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Getting A Handle On Vista
visination.com wrote to mention a news.com article which runs down some of the basics on MS's new Operating System. From the article: "Among the key features of Vista as it currently stands are: security enhancements, a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features, parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."
Done.
O'Reilly Developer WeblogsOS X Finder
OS X Mail
iTunes
And it's instantaneous. No indexing when your computer has some idle time to spare. You create the file and BAM!, it shows up in Spotlight (system wide search engine vis-a-vis Google Desktop) and any Smart Folder that its criteria has met.
All Adobe products make you reboot if you have any of the associated libraries with their other products being accessed at the time you install the new software. You cannot have an install program remove a dll that is loaded by the OS without causing a possible kernel panic/BSOD, so either unload other adobe products (you'd be surprised what is running in the background) or reboot. Not to difficult a choice. I turn off my computer every night, guess I just don't see the need for leaving it on all the time.
IIRC MacOS8 or 9 had it, too... I seem to remember working with Photoshop on an old Quadra and having the image file icons be a preview.
Sort of like "Smart Folders"? Yeah, that would be really cool to have in Windows one day.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/
Ten years from now, you're going to find yourself digging through the backups anyway.
If you have so many things going on that you can't remember where you put it all, you need to either lighten your load or learn better organization skills.
Spotlight may have some uses, but it is no substitute for organization. If you get it organized now, it's far more likely to be in an organized state in your backups in ten years.
Well, that said, without something like Spotlight and very good incremental backup software, aliases do tend to break. However, if you expect Spotlight (or the MSLonghorn equivalent) to organize for you, you're going to be disappointed.
It's the brain-damaged file system's fault. Contrast this to Linux/UNIX file systems which can typically unlink a file (delete) without freeing the associated inode until the file is actually unloaded by all users of the file. The upside is that the upgrade can take effect without a reboot, the downside is that you may not be fully upgraded unless you restart all applications that use that file you're upgrading. When you upgrade apache, making sure all relavent services are restarted is easy. When you upgrade glibc, it's far from easy.
And the real kicker out of all of this is that Microsoft is unlikely to ever change this. I would prefer a system that worked more like Linux in this regard, but unfortunately many programs on Windows require this annoying file locking scheme to exist exactly as it does right now. If Microsoft changes this, it will break some software, and people will blame Microsoft for the breakage. Even people within Microsoft understand the problems this exectuable locking causes, which is why .NET programs for IIS use this strange shadow copy (different from W2K3's shadow copy feature!) method to allow you to update your website, despite the fact the executables in the target directory should be in use.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Microsoft Office 2003 actually requires a reboot. It simply doesn't work otherwise. I was flabberghasted when I saw the error message and it took literally five minutes to figure out that it didn't work because I was working on something while installing and pressed "no" for "would you like to reboot?". Same with installing most sorts of drivers. Not to mention the seeming need to reboot every single time Windows XP updates... The damn thing keeps bugging me as well.
The thing is, on Win{16,32,64}, there is no way to delete or replace a file when the file is open by any process. Same applies to executables when any instance of them is running.
In the Unix world, deleting a file simply unlinks it from the directory it is in. It won't be actually deleted until no process needs it anymore; however, you are free to replace the file with a new version.
It is something which could be added to Windows without breaking compatibility. It's a kernel-level change that doesn't need any user-space changes at all. Fixing this would make it possible to replace drivers and running programs just fine.
Of course, you still will be unable to restart certain vital systems without a reboot, the monolithic design of Win32 and the GUI-is-everything principle bog them down.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
On OSX, I force quit something, and it's gone in a half second. On Linux, I kill -9 something, it's gone in the next screen refresh. On Windows, I ctrl-alt-delete, end process, wait, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, wait, click "yes, really kill it", repeat, wait, wait as progress bar fills in, repeat, and it's gone. Or not. Yeah, obviously this is NOT Windows' fault!
You're not doing an End Process. You're doing an End Task. End Task tries to shut down the app in an orderly fashion. End Process shuts it down immediately regardless. Go to the processes tab instead of the applications tab to kill the process.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Heh! Exactly.
...Promises also said
the idea of giving laptops the ability to turn on
quickly is something customers want and a quality that is arguably
better delivered today by the rival Linux operating system.
Looky:
RTFA'd (Among the key features of Vista as it currently stands are:security enhancements:)
Don't make me laugh!!! Still broadcasting on netbios. Still using ActiveX! Still running Internet Explorer. Still using that ridiculous firewall that Nessus plugins can easily bypass.
RTFA'd( a new searching mechanism )
Big deal. Linux has had that for a while now:
https://infserver.unibz.it/kat/
RTFA's( parental controls and better home networking )
squid proxy caching and good old ifconfig guis: all on Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever
RTFA"d(
here will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself.
)
shiny transluscent windows. Like this (Composite Extension in xorg + KDE 3.4)??? Hah!
icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. Like this (any recent KDE or GNOME version) ??
RTFA'd (
)
Hate to say I told you so, but...
RTFA'd(
The company is also considering setting up a "mobility center" within the Longhorn software that would be a centralized place to adjust settings, such as power management, display and networking.
)
And this is new???
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand