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Windows Vista & IE7 Beta 1 Released
gdsotirov writes "Today on the IE blog the availability of two new beta tests - Windows Vista Beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 - was announced. These tests are mainly targeted to developers and IT professionals. Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers. Tom's Hardware has details as well." From the article: "While the code also includes an early look at the new user-interface design, the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2. In addition to these fundamentals, Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform. The technical Beta of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 also is available today." Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?
The privacy statement for Internet Explorer 7.0 beta lists a "phishing filter," which is said to be capable of warning users about the possibility that the Web site currently being visited is impersonating a trusted Web site. This feature is turned off by default
Why bother creating a feature like this and having it turned off by default. The people most likely to be taken in by a phishing scam seem to me to be the same people who won't know enough about a computer to turn this feature on to protect themselves. The more tech and internet savvy people could turn this off if it annoys them.
but in order for it to be used properly, the Web site's address and other information about the user's computer, are sent to Microsoft for automatic evaluation.
Then again it does scare me a little that MS would be taking a peek at my browsing habits. Hopefully it just asks a big database full of bad websites whether or not this one is good. I'd like to think that MS wouldn't be keeping tabs on my online activity. Makes me wonder if this is why that bought Gator... I mean Claria.
I don't buy this for a second. Microsoft OS dominance does not come by people getting all excited about upgrading their OS. The vase majority of home users get Windows automatically when they buy their new Dell PC. And corporate users get Windows because that is what IT has standardized on for the corporate desktop.
None of this is going to change because some columinist over-enamored of his own opinion is less than enthusiastic about Vista.
Download my free songs!
For a website that has bill dressed in a Borg outfit there are sure a lot of press releases^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H articles about Microsoft products...
.net, VB, ...]
As my boss often says "it is what it is". Let's just wait for the actual RELEASE of the product instead of talking about it with devote admiration and desire.
Personally I don't see any changes that would make me switch from Gentoo Linux on my AMDX2 to it... let's see
1. Incompetent shell. check.
2. Single desktop desktop. check.
3. High price for "complete" copy. check.
4. Activation. check.
5. Poorly documented closed source kernel. check.
6. Feeding generations of inept developers. check. [re: C#, anything
7. Resource intense OS. check.
I mean I do a lot of development and even I could get by with 256MB of ram [albeit with swapping to disk here and there]. If I didn't compile things of substantial size I could easily run the rest of my desktop applications within 128M, heck even 64M.
The fact that the "newest windows" requires 512M of ram and a gigamahurts processor is a sign things aren't actually improving they're just getting more wasteful.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Heh, with the exception of "Dynamic security protection", that just reads like Firefox's feature list. Tabbed browsing, 'inline' search from address bar, support for RSS feeds, transparent PNG support... revolutionary!
I don't think anyone can actually suggest that Microsoft throw it out, having a good rendering engine of type in the platform SDK is pretty much a requirement these days. The OSS desktops all leveraging HTML engines is just one example, check out Apple who are relly going at it building applications based on WebCore. It just so happens that Microsoft got into the game early (one could in fact use the word "innovation" here, but I guess that would be a bit too flamebaity on Slashdot).
Well, that was clearly a troll...
I personally have noticed no speed difference, but I have a fast machine. Even if you do notice a difference, any semi-intelligent human being knows that a 10% increase in speed isn't everything. Firefox has so much more to offer. IE and Firefox aren't even in the same class. You might call me a zealot, but I prefer to be referred to as a "web developer" who appreciates a modicum of standards compliance.
It's funny. Most proponents of IE suggest that "Consumers don't care about what web browser their using. They just want it to work." I wonder what said consumer's response would be if they knew the costs that were passed on to them as a result of buying a computer supported by monopolies in several markets. Probably nothing, oh well...
Let's see... The same John C. Dvorak that has predicted the death of Windows a thousand times over dating back to the introduction of the platform?
Yawn. I've been reading his columns since 1989, and I still don't think a single one of them has come true. Remind me why he's relevant anymore? Used to be, I would get so excited when a new PC Magazine arrived. I mean, without the internet, I thought it was a great source for information from knowledgeable folks. I want the $35 per year back that I shelled out to Ziff Davis from 89-96. What a ripoff.
Oh yeah, and Dvorak's no different. Only now it's more difficult for him to get his voice out there without being so controversial and/or downright inciteful.
Just because someone charges a lot for something doesn't mean that they are price-gouging.
Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean you are entitled to a copy of it.
evil adrian
I'm going to call on you to back up your statement with facts:
Please explain how Microsoft charging for an MSDN subscription is an example of price-gouging, and if they are in fact charging too much money, what is a more appropriate price?
evil adrian
BSOD creates the "lasting emotional connection with users" referred to a couple of posts North of here... Anger, Frustration, Hate - all are emotions...
Except they do have competition, come on this is slashdot, you can't just conviently ignore apple and the 50 or so popular linux distros.
Either mac osx and linux are viable desktop os's or they aren't but you can't pretend they are half the time and then pretend ms has no competition the rest of the time.
Apparently the best way to develop a "visually intuitive" user interface is glass and more animation!
And any time KDE gets some visual gizmo, it somehow becomes worthy of being a Slashdot article in and of itself.
Let's attract even more attention to torrent sites so more can go down like btefnet and suprnova before them.
Dude, calm down. If you know anything about thepiratebay.org, you know they aren't going anywhere.
I'm sure all the linux devotees will have something to say about your 'no competition' comment.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Eh?
That would work if the developer/writer/creative person knocked it up in precisely zero seconds. Otherwise how can it have no value, since somebody took some of their time to "create" it?
I think the value of information/services/software surely has to be relative to the amount of effort you would have to undertake to reproduce it yourself.
If you can't do it/find it/work it out and want it badly enough, then pay for it. Seems fair to me.
By your argument, if you want a decorator to paint your house you'll expect him (or her) to come round, paint your walls and just bill you for the paint! If you find a decorator who'll do that, can I get his number...
Well, if it costs nothing to make the operating system, why not develop your own?
Um, no. WinHelp was a bit of an abortion. HTMLHelp is a easier to use and develop for, not to mention more capable.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Thousands upon thousands of hours of work go into the production of information and software for MSDN subscribers. Do you think that all of the content and software on MSDN just *magically appeared* one day, and Microsoft just decided to put a gate around it and charge a ton of money?
Get a clue!
Your logic is severely, SEVERELY flawed.
evil adrian
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing, since the costs of reproducing what is basically an abstract representation of information is nearly zero.
I can understand an idea being free. As in I thought of this doesn't it sound cool. Now let me spend 5000 hours of my time implementing my idea and just because the efforts of my work happen to be a piece of software it should be free also?
Think of it this way, if you took your car into the shop to get it fixed and the mechanic flipped a switch in a hidden compartment and then charged you $500 to fix it
Software is more like it taking the mechanic many hours to find and flip the switch the first time. Now hopefully he can duplicate his same effort in less time the next time. Being a bright mechanic he charges you less than it actually costs assuming he'll be able to charge the next person for the same action and take less time doing it.
Now if you want to argue that a piece of software should eventually become free after a company recoups it's development costs and some profit I could understand. Saying that software is intangible and it should be free from the start isn't keeping in mind the costs of creating it to begin with.
I have an MSDN Universal Subscription! And I read /.! I guess that makes me a masochist or something, but I like seeing how misinformed, short sighted, and downright stupid some people are.
Best Buy can have you arrested
GUI. Graphical User Interface. It's an art and a science all it's own. In the past, I did GUI programming for 4 years. It's an entire world when done right, with things like GUI standards, best practices, things called "deferred-create" and other cute names for ways to organize things on the screen.
I am shocked that a company like Microsoft can actually fuck up every GUI best practice rule out there.
IMO they spent a ton of time trying to rip of OS X and Aqua, but then change it enough so it has a look and feel as if it had Win XP roots. But it's a total mess. Scroll bars do not look like scroll bars, and are extremely faded. THERE IS DEAD SPACE EVERYWHERE!!! Six inch by one inch desk space areas just to show a word or two off text. Some buttons look like buttons, others look like internet links that are underlined, others only have an underline when you roll-over! I could go on and on, but I am seriously shocked. I know it's beta, but the UI will not change much, you are pretty much looking at the final product from a UI standpoint.
This is bad enough to make me leave the last Windows machine I have, and deal with windows just within a virtual environment on OS X. I "HAVE" to leave now, it's that bad a GUI. Shameful.
After much research, I found a way to have perfect CRM and financials for the small businesses out there that need to leave but can't because of those two reasons, those two kind of apps that DO run well on Windows.
Look at Salesforce.com, it works great in Safari (HTML and JavaScript, nothing else) and it misses nothing. And look at QuickBooks PRO for Mac OS X. You can only get Pro, not Premium for the Mac, but the few differences there will not be missed by most other than advanced accountants. And go with Apples Pages and Keynote or go with Open Office for the office work. Even MS Office for Mac if you need to, it's actually ok. That Salesforce.com + QuickBooks for Mac is what will help me live without Windows.
Bill G deserves a bitch smack for pushing such a counter-productive OS onto the world for the next several years. he will be wasting many decades worth of man hours for doing so. Criminal.
So a guy calls up a mechanic, because his car is acting all funny, running like crap, belching blue smoke, the works.
The mechanic looks at the car for a few seconds, rummages around in his tool box, pulls out a nut and a washer, crawls under the car with a wrench, and comes out a minute later without the nut and washer.
Then he leans in and starts the car, which runs perfectly.
Then he goes into his office and returns with a bill for 500 dollars. The customer goes nuts, screams rants yells, "You just put on ONE nut! And you're going to charge me 500 dollars for ONE NUT?"
The mechanic shrugs, goes back into his office, and returns with a new bill.
It reads:
Nut: 50 cents.
Knowing where to put the nut: 499.50
Total: 500.00
There are many things that you can't hold in your hand that have intrinsic value, moron.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If IE used another engine, then we could finally stop writing multiple CSS hacks and fretting over lack of PNG support to make up for Trident's next-to-worthless implementation of both.
Yeah, right.
"Installation took about an hour and 10 minutes."
AN HOUR AND TEN MINUTES??????
I thought this was supposed to be a modern OS. With Ubuntu, installation takes about 20 minutes and doesn't involve rebooting until everything is done and your system is ready to use. Sure, it doesn't have a pretty interface (although one is being worked on for the next release), but neither do the first several steps of the XP installation.
If people actually installed something other than Windows once in a while, they would never put up with the giant heap of shit that MS calls an OS installer.
So the mechanic is charging 26970 dollars an hour because of his knowledge of cars? Just because you can make an analogy to a car mechanic doesn't mean that analogy makes any sense. And I doubt such a mechanic would ever get a repeat customer.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
In the same way Konqueror could with the proper slightly-malicious code injected hose KDE fairly well (run off and allocate KParts modules like mad or so), but normally wont.
Microsofts code no doubt has issues here and there, but it is not really a fundamental error on Microsofts part that causes a lot of spyware to wreck things once it gets on the system (whether microsoft is to blame for the spyware getting there to start with is a different matter though).
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
Forgetting about the huge costs of education, be that University fees, exam fees or even just books or Internet access, is not the time spent learning worth anything? If I spent 5 years of my life learning how to fix your problem, is that nearly zero effort? I think you are getting confused with the copyright infridgement isn't stealing diatribe!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
One of the reasons Apple has limited the hardware Apple OS's work on is to limit the hardware that it has to support. I doubt that this strategy is going to change just because Apple transitions to x86 processors. Maybe someone will develop a kludge to allow OS X86 to work on any PC, but driver support is going to be either open-source, or non-existant.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing.
We better get rid of the FSCKing stock market too, then. Not a lot of TANGIBLE stuff gets traded there. Maybe all the STOCKs should be free too.
You'd expect the price of the service to be proportional to how much work it takes to render the service.
Uh, hundreds of programmers * several years == a lot of work. When you buy software, you are paying just a small part of the total cost of producing the software. THE COST OF PRODUCING THE SOFTWARE IS MUCH GREATER THAN THE COST OF COPYING THE CD. YOU ARE PAYING PART OF THE AMORTIZED COST OF THE ENTIRE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS.
Stop making pathetic excuses for your behavior. If you're going to steal, say, "I'm stealing." If not, then don't, but don't try to delude yourself and especially the rest of us into thinking that you have some kind of moral justification for what you are doing.
Assertions like yours just make me ill.
As explained in another part of this thread, I deserve to be paid for my labor, but not for the idea of the program.
;-).
;-)!
OK, then what is your "labor"? Your labor, would be using your fingers to tap some plastic keys right? What do you expect to get paid for that???? You can EASILY train a monkey to do that or even cheaper just fill a room with keyboards and let loose a bunch of chickens, or whatever. They are VERY cheap will tap the keys as they walk around and you can even eat them if you get hungry (try doing that with a human employee and see what happens
Nobody is going to pay you squat for your "labor" of pressing some keys on a keyboard. However, they WILL pay you well if you happen to have the information to allow you to know the proper combination of keys in the proper order (chickens are notorious for not looking for things like buffer overflows
If you work in IT (or a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, etc, etc, etc) you don't deserve squat for your "labor", but your knowledge (information) can be quite valuable.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Knowing where to put the nut: $0
Knowledge is power. They teach this even in first grade. In my school, they taught it in kindergarten.
Your comments show why you are not a mechanic. Its actually a simple idea. If the mechanic "price gouges" you on your car, you simply do it back when he walks in to get his computer fixed.
I feel appalled at how much I get paid for doing things that seem simple, like changing a registry key, and etc. That kind of work *doesn't even involve changing a nut and washer*, but do I think I should be compensated for it? Certainly!
$500 is a bit excessive for knowledge and labor, but if a mechanic charged me a hundred for fixing one thing with a simple nut and explained what to watch out for in the future so it didn't happen again, I'd gladly hand it over to him and thank him for not dragging out the work over the next two days.
Following things are broken for me on XP SP2
1. Windows update keeps spinning(for the last one hour)
2. Missing icons for Stop loading page and Refresh page(not in customizable list of icons too)
3. Trillian's msn connection is broken.
4. The Home,etc., icons disappear some times.
I can't believe that they could screw up interface so much. IE7 breaks Microsofts own GUI guidelines.
They apparently wanted to make it simple (only 2 buttons, like a browser for monkeys), but by making all toolbars upside down they've made it look more confusing and chaotic than Netscape 8.
That's so dumb.
Lets turn it around. Say the mechanic doesn't know where to put the nut, and it takes him 20 hours to figure that out, which isn't unreasonable if experience and knowledge count for nothing.
Hell, the mechanic is probably a former fry cook who thought, "What the hell, I'll be a mechanic from now on" and the guy who owns the auto shop also thought that was a good idea, because, like you, he doesn't value knowledge or experience.
So, in that case, at 50.00 an hour, which seems to be the figure you're using, that mechanic would give a bill for 1000.00.
Down the street, the first mechanic, the skilled one, would be billing people a dollar to fix problems the guy up the street is charging a thousand dollars to fix. He would have to fix one...thousand...cars...to make the same as the unskilled mechanic made fixing one car.
Take an example shamelessly cribbed from a book I'm sure a lot of people here have read...
Take the raw materials for an apple pie. Flour eggs, apples, butter, sugar, etc. These things are intrinsically valuable. No one would disagree with that.
Now a skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a short time, produce a superiour pie.
A less skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a longer time, produce an acceptable pie.
An unskilled chef, could take those ingredients, and, in a still longer time, make an inedible mess.
By your standards, the last chef would be the one that produced the most valuable product, because he put the most immediate work into it, followed by the second chef, with the skilled chef coming in last.
The problem is clear; the value of the object produced is not dependent on the amount of work put into producing it. The unskilled chef produced something of value zero, or even negative value because he destroyed something of intrinsic value to make something of no value. Conversely, the skilled chef produced something of higher value, because, with his skill, he produced a superior product.
That is why, here in the real world, people are rewarded based on their skill, and not based on their effort. Life is not a gimpy little league game where everybody gets a trophy, and out here, if you don't get results, you don't get paid. But if you get more and better results than someone else who is doing the same thing you get paid more than they do, even if it took you less time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Your point?
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
I can only conclude that you scored very low on reading comprehension tests. His point was that professionals performing a service should charge based on the service they provide instead of just saying, "pay me $XXXXX because I'm really knowledgable." Some services, such as medical or legal services are more expensive than others, like, say, lawn mowing. A mechanic charging $500 for a quick fix like that, especially since he didn't give an estimate first, is definately an instance of price gouging.
You seem to think that people can expect to be paid whatever they want for their services, regardless of what the market value is. You wouldn't be a consultant, would you?
>anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing
:)
Using that logic, then you shouldn't be paid for any job you ever do - after all, it's just time on your part, right? Time spent exercising skills, knowledge, experience... but none of those are tangible things either, right? The cost to reproduce those on demand, are nil - so why should you get paid?
>You'd expect the price of the service to be proportional to how much work it takes to render the service.
Actually, I don't, and I suspect that many others (most?) don't either. I expect the price to be proportional to the type of service rendered, the skill(s), knowledge and experience necessary to render it, and the amount of time needed to do so.
>Paying for information is simply not something many people are ready to do.
The flaw in this statement, of course, is that software isn't "information" in any generally accepted sense. I'm sure you'd like to think so, to make it fall within the whole "information wants to be free" "thing". But, your desires notwithstanding, it isn't so, nor should it be.
So, to be accurate, and honest with yourself and the world, you should rephrase it: "Paying for software is simply not something I want to do, and I'd like to think that many others feel the same". There, that's better
>The idea that an idea has monetary value is not something I agree with.
You're confused. Actually, I initially thought you were a troll, but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Here's an exercise: Let's consider an idea, for a program that allows someone to capture words, sentences, etc., in electronic form. Let's call this idea a "word processor". Got it? Great!
Congratulations, you're now in possession of an idea for which you paid nothing.
The specific manifestation of that idea in software, however, is owned by the person or company that created it. This is called "copyright", perhaps you've heard of it? In addition, the terms under which that is released is also owned by them, as copyright holders.
You are free to not accept those terms, which also means that you're not entitled to benefit from the items so protected.
Simple, no?