Windows 7

Depending on what you’ve read or experienced: Windows Vista is really great, really bad, or somewhere in between. For the most part, I’m not too excited about Vista. I think there are a bunch of technological improvements, and lots of potential, but overall I’m just not terribly impressed with the completed product. To say the least, I think some major polish and serious optimization are needed. I’ve heard some other people feel the same way.

This brings us to Windows 7, which is the the next version of Windows. There is a lot of Windows 7 speculation out in the wild. But, there’s not much in the way of official information, or even anything possibly concrete. Microsoft really doesn’t like to release official feature lists, or product information until they are sure they can deliver. That’s really no different than most software companies. What is different, is Windows is not just any software, and Microsoft is not just any software company. So, Microsoft has extra incentive to keep tight-lipped until they are actually ready to present something. Microsoft doesn’t like bad press about features they cut, and I don’t blame them.

In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for good old fashioned speculation… In fact, when I was a boy we didn’t even have the internet, all we had was speculation. How times have changed. Now in this modern day, when hard facts are unavailable, we can speculate en mass!

Hopefully, some Microsoft insider will be willing to drop an opinion here and there (sort of like MiniMicrosoft). Hey, perhaps one has. I’ve recently come across an interesting blog on Windows 7. By outward appearances, this appears to be written by an insider. I hope that over the coming months, this blog continues to increase in relevance. I do like information, and I’m quietly cheering for a much improved version of Windows: Shipping Seven (Random thoughts from somebody working on the next Windows OS)

Did Bill Gates Just Say Windows Sucks?

It appears that Bill Gates thinks Windows Vista could have used noticeable improvement before shipping. As I’ve voiced earlier, I agree with Bill. I think it’s good when the people in charge are actually aware of what they are shipping. I also think its good when executives are honest about significant issues with their products – otherwise they appear somewhat dishonest and aloof. I’m not saying executives should continually speak negatively of their products, but I do think they should be honest.

What follows is the short clip from Gizmodo’s recent billg interview. Please recognize this clip is a small excerpt of their whole interview, so Bill’s thoughts may be slightly incomplete (i.e. possibly a bit out of context).

Gizmodo’s Interview excerpt Holy Crap: Did Bill Gates Just Say Windows Sucks?

Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack Beta

Good new for developers and teams working on Microsoft Visual C++ projects! In this past year, Microsoft has publicly woken up and started re-investing in Visual C++. If you have upgraded to Visual Studio 2008, you can beta test some new and significant functionality coming down the pike for MFC.

This new functionality is part of the optional Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack Beta. Here is a brief overview:

The Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack extends the VC++ Libraries shipped with Visual Studio 2008. The VC++ 2008 MFC libraries have been extended to support creation of applications that have:

• Office Ribbon style interface
• Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP look and feel
• Modern Visual Studio-style docking toolbars and panes
• Fully customizable toolbars and menus
• A rich set of advanced GUI controls
• Advanced MDI tabs and groups
• And much more!

This feature pack also includes an implementation of TR1. Portions of TR1 are scheduled for adoption in the upcoming C++0x standard as the first major addition to the ISO 2003 standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as:

• Smart pointers
• Regular expression parsing
• New containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc)
• Sophisticated random number generators
• Polymorphic function wrappers
• Type traits
• And more!

Here is a brief tour of new MFC GUI additions.

If you are using VS 2008, here is where you can grab the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack Beta.

And, here is the Feature Pack documentation.

The Death of High Fidelity: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone has an interesting article on a transformation within recording industry: louder music and the resulting loss of fidelity.

In a nutshell, here is what’s going on. As personal computers and portable audio players become more popular, more people listen to music on tiny (low fidelity) speakers. And more people are also listening to music from MP3 and other digital file formats, which compress music and further removes detail. Because people more often listen to music at lower fidelity, record labels are compensating by making music louder… so it catches your ear. This has resulted in an industry phenomenon: louder music begets louder music. It’s a loudness war of sorts, where some record labels are fearful of releasing music that’s not loud enough, or not competitive enough. Gotta be competitive, right?

But this loudness war causes problems. When music is made louder, it actually becomes compressed and you lose significant detail. Instead of a song having loud and quiet parts, it’s all loud. What follows are two diagrams. The first diagram is of a song that is relatively quiet and what I consider not compressed. The second song is significantly louder and this is loudness is achieved through compression.

This is U2: “With or Without You” (Original)

Notice how this song’s waveform has peaks and valleys. There are loud parts of the song, and there are quiet parts. The song is not compressed and you can see how it starts out quietly (on the left) and gradually builds in loudness (as you move to the right). Given a reasonably high-quality sound system, and a reasonably quiet listening environment, your ear will perceive the subtle details in this song. In essence, this song has clear detail and fidelity.

Now, lets look at Arctic Monkeys: “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”

Looking at the waveform, this song is pretty dang loud the whole time. This loudness is achieved by compressing the peaks and valleys (i.e. details) until everything is one constant peak. This song’s sound is all about constant loudness, and forsakes subtle detail and fidelity. It’s mastered to be an assault on your ears. Which is fine, if that’s what you are looking for.

But, to my ears (and eyes) louder is not better. I much prefer music to have more detail (fidelity), and I think loudness should not be overdone. At least that’s my take. If you are interested how your music sounds, check out: The Death of High Fidelity