kodiac1's definitions
The phrase Blue Screen of Death has its origins in the maritime trade, particularly buccaneer lore of the sixteenth century. When a ship is sunk, all that is left is the morbidly still ocean, glistening bright blue in the Caribbean sun. Thus, when one heads out to sea, with the intention of meeting another boat, and all one sees is the rolling blue ocean, one can sadly assume that that boat has sunk.
The phrase became absorbed into common language as a term referring to the feeling of empty hopelessness one experiences when faced with a vast expanse of watery oblivion. Staring out into Lake Windermere, the great poet William Bleak was sufficiently moved by the still blueness that he wrote his masterpiece "Songs of Death", eventually going on to kick-start the goth movement.
With the advent of air travel in the twentieth century, it became applicable to the sky, as well as the sea: many an early airman was deemed lost to the Blue Screen of Death (although quite a few of them simply turned out to have gotten slightly lost and landed in the wrong place). Over time the Blue Screen has become synonymous with loss, emptiness and to some, the Devil.
The association of the colour blue with death, watery or otherwise, is readily visible throughout modern civilisation. Household cleaners such as bleach are packaged in blue bottles, in memory of those who, when the product was new to the market, mistook it for cheap ouzo and passed away through dissolution of the digestive tract. When one sings "The Blues" one is reflecting on the brevity of life, and the oblivion that awaits in death. Cheese and onion crisps, known to be the foulest of all snack foods, often come packaged in blue to ward off the purchaser.
With this in mind, that the "Blue Screen of Death" is the most chilling and deadly entity in computer science is no surprise. They have been plaguing computer operators since someone had the bright idea of connecting a screen to a computer. This is one of the most puzzling phenomina in computing since during the 60's, 70's and 80's the Blue Screen of Death was able to manifest itself in full blueness on green and amber monochrome cathode, black and white, and two tone LCD screens
The Blue Screen of Death was slipped into the very core of the Windows operating system at its inception, by a malicious developer with a sick interest in pagan rites. It is rumoured that when one sees the Blue Screen of Death on a computer screen it wrenches a tiny part of your soul and binds it to the afflicted machine. Repeated exposure, legend has it, will eventually drain one's spirit, leaving a living corpse, pale and restless, existing without purpose and an unquenchable thirst for caffeine.
A recent evolution of the "Blue Screen of Death" feature in Windows Vista has serious side effects. Instead of simply displaying a "blue screen", the new variant displays random flashing colors in a superhypnobrainwave pattern, causing the user to have a seizure and die within 195 hours of continuous seizure. The seizures are extremely painful for the 195 hours, then the seizure-ee suddenly feels a jabbing pain in their lower upper thigh and dies. 96.3141592% of these seizures last for the full 195 hours. The colors of the screen randomly flash between red, green and blue and actually cause death, so this variant of the "Blue Screen" should instead be called an epileptic screen of red, green and blue death, but Microsoft have decided to make the feature part of their new family of software - creating "Windows Live Screen of Death Beta".
The blue screen of death has had many social consequences. The Catholic Church has condemmed the blue screen of death for promoting a "culture of death". Instead, the church favors the "Ooops" kernel messages generated by linux. The phrase "Ooops" is a sacred part of Roman Catholic tradition, as it is the sound an Irish women makes when she realizes that the rythem method of birth control doesn't work.
A recent study conducted by an up and coming university Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Chicago, has managed to determine the Blue Screen of Death as cause of other incidents. It was an extensive study, conducted for over 30 years by a group of under-fed under-grad students.
Incidents: broken computer equipment; violent crime and suicide increase; loss of data and home made movies; wet floor and terrified expression on the face of a person that used the computer last; mysterious deaths of occupants in high-tech residences; increase in drugs abuse; and many more.
It is also possible to see a yellow screen of death, if you are colour-blind. While the BSOD has been known to cause many many heartattacks, it has also been known to cause coniptions as well as the ability to gain super human strength and shoot eye beams into your computer monitor. Please, do not have a heart attack if it happens to you.
The phrase became absorbed into common language as a term referring to the feeling of empty hopelessness one experiences when faced with a vast expanse of watery oblivion. Staring out into Lake Windermere, the great poet William Bleak was sufficiently moved by the still blueness that he wrote his masterpiece "Songs of Death", eventually going on to kick-start the goth movement.
With the advent of air travel in the twentieth century, it became applicable to the sky, as well as the sea: many an early airman was deemed lost to the Blue Screen of Death (although quite a few of them simply turned out to have gotten slightly lost and landed in the wrong place). Over time the Blue Screen has become synonymous with loss, emptiness and to some, the Devil.
The association of the colour blue with death, watery or otherwise, is readily visible throughout modern civilisation. Household cleaners such as bleach are packaged in blue bottles, in memory of those who, when the product was new to the market, mistook it for cheap ouzo and passed away through dissolution of the digestive tract. When one sings "The Blues" one is reflecting on the brevity of life, and the oblivion that awaits in death. Cheese and onion crisps, known to be the foulest of all snack foods, often come packaged in blue to ward off the purchaser.
With this in mind, that the "Blue Screen of Death" is the most chilling and deadly entity in computer science is no surprise. They have been plaguing computer operators since someone had the bright idea of connecting a screen to a computer. This is one of the most puzzling phenomina in computing since during the 60's, 70's and 80's the Blue Screen of Death was able to manifest itself in full blueness on green and amber monochrome cathode, black and white, and two tone LCD screens
The Blue Screen of Death was slipped into the very core of the Windows operating system at its inception, by a malicious developer with a sick interest in pagan rites. It is rumoured that when one sees the Blue Screen of Death on a computer screen it wrenches a tiny part of your soul and binds it to the afflicted machine. Repeated exposure, legend has it, will eventually drain one's spirit, leaving a living corpse, pale and restless, existing without purpose and an unquenchable thirst for caffeine.
A recent evolution of the "Blue Screen of Death" feature in Windows Vista has serious side effects. Instead of simply displaying a "blue screen", the new variant displays random flashing colors in a superhypnobrainwave pattern, causing the user to have a seizure and die within 195 hours of continuous seizure. The seizures are extremely painful for the 195 hours, then the seizure-ee suddenly feels a jabbing pain in their lower upper thigh and dies. 96.3141592% of these seizures last for the full 195 hours. The colors of the screen randomly flash between red, green and blue and actually cause death, so this variant of the "Blue Screen" should instead be called an epileptic screen of red, green and blue death, but Microsoft have decided to make the feature part of their new family of software - creating "Windows Live Screen of Death Beta".
The blue screen of death has had many social consequences. The Catholic Church has condemmed the blue screen of death for promoting a "culture of death". Instead, the church favors the "Ooops" kernel messages generated by linux. The phrase "Ooops" is a sacred part of Roman Catholic tradition, as it is the sound an Irish women makes when she realizes that the rythem method of birth control doesn't work.
A recent study conducted by an up and coming university Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Chicago, has managed to determine the Blue Screen of Death as cause of other incidents. It was an extensive study, conducted for over 30 years by a group of under-fed under-grad students.
Incidents: broken computer equipment; violent crime and suicide increase; loss of data and home made movies; wet floor and terrified expression on the face of a person that used the computer last; mysterious deaths of occupants in high-tech residences; increase in drugs abuse; and many more.
It is also possible to see a yellow screen of death, if you are colour-blind. While the BSOD has been known to cause many many heartattacks, it has also been known to cause coniptions as well as the ability to gain super human strength and shoot eye beams into your computer monitor. Please, do not have a heart attack if it happens to you.
by kodiac1 July 5, 2006
Get the Blue screen of deathmug. By pure definition, a roller coaster is anything that may seem rebellious or appear dangerous when in fact, it's perfectly safe for family fun as long as you're over the height for 48 inches. Using this definition, it can be determined that Linkin Park is the typical example of a roller coaster.
Society's definition of the roller coaster is that it is a form of mass-transit system for small- and medium-sized cities. In principle, it is similar to a bus or monorail, in that passengers pay a small fee to board and be transported elsewhere. With roller coasters, however, passengers are also sent through double-backwards corkscrews, 85-degree death drops, underground tunnel plunges, and triple-twistback loop-the-loops, often at speeds of over 100 miles an hour and with G-forces approaching space shuttle launch (or crash) levels. Many cities are reconsidering the installation of coasters, due to the number of heart attacks, pregnant woman injuries, and scalding-hot-coffee-spill disfigurations, but they're just pussing out.
Roller coasters are also located in theme parks like Disneyland, Six Flags over Somewhere Really Flat and Boring, Fantazyland, Disneyland 2, Duff Gardens, Vekomaland, and Grue Park. The majority of them are made out of steel, and given names like "Smegma" or "Mind Eraser" or "Deathmachine" or "That thing over there". People love to ride them, for the simple reason that prostitution was made illegal. They tend to generate long lines and vomit.
Society's definition of the roller coaster is that it is a form of mass-transit system for small- and medium-sized cities. In principle, it is similar to a bus or monorail, in that passengers pay a small fee to board and be transported elsewhere. With roller coasters, however, passengers are also sent through double-backwards corkscrews, 85-degree death drops, underground tunnel plunges, and triple-twistback loop-the-loops, often at speeds of over 100 miles an hour and with G-forces approaching space shuttle launch (or crash) levels. Many cities are reconsidering the installation of coasters, due to the number of heart attacks, pregnant woman injuries, and scalding-hot-coffee-spill disfigurations, but they're just pussing out.
Roller coasters are also located in theme parks like Disneyland, Six Flags over Somewhere Really Flat and Boring, Fantazyland, Disneyland 2, Duff Gardens, Vekomaland, and Grue Park. The majority of them are made out of steel, and given names like "Smegma" or "Mind Eraser" or "Deathmachine" or "That thing over there". People love to ride them, for the simple reason that prostitution was made illegal. They tend to generate long lines and vomit.
by kodiac1 July 8, 2006
Get the Roller coastermug. American Jokes are jokes which are not made in America. Yet, these jokes can be made in America, but apart from America, they can also be made in China, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Ethiopia, North Pole, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, the Sun...... wherever place you can think of which allow people to live. American Jokes are simply abbreviated as "AJ", which, obviously, comes from its original name American Joke.
So how did American Jokes become jokes? Once upon a time, there was a place named Quality College where students were capable of making very bad jokes. Those jokes are definitely totally utterly not funny at all, but students just loved making those cold jokes. One day, someone suddenly gave these bad jokes a name, AMERICAN JOKE.
It was rumoured that the term American Joke was invented by a student named "Sir iohC niwdE". Such a term was efficiently spread away by another fellow "A ginM", "maL noraA", "eeL ynneB" and "nhoJ osT". They are the founders of the "American Joke Society" (abbr. AJs), which is one of the biggest AJ as well.
Recently, the rumour was proved to be false. Yet, the rumour still remains to be one of the top AJ recently.
That is why these jokes are called American Jokes nowadays. But in fact no one can really explain how America is connected to those Jokes, or since when has American become a joke. Anyway, the name itself demonstrates the true meaning of the American Joke. It is that, a joke which is expected to be a joke, a joke which is formally a joke, a joke which is supposed to make others laugh, but at the end not being so "joky" as expected at all. Do you find the term American Joke a joke?
However, as students were becoming lazier and lazier, they eventually found the term American Joke too clumsy to pronunce. Instead, they gave this term another shorter version: simply known as AJ. Due to the simplicity of such a term and its effectiveness in preventing people from producing endless meaningless non-interesting yet troublesome dead-airing cold jokes, it was quickly spread among the community that nowadays every one knows about "AJ".
So how did American Jokes become jokes? Once upon a time, there was a place named Quality College where students were capable of making very bad jokes. Those jokes are definitely totally utterly not funny at all, but students just loved making those cold jokes. One day, someone suddenly gave these bad jokes a name, AMERICAN JOKE.
It was rumoured that the term American Joke was invented by a student named "Sir iohC niwdE". Such a term was efficiently spread away by another fellow "A ginM", "maL noraA", "eeL ynneB" and "nhoJ osT". They are the founders of the "American Joke Society" (abbr. AJs), which is one of the biggest AJ as well.
Recently, the rumour was proved to be false. Yet, the rumour still remains to be one of the top AJ recently.
That is why these jokes are called American Jokes nowadays. But in fact no one can really explain how America is connected to those Jokes, or since when has American become a joke. Anyway, the name itself demonstrates the true meaning of the American Joke. It is that, a joke which is expected to be a joke, a joke which is formally a joke, a joke which is supposed to make others laugh, but at the end not being so "joky" as expected at all. Do you find the term American Joke a joke?
However, as students were becoming lazier and lazier, they eventually found the term American Joke too clumsy to pronunce. Instead, they gave this term another shorter version: simply known as AJ. Due to the simplicity of such a term and its effectiveness in preventing people from producing endless meaningless non-interesting yet troublesome dead-airing cold jokes, it was quickly spread among the community that nowadays every one knows about "AJ".
Here are some practical daily examples of American Joke:
1. "American Jokes are good jokes."
2. "Fine, thank you."
"You too."
"You three."
"You four five six seven eight......"
3. "Today I accidentally crashed into John and BJ."
"Oh really? Does it hurt?"
4. "John, congratulations for winning the champion. You are now the Macau Shooting Star!"
"Macau Shooting Star? Does that mean I can shoot stars in Macau? How do I shoot them?"
5. "BJ who is a DJ loves AJ."
There are too many examples to be named. Please be kind to add in your own version of American Jokes and they better are your own creations. The world of American Jokes should not contain any boundary.
1. "American Jokes are good jokes."
2. "Fine, thank you."
"You too."
"You three."
"You four five six seven eight......"
3. "Today I accidentally crashed into John and BJ."
"Oh really? Does it hurt?"
4. "John, congratulations for winning the champion. You are now the Macau Shooting Star!"
"Macau Shooting Star? Does that mean I can shoot stars in Macau? How do I shoot them?"
5. "BJ who is a DJ loves AJ."
There are too many examples to be named. Please be kind to add in your own version of American Jokes and they better are your own creations. The world of American Jokes should not contain any boundary.
by kodiac1 July 4, 2006
Get the American Jokemug. Do you have an irrational, yet somehow compelling grudge against all of humanity, or even just some sections of it, like France, for example? Perhaps you have a point to make, but writing letters just doesn't cut it, and a big explosion would really help people to get the idea. If this is you, then see a doctor, you mad fucker, the Capybara bomb might be just what you need.
The Capybara bomb is a surprisingly successful stealth weapon composed of:
1. A capybara
2. Dynamite
The animal
Ah, the capybara, my old friend how you lollop through life, swimming in rivers and snuffling dung, all the while unaware that TERRORISTS! are seeking to use you in their nefarious plans. Never mind. Let's take a closer look at the furry little dope.
The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochæris) is a semi-aquatic herbivorous animal with a brain the size of a tangerine. Full-grown capybarae reach between 105 and 135 cm (40-55 in) in length. They are peaceful, fun-loving creatures that like dancing and poker. They look like giant guinea pigs.
Most importantly, however, the average capybara can safely hold up to 7 sticks of dynamite.
The dynamite
Any old dynamite will do. Just wash it, shove it in and go.
Advantages
1. Absolutely no one expects that a capybara is going to explode.
2. They are very docile and tolerant animals, and especially so when dynamite is being inserted.
A capybara bomb can be used pretty much anywhere but they are especially useful for TERRORISTS! who hate zoos. The range and damage capabilities of the device are limited to around 1 meter (3.2808399 feet). This is good for blowing up telephone boxes, small cars and litter bins.
Uses
If you want to blow up a really big thing, then you'll need more than one capybara. A whole lorry load of capybarae could probably bring down a Wal-Mart, but if you're stopped for any reason, it's going to be really hard to come up with a sufficiently good reason as to why you are driving a consignment of 500 capybarae with dynamite up their asses, to the Wal-Mart.
The Capybara bomb is a surprisingly successful stealth weapon composed of:
1. A capybara
2. Dynamite
The animal
Ah, the capybara, my old friend how you lollop through life, swimming in rivers and snuffling dung, all the while unaware that TERRORISTS! are seeking to use you in their nefarious plans. Never mind. Let's take a closer look at the furry little dope.
The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochæris) is a semi-aquatic herbivorous animal with a brain the size of a tangerine. Full-grown capybarae reach between 105 and 135 cm (40-55 in) in length. They are peaceful, fun-loving creatures that like dancing and poker. They look like giant guinea pigs.
Most importantly, however, the average capybara can safely hold up to 7 sticks of dynamite.
The dynamite
Any old dynamite will do. Just wash it, shove it in and go.
Advantages
1. Absolutely no one expects that a capybara is going to explode.
2. They are very docile and tolerant animals, and especially so when dynamite is being inserted.
A capybara bomb can be used pretty much anywhere but they are especially useful for TERRORISTS! who hate zoos. The range and damage capabilities of the device are limited to around 1 meter (3.2808399 feet). This is good for blowing up telephone boxes, small cars and litter bins.
Uses
If you want to blow up a really big thing, then you'll need more than one capybara. A whole lorry load of capybarae could probably bring down a Wal-Mart, but if you're stopped for any reason, it's going to be really hard to come up with a sufficiently good reason as to why you are driving a consignment of 500 capybarae with dynamite up their asses, to the Wal-Mart.
by kodiac1 September 5, 2008
Get the Capybara bombmug. 6 (uppercase: ^) is a real-live Arabic cardinal numerical integer, the successor to 5 and predecessor to the suspicious 7. It is a real subset of the set of all elements that come between the number infinitely far away from 5.00 and the number infinitely far away from 7.00 in opposite directions, and vice versa. Ordinally, it comes after the fifth number in the sequence of the numbers, and is before the seventh of the same.
In mathematics, the number constitutes a number of the base 10 regiment, or a decimal number, and may be more accurately denoted by the symbols 6.00. 6 is an even number, as opposed to an odd number, and can be created as the product of a 2 and a 3. Due to the phenomenon of reverse truncation, 2+2 approximately equals 6 for very large values of 2.
In finance, 6 is a small amount of currency, and may buy you a small paperback mathematical dictionary in some nations, whilst in others it will barely pay for a financial newspaper. The concept of having less money would be constituted in this situation by having 5.99 of your currency, and the concept of having more money would be constituted by having 6.01.
In literature, 6 is a page on which words are written. As an example, if you were reading the fifth page of the book (page five, that is), then the next page would be called page six (or the sixth page), and vice versa.
In cookery, 6 is a measure of how much of a particular ingredient you include in a dish, and its precise value is determined by the units that are used to suffix the said 6.
In computing, 6 is a key on a keyboard, usually denoted by the '6' symbol, and appearing in all twice on a standard keyboard, once in a horizontal fashion above the letters of the alphabet, in juxtaposition with the numbers 5 and 7; and once on the so-called 'number pad' on the far right of the unit, where it features on the right-hand side, to the right of the button marked '5', below the button marked '9', above that marked '3', and with borders to '8' and '2' also. The former occurrence of 6 wears a hat on standard US keyboards.
In time, 6 o'clock is the time that is one second after 5:59:59, and one second before 6:00:01. This time may be in the morning, or it may be in the evening, but at both times you are likely to find human beings awake.
In describing human directed animal attacks, a homonym of 6 is used as in: "Joe sics his dog on the hapless home invader.".
In medical terminology, 6 is used to describe relative malady as in: "I'm sick's a dog.".
In the calendar, 6 is the day that comes after the 5th day of each month, and comes before the 7th of the same month.
In German the number 6 is spoken like "sex" and therefore a never ending source of stupid jokes.
In base 6, the number 6 is written "10."
On the other hand, in base 5 the number 6 is written "11." This is rather odd since 6 is not an odd number, while 11 is.
In mathematics, the number constitutes a number of the base 10 regiment, or a decimal number, and may be more accurately denoted by the symbols 6.00. 6 is an even number, as opposed to an odd number, and can be created as the product of a 2 and a 3. Due to the phenomenon of reverse truncation, 2+2 approximately equals 6 for very large values of 2.
In finance, 6 is a small amount of currency, and may buy you a small paperback mathematical dictionary in some nations, whilst in others it will barely pay for a financial newspaper. The concept of having less money would be constituted in this situation by having 5.99 of your currency, and the concept of having more money would be constituted by having 6.01.
In literature, 6 is a page on which words are written. As an example, if you were reading the fifth page of the book (page five, that is), then the next page would be called page six (or the sixth page), and vice versa.
In cookery, 6 is a measure of how much of a particular ingredient you include in a dish, and its precise value is determined by the units that are used to suffix the said 6.
In computing, 6 is a key on a keyboard, usually denoted by the '6' symbol, and appearing in all twice on a standard keyboard, once in a horizontal fashion above the letters of the alphabet, in juxtaposition with the numbers 5 and 7; and once on the so-called 'number pad' on the far right of the unit, where it features on the right-hand side, to the right of the button marked '5', below the button marked '9', above that marked '3', and with borders to '8' and '2' also. The former occurrence of 6 wears a hat on standard US keyboards.
In time, 6 o'clock is the time that is one second after 5:59:59, and one second before 6:00:01. This time may be in the morning, or it may be in the evening, but at both times you are likely to find human beings awake.
In describing human directed animal attacks, a homonym of 6 is used as in: "Joe sics his dog on the hapless home invader.".
In medical terminology, 6 is used to describe relative malady as in: "I'm sick's a dog.".
In the calendar, 6 is the day that comes after the 5th day of each month, and comes before the 7th of the same month.
In German the number 6 is spoken like "sex" and therefore a never ending source of stupid jokes.
In base 6, the number 6 is written "10."
On the other hand, in base 5 the number 6 is written "11." This is rather odd since 6 is not an odd number, while 11 is.
A common urban legend tells that 6 is afraid of 7 because "7 8 9". Recent forensic discoveries indicate that 9 probably died of natural causes, and 6's fear of 7 may have stemmed from other causes, such as domestic violence.
by kodiac1 July 5, 2006
Get the 6mug. by Kodiac1 September 27, 2007
Get the negsmug. The Microsoft DirectX Window System (nicknamed "direct hex" by programmers) is an implementation of the X Window System for, unsurprisingly, Windows. It offers superior video output performance on the ATI and NVidia processors and inferior video output performance on all other processors, including the ones from AMD and Intel. It should be noted that Microsoft doesn't participate in either holy war, instead preferring to remain completely neutral in the question of vendor preference. For another example of Microsoft's neutrality, see x64.
DirectX differs from the official X implementation, which is stolen from XFree86, in the following minor details:
* It isn't stolen. Theoretically, nobody can steal it as well, and practically, nobody cares. Occasionally, the Free Sockpuppet Foundation goes nuts and shouts, "You Wine heretics, you stole it all, you gave up to the evil empire, we're doooomed!!" but it's been quite a while since anyone actually listened to them.
* It has made Ctrl-Alt-Del a well-known key combo.
* It is object-oriented to the point of granularity, passing thru your hands if not micromanaged a small grain at a time in order to produce the smallest of inputs. Its object orientation is language-independent, but crappy in the one true language. Unless you manage to find a cool wrapper library, which will immediately slow down performance almost to the point when you forget about your games and enjoy a slideshow.
* It is easy to use. Seriously. You only need to download a 200 MB SDK and forever forget about these*** stupid->IID_IPointers. It's slightly easier to use than OpenGL without downloading the SDK, which is a significant argument in favor of DirectX as downloading an SDK is no longer a problem in the digital millennium. Until you try to port your application.
* It doesn't include a window management system, there is already one in Windows and we are trying to be as minimalistic as possible. You cannot find an X system distribution as small as 20 MB which includes everything you ever need, including Direct1D, Direct2D DirectDraw, Direct3D, Direct4D, DirectSound, DirectShow, DirectHide, DirectInput, DirectPrint, DirectCD, DirectUSB and all the other subsystems for "direct"-ly (through a small, small hardware abstraction layer called Windows device driver and Win32 API) accessing all imaginable hardware. Until the vendor once again misconfigures the driver. But hey, it's not Microsoft's fault.
* Windows Vista finally bundles a DirectX window manager called Aero, which is a significant improvement over the best X window managers on Earth, such as TWM. From this point, DirectX/Aero will support OpenGL natively, eliminating the extra layer called ICD, for a small performance overhead of 50%. (Some say that ICDs can still be used, but Microsoft predicts that nobody will want to have these beautiful, eye-candy window borders to be even temporarily disabled to run some lame attempt on producing a 3D graphics library.
* It does run on your new video card, which is a vast improvement over the official X. The only drawback is that by the time you cover the security holes in the only system it supports one true system, it will be obsolete by at least a dozen new video cards, and all the coolest DirectX business applications will refuse to run on your card, but will run just fine on the card immediately succeeding yours. Until you install that one.
* Unlike X and its evil NPOV'ized some-say-that-it-is-evil spawn OpenGL, whose goal is not to add any functionality unless the hardware vendors and end users are rioting around your company's headquarters, the goal of DirectX is to add as much objects, function calls, layers of abstraction and obfuscated code as possible, regardless of whether any currently existing hardware is actually capable of understanding what DirectX wants from it, let alone doing what's asked. This clearly shows that Microsoft is thinking of the future and introducing innovation, quantity obscuring quality.
DirectX differs from the official X implementation, which is stolen from XFree86, in the following minor details:
* It isn't stolen. Theoretically, nobody can steal it as well, and practically, nobody cares. Occasionally, the Free Sockpuppet Foundation goes nuts and shouts, "You Wine heretics, you stole it all, you gave up to the evil empire, we're doooomed!!" but it's been quite a while since anyone actually listened to them.
* It has made Ctrl-Alt-Del a well-known key combo.
* It is object-oriented to the point of granularity, passing thru your hands if not micromanaged a small grain at a time in order to produce the smallest of inputs. Its object orientation is language-independent, but crappy in the one true language. Unless you manage to find a cool wrapper library, which will immediately slow down performance almost to the point when you forget about your games and enjoy a slideshow.
* It is easy to use. Seriously. You only need to download a 200 MB SDK and forever forget about these*** stupid->IID_IPointers. It's slightly easier to use than OpenGL without downloading the SDK, which is a significant argument in favor of DirectX as downloading an SDK is no longer a problem in the digital millennium. Until you try to port your application.
* It doesn't include a window management system, there is already one in Windows and we are trying to be as minimalistic as possible. You cannot find an X system distribution as small as 20 MB which includes everything you ever need, including Direct1D, Direct2D DirectDraw, Direct3D, Direct4D, DirectSound, DirectShow, DirectHide, DirectInput, DirectPrint, DirectCD, DirectUSB and all the other subsystems for "direct"-ly (through a small, small hardware abstraction layer called Windows device driver and Win32 API) accessing all imaginable hardware. Until the vendor once again misconfigures the driver. But hey, it's not Microsoft's fault.
* Windows Vista finally bundles a DirectX window manager called Aero, which is a significant improvement over the best X window managers on Earth, such as TWM. From this point, DirectX/Aero will support OpenGL natively, eliminating the extra layer called ICD, for a small performance overhead of 50%. (Some say that ICDs can still be used, but Microsoft predicts that nobody will want to have these beautiful, eye-candy window borders to be even temporarily disabled to run some lame attempt on producing a 3D graphics library.
* It does run on your new video card, which is a vast improvement over the official X. The only drawback is that by the time you cover the security holes in the only system it supports one true system, it will be obsolete by at least a dozen new video cards, and all the coolest DirectX business applications will refuse to run on your card, but will run just fine on the card immediately succeeding yours. Until you install that one.
* Unlike X and its evil NPOV'ized some-say-that-it-is-evil spawn OpenGL, whose goal is not to add any functionality unless the hardware vendors and end users are rioting around your company's headquarters, the goal of DirectX is to add as much objects, function calls, layers of abstraction and obfuscated code as possible, regardless of whether any currently existing hardware is actually capable of understanding what DirectX wants from it, let alone doing what's asked. This clearly shows that Microsoft is thinking of the future and introducing innovation, quantity obscuring quality.
Oscar Wilde's favorite color (blue) shows up regularly as it crashes, along with a broken curse written in hex known as a "hex dump". DirectX
by kodiac1 July 4, 2006
Get the directXmug.