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You've misinterpreted my response. I have no desire to FUD for MS, only to clarify the technical picture. A more succinct version of what I said:

1. Windows Update works in a similar way to the Ubuntu update you are championing. It downloads a list of all updates along with some XML data about what they apply to.
2. But according to the linked article WU does send MS server a list of installed hardware; from this the server sends WU a list of applicable driver updates for that hardware.
3. In either case, if the update server wanted to track what software you have installed, it's still a trivial matter to parse the server-side logs of what was downloaded. Even though the initial apt-get update only pulls a list, after that you still have to download the actual updates your system needs. If someone downloads the update for SuperFoobar2001.3, it's a good deduction that this someone (at IP address 123.4.5.6 or whatever) has SuperFoobar2001.3 installed on his computer. Drivers too - a user is unlikely to download drivers via apt-get for hardware that's not installed.

http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/archiv/402064/index15.html

I knew Windows Update was dodgy, but this is far beyond the so-called red hand of guilt -- MS would have to be some kind of anti-Pict with its whole body dyed red for this expression to apply in this instance. Got me thinking more and more about simply sucking up the hit in productivity from missing *nix software and making the jump, regardless of required apps that I can't get to run under Wine. Part of smart business is reducing your exposure to risks, and MS is looming ever larger...

Cheers,

You are allowed by law to buy a PC without an OS on it, and Dell are obligated to offer to sell you the PC without the OS on it.

Don't expect it to be so easy anywhere else, Dell gets a lot of subsidy from Microsoft for the 'Linux' games it plays.

That's not quite what the law says. Dell are allowed by law to only sell PCs with Windows if they so choose. What the law says is that the "OEM" version of the software may be sold without any accompanying hardware, and that Microsoft is explicitly forbidden from making versions of Windows which are tied to (only run on) specific machines. You can see this article (in German) for an overview; the judgement itself, from 6th July 2000, is typed up here (also German). This law is also the reason that people in Germany can legally sell their used OEM Windows software on ebay, even if the EULA says that the software may not be sold separately from the machine it came with.

It has also been hinted at that extra conditions of use (eg: in the EULA) on boxed software that were not visible on the outside of the box prior to purchase may be counted as null and void, but this has not yet been confirmed by a court of law - in Germany, or AFAIK anywhere else in the EU.

The situation in the States is, of course, an entirely different kettle of fish. As far as being a consumer goes, it's the land of the not-so-free.

-- Steve

I had a lot of conversation and disputs with iXBT video-guru Mr. Andrey Vorobieff about testing methods on 2D quality.

Since then they have a little caption: "On our equipment (noone seen yet) everything looks fine!"

Compare to German review dated 2003: http://www.tecchannel.de/tecdaten/show.php?article id=401558

All the test methods are logged and described. Every topic is pedanticly researched and verified.

I'm still interested in good reports about 2D signal quality (from the videocard to the monitor), then about video quality playback, and THEN 3d quality and performance.

So I still rely on my own eyes: Matrox still in the game. ATI is next. Nvidia out of my yard.

Don't you saw an artifacts on LCD monitor (analog way, don't speak BNC-style on CRT, pleeease) after changes in refresh rate? 60 hz is "native" to LCD, and changes to 75Hz may result terrible effects like text jagginess and contrast corruption like in worst times.

Long vive CRT!

I once had one of those MP-Men. Interestingly in germany it was labeled as a Schneider MP-Man". Y'know, the company that brought you the Schneider CPC back in the 80s.

I sold it for 50 a year ago. It was kinda cool, but honestly I don't regret it. It was too big, had too little Memory and couldn't handle any other files except plain old MP3. It was pretty much an early adopters gadget...

There is a picture here

When's it coming out? Any day now
How much does it cost? $925
Has any one besides THG benchmarked one?

Yanno,
If you annoying,
lazy, fanboy fuckers actually
took the time to look for the answers to your own fucking questions,
questions you wouldn't be so fucking annoying.

That's from a 30 SECOND FUCKING GOOGLE SEARCH.

I call that very biased. Benchmarking something thats not out yet. It's not out and that is why AMD wins.

ON WHAT FUCKING PLANET. Jesus. EVERYONE benchmarks stuff before it's released. Where the fuck have you been? AMD LOST. GET OVER IT.

That being said, I'm personally building a dual Opteron system on an MSI Master2 FAR board because $925 for a processor that's only marginally faster than the Opteron is ridiculous. Price/Performance is owned by AMD, but of course, they've owned that for quite a while now.

For a start, most of the Microsoft execs would be in jail. Let's see ... life without Ballmer ... Yep! Clearly better off.

The following pages are restricted to users of our Premium service. If you are not member you can buy the externer Linkcomplete article as a PDF-file for Euro 1.99. Included you will find a complementary copy of the tools we used to find out what is going on with Windows Update.

First of all, the example data sent is available free, as one poster above already listed. There's no software described there other than Windows itself.

Second, the System Info Schema, as posted by another above, is pretty explicit about what registry keys are available to be sent, and it's pretty tame.

Frankly, I have no problem letting them know exactly what hardware I've got running. How can they harm me there? Perhaps a malicious hacker could grab this data and find ways to abuse my network card? Pretty slim.

Call me too open, if you will, but I'd be happy if it would let me know about other MS updates, such as Office, without having to also visit MS' office site. Update those automatically? Never. But it's much less convenient than the Windows Update site.

I greatly doubted that it would be sending large quantities of personal data, because it just doesn't take that long. The ones to worry about are the virus scanners, that take the time to examine every freakin' file.

In summary:

• They're not sending your entire hard drive
• They're not sending your entire registry
• They're not sending a full software inventory
• They're probably gathering a little more than they need
• They're probably not doing anything with it (yet)

That is:

WTF RTFA

Nice claims, but we the free part of the article doesn't show any actual examples of data that's transmitted.

WTF WTFA

They've updated the story to give the full info on what gets sent back here: http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/1126/14.h tml

I don't think the Inquirer did. Certainly Slashdot didn't. The poster probably didn't.

The SOAP listing on the site (http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/1126/2.h tml) looks pretty innocuous. Seems to me at least *one* person somewhere could pay the $2 to find out just what exactly all these headlines are about and, perhaps, tell us. (Facts can't be copyrighted.) I betcha it's nothing... a driver listing or something.

Yes, it is pay-per-view beyond a certain point, but the meat of the story is in the stuff sent back to MicroSoft, which they've updated to be free at this link here: http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/1126/14.h tml. It seems to be information on hardware in the machine. I'd like to see MicroSoft's response to this.

I am reading it right now. Click here http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/1126/inde x.html and click on [Weiter >>]. It may be a teaser but I have gotten to the end yet.

Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.

Odd? Hardly. Microsoft feels it is above the standard of most Good Corporate Citizens because they have a monopoly. Remember when MS' updater said no info would be sent back to MS? Well just have a look at what XP is sending back to MS for an example of their power-crazed mindset.

Too lazy to send in a story.

What troubles me about video card reviews in recent years is that they harp on at length about the ins-and-outs of antialiasing, and framerates, and memory bus bandwidth, but apparently nobody bothers to look at the picture on the fucking monitor.

It used to be different. In the early-mid 90s, PC rags far and wide would rate video cards primarily on how good they looked. This is mostly dependant on the analog signal path of a specific card, and not tied to a given chipset - things would (and still do) vary widely between different implementations of the same chip. I'm talking about horizontal sharpness (limited bandwidth), image distortion (bad topology), contrast compression (shitty amps) and ghosting (poor termination), to name a few.

The physics haven't changed since then, and indeed have become more difficult. Resolutions and refresh rates keep pushing upward, and this makes the analog stage proportionately trickier to design properly. Designing an analog circuit for signals ranging anywhere from DC to 400MHz (a pretty common RAMDAC spec, lately) is quite non-trivial.

Despite this growing problem, even Tom's Hardware doesn't bother to tell you (subjectively, or otherwise) just how good, or bad the picture is on a given card/monitor combination. The closest they come is a note at the end of a Ti4600 review which states that all of the tested cards looked a bit fuzzy on their Eizo monitor, relative to whatever it is that they normally use with it (which they unhelpfully do not identify).

This German page has some very nice multichannel 'scope plots generated by the RGB output of a plethora of different cards, but offers no subjective interpretation of what they look like on-screen, as far as my English-trained eyes can see.

Even the most hardcore of gamers probably spend most of their time in front of the PC reading text and looking at porn. Are there any reviewers left in the world who actually make a point of evaluating image quality?

Here's my stab at it:

I've got a Voodoo3 3500TV. Works great in X, all features except vidcap working perfectly. Image quality at 1600x1200x75Hz is remarkably good, free of ghosting and pretty sharp on a 4-year-old 19" CTX VL950, though it could be slightly sharper. In terms of speed, it's about as fast with X as it is with XP, and handles all but the latest shoot-em-ups quite playably. The included 5/8"-thick, 6' snake makes for handy connections to the card's well-stocked array of inputs and outputs.

Its 3.3-volt AGP interface presents an insurmountable hurdle for modern use, however, when one is looking to buy an nForce2-based motherboard (none of which have 3.3V AGP sockets).

Thus, it needs replaced.

If anyone has any anecdotes on the fidelity of a current video card, please submit them below. Specifically, I'm looking at ATI-branded Radeon 9000 Pro or Radeon 8500, or who-knows-what-brand GF4 Ti4200. Preferably, the reviews will be more from the perspective of a graphic artist, instead of a gamer, and be based on what things look like at high resolution and refresh rates.

But at this point, I'll gladly listen to anyone's opinion about visual quality, even if it involves a Happy Mountain Computing Xabre400, plugged into a 15-year-old, fixed-frequency Sun display, and is written by a twitching 9-year-old crackhead who once lost eight teeth to an unfortunate hockey incident.

Anyone have some light to shed on the subject?

[I'll leave my tirade about the absolute dearth of modern CRT monitor reviews for another day.]

Fair enough.

I don't have the license text handy, but I do have references to published accounts of Philips being upset about copyprotected CDs not being CDs and threats to disallow permission of the logo on such disks. Sorry, best I could find on short notice.

First, look here. Yeah, it's in German, but there was a whole Slasdot writeup and comentary on it here.

As for what CDs have the logo, gee, I don't know of any that don't have it, though I have hears rumours of producers of copyprotected "CD's" being willing to drop the logo and rely on recognition of "flat, shiny disks with music" as "CDs".

At the CeBIT the Federal German Ministry of Economics distributes for free the mail encryption program GnuPP 1.1 complete with manual. The mail roboter Adele shall provide a lead-in to the issue by practising the krypto mail communication together with the user.

The Federal German Ministry of Economics is supporting the open source project GnuPP (GNU Privacy Project) since the year 2000. With that the Ministry wants to provide the development of a cryptography infrastructure that does not depend on manufacturers, that is safe and corresponds to international standards. It would not be recommended to use standard software in security sensitive areas and the Ministry explicitly warns to do so in its press release. Only the open source principle allows the user to look at the complete programming of a software, and that means security to the greatest extent.

Apart from the software the package of the Ministry contains a two-piece manual that is completely new written and designed. With the help of this manual even laypersons shall be able to clear the first hurdle of e-mail encryption. And something else is new: "Adele" (adele@gnupp.org), an exercise roboter for practising the procedure of encryption and decryption as often as the entry-level user will need it. Adele reacts to sent-in public keys and encrypted e-mails, sends its own public key, and answers to encrypted and decrypted incoming e-mails. In this way a dialog between correspondence partners is formed so that entry-level users can practise transactions of e-mail encryption "like in real life" and may gain confidence in the safety of this procedure.

At the CeBIT one can get the GnuPP package (manual with CD-ROM) for free at the stands of the Federal German Ministry of Economics. During the entire fair the Ministry also provides presentations and advisory service for free.

For background informations and details on the fair please surf tecCHANNEL.DE and read our big CeBIT Special (German only, please bear with us). Moreover we have compiled for you all CeBIT news in category-specific news channels. (jlu/bmu)

Federal German Ministry of Economics: pavilion11, stand D25

Pavillon D / 11, stands 76 and 5

At the CeBIT the Federal German Ministry of Economics distributes for free the mail encryption program GnuPP 1.1 complete with manual. The mail roboter Adele shall provide a lead-in to the issue by practising the krypto mail communication together with the user.

The Federal German Ministry of Economics is supporting the open source project GnuPP (GNU Privacy Project) since the year 2000. With that the Ministry wants to provide the development of a cryptography infrastructure that does not depend on manufacturers, that is safe and corresponds to international standards. It would not be recommended to use standard software in security sensitive areas and the Ministry explicitly warns to do so in its press release. Only the open source principle allows the user to look at the complete programming of a software, and that means security to the greatest extent.

Apart from the software the package of the Ministry contains a two-piece manual that is completely new written and designed. With the help of this manual even laypersons shall be able to clear the first hurdle of e-mail encryption. And something else is new: "Adele" (adele@gnupp.org), an exercise roboter for practising the procedure of encryption and decryption as often as the entry-level user will need it. Adele reacts to sent-in public keys and encrypted e-mails, sends its own public key, and answers to encrypted and decrypted incoming e-mails. In this way a dialog between correspondence partners is formed so that entry-level users can practise transactions of e-mail encryption "like in real life" and may gain confidence in the safety of this procedure.

At the CeBIT one can get the GnuPP package (manual with CD-ROM) for free at the stands of the Federal German Ministry of Economics. During the entire fair the Ministry also provides presentations and advisory service for free.

For background informations and details on the fair please surf tecCHANNEL.DE and read our big CeBIT Special (German only, please bear with us). Moreover we have compiled for you all CeBIT news in category-specific news channels. (jlu/bmu)

Federal German Ministry of Economics: pavilion11, stand D25

Pavillon D / 11, stands 76 and 5

I believe that by 'disc cam in cage', they mean some sort of gyro device. By spinning a mass (within a cage for safety), you can rotate the robot the other direction.

It's not a gyro which can (AFAIR) only be used to control rotation about an axis but not movement.

Here is another article (also in german, but maybe it translates better). They're saying that movement is done by impulse by a constantly rotating camshaft that's mounted inside a cage. Whenever the robot hits a wall the cage moves w.r.t. to the camshaft (and the camshaft hits the cage I suspect).

What I could imagine is that the camshaft pushes the cage and thereby pushes the robot away from the wall it just hit.

Here is another report about this contest with a picture of the jitter. Looks cute, huh? Sorry for that other post with the false desription, seems i have mistaken it for s.th. else.

All the news as of late, all the apparant holes popping up in the product activation, and the latest - a Senator challenging Microsoft's media player.

Not only that, but with respected tech sites churning out articles like this, a lot of people are bound to be turned off.

In my opinion, (yea, I know - dangerous) Microsoft tried too many tricks too soon. In the next year or so is when linux is really going to have a chance to break out and rain down upon the masses. I'm not a linux zealot, but I just see this as a real oppurtunity for the OS to really get out there and make itself known to even the most casual computer user. Especially with backing from IBM...I would IBM probably has a pretty good hate on for Bill and m$ for the whole OS/2 deal years back.

Hey, that's just my .03, flame away!

Caino

Don't touch my .sig there!

Don't know if anybody is still reading this topic on Slashdot, but it's happened.

http://www.tecchannel.de/betriebssysteme/746/index .html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20433.html

Super eurobeat from Avex and Konami unite in your DANCE!

--

Whoops; just noticed that its actually tecchannel.de, not computerchannel.
The link to the concrete article is correcht,though. Sorry.