LarryOsterman

• Anders Hejlsberg and Guy Steele: Concurrency and Language Design

  Oct 06, 2008 at 9:27 PM

  OH WOW!  IT'S GLS!!!
  
  Guy Steele was my comparative languages professor back at CMU, he was hands down one of the best teachers I've ever had.
  
  The man's simply amazing.
  

• Scott Field: How secure is Vista, really? - Part I

  Nov 30, 2006 at 6:41 AM

  neilfmorrow wrote:

  I read, heard something about the Blue Pill what is exactly is that and how does it affect Hypervisor???
  
  In relation to patch-guard, is it true that patch-guard, in part, needs to read the number of pulses generated by the clock and can patch-guard be disabled or told in effect not to read the clock?
  
  Will, the patch-guard like technology or technologies, be implemented at the hardware level at some-point in the future?
  

  
  
  Blue pill was a proof of concept piece of software that ran as a hypervisor.
  

• Charlie Owen - Your first Media Center/Vista application (and a look at their secret room)

  Apr 07, 2006 at 7:30 PM

  Cool, the listening room sees the light of day.
  
  
  

• Episode 3

  Feb 23, 2006 at 8:46 PM

  Sorry for editing the post, but rouge/rogue is one of my pet peeves.
  

• Vista Audio Stack and API

  Jan 27, 2006 at 8:31 AM

  blue fire wrote:

  I watched the video and it sounds cool. I'm working with professional audio devices. I'm actually write the firmware.
  i'm not a driver developer so don't shout too loud if this question is not supposed to be put here.
  The problem is like this: usually the user might change the number of channels that come and go to the device. For that you have either a USB or 1394 connected device.
  Whenever this happens Cubase gets really spooked or dies gracefully.
  The problem relies in the fact that wdm was designed for devices that always have the same channel configuration.
  The only solution is to disconnect the device and reconnect the device after a certain time. But then you don't get sound anymore. i mean it is suppose to be plug and play...
  After the device is reconnected a rediscovery process takes place and it is ok. But you need to restart your application change your setup and so on.... which is really ugly
  (Usually musicians don't understand the difference between digital or analogue and they expect that the device behaves like an analog device. Either they have crappy sound if the device is not in synch or they get sound.)
  is this taken care in Vista?
  Does the application have the possibility to register for a stream format change event?
  Maybe I missed it but i don't remember of any mention of this subject.
  i believe this is pretty cool feature especially when you have more then one devices on the bus (USB/1394). The problem relies mostly in the fact that you don't want to flood the bus with traffic if it is not necessary.
  Cheers,
  dacian
  

  
  
  Apps can register for stream format events or they'll receive a distinguished error when the stream format changes.
  

• Vista Audio Stack and API

  Jan 27, 2006 at 8:30 AM

  Jedediah wrote:

  I'm curious what exactly the problems are with a managed audio API. I'm working on a pro audio app in C# and we're planning to make a managed wrapper for ASIO (and I guess for wasapi too). If it's not going to work, I'd like to know now!
  

  
  
  The big problem with a managed solution is that it's a managed environment.
  
  What does your app plan on doing when GC comes along and blocks access to your audio buffer for 10 milliseconds?  What happens when the jitter decides to re-gen your IL code?
  
  If you're trying to do low latency audio, it's critical that all the memory and code involved be locked down in memory so that you don't incur paging hits.  But in a managed environment, it is difficult to achieve that goal.
  

• Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

  Jan 06, 2006 at 6:27 PM

  Horshu wrote:

  LarryOsterman wrote: So if random app A calls PlaySound("Alert") (which plays the users configured alert sound), Robert Fripp should somehow come to their home, and figure out that it was random app A that called it?

  
  
  Evidentally, the "" didn't make it quite clear enough that I don't honestly expect Robert Fripp to audibly ID every sound in Windows when it plays, so imagine Robert Fripp also playing a Vista-like rimshot instead of the emoticon.  My point is that Windows does not do a good job at connecting the multitasking visual with the multitasking audio, which results in a confusing experience when the system starts chiming, etc.
  
  

  
  
  For Vista, the per-app audio will help this problem, but for system sounds (especially those that are tagged as system sounds), we explicitly eliminate the relationship between the app making the sound and the sound itself (nobody wants to know that taskeng.exe or explorer.exe is making a particular sound, that's not relevant to them).
  
  The problem is that the relationship between the .wav file being played and the event that generated the event, and the app which generated the event are all fuzzy.
  

• Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

  Jan 06, 2006 at 11:55 AM

  Horshu wrote:

  Each sound should end with Robert Fripp saying, "The sound you heard was caused by the following application..."
  
  Really, though, I like the sounds a lot and generally keep the defaults turned on, so I'm looking forward to hearing Vista when it's released.  The thing I dislike about Windows sounds, though, is the random beep from a window wayyyy underneath a stack of others.  It's a little late, but it'd be cool if the greater the window's Z value, the quieter the sound, and then what I desperately want is some kind of sound log so I can track down a particular sound made at a particular time to find out why the sound got triggered.

  
  
  So if random app A calls PlaySound("Alert") (which plays the users configured alert sound), Robert Fripp should somehow come to their home, and figure out that it was random app A that called it?
  
  System sounds are a smidge more complicated since they're a platform thingy.
  

• Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

  Jan 06, 2006 at 5:49 AM

  buggy123 wrote:

  Not only do I only use 100 percent pirated copies of Windows in massive OS rollouts, I also disable all sounds upon installation.  Eat it, Micro(I need to watch my language).
  
  
  Larry Osterman: Watch your language.

  
  
  If you don't want to listen to the Windows sounds, that's your choice, whatever.  Other people use the audio feedback provided by Windows.  To each his own.
  
  But you might concider not using pirated versions of Windows.  You wouldn't steal from the local grocery store, would you?  So why are you stealing from me?
  

• Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

  Jan 06, 2006 at 5:47 AM

  buggy123 wrote:

  Not only do I only use 100 percent pirated copies of Windows in massive OS rollouts, I also disable all sounds upon installation.  Eat it, Micro(I need to watch my language).
  
  
  Larry Osterman: Watch your language.

  
  
  Buggy, I'm not going to delete this post, but I have fixed the language.
  

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