killing that (I now have a program to force the fan on permanently), but most notebooks that I know of with issues, it's the GPU that will actually overheat and die. People who "fix" it use the same methods used to "fix" 360s; some method of applying heat in an attempt to get the solder to reflow.



I know that Sorry if it sounded like I was spreading misinformation.

By the way -- those in the past couple of days who may be experiencing this problem (which may include me -- I'm not sure! I now officially cannot be arsed to go back and find out, and testing under a VM cannot be done because browsers have white/blacklists of GPU drivers (really!)) on "newer" Windows systems should note that KB3013455 -- released 2015/02/10 -- apparently fucks up font rendering on some systems (even with ClearType + font smoothing enabled), and it's even mentioned in the KB "Known issues with this security update" section (which of course nobody reads because the descriptions of all the updates Microsoft pushes out are vague one-liners that are repeatedly questionable).

References:

* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3013455
* https://twitter.com/bbbradsmith/status/ ... 5997343745
* http://superuser.com/questions/876582/t ... ok-in-word
* http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 13c05107d3
* http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r298529 ... OS-POS2009 (note this thread says "Windows XP affected" but it isn't -- there was no such updated pushed to XP. It turns out the persons who claim XP was affected admitted to using registry hacks to pull in new KBs anyway, making the system act like Windows XP Embedded (I do not do this, I do not advocate this)

OSes affected are listed in the KB (please read the entire thing, do not just skim it).

Folks can thank rainwarrior and the folks over at Strange Brew Games for talking about this + me getting involved. The timing is ridiculously uncanny.

And this isn't the first time this has happened.

Will this get me to try 7 again? Hell no. Sorry, I guess I'm just too unreasonable valuing the way my text looks in a graphical-based desktop UI. I must be out of my mind wanting that. Yes, I must be. *rolls eyes*

And it reinstalled itself this morning.... I thought the days of turning off automatic updates were over.

You might have to disable auto-updates, then fetch new updates (get the new list), then right-click on KB3013455 and "Hide" it. I think that works.

I honestly despise the Windows Vista/7 updater. They made it super simple, but I'd much rather see what's going on under the hood (or have the option of doing so). For example, when BITS takes a dump repeatedly I'd really like to know what's going on (which you can do via bitsadmin /list /allusers and bitsadmin /list /allusers /verbose in the CLI (also available in XP if you install bitsadmin.exe from the support folder on your CD)), not just some ridiculous message like "error 8007809C" or whatever it is. This happened numerous times during the 4 days I had 7 installed; updates would randomly fail for what no reason I could determine, but BITS was quite clear about the issue (Microsoft servers being piles of crap).

I honestly like XP's update method more, although the whole launch-IE-and-use-ActiveX thing I feel is stupid (have since it was introduced). They should have just implemented the XP methodology/details/UI natively and left it at that.

I swear, for a UNIX SA, I know way too many ridiculous things about Windows. Things I shouldn't have to.

to manually approve everything for the Windows 7 updater :

It is available in:
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Windows Update\Change settings
(paste that in a windows explorer url bar)

choose: Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them.


When looking at an update, follow the links to get the actual information on what the update is.
for example if you go to:
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Windows Update\Select updates to install
1) pick an update in the list.
2) on the right hand side click on "More information"
or just go to the webpage support.microsoft.com/kb/xxxxxxx
3) on that support webpage usually scroll down to the More Information section and it has links to a usually detailed writeup if it warrants it.


This is the manual, tedious method to approve updates one by one, if you're that kind of person. On my browsing machine at home IDGAF and just have update automatically on. There are better things to waste my time on.




EDIT:

Just thought of something...

Koitsu did you ever run through the ClearType tuner?

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display
then click on "Adjust ClearType text" ?

it shows a series of panels and you pick the best-looking one (or the least worst-looking one).

I'm thinking in Windows 7, Firefox is doing the "right thing" by fetching the OS setting, as in if you say no cleartype and no font smoothing the pixel jaggies is what you get depending on the truetype font.

Yes, I always go through the ClearType tuner, even when turned off (meaning I go through all the screens even after un-checking the box).

All I want from browsers is this logic flow:



I can get Google Chrome on Windows 7 to emulate this behavior (which is what XP seemed to do) by disabling directWrite and having my font settings disable all font smoothing (AFTER disabling cleartype). Chrome on Linux used to do this, but somewhere around 33 it stopped and now all fonts are jagged and shitty if they are common web fonts, like the ever-common Open Sans.

It amazes me that this font issue is such a deal breaker for so many people... I kinda remember having font trouble several years ago, but certainly nothing after I switched to Windows 7. I never felt the need to change any font settings, and they all look perfectly fine and readable to me.

Problem is you won't be able to use Windows XP forever. Programs will eventually stop working on it, and you will start having trouble with simple tasks, like watching videos because you can't get a codec to work. Do you really want to go through that?

Font rendering must be legible (i.e. must work correctly) in a GUI-based OS, both with ClearType disabled and/or font smoothing disabled. The fact that browser developers, and/or font designers, aren't testing these scenarios is unacceptable. Is it the fault of the OS? Apparently the answer is "apparently yes, sometimes" (evidence has been presented above). I'd argue it must be legible in text-based OSes too (e.g. MS-DOS); surely I'm not the only one who remembers old PC demos changing the BIOS font to something "l33t" (and ugly) after playing their demo, forcing you to reboot just to get things back to normal...

I can't speak for everyone, but I will switch to a non-Windows OS if/when that day comes, rather than tolerate crap that causes eye strain. Or I'll just stop "computing" entirely (and I'm not in the minority here -- I have numerous peers who, for a multitude of reasons that all differ, are disgusted with the direction technology has gone over the past 15 years or so). The latter is tough for many of us that have careers or "lifelines" that rely on technology, but abandoning it is possible.

It's very hard to convey to someone, particularly because I'm a UNIX SA and so much of my life involves computers, that I'm actually a weird form of technophobe. There's a damn good reason I have the following H.P. Lovecraft quote on my home page...

"Granted that the machine-victim has leisure. What is he going to do with it? What memories and experiences has he to form a background to give significance to anything he can do? What can he see or do that will mean anything to him? What has heretofore made life tolerable for the majority is the fact that their natural workaday routine and milieu have never been quite devoid of the excitement, nature-contact, uncertainty, non-repetition, and free and easy irregularity which build up a background of associations calculated to foster the illusion of significance and make possible the real enjoyment of art and leisure. Without this help from their environment, the majority could never manage to keep contented. Now that it is fading, they are in a bad plight indeed; for they cannot hope to breast the tide of ennui as the stronger-minded minority can. There will be, of course, high-sounding and flabbily idealistic attempts to help the poor devils. We shall hear of all sorts of futile reforms and reformers — standardised culture-outlines, synthetic sports and spectacles, professional play-leaders and study-guides, and kindred examples of machine-made uplift and brotherly spirit. And it will amount to just about as much as most reforms do! Meanwhile the tension of boredom and unsatisfied imagination will increase — breaking out with increasing frequency in crimes of morbid perversity and explosive violence."

I stopped being a hardcore technology fan long ago. I guess it was around when games transitioned from 2D to 3D, and everyone was spending loads of cash buying the ultimate video cards and I was OK with a PC that ran DOS games and emulators smoothly. Smart phones and the like have been somewhat present in my life, but my devices are never cutting edge and I honestly have no interest in being more than an user when it comes to this new stuff.


I sometimes consider working with something else, but the only other thing I'm moderately good at (art/design) heavily depends on technology nowadays, so I don't really see how I could ever stop using computers for work. I guess this is true for nearly everyone in the world, seeing as even waiters have to place orders using computers these days.

If you have any interesting stories, I sure would like to hear them.

Buried in the link from tepples at the top of page three is an explanation of what's happened. ( http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/ )

Basically, some people were SO UPSET by allowing pixel grid rigidity to produce non-uniform letter spacing or even worse the width of a word suddenly changing noncontiguously (if you space the individual letters uniformly) and the sudden increase of weight as you increase font size that they decided to burn the whole thing down and that what you think you want is Bad and you are Bad for thinking you want it.

#^$&@ that noise.

I guess I'll be using pixel fonts for as long as I'm still using <10MP displays.

I assume you mean about life vs. work choices, or people abandoning technology. This is actually an incredibly common thing nowadays here in Silicon Valley -- it's prolific enough that it's become a tongue-in-cheek joke (note the yellow and blue tiers). People work in tech for several years, then suddenly have some kind of "life epiphany" (often while employed, but sometimes when between jobs), followed by literally dropping everything in their life and either a) disappear, b) flip out and make some massive change to every aspect of their lives, or c) melt down.

I'll share some stories of this happening at a past few jobs. These are true stories. I don't have years (of when the event happened) on a couple of them because I simply can't remember.

1. 2000 - Had a guy in operations/engineering who just literally stopped showing up for work one day. Our environment required that all employees be physically present (i.e. no remote work). Attempts to contact the guy failed; didn't answer Email or telephone (work or personal). A colleague went to his house and he didn't answer the door. This went on for 2 full months (my boss was wonderful but sometimes a little too lax). At the end of 2 months, the guy finally answered his phone, but wasn't able to give a clear explanation for why he just disappeared (apparently he just mumbled). He was let go (which was sad, because he was actually a great engineer and a really good guy).

It wasn't until about 6 months later that colleagues of his found out what happened. All I know: he had the equivalent of a mental and emotional breakdown as a result of discovering his wife cheating on him in EverQuest (don't ask). But it wasn't just depression -- he stopped paying his mortgage, bills, and all sorts of major important things. His (then-become-ex) wife kept paying for the mortgage for a while but had to stop because she had moved out (essentially was paying for two houses, one of which she didn't live in any more).

Several years later, I found out the guy had moved to Texas to live with a random friend of his (because he essentially had nothing left here, plus the divorce left him with less than before). As I understand it, he still does not hold a job, and has no desire to interact with any person he knew prior to the event (friend or otherwise, including old co-workers). Meaning: some part of who he was as a human being/individual was completely shattered. The fellow was in his mid-30s (I think).

2. 2001 - Same job as above, different guy. Guy just stops showing up for work, but is available via Email on super rare occasion (once a week or so). This goes on for about 7 months, and the timing was extra bizarre because we had all been informed our entire division (about 30 people?) was to be laid off right after Christmas. So during those 7 months this guy just "disappears" from work. Nobody is sure what he's working on/doing, if he's even alive (boss had called him a few times so he did seem to be alive but just would not really "respond" unless he was engaged by my boss) -- tools/infrastructure he was responsible for went neglected. But it gets worse/weirder.

Sometime in November, I happened to be late at work one night (around 0300), I think working on some Parodius stuff, when suddenly into operations strolls this dude. I'm like "{name}! Holy shit! I thought you were dead dude! WTF!" and he just says "Heh", sits down at his computer, does something for about 20 minutes, then leaves. Any attempt at convo I made with him just resulted in nods but no eye contact, it was like he was engaged heavily in some computer-related task.

Here's where it gets super weird: this guy had about 8-9 computers on/around his desk (all public servers on the Internet for various things, and some were servers that managed internal services -- the important part is the hardware was his, meaning he owned it, and was probably several thousand USD worth of stuff). When our division got shut down, it was done in phases. First they took our physical desks and chairs (but left equipment), then they took out the networking/wiring, then they took out everything else. (FYI: this is not common, I've never heard of a layoff happening like this, so this was bizarre)

But anyway, this guys' servers were all over his desk, with intertwined Ethernet cables and switches and so on. So when the decomm guys showed up to take the desks, they had to figure out how to remove his desk without impacting any of the equipment. My boss, his boss, and the decomm guys all called this employee who didn't answer. They ended up having to cut part of the desk (with a saw or something) to get the desk out without impacting any of the power/network cables or the equipment. It was like a circus watching these guys having to do this.

The 2nd phase came through 4-5 days later, networking decomm folks came in and took all the cables + shut off the in-wall RJ45 ports. Did the guy show up to get his stuff then? Nope. So there were several servers still powered on, with no network access, sitting there. You'd think bare minimum this would be the time someone would get their equipment...

3rd phase came through -- by which time the room was nearly empty except for these several servers sitting in a corner -- and the breaker was flipped. All the machines shut off, and all of those boxes were taken by the company and thrown in the trash (they couldn't take them or put them in storage -- they didn't own them, and they weren't going to pay for some random dudes' equipment being in storage). They tried calling him that same day, no response. Who knows what data was on them.

It wasn't until 3-4 years later when there was a "nostalgia get-together" for all the ex employees where this guy was seen. He acted like nothing had happened, like there was nothing odd about anything that went on, etc.. When asked politely "hey man so I mean what happened with your boxes? You didn't get 'em?" he just smiled -- no other reaction. Super, super weird.

I've always (jokingly) maintained that he wasn't able to answer the phone or get his equipment because his wife had him strapped to the wall with chains and in leather (him and his wife were fairly... shall I say... "alternative" in both their lifestyles and they were fairly public about their "bedroom behaviour" -- didn't bother me in the least, but it made for a funny explanation).

3. 2003 or 2004 - An employee didn't show up for work, which was major because it was a NOC (i.e. shift-based work). Several calls were made (home/cell), no response. After 72 hours of no response, employee was officially terminated, even though nobody could reach the guy. No one knew what happened.

About a few days later, the guy calls up work to explain what happened. Apparently while driving on the freeway to work, he had some kind of "epiphany" about life, and just kept on driving. He proceeded to "take whatever roads he felt were right", and ended up driving from California to Nebraska. He literally left everything he owned at his apartment/flat, told nobody what he was doing -- basically just said "fuck it" and drove.

I have no idea what happened to this guy (he was gone before I started working there, but it was a story most of the employees during that time enjoyed recalling because of how weird it was).

4. 2004 - Same job/place as #3, different guy of course. Comes into work one day with his hair dyed bright blue (more specifically: like a Smurf), and sits down and does no work. After about 30 minutes, announces he's quitting, takes his stuff and leaves -- no anger/animosity, he just seems super happy. AFAIK he didn't sign any "I'm gone" paperwork because he just disappeared. Over the next several weeks, he periodically Emails the workplace (specific people/employees) with his "status" of "where he is", and eventually one day includes a couple photos.

He apparently quit his job, took all his money out of the bank, took a small knapsack filled with random items (clothes, etc.), left everything he owned, bought a plane to Saudi Arabia, flew there, and decided to live there. More specifically: live in or around the sand dunes. He included pictures of himself surrounded by 6 or 7 other people, all looking either high or drunk as fuck, with this weird makeshift tent they made in the desert. If I remember right, that Email with the picture included a key piece of information, and that was: he was in Saudi Arabia eating Cheerios or something to that effect. That was the last anyone heard from him -- no clue what happened past that.

So basically these stories are of people who are already in some sort of "extreme" state of mind, but the thing is, this kind of shit happens regularly in Silicon Valley. I'm not from here, so it's extra weird; I find this kind of thinking/approach bizarre, because it's literally like someone deciding absolutely no responsibilities matter (at any level) and just bailing (on life, work, whatever) sporadically. Doesn't matter if they're without work, no income, how it reflects on their CV/resume, etc. -- just flat out don't care.

I like to think all of these people now do something unrelated to technology, e.g. own vineyards, are fishermen, live in northern Canada with native Inuit, or something along those lines. It's like they just completely fell off the grid (of society and societal norms), and AFAIK none of them ever re-engaged with their technological career line. So what they do now in life is completely unknown. But it just goes to show (I think) that despite their weird approach and irresponsibilities/not giving a shit about how their actions affect those around them, it's very possible that technology causes a person (maybe in the last 3 cases, not so sure the 1st) to become disillusioned or feel like they've become alienated by something. It's hard to put into words.

Perhaps they are testing, but the appearance benefit on those few remaining bilevel displays (such as yours) resulting from handmade font instructions doesn't outweigh the cost (upwards of two full-time weeks per font) of making these instructions. For antialiased displays, instructions generated by ttfautohint are often good enough.


In addition to the examples you gave, did you have "Dive Into" Mark Pilgrim in mind?

I have no idea who that is. *googles* Oh. Python. No wonder I had no idea.

To tell you the truth, after reading this whole thread and seeing the lengths people go through to outright reject technology, culminating in a discussion with how "terrible" cleartype font rendering is, it doesn't surprise me in the least that people dye their hair, set up servers, and drive to Nebraska to reboot their lives.

Yup. The stories you shared are definitely interesting, but I must admit I was expecting happier stories, where people actually succeeded at abandoning technology and finding something else that made them less miserable.

"And don't be afraid to let your freak font fly."
Until people not familiar with insular typefaces start misspelling your name in GoodNES.

"What are we, animals?"
Would Fink Heavy, the font in the logo of Animal Crossing, have been better?


Such as people giving up their technology and living in an Amish paradise?

Same here. The font is perfectly legible in W7. But I think koitsu needed any excuse to call W7 shit so he could return to XP and took this one. He could also complain about the lack 8.3 names in all caps limitation for files or stuff like that.^

It is true that I have some nostalgia for W95 and 98, but definitely not for XP ironically as it was never my main operating system and I never liked it (I switched directly from 2000 to seven).

Also this is a completely different topic, but I agree that the turns "technology" has taken lately are not very glorious. However, koitsu never points to anything concrete (except fonts, which is for me not a "problem" at all) so it's hard to get a hold a what exactly is so wrong. If you cannot word/point out a problem, you certainly cannot either solve it or find your way arround it. Quitting "technology" as a whole seems a bit over-ambitious, but if you'd need to do that it seems becoming a farmer or another job in the 1st sectory would be the best answer. But we should not forget that those jobs are really hard physically, much more so than working with "technology" or any other modern job.

In my opinion if I were out to point what exactly is wrong with technology today (although some of them are more nostalgia than actually wrong thigns), I'd say the following :

• Smartphones : I just don't like them. They are around only since 7 years, and have been really democratized extremely quickly. The main reason I don't like them is that people buy a new one every year no matter if their old one still works because they're just attracted by ads and *have* to get the last one.
  
• Everything is made in China, and is extremely low quality. Everything is made to be put to trash as soon as possible in order to buy a new one as soon as possible and continue the exponential PIB growth of companies that capitalism requires to work (ironically, based on a communist country). The problem is that not only this ruins the environment, but also once the real growth has reached a limit they resort to artificial tricks to fake a growth or they're dead.
  
• The rise of "connected" stuff : Personally I prefer keeping as much things offline as possible in order to reduce risks of both piracy and privacy problems. I think it is sometime a good idea not to add network capability to devices, but...
  
• The "everything should be updated regularly" fad. Back in the 90s programs could not get updates regularly as you just had the version that came with your CD, and this was perfectly great. Developers had to make sure there was as few bugs as possible, because they couldn't "just get an upgrade" later. And as a user you could just work around bugs when you found them. However, I must also say update regularly has many advantages both as developer and user : As a developer you can immediately fix your mistakes and blame the user if they don't update, and as a user you get hope for new features or bugfixes constantly.
  
• The fact it's harder to get pirated programs. Back in the 90s there were those CDs with hundreds of them that circulated around everywhere. Now this is compensated by the fact we can get GNU programs for free easily so it's not that bad.
  
• The fact apple is now considered "cool", when it was considered bullshit before 2007. I don't know why but now I feel less bad about old macs, because while I didn't like them back then, they were definitely better than modern macs (i.e. at least they were actually different from PCs and weren't all about the look of the case...)
  
• Not really related to technology, but sort-of : The fact there is more and more "managers" and "process engineers" and bullshit like that instead of real jobs like electrical engineer, etc...
  
• Knowing a programming language no longer impress anybody, while in the 90s you were considered a very smart and knowledgeable person just for that (especially as a kid).

Is that what you mean koitsu, or are you talking about somehting completely different ? I have no way to know, since you constantly rant about everything being wrong without talking about anything specifically (other than fonts) which is extremely non-constructive.

Also ironically the fact that Windows as a whole is much less mainstream than before is one of the biggest change of the past 10 years, but Koitsu is contributing to it...

I also don't like smartphones, and don't own a cellular phone. I also don't like touch screens and the other things they do; I prefer a command-line interface with a proper keyboard.

I agree; the environment is one problem, but the other problem is just that it doesn't last long enough. I like to instead make it to last longer.

Not all devices need network capability. But I agree to keep files local, which helps many thing actually. I may post copies on internet if they don't need to be private, and in case to backup, and/or if other people can find use of it too, but mainly I keep my files locally.

What I hate more is auto-updating.

Don't blame everyone if it doesn't belong. Nevertheless, if a new version is available at least you have an option to upgrade; therefore, you can put the past mistakes in behind (if applicable). But still, you can distinguish between early and "official" builds, and try not to have to change things too much, if you are doing the programming in good way! Nevertheless at least you have the option!

Modern Macs do have one feature I like which is using UNIX; therefore it could be easily enough to port C programs, and I can understand how to use them since I know UNIX. So, if you know UNIX it helps, and if you work on both Linux and Mac (or if you switched from one to the other) you can know it uses mainly the same kind of commands!

I don't really consider I would need to impress anybody with such thing anyways though. But you may also, know a different programming language than someone else, and/or you may prefer different ones. Also there are a lot of programming languages, including general-purpose, graphical, domain-specific, esoteric, etc. I wouldn't expect that most people even who know a few programming languages would possibly know all of them (even I don't know about all programming languages, although I know more than some people).

Nevertheless there is a lot more to be considered than just what you wrote! These aren't the only problems, please!

I liked unantialiased fonts until I got used to antialiased fonts. The other thing was that I was still using a CRT monitor, so cleartype did nothing for me. I stuck with plain grayscale AA until I finally moved to an LCD screen where, at native resolution, I could finally take advantage of cleartype. Ever since then, I've just gotten used to it to the point where plain non-AA'd pixel fonts are hard on my eyes (It's too sharp and skinny, there's too much contrast, and my eyes focus on it too hard; it was fine in the 800x600 days, but not anymore). That's why I'm bewildered that so many of you prefer to have unantialiased fonts. CT exists because it improves readability beyond what plain pixel fonts can do, it's not just some pointless bell and whistle. You all sound like the only reason you hate it is because it's different, not unlike those who'd complain about the rise of mouse-driven GUIs instead of keyboard-only interfaces.

TL;DR: I don't know why you guys hate cleartype so much, and I think you're just screwing yourselves over by being so stubborn about it.

Fundamental changes to workflow, I can understand, but the visual representation of text on a screen, I cannot.



I think it takes a certain predisposition to cause the events of Koitsu's stories; either that or a really horrible robot takeover or some other reason to have PTSD from tech.


For the longest time, I didn't like them because most everyone I knew was glued to their phone. There are people who cannot function if they don't have constant access to youtube, facebook, twitter, etc. To compound things, I'm a game developer, and I'm extremely put off by the amount of F2P bullshit on the market. In fact, it's been such a serious problem, Apple recently added a "pay once and play" category to their app store, and I can only imagine that Google will do the same, if they haven't already. That makes me feel better, but I'm still miffed that a game like Flappy Bird can randomly get insanely popular, with the market being flooded with clones and other shovelware like that. It's so unpredictable, it seems like time and effort makes little impact on how well your game does, and that just doesn't sit comfortably for me.

Mobile markets aside, I'm more and more aware of the benefits of having a smartphone, like having a map, being able to get driving directions, and being able to check yelp when wandering around, so I'm going to need to get one in the future. I just hope I don't become glued to it like so many others have.


That's just as much of a problem for China as well. They're huge polluters and working conditions are usually horrifying. Once the US's economy picks back up, we won't need to outsource so much stuff, or at least that's what I hope.


TVs and microwaves don't need internet connections, I agree.


I agree with this entirely, but what can we do? It's cheaper to make your deadlines and push an incomplete product as long as you can get a day-1 patch ready. It's sad, but considering the goal of selling something is to profit from it, I don't see any changes anytime soon.


You're complaining that there's more "free" alternatives than before, making pirating less necessary? Well, FOSS software tends to blow chunks compared to the stuff you buy, so I see where you're coming from, but that's a problem with the nature of something being open source; if anyone can stick their fingers in it, then you can expect both great and crappy designers to do so, leading to a mishmash of conflicting ideas and very little coherence. With that said, I like the idea of open source software, and I think it can be done correctly, and there are certainly situations where GPLs and copylefts are a great benefit (such as emulators and anything research-based), but my oh my is it a huge mess right now.


I agree, I loved "classic" Apple, but somewhere around the time they changed from the rainbow apple logo to the slate gray apple logo, they started going in a direction I didn't like. It was less about the user and more about the look. Early GUI-driven Apple products were focused on being straightforward to use, recalling that this was during a time when you needed to keep a huge manual ready if you wanted to do anything with your commandline terminal. Somewhere along the line, they got really arrogant, and their fanbase reflects that. Apple really cannot do any bad these days, everyone will eat their products up regardless.


I dunno anything about this. If anything, I'd be more annoyed that the higherups in any company are usually disconnected from their actual workers, implementing ideas that sound good on paper and sound good within the manager circle, but any workers could point out the flaws and make improvements if they'd just get their input. I deal with this in my non-tech job, I can only imagine how much worse it is in an actual tech job.


Ugh. I've known too many people who are overly-proud of the languages that they know. You know, the ones that scoff at anyone who says they use a C-like language, or anyone who doesn't use the C-extension they use. Especially programmers who are impatient about explaining things or are too arrogant about their methodology (just flip through stack exchange, you'll see what I mean). Really, if a language or a coding style works for you, then use it; nobody needs a bunch of terminal monkeys having a religious war about which whitespace style is superior, or why one language is so much better than this other language.

Nope, this was no complain, but more some nostalgia. It just was different when most computers just had a floppy and CD drive instead of an internet connexion as a way to get and install programs. Back then network connexion was a gimmick that you didn't need. Nowadays a computer without it would be completely unusable, on the other side disk drives are almost a gimmick that you don't need any longer (even a CD/DVD drive).

Perhaps the situation today is better for this regard, but still I feel nostalgia for the "old" way when programs were installed once from a CD and never upgraded.


I think I summarized pretty much everything I'd have to complain in this list, perhaps I forgot a thing or two but they should be pretty minor if I forgot them. If you have your own list, please go ahead. Again, complaining in the void is not constructive.


Exactly my thoughts. I just don't like this. Before the web was a lot of small websites, now it's half-a-dozen huge websites, and there is no way around that. People also don't seem to realize the terrible impact on the environment those huge website have, huge datacenters tend to consume a tremendous amount of (non renewable) electricity and generate a lot of heat.


Yeah, exactly my thoughts. What happens is basically slavery just like in the "good old times", but with the slaves being far away so that nobody sees them.


Yeah, that is exactly what I mean. The maket is just flooded with what I call "cheap chinese shit", and people continue buying this over and over. Personally I now just buy what I need and nothing else, so I'd rather pay more to get something more valuable/that last longer, but the option is not even there, because people just want to buy lots of cheap stuff and trash it 6 months later, so that is basically what all the shops propose.

I agree about the mobile market in general. It's not a pretty sight. However, just because occasionally something simple like Flappy Bird becomes popular, doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it.


Map and GPS are pretty much my number one reasons for getting a smartphone (I get lost easily). It's also good to have access to the Internet when you're in a tight spot. Having a music player in the same device is a plus. There are a lot of utility apps (e.g. for bus schedules), so it's not just about social media and taking selfies.

Having a camera available at all times is nice too.

The Internet is already quickly becoming such a convoluted mess...I finally gave up and installed NoScript and suddenly I don't need gigabytes of RAM to browse the Web. Also, I use mobile versions of the most offending sites whenever possible.

Obviously it won't last forever, but I think I could manage okay in a future where my computer is used for everything except WWW. Zombie apocalypse will take out all of the servers and then I won't even care anymore.



Maybe it's because we've seen too much, the whole "gaze into the abyss" sort of thing. Most people who are super into technology today, are the same people who were calling us nerds and laughing at us in the school hallways...they think technology is all fun and games, like a Harry Potter wizard spell, but we know what dark secrets and Satanic rituals those warlocks and witches are actually practicing.



I've tried Cleartype on a CRT and on an LCD and I honestly don't see any difference. Maybe my eyeballs are just broken, but I see soft, fuzzy, colorful characters, and my brain wants to see sharp, crisp, monochrome ones.

I do turn it on sometimes for when I have to zoom way out in a PDF, though.

Businesses have started to remove payphones instead of repairing them because the vast majority of people who need to make a call have a cellular phone and subscribe to cellular phone service. Without even a $5/mo Virgin Mobile dumbphone, how do you make urgent calls while away from home?

Do you normally drive a car, ride a bicycle, ride the bus, or walk?


Anybody who's been following my microblog for the past couple weeks would see exactly how Flappy Bird is itself "clones and other shovelware". (Hint 1: SFCave)


Without an Internet connection, and without an external receiver to turn IPTV into HDMI, where would a TV get its signal?


Including things like GIMP and Krita (compared to Paint Shop Pro) or Firefox and Chrome[1] (compared to IE)?


How would a community analogous to the present NESdev community have functioned without any sort of network connection?


[1] Referring to the free subset of Chrome provided by the Chromium project, not the Adobe parts.

"I changed my mind about this one thing, therefore everybody should."

You yourself realize that you used to have a different opinion. This is not an objective matter. This is a preference. When your ability to configure a program to your preference is becomes restricted in an "upgrade", it does not feel like an upgrade at all, in that respect. Not everyone's eyes and brains operate in quite the same manner, the way text is rendered feels different to different people. Just because you got used to something in particular doesn't mean everyone can have the same experience.

Personally, I am strongly opposed to sub-pixel rendering. I can clearly see the red and blue fringes, and I find it disturbing. We have created aliasing in the colour domain to reduce aliasing in the shape domain? I don't like this tradeoff. It's also completely busted if you want to rotate one monitor. Greyscale anti-aliasing is better to me, in that respect, at least. My preference, though, is for flat lines, clear pixels. The fuzziness suggests a lack of focus to my brain, and I don't like it. This has nothing to do with "getting used to it". My phone has no option to disable AA and I use it plenty. Using something more doesn't mean I like it better. Why would it?

There are many situations where I would use greyscale anti-aliasing by choice, such as rendering a video which could display at multiple sizes, or for aesthetic purposes when creating a logo, etc. When I'm looking to read text on a webpage, though, I am concerned about comfort of reading, not about aesthetic appearance. I want to understand the text faster and more comfortably. What reads quickly and comfortably IS NOT UNIVERSAL. Options are important here!!!

I was like that for a bit - I installed Windows XP and was really excited by cleartype. It took me about a year and then I was tired of it and disabled it. It's funny, because I spent so long on Windows 2000 being jealous of XP users with Cleartype.

For those who think I'm just bitching about Windows 7 to bitch about it without "any concrete details/evidence/whatever" -- see the screenshots posted earlier (combined with other people disliking the same thing, and one guy getting bit by that ridiculous bug in the recent Windows KB), and see my wiki page that I've been trying to put together for several years (hardly finished). The number of issues I have with 7 are many, and it would probably take me months of actual man-hours to put together a full list of EVERYTHING that is a step backward. Furthermore, I've realised it's not even really worth listing it all off -- Microsoft will never come out with SP2 for 7, so there's zero chance of any of this shit getting fixed. (This is a problem with our current technological model in general these days -- release something, then never actually maintain it, instead all time being spent on some new thing, rinse lather repeat. I see this constantly at my day job and subsequently our partners and their development models too. It's disheartening)

I was telling someone last night the following (a gal who also dislikes 7 and hates 8 even more, and overall prefers XP): every Windows release since XP has gotten better in regards to kernel/device driver support/underlying infrastructure framework, for the most part (Vista has some exceptions). But that only makes up maybe 20% of what a GUI-based OS provides -- the remaining 80% is what most end-users have to deal with/interact with, and it's the stuff that ultimately matters (and if you think I'm shitting you, then go explain the MSFT stock drop I mentioned earlier in the thread, re: Windows 10). So you now have releases of products that are 1/5th better than their predecessor, but maybe 3/5ths or 4/5ths worse than their predecessor. Why would someone accept that imbalance? To me, it's literally saying this: "yeah, I'm totally cool with 60-80% of something new sucking ass, because hey the 20% is still better" -- it's a mentality that doesn't make any sense to me. The positives should outweigh the negatives.

Actually, fuck it -- don't bother reading it. You've made up your mind/have your own opinion, just as I have mine, and they're both based on our separate experiences -- which means we're probably never going to find any common ground on this subject. There's no way to satiate someone who can't put themselves in another's shoes. rainwarrior summed it up.

And no, my general opinion of CT is this: it does not look better to me, on almost any LCD I've used in the past 10 years (most of which have been either 1920x1200 @ 24" displays, or sometimes 1366x768 @ 15"). What rainwarrior describes (coloured fringes around the outlines of the glyphs) looks awful to me, just as they do him. The only exception I've encountered was when using a different OS (OS X) on different hardware (Macbook with a Retina display) -- they don't use CT, they use some other methodology, but the result was for the most part gorgeous. And that wasn't because of their CT-like tech -- it was because the display was insanely high resolution in a smaller form factor (2880x1800 @ 15"). "So why don't you use a Mac?" -- because I can't get anything done on it, I'm too used to my existing methods for getting things done using a combination of Windows and *IX, and I was spending 90% of my time "fighting" with the OS to accomplish tasks that would take me mere seconds on Windows/*IX. So despite being a great piece of hardware, the usability hit for me was too major and too frustrating. (I'm the only employee at my workplace who uses Windows for a workstation, by the way -- that has prompted more than one discussion in itself)

For the most part I don't give a damn about the difference between operating systems. As long as they work sufficiently well, the only critical thing is what software they run.

I use Windows 7 primarily, but I also frequently use Android, Windows 8, Ubuntu, and OS X, and some other things less frequently. I have a lot of preferences in reaction to the differences between them, and sometimes the preferences are quite strong (as with ClearType), but those things aren't a dealbreaker. Not being able to run software I like is the dealbreaker.

If Windows 7 was as incompatbile with new software as XP has become, I would switch to Windows 8 in a heartbeat, even though I have a strong preference against it.

The idealist in me wishes we'd all switch to Linux, but I'm not going to forego the use of my favourite programs for that ideal.

I completely agree with you here. Except that your 20% is my 80% and that my 80% is your 20%, this is why I "switched to" windows 7, while you didn't. For me the graphical interface doesn't matter nearly as much as what is behind it, although I like the standard/classic Windows interface and I am annoyed they keep fixing things that aren't broken.

Is it OK if I move the issues with Windows 7 to a subpage in your user space?


OS X uses grayscale antialiasing but ignores most instructions. This preserves shapes of letters while introducing a small amount of blur. The Retina display compensates for this blur by doubling pixel density in both directions. With four times as many pixels to use, blur isn't quite as apparent. Without the high-density display, you'd probably be complaining that OS X is even blurrier than Windows.


So perhaps you could use a MacBook with Retina display, install some Linux variant on it, and set X11's pixel density to 192 dpi to keep everything readable.


Does this "strong preference" persist even with Classic Shell? But fortunately, the Win32 (desktop) API changed next to none between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. And with the large Windows 7 installed base combined with the negligible uptake of Surface RT tablets, there's no big rush to port existing desktop applications to the Windows Runtime API introduced in Windows 8.

I don't know what "Classic Shell" means.

Classic Shell is a program for Windows 8 that replicates the Start menu from Windows XP and Windows 7.

What software doesn't work in XP? I only know of a couple minor things, like IE, which forced me to switch to Opera a long time ago (and then Firefox when Opera became a RAM muncher).

For me, the list of software is:

* AMD graphics drivers and general chipset support -- dropped XP support at some point in the past
* Intel AHCI drivers and general chipset support -- they dropped XP support in April 2014 as well, literally on the dot
* Java 8 -- installs but bitches at you; Oracle has already screwed this up in the past which means they probably will drop support eventually, so I've no faith that it'll remain this way indefinitely
* nVidia -- no longer makes XP drivers for any video card newer than GTX 760
* Open Broadcaster Software -- has never worked on XP, I've argued with the author about it publicly (no technical justification for it, author admitted such, but of course fanbois tried to derail the convo)
* Pale Moon -- officially dropped XP support, though you can find third-party builds which continue it, so now we have a fork of a fork...
* Vidcoder 1.5.x or newer -- no idea why the author dropped XP support (must use 1.4.x or older)
* VMware Workstation 11.x or newer -- no longer provides XP support (must use 10.x or older)
* Wireshark -- it won't tell you this until you actually try to *do* the installation (meaning the 32-bit installer runs on XP, but then once it starts tells you to sod off) (must use 1.10.x releases or older, but hilariously the auto-updater on 1.10.x tells you "hey! You should update to 1.12.x!" -- uhhhhhhhh uh huh, right...)

I'm also 100% certain I'm missing a few others that just don't come to mind right now. I KNOW there are tons of PC games which also refuse to install on XP -- the most hilarious of them is Halo 2, where the game on Vista/7/etc. uses DirectX 9 but refused to install on XP, so people came up with a hack that lets it run (and it works fine, which to me is proof that software authors were just flat out being anti-XP dicks).

But what rainwarrior says is true -- the list is growing.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I was actually using a hand-me-down AMD during my Win7 trial, and then switched back to XP, and everything was so much worse...it wouldn't even let me use native res on an HDTV via VGA (I should have tried QuickRes, though). It only helped to remind me why I like nVidia so much better...



...well dang.

Microsoft was the first to stop making new things for Windows XP. Internet Explorer 9 requires Windows Vista or Windows 7. Ability to access more than one independent secure web site on a single IP address requires Server Name Indication, which doesn't work in IE on XP. (You can put multiple hostnames in the subjectAltName field of one certificate if all sites are operated by the same entity. But this won't be true of sites operated by different customers of one shared host.)

I'd also be willing to bet that recent (circa late-2013-plus) Intel GPUs also don't have XP drivers either -- that's speculative on my part, but odds are I'm right.

And that, as I mentioned very early on in this thread, is the scariest part for me -- that if either my motherboard or video card dies, I'm downright forced to upgrade my OS because XP drivers aren't being created any more (motherboard vendors can't provide something that the manufacturer chooses to no longer build). That is the main reason I """want""" to upgrade, but things like fonts rendering like crap is a huge deal-breaker for me.

Oh, and to answer Tepples' question about getting a Macbook and running Linux on it -- not going to happen. In my experience, Apple products tend to use chips that generally do not have drivers available for them (and for those which do, the quality of the driver is sub-par in comparison to something used in a non-Apple product). Take a look at this list (including some of the other Macbook products which are even newer) and you'll see what I mean. For example, for the Air, "no driver for webcam" is a deal-breaker -- I imagine at least one person reading this saying "koitsu you are just here to whine you bitchy fuck" -- because I work remotely 100% and things like Google Hangouts for daily collaboration and WebEx for company presentations and meetings are pre-reqs, no questions asked. Then go look at all the "weird wonky bugs" throughout the page (the storage subsystem ones really do not sit well with me, especially considering that's a forte of mine). You're better off using the OS the vendor intends -- same goes for a bunch of PC products too (those multimedia control keys and their related drivers/utilities are often a sore spot).

And yes, IE 8 and older on occasion cause websites (for example, nVidia's download section) to pop up nastygrams about how "the site doesn't support that browser", even though there's really no technical justification for that either (rephrased: web designers just want to inundate you with the latest trendy working-draft garbage rather than just providing something clean/concise and staying out of your way). The SNI issue is with IE specifically; Firefox on XP, Chrome on XP, etc. all use updated SSL libraries that do SNI properly, so technically speaking it's not an OS limitation. But lack of SNI is also a problem in tons of other products (Tomcat not supporting it is hilarious, and one that isn't mentioned on that list is postfix (reference, search for SNI, look at 3rd result)), so it's not just old-IE-specific. Meaning: if you run a webserver and you want to be 100% compatible with all devices out there, you need to assume SNI is not available, which means each SSL vhost gets its own dedicated IP and name. That's how I did it on Parodius for many years.

Nice straw man. I changed my mind when I tried it out and found it wasn't as bad as everyone else was saying.

I'm just saying that being so resistant to change is only going to make the future harder when you* find out that you've run out of options, versus swallowing your pride and just adapting. I'm not saying you're not allowed to have a preference.
(*"you" as in "everyone in general", not you specifically)

How the hell is it about pride?

It's not a matter of trying it. I'm forced to use it daily. I don't like it.

I'm not proud that I don't like onions, either, but I have to bring it up any time I let someone else prepare my food, or I get to have a shitty meal. I've been told countless times that I'd get used to them. I don't. I've tried them plenty. I've tried eating them regularly, to no avail. I frequently end up eating them by accident. Onions suck, and I'll always hate them. It has nothing to do with pride, and everything to do with HOW THEY TASTE TO ME.

I didn't mean "pride" literally, I meant "swallowing your pride" in the same sense of "biting the bullet".

Food and tech are two different things though, I've known people who literally get sick after consuming anything with onions, so you'll always have the option of no onions. This is different from, for example, when youtube decides to uproot its entire page layout (again). It sucks to have to relearn how to use it (again), but what can you do? Boycott it?

Okay, correction noted, but those two phrases mean different things.

If it ever becomes cheap enough to just double the screen resolution, there won't be any practical difference between AA and non-AA font anymore. I'm not sure if that will happen any time soon, but I'll be glad when it's no longer an issue.

In the mean time, I see no reason to switch just to fit in. I don't like it, and I don't have to use it yet, at least not on my primary computer. I put up with it elsewhere, and I will continue to resent lack of support for it.

My mistake on the phrases then, and on continually editing my post over and over.

Tangentially related, 185dpi "4k" monitor: Dell P2415Q

There are fewer possible dedicated IPv4 addresses than people on Earth. Some ISPs are already stuffing home and mobile users behind carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), charging extra for real Internet access. Even upgrading from shared hosting to VPS isn't necessarily an answer, as an entry-level VPS might be put behind a load balancer that uses name-based virtual hosting. Should site owners ask users of IE/XP and other SNI-ignorant user agents to come back with IPv6? Or should they do like Slashdot and allow only paying subscribers to use HTTPS other than on login and password change pages, redirecting nonsubscribers' hits from HTTPS to HTTP, in order to recoup the additional recurring cost of a dedicated IPv4 address?

I don't know what you want me to tell you, Tepples. I'm just stating the reality of the situation. And don't get me started on IPv6's awfulness either. A good portion of the IPv4 "exhaustion" is caused by very specific places with /8s not re-subnetting and relinquishing. I'm looking at you, General Electric + IBM + Xerox + MIT + Ford + USPS.

The rate of allocation of new IP addresses is so fast that simply freeing up those six more /8s would buy us at most six more years. It's not a solution; it's busy-work.

I have no real faith in IPv6 given that it's an over-enginereed mess. IPv6 contains so much change and garbage -- it isn't just about extending addressing space. There are already real-world examples of such issues -- this is my present favourite (do not read unless you actually understand networking). IPv6 NDP and RA and DHCPv6 changes are going to be the end of us.

I want to say first that I do not really like clear type and prefer raster font but one thing that influenced that is the fact that it look like crap on my 2008 lcd. For some reason, the font looks awful. After I tried it many years later on a basic dell monitor, it was not that bad. Did you try on other monitors than your own to see if it's easier on your eyes?

Regarding raster font in win7, I was able to make it work for most of it, browsers included but it was a lot of registry hacks and font removal. I don't remember the flickering in classic mode.

As for Mac osx, I didn't like Mac in the past at all but after using it for many months at work, if you use a combination of mouse with trackpad on a notebook, I'm now a lot more efficient than I was in windows. The multiple desktop and gestures to move between them with the trackpad is a time saver. I use the mouse when precision is required. the trick to get used? Time. It takes time to get used to the new paradigm but it is worth it. Right now I think OS X 10.10 is better than win8, especially if you are a Unix guy. It comes from someone that have been a Microsoft guy since dos

Windows 8 isn't hard to beat... I do enjoy using it with Classic Shell though. Oh, and Foxit PDF reader so it doesn't do that bullsh*t fullscreen "Metro" thing.

Cleartype depends on your LCD's subpixels being arranged into columns of RGB or BGR. Any other arrangement would cause it to fail.

I had tried a few times to migrate to other OS (win7,Win8, Ubuntu) but after a few days I got back to Windows XP
I feel that win7 or win8 is good for the girls who want to use their luxurious laptop or tablet for playing some MP3 music and dance with it.
LONG LIVE XP!

That would be OS X. (More so iOS, if that is eligible.)

The problem with anti-aliasing of fonts is not that it makes the fonts blurry. The main issue that I have seen as a layman is that pixel density is too low on average. If you look at high resolution devices like Apple's Retina display or some of the high-end Android mobile devices, they have enough pixel density to anti-alias their fonts while still maintaining high readability, since the pixels are packed much tighter. It's a lot closer to reading a piece of paper than on a standard 1920 x 1080 monitor that only has 100 or so pixels per inch. Even on such a monitor, I prefer Mac-style unhinted, subpixel-enhanced rendering. It keeps the letterforms shaped as the typographer designed it, instead if hammering everything into the pixel grid.

I will concede, however, that if one really likes their fonts aliased, then they must also be hinted or they will look like garbage. Trouble is, more and more fonts created today do not have the proper hinting information that the Windows renderer would need. As far as I know, only Windows and Linux have any real need for any type of font hinting. I know Linux gives you the freedom to turn the hinting on or off, whereas Windows does not. Meanwhile, the Mac was designed around unhinted, smooth rendering to look its best, so it's pointless to try to disable the hinting on a Mac. If you don't like font smoothing, then don't get a Mac, simple as that.

Subpixel rendering is almost outmoded anyway. When you have over 300 pixels per inch, you don't really need to worry about subpixel rendering. You can't even tell the difference when the subpixels are that small, unless you have near perfect or better than perfect vision. I certainly can't. As pixel density creeps upward, eventually even grayscale smoothing will be outmoded. The gold standard is ink on paper, and we're already really close.

You know, as resolution creeps up, (4K) I wonder how well hardware will be able to adjust... (The "new" consoles are already outdated in that respect. It really doesn't even feel like anything even happened, but that's a rant for another day...)

If you don't have the power to render the whole screen you can usually render at a lower resolution and upscale. For example, most PS3 games running on a 1080p television, the picture was upscaled from 720p rendering (either by the TV, or by the PS3, depending on your settings/TV).

Also, pixel rendering scales linearly, essentially (it's very parallelizable). If the moore's law estimate holds out, if you can do 1080p now, you should be able to so ~2000p in 4 years for the same price.

So, even if you don't want to pay more for the pixel power, upscaling would still let you use the high resolution for low-refresh applications like text, and a lower resolution for games.

Thing is ... the more you increase the raw resolution, not only the more is subpixel aliasing a waste, but so is full antialiasing.

(For example, I had a laser printer maybe a decade ago, that had a native resolution of 600dpi and they were talking about how awesome it was that they'd added greyscale antialiasing. I couldn't see a difference, no matter how close I held the page to my eyes.)

The only real argument is about what is the right thing to do when you're dealing with a low pixel count letter form. All three options will anger someone (chroma error, blurry letters, or awkward kerning). Increasing total pixel count (such that we don't ever have low pixel count letter forms) means we can sidestep the entire argument.

I agree. I can't wait until the day we have 600ppi displays and no smoothing whatsoever is needed. Already, 300+ppi is sufficient to eschew subpixel rendering (although it's my understanding that OS X on a high density display still uses it, though I know no mobile OS does that supports arbitrary viewport rotation). I know that it's rough to pick up my crappy 1024x768 secondary Android tablet after a few hours of using my iPhone 5c and iPad Air. Apple devices really do have gorgeous screens with standard subpixel layouts.

Exactly, the "other" column, which includes Linux, is still only at 3.41%
Despite the constant evangelizing of "switch to Linux, it's FREEEEEE~", 2015 is still not going to be the year of the desktop.

I know it works great in routers and other net appliances, and is the superior choice for servers, but Linux is godawful as a desktop OS.
Want to know my thoughts about why? Paralysis of choice. Too many "desktop environments", inconsistent graphical forms and constant demands to drop to the arcane command line to type some alphabet soup incantation because that's the only common denominator. You can have Linux the way you want it, but not have it look or visually act the same way as anyone else's installation.

Wait, what were we talking about? oh, XP.

If I wanted a desktop environment that acted the way someone else thought I should be using a computer, I'd get a Mac. Or a Windows 8 machine. Or, heck, an Android tablet.

Yeah, f that. I don't want Linux on the Desktop, I want it all for myself, TYVM.

If it were to explicitly state how much of that is Linux, it'd amount to around 1% actually. Linux has been going down over time. I think we'd need something like Valve releasing a SteamOS-only game for that to change (those who can't bother with a SteamOS machine will consider installing Linux instead, even if for dual booting only).


Honestly I'm tempted to make my own OS only because of how bullshit everything has become lately (not just Linux), but we all know that won't pan out =P As for Linux itself, the problem is that 1) driver support is heavily hit and miss (and why the heck do you want to support a system with 1% market share where most users are advanced techies that know where to get everything for free?) and 2) many programs keep breaking all the time because developers can't settle on doing something specific, they always need to be following the next shiny thing and there's also constant internal politics getting in the way.

Also Linux being better for network stuff is debatable, its biggest strength is having lots of POSIX tools but a lot of sysadmins hate it actually (as well as there being religious wars over it, see the whole systemd shenanigans), and BSD is not a minor player either (many vendors aren't happy with the idea of being legally forced to provide source code).

If you make your own OS, it'll have even worse driver support unless you're also manufacturing the hardware. This is why Ubuntu Phone and Firefox OS use the Android version of the Linux kernel and drivers.

How many users do those OSes even have in the first place? =P (also most manufacturers customize Android and don't release the customized drivers)

Also this is part of why I said it wouldn't pan out - in fact any OS that isn't pretty much made by an important commercial entity to back out some heavy marketing behind it is doomed to become niche at best and more likely completely ignored (incidentally, this is why Linux has never made it big outside of server environments, and it only did in the latter because it was used as a cheaper replacement for Unix)

Yea, I recently bought a laptop with windows 8.1 and I am just about ready to throw it out the window. I'm hoping my planned downgrade to 7 will help, but I've seriously considered going back to XP....

(cough, cough, classic shell, cough.)

Classic shell helps a lot, but it's still not exactly up to the standards of the original Windows 7 start menu.

It was the first thing I put on, but I still don't like it. I feel like I could live with windows 7 since I use it regularly for work.

Going back to the roots of this thread:

I'm one again back on Windows 7. I decided to buy a separate SSD for the task, and leave my XP install (on a different SSD) alone in case I need to switch back (rather not explain why bare-metal imaging software + restore isn't a good idea), but I'm trying even harder to stick with it. So this makes attempt #4 or #5. I forget.

This time I'm leaving both ClearType and font smoothing enabled and force myself to get used to it. So far it's been painful. I've had to file feature requests with a couple authors of applications I use (some commercial) to support implementation of selection of CreateFont() fwQuality in their app so I can use TTF fonts that lack hinting without them looking like blurry crap. I did find that I had to "tone down" the ClearType "strength" to get things to be a little more tolerable for me as well, but it still isn't anywhere near what it looked like on XP. And furthermore, in a lot of fonts I can still see the tinges around the edges (either blurriness due to font smoothing, or red/green tinges due to ClearType); Impact is a common offended (even black-on-white).

One thing I will note here: ClearType + font smoothing tends to look pretty nice on most web pages with light or mid-level backgrounds, but on black it looks atrocious. I'm a UNIX SA, right? So terminals/etc. are what I grew up with, thus I often prefer dark-ish backgrounds.

The ClearType + font smoothing situation is beyond just OCD. I actually went to bed at 4am this morning with a massive headache (I had to take 1.2g of ibuprofen) due to how badly it was screwing with my eyes. Today's been a little better.

I've also forced myself to use Aero (because Classic and Basic both have problems with some text areas in applications excessively flickering which did not happen under XP), which is equally painful. I'm hoping I can tweak the UI enough to get things looking more like my XP setup (Classic mode, with Rainy Day theme -- all the Win7 Rainy Day themes I've seen require hacks to get them to work on 7 due to digital signing, and none look all that great anyway). That's going to take some time, and probably making an XP VM just to dig up all the RGB values for the old theme.

I've also found several easily repeatable UI bugs in Microsoft's "Library" thing (re: the newer way of dealing with My Documents, etc.), but thank god I found workarounds for them all.

If I stick with this long enough, I'll eventually get a higher resolution display (probably a 3840x2160 panel) and hopefully things will be more tolerable universally. The problem there is: once I go to such a display, I can't go back to XP because it doesn't support said panels. :\ So it'd be one of those "buy this and pray to god the screen looks perfect/you have no qualms with it". My LCD is a Dell 2407WFP (a PVA panel) which is something like 8-9 years old at this point, because all the IPS panel displays today have issues to me (IPS glow is by far the worst offender).

Open the ClearType adjustment tool. Use the checkbox on the first screen to flip back and forth to see which font smoothing you prefer. It applies immediately, so you can open some programs and compare. (Unfortunately, the other settings do not make immediate changes.)

One curious thing I noticed about your Windows XP screenshots is that all of them are using subpixel rendering for larger text, and no smoothing at all (possibly embedded bitmaps) for smaller text. I don't have time now, or I'd try to find out if there's any way to force that particular combination in Windows 7.

If you turn off font smoothing in 7 entirely, Chrome (with DirectWrite disabled) will fall back to anti-aliased font rendering when a font does not have hinting instructions. Lots of the Windows 7 UI elements force cleartype anyway, but it at least lets you enjoy a good pixel font.

Koitsu, I'll recommend this font for text editors / terminals / etc (get the Windows .fon version) as it's a bitmap font, and no amount of font setting dickery will make it look bad, so at least the most important content on the computer can look nice and sharp.

There's really only one font I like, and that's the 6x13 font from ucs-fonts. There are several "ports" of this font available (some .fon, some .ttf): http://underpop.online.fr/l/linux-conso ... f-and-fon/

I have a privately-created .ttf version of this font that has a full Unicode character set (including line drawing characters (very important for me), Japanese, etc. -- it's 354KBytes and only available in TTF, obviously). It's beautiful and amazing (and intended for use with one size only: 10pt). It took the friend of mine who "ported it" several months (no exaggeration) to get it right (FontForge is both powerful and horrible at the same time) on XP, 7, and OS X. The downside is that it lacks hinting, so when used on a system with font smoothing or ClearType enabled, you get very shitty results.

Some applications (like PuTTY) let you control this. How: CreateFont() has a parameter called fdwQuality that lets you select what sort of behaviour you want, and that's exactly what PuTTY uses. However, I use said font in mIRC for a chat font as well, and mIRC lacks this degree of control (I filed a feature request with Khaled today (I'm a paying customer); it shouldn't be hard to implement).

So for now, in mIRC, I'm using a .fon version of the same font I found online somewhere... but this font differs in some regards -- it appears to have been based on an older ucs-fonts package (ex. it's double quotes look like two short vertical dashes, while it's apostrophe looks like a horizontally flipped backtick -- apostrophe should look like a single short vertical dash). Thankfully mIRC (or Windows, not sure which) has a bunch of "smarts" so that even when using this font, if someone sends UTF-8 across IRC, it still manages to find a relevant font and show Japanese, rather than show "?" or block characters for unknown glyphs.

Fair warning: once you use 6x13 or its relatives (but I'm very font of 6x13), it's *very* hard to go back. It's one of those terminal fonts that has existed for 20+ years, and xterm users will know exactly why it's so beautiful.

Eh, I'm not surprised ClearType feels like shit, since it was a quick alternate algorithm made because the other obvious fast antialiasing idea available was already patented by Apple (ugh!) and the alternative was non-faked but slow antialiasing. It also relied on LCD screens using their native resolution and having the RGB components arranged as three vertical columns, while these days they're arranged in more complex patterns.

That's good thing about Linux though. You don't even need the desktop environment; when I work on Linux I use only the command-line anyways for most things. A window manager helps but a desktop environment is not needed.

The fonts that I hated so much.. I do not hate them much anymore (maybe I'm so busy that I don't have enough time to hate!). I guess using a mac for a few years get you used to the anti-aliasing.

When I want to see back xp, I just use a VM and it looks crisper. Maybe you could use vmplayer for the applications you mind about, set unity mode and it could be a compromise until you get used to it. My guess the fonts should like the same as the one in XP in that case?