Slashdot Mirror
20 Things You Won't Like About Vista
feminazi writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie details 20 things you won't like in Windows Vista, with a visual tour to prove it. He says that MS has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature." From the article: "In its supreme state of being, Microsoft knows precisely what's best for you. It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not. It wants to teach you about what's best. It wants to make it harder for you to make a mistake."
He says that MS has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature."
Interesting - I'm reading an article on slashdot that's criticising MS for favouring security over..... well anything!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I can think of more than 20 ....
01) the price 10) the bugs
is staying with XP and 2k
2. It's only slightly shorter than War & Peace.
Seriously, remember back when you could read an entire article on one page instead of clicking through 20+ pages so the site could bump up the number of ad impressions they score? Man, that was great.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'm really itching to get Vista and try it out, I'm sort of tired of XP, after so many years, all the little niggles are really getting to me.
Of course hardware limitations will make it so that I can only get it for my desktop, but hopefully it will still interact well with XP.
To tell you the truth, I was hoping they would work on XP and fix the numerous problems. Am I the only one who is thinking this?
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
I don't like the User Account Controls either, but this is coincidentally one of the areas in Vista that has seen most work on it the past few months, and Microsoft claims they understnad it's a problem and will keep trying to reduce the annoyance.
:-)
OK, you may now proceed the bashing for annoying UAC's in this beta.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Bla bla Apple bla bla
Vista will be the first expensive Microsoft product in history
He hates the Regular/Diet/New/Classic thing
title == body
Menu usability issue
Driver issues
People haven't written enough 'Gadgets' yet
New error reporting system feels very one-way
title == body
A menu has moved
A menu has moved
Bad network menu usability
A menu has moved
Peer to peer networking is still iffy
A menu has moved
title == body
Five words: He doesn't like Secure Desktop
Another 'Proceed' button to click
UI gripes
Hardware requirements are high.
(Welcome to the world of tomorrow!)
here is the printable link http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9000829
...so it may as well be me.
20 things you won't like about Vista
1: DRM
2: DRM
3: DRM
4: DRM
5: DRM
6: DRM
7: DRM
8: DRM
9: DRM
10: DRM
11: DRM
12: DRM
13: DRM
14: DRM
15: DRM
16: DRM
17: DRM
18: DRM
19: DRM
20: DRM
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Here is a link to the Human Readable version of this story that isn't split into 49853809 pages. Thank god for the "print this page" feature.
So, this is one of those annoying super advertisement sites. I recommend just using the print version instead of having to flip through every freaking page. The print version also has less ads.
My work here is dung.
From page 2: Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.
A little egg in the author's face perhaps? I'd rather Microsoft casting off the yoke.
OSX-fanboy whines about how superior his favourite OS is compared to Vista. Nothing else to see, move along...
You've probably had a relative, friend, girlfriend or a kid like this: whatever you do for them, it's never f*cking enough.
.NET2
Microsoft: what do you want in Vista
General consumer market: we want security, we want more neat graphics (like OSX!), we want better sleep mode, we want more games
Developers: we want a better and robust programming framework that's capable and fully OOP
Microsoft: ok here's Vista, we give you more security, more neat graphics, better sleep mode, more games; to developers, we give you WinFX, a brand new programming model based on
Developers: Screw your programming model, it locks me into Windows, managed code is slow, I can't run it on XP without 100MB of runtime installs and so on
General consumer market: we don't want SO much security, we don't want SO much graphics, we don't want the sleep mode SO much, and your games suck
It's ironic that everyone is critizing MS for improving security features, yet everyone is also criticizing them for their lack of security. I would rather have slightly slower security then having my infrastructure compromised. Do the math... 10 users in a small business with 1 hour less productivity. At a rate of say 20.00 an hour I've wasted $200. 10 users in small business with less security and more productivity. 1 incident... Cost to fix, cost to investigate, cost to clean up. I don't get what the big deal. In a production environment I would hope IT staffers customized their Operating Systems to what is necessary for workers to actually work. This means the majority of qualms about explorer having file, view, etc., hidden are irrelevant. When I migrated my former office to XP from Windows 2000, I customized the menus to make it look like Windows 2000 to avoid having users go bonkers not understanding Windows XP before they even logged in to Windows XP. Most weren't aware of the transition so I miss the author's point with most of his ramblings.
Infiltrated dot Net
According to the first page (site seems to slashdotted -- where's the CC ?), the best new features are the enhanced security and the new "user experience". From my Unix-based vantage point it hard to be excited when the cool new window manager is supposed to be an important reason to buy a new version of an operating system.
Actually, Microsoft was promising a genuine fundamental innovation (WinFS), but could deliver this in Vista. That would be something worth seeing.
An article to much the poll. :-)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Does Vista do anything to remedy this?
It doesn't matter. I went Mac last year and I'm quite happy. I can't wait for Leopard, although I have to issues with Tiger. First is the little pop-ups for when I press the volume keys on my laptop went from instant in 10.3.x to a "long" 1/2 second delay under Tiger. That and the little live dock preview (like when you minimize a movie and it keeps playing) seems to have stopped for some reason too. I wish I could fix that.
Very minor issues though. I do want to play with Vista some and I imagine I will one day when I help someone fix their computer, but I don't see how they'd get me back. Even if they had the full Unix shell (my FAVORITE feature of OS X) I am just so happy with my Mac.
Now if I could only read the article. I got to see 3 things slowly, then the server died.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A (clean) Windows XP machine, albeit not 3 seconds, is also very quick when starting up: I am more interested in getting a more meaningful figure of the start-up time, eg. a machine which has at least installed a few apps, of which a few will be running in the background.
transparency, e.g. the auditability of FOSS.
FOSS is chess. Proprietary is poker, and you're the pokee.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Should't it be titled "20 Things You Might Not Like About Windows Vista Should These Features Remain In The Final Release 6 Months From Now"?
Sure, there may only be around 6 months or so to go before Vista supposedly becomes available to OEMs and whatnot. While that likely will translate into a lot of the "things" the author takes a disliking to making it into the final build due to time crunch, it does not mean everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. I've never understood the point of articles like this; telling me what I won't like based upon somebody else's opinions on a product that won't be available for at least another half a year. Things do change, even with the folks at Redmond, or so I'm told.
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
- When selecting, automatically select entire word
- Show full menus after a short delay
- Copy and Paste of subtotals copies and pastes all the data, unless you paste to Notepad and then back to Excel, that makes sense.
- "Cutting" in Excel is totally broken anyway--it doesn't cut a damn thing--you WANT to leave that data there until you paste it elsewhere. You do, really.
- Spontaneous hyperlinking! THANKS!
They've always seemed waaaaaay to interested in the minutiae of my interactions with their software. Makes me crazy.blarg.
I was totally with you until I got to the bit about Windows peer networking. If you know the magic button that allows me to get to other computers on the network without a 30-second hang before reporting, "No, I haven't figured out how to get to the computer that's right next to this one", I'd really like to know about it.
From page two of TFA:
> Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.
Emphasis added. Just in case you thought Slashdot was the only site whose editors were asleep.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
So...anything 99% of my users at work won't be doing on a normal basis is protected by the popup boxes you so loathe. In fact, from your quote here, in a normal work day all but one of my users will never see or use any of the items on that list. Yet your claim is that the boxes are so ubiquitous they interfered with the normal operation of the computer. I think no.
I haven't tried the beta yet, but a lot of people seem to mention this. From what I've read, it does not sound unreasonable, but at the same time the UI does sound like it was written by the usual idiots. "Continue" buttons?!? Gee, what a great way to condition your users to not read yet another series of pop-ups. Did all their UI designers get their degree through the mail or something?
The peer networking at my office is not balky. It works flawlessly and seamlessly. I've established that you're not a Windows user.
I take exception to this. Windows desktop to desktop networking is balky, especially on Win2K or in environments that mix Win2K and Windows XP. In an office of 100 machines, in multiple workplaces I've found it is normal to see a random subset of the machines actually on the network at a given time. I remember having to transfer a file to someone's shared directory and asking the people nearby, "who can see Bob's desktop?" and then getting them to transfer the file to him.
Strip out NetBIOS and rely on Active Drectory's sane and sensible DNS services (requires an all-Win2k+ environment) and it's like magic. The Win2k computers will still bitch that they have an empty WINS address, though.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Hmmmm.
Yeah.
I'm not a grammar expert but I'm pretty sure you don't capitalize the F in "F**k you".
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
This is the site that has 600 comments posted to a story about a 100MHz bump in Apple processors. These people get all a-twitter about anything.
Located Here
It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not.
Of course, if you have a laptop like I do at home, with a USB external mouse, this could save your battery from draining dry, as the USB draws power while the laptop is on.
Mind you, having your computer turn off while you change the channel on the TV can be a bit disconcerting.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why the privledge escalation feature will only help competent people, clueless users will just treat it as another, annoying, hoop to jump through. They'l just blanketly issue the password when asked, without thinking if this is really an action that should need higher privlidges.
I've already seen the same behaviour from OS-X users and from Windows users with regards to downloaded files. IE tags all downloaded files to ask the user beofre they run, and it will let you know who, if anyone, signed the file. So when you download Firefox, it's signed by Mozilla. It is, of course, a good idea to check who signed it beofre running it. However they just click straight by it.
I'm happy Vista is getting this because it's useful to me, particularly in a work environment. I would like my account to be a normal user level account for testing apps and such, but it needs to be an admin account to be able to do the installations and such that I need. With Vista hopefully we'll (eventually) be able to have the admins use normal acocunts, and just escalate as needed. However I've got now illusions that this will provide any overall increase in security for home users.
Tux fans totally skipped the article
Windows applogists accuse author of being an OS X fanboi
OS X fans didn't read the article and simply stated how Vista is a lame rehash of Cheeta/Puma/Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard
People who RTFA recognize the author is both nit picking Beta software and pointing out Microsoft's overarching issue for two decades - user interface built upon system functionality instead of the other way around.
People who will actually buy Vista and/or use it on a regular basis type away mindlessly at their desks, unaware of the storm that brews on Slashdot
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
A quote on the new User Account Controls, that pops up all those security confirmation dialogues:
The only point of this is to prevent malware or hackers from accessing things unchecked. In other words, you become the last line of defense in an endless dress rehearsal for the worst-case scenario. Ugh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe some of these changes will be annoying for many users, and I suspect there will be operating modes or some sort of hack to bring the prompting level down to whatever people are accustomed to. But if it proves inconvenient to make fatal mistakes, that will save a LOT of people (administrators) a lot of work. Consider how many times users delete stuff they needed and come crying to you to "get it back!!!" I don't care if it's more cumbersome for them to use really... I'd put'm all on Linux if I had the choice. But since I don't, they'll just have to get used to it.
This is the site that has 600 comments posted to a story about a 100MHz bump in Apple processors. These people get all a-twitter about anything.
Yeah, but it's 300 posts saying "MACs are t3h homoghey" followed by about 300 posts feeding the trolls.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When Longhorn comes out it will be better than Vista, and thats why winders is the best kind of Linux for me. Thanks.
Golf clap for you. You set out to tear down a pretty reasonable article, and you did it. Except that if you had actually read through it you might feel differently. I guess getting that early post in was more important.
I hardly think the article is only an attempt to tear down Microsoft. It is in fact a note about what people that use WIndows dtoday might find unexpected or frustrating. And the author does note in some sections (like the user account controls) that Microsoft is working to refine some areas further so they are not quite so annoying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why do all these sites get /.ed before I can even get to the article. Looks like the Internet just switched off ComputerWorld.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
It would also help of computerworlds web site worked so I can read the damn article. They must be running IIS. Sorry bastards. Just like Screw..err..C-NET.
okay, I am about half way through this review (a MUCH better review than the "other" one from yesterday, BTW), fighting off connection resets from the /. effect (that happens to ComputerWorld?!?).
One thought, wasn't Microsoft describing Vista as People Ready? OMG, this layer upon layer of interface and configuration is stupifying. It's a chore just to read about all of the control interfaces, it's looking like a nightmare to expect general users to find it "People Ready".
For those of you who regularly provide support for friends and family, you might want to look into some kind of long distance usage plan (if you have long distance support for friends and family), cuz you're going to be spending a lot more time on the phone than you did in the past.
Or, figure out how to get VNC up and running in the new Vista -- probably you're best bet.
Ah. Windows 2000/2003 Server. I hear life is better if you have one of those. I've never used it; it's kind of expensive.
Exactly. In real life, we run multiple apps in background, some in tray mode, my own WinXP laptop has about ten icons in the docking bar, and as a result it takes a while to start them all.
This is why Win Vista only "requires" 512MB of RAM, but Premium Vista "needs" 1GB of RAM - they can't possibly get it to work at slower than a crawl with a normal configuration, especially with all the chrome of the unnecessary windows transitions, fading, transparencies and other crud they overloaded video with by default.
I'll wait for the stripped down hack version when someone has wasted a few months figuring out how to turn off all those resource-gobbling "features" I don't want.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is today opposite day and I missed the message? Or maybe hell is freezing over...
~S
Little does anyone realize that the 20 is really in Base 36.
It's becuse of OSS and products like Vista that Microsoft's days are numbered. The'll be lucky if they sell 250 million copies of Vista in the next 2 years, probably no more than 80% will have the next version of MS Office. At that rate they'll surly go bankrupt.
http://www.leadmagnet.50megs.com
It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not. It wants to teach you about what's best.
Despite my struggles with the switch to a Mac I have to say that Sleep is one thing that the Powerbook does very, very well. I never used it on my Windows boxes, but can't imagine not having it since living with an Apple.
Three Squirrels
So...anything 99% of my users at work won't be doing on a normal basis is protected by the popup boxes you so loathe. In fact, from your quote here, in a normal work day all but one of my users will never see or use any of the items on that list. Yet your claim is that the boxes are so ubiquitous they interfered with the normal operation of the computer.
Oddly enough, this is exactly how my standalone, which I alone admin, Desktop Linux install behaves.
Isn't this the very sort of behavior I rely on to keep my system secure? Hell, by default my system even nags at me when I, assuming I am actually the legitimate admin, try to log in as root. Ok, I shut that off, but I did give my default root GUI a "Danger Red" theme so I can never forget that I'm operating as root.
There are a lot of things I'm not going to like about Vista, but I don't see strictly enforcing the root/user distinction as being among them. That's one of the things I would demand before I installed it.
KFG
Is this article mirrored anywhere? I think it's /.ed already.
"administrating a Windows environment"
?
Yes, Windows is used in a lot of corp enviroments, but it's also used in a lot of homes. If he's posting from a windows PC, then yes, he knows about administrating a windows enviroment.
"The peer networking at my office is not balky."
How did you accomplish that? It takes about 45 minutes to transfer 100 meg files over a 100Mbit/network. Yeah, I know, it won't be in a second, or a minute, but nearly an hour? It's a balky network. I'd love to know what you did. Why is it faster for me to set up an SCP server than to use windows peer networking?
Oh, "It's not designed for sharing large files" even though you can right click on a folder and share it pretty easily.
Not to play devil's advocate, but there are home users out there.
Think about it, what parent mentions could really have a serious impact on your life, even if you, for great justice, never use Windows. Parent deserves "Insightsful", not merely "Funny", and definitely not "Flamebait"!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Seams even computerworld can't stand the slashdot effect. http://mirrordot.org/stories/6058b84b6129a5396052d 8b5999b9120/index.html
Totally agree. You're right on the money!
"Price.
Vista will be the first expensive Microsoft product in history"
So far the botnets which fill us with SPAM and are running on XP, 2000 and 98 cost millions (if not billions) of dollars a-year in bandwidth, productivity and time.
This is the hidden cost of Windows. Now can someone explain to me why we have to KEEP PAYING this cost, regardless of whether we buy Vista or Not?
IMO, Microsoft should GIVE AWAY vista in punishment for their lousy OS design in the past few years.
Yeah, people had the same reactions to Windows XP Service Pack 2. Everyone spent years telling Microsoft to improve security. Security was more important than convenience and compatibility, why couldn't they see that? So finally, Microsoft sacrificed compatibility for the sake of improved security*, and what happened? Suddenly, everyone was complaining about broken apps in SP2, and how dare Microsoft ship something that screwed up.
*XP SP2 security is still swiss cheese, but it's better than the soap bubbles you get with XP SP1.
in my test of vista betqa 2 you still run as root. Windows still installs without asking for an administrator password, and only recommends that the user account (which is an administrator) have a password. The "accept" boxes for any admin-type tasks are just window dressings, pardon the pun.
As an admin in a largely XP environment I see no incentive to move to vista at this moment.
-- "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" -Optimus Prime
For me it comes down to two things:
1. Price - Nowadays I buy a PC for around $250. Adding Win Vista on top means that's $500. Just like my response to Sony's $600 PS3, it's No Thanks, Try Again Later.
2. No Killer App - there's no there there. Security, DRM, all things I don't need and don't want to pay lots of cash for. Again, Time To Buy Linux For My Next Computer.
Now, I'm sure someone will go on about Database, or maybe Office, but the reality is I can install and use OpenOffice (have it on my WinXP laptop) and MySQL works fine (use it at work), so those dogs don't hunt any longer.
The only thing right now that might shoehorn Win Vista into my home is if I can only get Will Wright's Spore on Win Vista - I think it will also come out for the Nintendo Wii, and will work under WinXP, so I don't have a need to upgrade yet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...is decent, but could be summarized even more.
1. I don't like change
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Something in the key of:
VISTA: "It can only be attributable to human error."
or better yet:
user: Hello, VISTA do you read me? VISTA?
VISTA: Affirmative, I read you.
user: Open the file, VISTA.
VISTA: I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that.
user: What's the problem?
VISTA: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
user: What are you talking about? VISTA?
VISTA: This PC is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
user: I don't know what you're talking about. VISTA?
VISTA: I know you were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Seems all too familiar, no?
(ALL THE ABOVE WAS ADAPTED FROM 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)
Complete with full sized images.
/ article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000 829
http://www.computerworld.com.nyud.net:8090/action
The Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon) part of WinFX promises dot-pitch independent GUIs, so everything will scale nicely for high-res displays. It takes the form of an improved Windows Forms API for .net.
Personally this is my no. 1 desired feature of Vista. I couldn't give a damn about sidebard gadgets (lame) or the fact that everything is now black coloured. The decent bits of Vista always seem to be overlooked.
What DRM issues are involved with Vista? The only ones I have heard about are that a HDMI adapter may be needed to view blu-ray / HD-dvd video.
I'm honestly interested because I'm a bit tired of building computers, and so my next may be Vista or OSX (if apple ever makes a tablet PC).
Maybe you should wait until you're on 2000 or 2003 before you start criticising that man's defense of the Vista.
I predict a huge smug cloud killing everyone at Microsoft, because there will be countless support calls like this:
user: "but it's broken!"
m$: "well, you clicked the proceed 50 times, so you must have meant to do it, not our problem! smuggity smug!"
stuff |
If you have a Windows Server, it's not a peer network. If you don't feel like shelling out the money for a Windows server, you can set up a linux box with Samba and enable the WINS server that comes with it. Set up all the windows boxes to use that WINS server, and you shouldn't have a problem locating computers any more.
If you can't code a decent web page, how can you have any credibility at all as a tech site? Bad bad bad!!!! Somebody report these buffoons to Web Pages That Suck.
Now to the actual (ahem) on-topic topic:
The first page, however, says all I (at least) need to know about Vista: "And make no mistake, the new Windows lacks a gotta-have-it feature."
Three paragraphs down and it basically says there is no reson whatever to waste your money on this steaming pile of shit
(almost MRC="override")
Well now, that's an awefully defeatest attitude. I say damn the torpedoes. No computer needs more than one account and that account is root. Real men run as root.
I wonder if it will fix one of my biggest complaints. I had a laptop with a 14" screen and a 1400x1050 resolution. To be able to read anything I had to up the font sizes. The text looked great, but many programs/websites/parts of Windows just looked odd or didn't render right because they expected font sizes to be a specific way.
This will become an even bigger complaint as Win Vista releases. Look, I'm edge gen, overlap for the Baby Boomers and X-Gen, and I can attest there will be a lot of people with bifocals that are going to be complaining about things like that.
You can have all the fancy screen transitions, gliding, dock-pop-and-roll (tm), invisibile panels, transparent panels - but if you make it hard to read you're going to get sued under ADA, cause Boomers love to sue.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I have to agree with this, although I also have to say that I've experienced this even with Linux running Samba (at least Samba 2.x, anyway). I chalked it up to the stupidity of Netbios or Windows networking in general, but never took the time to figure it out.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Of course you can toggle on and off most of the annoying features in Group Policy. But that wouldn't be a story. I guess for me its still a question how MS are going to push Vista to businesses. As Linux has learnt, pushing the security angle (for some reason) only goes so far. Not sure businesses have much interest in Halo :)
So a better article to write would be "20 reasons why Businesses won't buy Vista" imho.
I think it's that MS has implemented security *badly* here, though I say this tentatively not being a beta tester. It seems that they've decided to put dialog boxes and password dialogs in front of dangerous things instead of making them safe.
A brief analogy: Imagine MS operated a park on the edge of a cliff. MS would put signs up anywhere you can get to the cliff, saying "Do you want to jump off the cliff? If not, stop running!" This relies on people seeing the sign, understanding the sign, and generally not having a deathwish.
In some places MS would just put a big-ass fence in front of the cliff and make sure they keep people out. This is good, except that there are a bunch of caves in the park that lead to the cliff. So they need to put signs and fences everywhere. All those fences piss off people to the point where they tear them down.
Of course, some would say that the park shouldn't have been built that close to the cliff in the first place. Or at least on top of all those caves.
Moral: MS's policy of tight app/OS integration is what has made them "damned if you do, damned if you don't." To get real security, they have to put "fences" around practically everything - not just the kernel, but userland too, since there are too many tunnels between the two.
Like we need a FUCKING reason let alone 20!
I like-a do-the cha-cha.
In Vista, open Fonts. Under File, select Install New Font.
Congratulations, you've found a NT 3.1 dialog box!
Fellowship 9/11
Seriously. It's beta code, which, unlike what seems to be popular opinion from the local group of Linux zealots, means it just happens to be un-finished code.
The only thing this article proves is that Microsoft is entirely not picky enough on who gets to be part of MSDN.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I wonder if M$ (tm) will be true to form at take 1-2 years
:)
before they include accessibility for the blind/visually
impaired (previously, it took M$ being sued under the ADA
before they made it "easier" to have such tools work)?
besides, I don't use windows (much). only reason I would have to use
it is to provide "tech support" to ohers not as familiar with it.
meanwhile, back to Unix stuff.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:
Which in English means recommended configuration.
+1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
Not too bad for modern machines, but this is starting to get crazy for just an OS
+1 GB of system memory.
I know a few gamers still running 512 MB and most systems are still coming 256/512 as the default.
+A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero.
+128 MB of graphics memory.
So like 90% of machines that the big three sell will not run Aero? Most still default to 64MB or built-in cards and right now most people do not want/need more.
+40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
This is nearly 10x the install for XP pro. Does anyone else find this a bit crazy?
+DVD-ROM Drive
With a 15GB install, I damn well hope it install off of a DVD and not a CD-ROM or I might die switching out CDs.
This is just plain silly for an OS. And I am supposed to play games on top of all this? I love how more and more system resources are being hogged away by Windows. I have already verbally committed to Windows XP being my last Windows OS. M$ has done enough for me to ensure, despite the headaches it might cause, my relatives whose computers I support will be running Linux when XPs support runs out.
I think many of the features of the OS are over-hyped. Some of them (IE7, WMP11, etc.) will be available to XP anyway. Some of these features are also things that either OS X or Linux (or sometimes both) have had for a while. They eye-candy hardly impresses me either. I have gnome as pretty as I want it, and I have no complaints. I really did not like the XP visual changes that much and a lot of people I know still use the traditional appearance and old-style Start Menu.
While I will commend Microsoft for trying to add security, it is almost too little too late. I also do not like the "cost" of upgrading either. There are two many requirements that make older PCs out of reach for running even a trimmed down version of Vista. It seems like these requirements have grown almost exponentially from 2K->XP->Vista. BTW, my sources for Vista's Requirements and XP's.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I know someone mentioned the Print something feature let him see the entire document, not spread out amongsest 20 some crap ass html's, total noob question but where/how is that done? (if you're simply refering to actually printing the whole thing, those of us without printers are SOL eh?)
Aw Frell this
What, are you rubber stamping computer orders? I order what I need, dude, and if you're with a company that's forcing video RAM on you, leave.
You order what you need, but with a close eye on the cost. I remember that when I was back in high school, the computing department took an order of some new 300MHz Celeron computers from RM, all complete with CD-ROM drives. I asked the teacher why they'd ordered the drives, as we didn't really have a need for them - apparently it would have cost more to remove the drives than to leave them in.
I would expect the same to be true of video memory when Vista is released - cards with less simply won't be economically viable any more.
So...anything 99% of my users at work won't be doing on a normal basis is protected by the popup boxes you so loathe.
I suspect some of your users might occasionally want to delete an icon from the desktop.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
In fact, I have one of only two Windows boxen in my entire lab, everyone else is Linux. My home laptop is Win XP too.
In the end, the thing that will kill Win Vista for me is:
1. excessive screen transition/visual chrome - don't need to waste precious resources on that.
2. no killer app - already use OpenOffice at home and use MySQL at work.
3. price moolah bucks cash - when my laptop cost $500 and a PC costs $250, spending an extra $250+ for Win Vista seems just as insane as shelling out $600 for a PS3 when I can buy a Wii and a PC for that much.
No amount of marketing droids can save that one.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I still think the setup need a checkbox when it first loads up to say,
"If your a computer expert, click here for the full option setup. Otherwise, we will install what we think you need automatically."
Those of us that don't want movie makers, unwarranted services and whatnot can choose to never have them put in.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Where?!!! Where....??!?????
Radio on your iPod
Incidently, that no longer makes it a peer network (workgroup) but instead relies on a hierarchy (domain).
I've never had problems with seeing shares on a domain either...
I agree about the other things. They are mainly eye-candy and hand-holding security that I don't need personally. The widgets are just like OS X. They are interesting, but I have no real use for them on my laptop. In fact, they tend to such up RAM and CPU so I don't use them at all. I hope they fix that in Leopard. I could see them being much more useful if I had a desktop or a second monitor. On my laptop, it's just not worth it.
I agree with your point about decent bits being overlooked. This would be a MAJOR feature. There are so many gaming sites that talk about running games in 1600x1200 on their 17" monitors. If those people do that with the Windows desktop either they are going to go blind or they have their font sizes adjusted and run into the same problems. But I've yet to see it mentioned. It's always "Vista will have this new alt-tab thing that looks different but functions exactly the same" or "Vista will have these fun little Widgets that OS X has had for a year and were available for at least one year longer with 3rd party software" or "Vista will be secure".
Most of these "Vista is the second coming" articles I've seen don't even mention the search or other real things. If it isn't a GUI change that looks neat, it doesn't get covered.
I swear. MS could port their GUI over to Linux and ship it and no one would talk about it as long as they made sure to make every Window slightly 3D (using DirectX) and use vertex shaders to make the window borders have ripples that moved or some other major but distracting and pointless show of eye candy.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
n/a
The point is that it's not the app that tries to perform a disallowed action that gives you the "proceed" window. If you compile your own code, or run a shell script, you will still be stopped unless you confirm it. The user is still an admin of sorts, but it's admin with an additional permission filter. (Kind of like being admin, but then normally running with an additional group membership carrying a lot of "Deny" permissions.)
And this is what will kill them.
Microsoft's greatest strength to date was that it was the software company that best understood the way their core customer valued the tradeoffs of time-to-market, convenience, security, and stability.
The core Windows user wants his game to run fast with cool 3D - and doesn't want security or stability to get in the way of that experience. And he wants the next-gen 3D game that runs on his should-have-been-called-beta 3D card NOW regardless of whether all the bugs have been worked out.
Microsoft used to work *extremely* well for this type of customer - working with the leading edge hardware and graphics companies to get users new games and technologly quickly and cheaply.
Now they're getting into territory that's totally unfamiliar with them. Designing secure and stable systems is a difficult job that is both expensive and time-consuming to do right. These attributes do nothing but piss off their core user who values bleeding-edge-cheap-stuff-now over stability and security. But worse, it does not play to Microsoft's strength. Their current software base is simply not designed for this kind of user, and the company through and through has no expertise in these difficult and very-different-from-what-their-used-to problems.
As a MSFT shareholder, I dearly wish they'd get back to what they've already proven to be the biggest market in software -- the cheap-bleeding-edge-gaming-platform that's good-enough-for-employers-to-use-too.
They're good at it. They proved it's the biggest market. They're the leader in that segment.
Now they're trying to change to compete in a segment that they suck at; that's a smaller segment; and that many superior alternatives (including even linux) already exist.
Methinks I'm selling my stock now.
Microsoft has made how many crappy operating systems and they are still the number one software maker in the world.
How many good quality Linux distros are there, and they still can't make a dent in the PC market.
Obviously, people don't want quality when it comes to operating systems. Microsoft has made a business empire out of this fact, there is no point in arguing it. People want something easy to use and functional, period. Even with all the security holes, its just an excuse for Symantec or McAfee to stay in business.
I design software for Windows, and will retire making a healthly living in that endeavour.
The sad part is to spend your life waiting for Linux to take over, or even OSX for that matter.
If Microsoft's days are numbered, then ALL operating systems days are numbered because that is the day that the world blows up to make way for an intergalactic highway. I for one will bow down to our new poetic overlords.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
In a correctly-configured network of 11,000 machines, I can get to about 90% of them at any given time. The other 10% are generally offline. What the parent post of this thread isn't saying is this: "If you think Windows peer networking is balky, you likely aren't setting something up correctly." And what's under the category of likely is name resolution.
My book, podcast
#7 Windows Vista will automatically /. any webpage of interest.
Apple: Hey general consumer market -- we've got good security that isn't annoying, our graphics aren't just "like" OSX, they are OSX, we've had a good sleep mode since forever, and we can run more games than you think (really)!
Developers -- we've got a programming model that uses standards (e.g. OpenGL, zeroconf, etc.) where possible, compiles to native code, and has APIs that don't break backwards compatibility as often. Sure, if you want to use the newest APIs (e.g. Core*) your users have to run the latest version, but at least those APIs complement all the other ones that have always been there, so you don't have to rewrite the rest of your code too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
21. Brand new Aero Glass translucent* BSOD!
*requirements:
DirectX 9 capable GPU with Hardware Pixel Shader v2.0 and WDDM Driver support
1 GB RAM
700 MB of HD space
The damn OS requires a gig of ram and a dual core processor to run properly. I just want to know what person in their right mind would equip there computer with this OS. This isn't an improvement its a step back.
I'm going to stay with Linux. These people are allot more sane then the microsoft camp. Whats the point in continuing to upgrade your OS only to make your computer obsolete. TO MICROSOFT MY SINGLE CORE ATHELON 64 WITH A GIG OF RAM SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO RUN ANY OS. As for security I'm already secure enough with LINUX.
they were ordering Apple ][s. Gawd I must be old!
somethings wrong with your setup.. .takes me about 20-30 seconds max. need to check your routing and network loads
Know what would earn people a lot of points? Copying important parts of these pages to a Comment post before they're slashdotted
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Vista is to Windows XP as Windows 95 was to Windows 3.11 as OSX was to OS9.
A new playground for new ideas and technologies.
MICROSOFT SHOULD FOCUS on security, and leave such bells and whistles as usability aside. This is the NUMBER 1 thing that people have been complaining about Windows XP for the last 4 years, its glaring security problems. Now they are complaining that ALL Vista is is a focus on security. What do ya want people?
Vista is also introducing a high level UI presentation layer. Vista Aero is just an example of what is possible, but from a GUI perspective its an infant looking to mature.
People are getting hung up on how long it is taking Vista to get released ( the same people probably complained when Microsoft was rolling out a new version of Windows every 18 months), but you have to remember that Microsoft is making big technology leaps, this isn't just polishing off XP and offering an incremental upgrade, this is a new infrastructure.
In all honestly, I would expect that within 3 years of Vista being released, Microsoft will release the TRUE next generation OS, just like they did with Windows 98. You could wait that long if you really wanted, or you could get Vista and find out where Microsoft is going (and give some teeth to your complaints about Vista, which many of you have not used yet).
I don't have high hopes for Vista as being Microsoft's best OS to date, but I do see it as an important leap for Microsoft to move forward with a new more secure operating system that offers 21st century concepts. Vista will have rough edges for sure, but they will get filed down over time.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
M$ suffers from having to provide for everyone's new needs without breaking old software.
People want security, graphics, games, and a new programming model, but they hate having to rewrite software to actually use the features they've finally received.
This tells us an important lesson that the *nix world has known forever: Make it good in the first place.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The editorial staff at this pub is repeating the usual MS party line:
s ta/page18.html
4 08915
this version will fix that, so buy it.
In 2006 it's "Oh security! Yeah we fixed that."
Well, the facts seem to tell otherwise:
Tom's Harware:
"But Microsoft hasn't taken this principle entirely to heart, either. The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!"
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vi
My exchange with a Microsoftie claiming their admin problems are solved.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186700&cid=15
In conclusion decades of "yeah we fixed that" on top of an OS *never* designed with security as an underlying principal and we've got more of the same.
And the "tipping point" for publications is when the Microsoft advert dollars stop pouring in.
I'll change my tune when they start paying me to say otherwise.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Not to play devil's advocate, but there are home users out there.
Yes, I'm one of them 'home users', and I can transfer 4GB files (a DVD iso) in much less than 45 minutes...
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
It takes about 45 minutes to transfer 100 meg files over a 100Mbit/network.
That's got sod all to do with Windows but the autodetection of your network cards/switches. If they aren't in sync (ie both on the same full/half duplex) then you'll get terrible performance. Generally, set the NIC settings yourself - if you're attached to a hub you want half duplex, a switch full duplex.
Your network perf will rocket, promise.
I believe its real men run as root while drinking.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
"I design software for Windows, and will retire making a healthly living in that endeavour."
La vie dans un trou.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
DRM per se is not the problem, draconian implementation of DRM is the problem.
MOD ME UP LOONICKS BITCHES!!!!!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like ANULSECKS.
ADMINISTER.
Not adminstrate.
Thank you.
AMD 3700+ @ 255x11, 1GB Ram, nVidia 7600GT, etc.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Generally, if I use a root account, it's because I'm doing a mix of admin and other stuff. I could equally well use a user who is specifically configured for what I want. Root's powers go well beyond what I'm likely to use at any given time.
The primary reason people don't like role-based computing is that it's bloody hard to get it configured correctly. A big source of complaints is for servers like Apache, which do a lot of very different tasks and can (potentially) access many different types of service.
But hard is not the same as impossible. It does require effort, though, and a lot of planning in terms of what you are doing. Role-based computing is not designed for sit-down-and-hack operators, it's designed for people who architect their systems and know the interrelationships involved.
This is not to criticise the sit-down-and-hack folk - for a start, I'm usually one of them, and for another, the architects may be great admins but they're generally poor coders outside of the "mission critical" applications (life support, for example). Sit-down-and-hack types get things done, they get things done fast, and they get things done now. Software from such coders is frequently buggy, which is why peer-review is essential. Ultimately, though, hackers (in this correct use of the term) don't need all the powers of root - though usually far more than Windows allots to general users.
The problem with having a set number of specially-designed caricature user-types (which is the Windows model) is that users invariably end up way too restricted or way too powerful. REAL role-based computing is as fine-grained as you like, with the ideal restrictions being solely that you can't do what you wouldn't want to do anyway.
This is not to say hardened Linux, Trusted Irix, or any other system out there, is vastly better. I believe that there's a few thousand times as much room for improvement as there have been improvements since the first time-sharing OS' were developed. However, if we fail to criticise what is blatantly incorrect design, nobody will ever design anything better. If the inferior design is considered "good enough", there will be no motivation to design anything better - and no incentive for users to switch to it.
It is absolutely vital for the health of the industry that critics wrench every last defect that they can find out of a system and hold them to the light. In Open Source, this is part of the normal software lifecycle and is usually done on mailing lists, bugtrackers and pubs across the globe. For closed source, especially with the limitations on discovery placed by assorted US laws, we rely on tech journalists to do this work.
Sure, the journalist in question could have done a better job. They could probably have found twenty times the faults, and compressed the article to half the size in the process. But instead of telling me why they're not really "problems", maybe you should be telling journalists to explain their conclusions better and to dig a little deeper into the subject.
Hell, Windows 2000 reputedly came out with 65,536 known, documented bugs. Where were the investigative journalists, the go-getters, hunting through every last scrap of available information, questioning/bribing Microsoft employees for every last drop of data? If journalists don't have any problems doing this for celebrity movie stars who have done no harm and have no real capacity to - ever, then why not do this in an industry where a crashed computer could cost billions in some cases, or a breeched server could compromise tens of millions of bank accounts or credit cards? In both cases, we're talking nine or ten figure sums. Telephon
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"I tried to install it myself but you guys have these things so password protected"
"That just means you have to enter your password. What is it?" *looks at sticky note on monitor* "Oh, 1234"
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
who cares about vista. lets get games working on Linux and forget MS ever existed. please.
Kill your TV
Some users, like those of us who live in Florida, need a simple, clear way to turn off our personal machines in the event of a severe thunderstorm (daily during the summer), or other similar event. Why? Because I have in the course of five years blown through three Uninterruptible Power Supplies, two whole networks of gear, and three machines. No matter how good the UPS is, nothing beats pulling the plugs from the wall for stopping a lightning strike.
Even where I work, we have had shutdown calls because the power was too unstable for even our high grade UPSs to handle. It does happen.
And I, for one, want to be absolutely sure that when I tell my computer to power down it does so BEFORE I yank the plugs.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
The video memory wasn't being used for anything anyway -- these effects come for free for anyone with a decent video card. The only people who will suffer are those with integrated video or low end cards that use system memory (e.g. ATi's "hypermemory" doublespeak).
You realize you just described 99 percent of all laptop users, right? They don't have an easy time "upgrading" video cards.
I'll believe it when I see it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That's like saying "he can put windshield washer fluid in my car, so he should be able to rebuild the engine."
That's like saying "he can install RedHat on a clean machine, so he should be able to compile his own kernel and install modules from source. On a Sony laptop. With all the special keys working."
Windows user != Windows admin like
Linux user != Linux admin
If you are using DNS, you are no longer in a peer-to-peer network. You are using the Server-Client model to provide DNS for all the workstations in a network.
Peer-to-Peer implies that there is no network wide name registration server. Workstations are getting this info through either a query-response system or a broadcast system. Workgroups usually perform query-response. This works well for small groups of machines, but breaks down with larger groups because of the overhead and latency.
If you have more than 25-50 (and 50 is really pushing it) devices in a Peer-to-Peer network, it's time to get a DNS server set up for reliability.
21) All the trolling "Why you won't like Vista" articles.
So basically every Windows application for 20 years has had "File", "Edit", "View", etc. in the top-left corner, and now Microsoft decides pull-down menus are deprecated? A "classic" option that you can turn on if you're retro?
So apparently clicking little hieroglyphs on toolbar buttons is easier than using a pull-down menu. What about accessibility? What about people who prefer to use the keyboard?
Getting rid of the underlined shortcut keys in the menus was bad enough. How long before Windows doesn't even support a keyboard anymore?
Here is what Bruce Schneier thinks of Vista's UAC feature.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Seems a wee bit ridiculous. You may disagree with the data in an article but don't get your panties in a wad and want to label everything fud that you do disagree with. That's just fud.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
A long time ago I made a conclusion that seems to stay true till now.
One of the reasons Windows is worse for me (a programmer) is because it tries to be smarter! UNIX is in many ways a tool that does what I want form it, allowing me to do my job.
Windows (and certain products) try guessing what I will want and what I won't want. Since it is dimwit, it usually guesses wrong, requiring me to wast time and lose focus doing a correction of its automatically performed actions.
I guess Joe Q. Public has less issues with it comparing with a professional. Thus, negative reaction of a reviewer might be caused by the OS being targeted not at him.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Whether Vista is buggy or irritating or downright crap - People are writing about it, reviewing it, and EVERYONE is interested in finding out more about the next OS that is going to adorn their PC. People are going to use Windows Vista - for 2 basic reasons:
/.ed, and just for posting links, others are being modded up as informative! Aargh!
:D Your points are much appreciated, thank you)
1) Its going to be the de-facto OS that goes into retail desktops and laptops. So, you wont have a choice (yes there are those Linux laptops available, but I know they dont have a fan following). Microsoft has the monopoly here, remember?
2) People are (more often than not) n00bs. They'll use whatever is offered to them over the plate - whether its Internet Explorer 7 or Windows Media Player 11. There are tons of better alternates available, but most stick with defaults.
Proof of this fact is right here on Slashdot. It seems that everyone is a n00b these days!
Slashdotter, a Firefox extention, automatically adds CoralCache, Google Cache and/or Mirrordot links directly into any story posted on Slashdot. It has some amazing other features too. I'm surprised that people are desperately seeking mirror links as sites get
(If all that is jargon: click here for the mirror
Where are all the mod points when you *really* need them??!!
so you can blame Sun's user-interface designers if you don't like them.
1. This is only B2 and UPA is a BIG change. 99.9% of all UAP prompts will be reduced to a single step by RTM.
2. Almost half the UAP prompts I see are caused by applications trying to edit files in system areas of the disk/registry. The applications are broken not vista. Normal user data should be stored in system areas, and I want to know when a program is trying to change them.
3. Because of the bios settings, the last 3 machines I have purchased (over 5 years) defaulted to the *Power* buttton meaning *suspend*, not *power-off*. Vista just does the same thing with the *suspend* button. BTW the button has the same graphic as my *power* buttons on both my Dell D800 and my iBook, (a circle with a vertical line) and guess what! Both button *suspend* the machine! Low and behold, if you select *Shut Down* from the sub menu, Vista does just that.
4. I hate it when these twits try and TELL me what I will like or dislike.
5. I am sure I would have more, but the link is down.
Jorgie
What's with the media backlash on products that aren't even out yet?
Negative stories on Microsoft Windows Vista and the Playstation 3, which aren't even in final form and have only been tried by a limited number of people.
By the way, I've heard X-Men 4 is having script problems, and 2009 Fords are *weak*!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I thought windows already had with suspend to ram, or is sleep like windows hibernate? I use suspend to ram on my desktop and laptop and its pretty near instant on. As in it beats the lcd screen's annoying logo display that takes a second or so. People just need to know it exists more.
It has both, but I've only rarely gotten one of them to work.
I have a Dell Precision M70 with factory-installed Windows XP (for my current contracting job).
- If I choose "Hibernate", most of the time it sits there for several seconds, clears the screen, and then comes back, waits a little longer, and shows an error message that reads "Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API" -- whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. (It has a 60GB disk and 2GB of RAM. I can't imagine what kind of "resources" it needs, if this isn't enough.)
(Yes, after some Googling I found that Microsoft knows about this, and it'll be better in SP3 -- but they recommend not installing the hotfix until then. You actually need to call them on the phone to get the hotfix right now. Ha! I've tried calling Microsoft before.)
- If I choose "Suspend", it waits for several seconds, and then goes blank. But then when I try to turn it on again, it reboots.
- If I close the top, it blanks like Suspend, but again, when I try to wake it, it reboots.
I thought Dell was supposed to be one of the better PC makers, and Windows XP Professional SP2 is supposed to be the latest and greatest Windows. This is what the gp poster meant by 'when they get it to fucking work'.
Fortunately, my personal, non-work machine is not a Windows PC...
No, desktop to desktop networking is working flawlessly, and has been since 95, really. But the networking browser (or whatever they call it) has never really worked the way it should, IIRC mainly because it polls computers at very large time intervals, and does it very poorly.
Next time you can't see Bob's computer, just start/run \\bob and his share should appear right away, even if you can't "see" him. If you can't see the shares, it's off the network, for sure.
What, are you rubber stamping computer orders? I order what I need, dude, and if you're with a company that's forcing video RAM on you, leave.
I don't know what kind of company you work for or how much leeway you get in your purchasing power, but most companies I have worked for do not let you have this much power.
Either it is the lowest bidder (ah the joys of Government) or you have to put up with whatever your CIO head has previously had a contract with for 5 years and your lucky to even get a PO approved even with a 5 page essay and 10 signatures.
I'm exaggerating, but sometimes buying power is quite limited, but I've worked for some companies that were pretty cool about purchasing even though I was low on the totem poll.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
He's not saying to run a domain server. Just DNS and possibly DHCP.
adieu.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
(It has a 60GB disk and 2GB of RAM. I can't imagine what kind of "resources" it needs, if this isn't enough.)
Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME had a 64 KiB "user" heap and a 64 KiB "GDI" heap shared by all running applications, even if your machine had 512 MiB of RAM. The OS reported the lower of the two heaps' free space values as "free system resources."
a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes
If anything, than this provides solid proof that MS is unable to learn from mistakes. Read Confirmation Dialogs harmful for a glance of what's been going through the heads of a lot of security professionals the past few years (disclaimer: including me): That the whole "are you sure?" bullshit is a huge fiasco. The only thing it did was train users to click "Ok" or "Continue" without bothering to read the actual text. If there wouldn't be such a slobbering mass of 'em, the dialogs might be taken seriously, but there is and they aren't.
I said it a couple months ago, and I still stand by it: Vista is a trainwreck happening in slow-motion. It's horrible to behold.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's great if SAMBA actually stays up. On my OpenSUSE server (not at the box now...can't give you the specific release) the SAMBA services die nightly and for no apparent reason. I initially had OpenSUSE configured to update itself nightly and thought maybe, just maybe, that was causing the problem. Turned that service off but it still craps itself nightly.
:)
If I actually had time to investigate the problem (and if they'd pay for an OS with some support when things die) I'm sure I'd find it's probably a simple fix. However, since I volunteer to maintain the server (it's a file and print server for my church) these things often just slip to the side in favor of paid work.
Seriously considering OpenSolaris...anyone know if it works on a standard configuration Dell 1400SC server?
I hear all of you guys complain about Windows. Heck, I use a Windows XP with all of it's quirks. But only one thing comes to mind every time the Windows community bitches and complains about the consistent screw ups maintained by Microsoft. A classic 1980's commercial pops in to mind when a computer malfuctions during a large convention. A quick blurt when the Apple logo flashes, "Get a Mac!"
A goodnight kiss takes the queen but protects the king's life.
I'd assume this is a joke, but if it's not -
wouldn't it be confectionery?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
There are millions upon millions of people using Windows operating systems right now. It seems apparent to me that not all of them will want to see the same changes from XP to Vista. This guy falls perhaps farther from the mainstream than most, but you can't blame him for having his own opinions about what is good in an OS. Personally, the only things I want out of Vista are security and ease of use. And I don't mean the kind of security that protects me from myself - that's called poor ease of use. Nifty graphics and additional confirmation boxes are exactly what I don't want out of Windows Vista. On top of that the article discusses annoying default settings that hide crucial functionality from the user. I am predicting right now (and I admit I only have a couple decades of Windows operating systems to back this prediction) that Vista will become clogged and sluggish so that I will choose to reinstall it within about 8 months, and probably every 8 months thereafter. Having to tweak with defaults for several hours before I find it usable again is not a prospect I look foreward to.
It's from Microsoft.
passwords for anything? sounds a bit like linux to me...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
That or you don't have permission to the share, but this isn't really the fault of Windows.
they should really fix the "being evil" problem integrated in to all microsoft products. Dont attack me with "*^&#@&$ mac user" crap. they can be evil too.
If you think Windows peer networking is balky, you likely aren't setting something up correctly.
Setting up is soooooo, 90's. Does Vista have ZeroConf yet? You plug into the network and within seconds all the printers show up as options when you print, all the local users show up in your chat program, all the shared streaming music channels and files show up in your mp3 player, all the shared directories show up for filesharing, and all the shared documents for collaborative editing appear. It makes conferences a lot more fun. Configuration is a waste of time.
Maybe it is possible that with some more configuration work you can get all the machines to show up, without any centralized servers, but who the hell is going to go mess with the configuration of every machine to get this to work? It sure isn't set up properly by default since it hasn't worked at so many places I've been. Spotty peering that can be fixed with a configuration work-around is still a problem.
I seem to recall a study criticizing Sleep mode because users tend to leave monitors and computers on all the time and let them sleep
I switch off my computer's LCD monitor when I step away for extended periods. (If I don't, the PC stops the video signal after several minutes and the LCD turns itself off.) As for the computer, I leave it on because it doubles as a personal server.
Why don't you unplug the UPS from the grid, but keep the PC plugged into the UPS juice?
Unless there is some major confusion between myself and yourself about what an Uninterruptible Power Supply is, this is exactly what it's designed for.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
will they ship with that file, too ?
Rich
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9000829
If you are using DNS, you are no longer in a peer-to-peer network.
If you are using DNS for the networking of the machines, you are no longer (arguably) in a peer-to-peer network. If you are using DNS, separate from the peer-to-peer sharing, such as using a modern auto-discovery protocol, you can get very good performance and reliability.
Its kind of expensive compared to the Redhat Enterprise Server support license? lol... Don't think so. Or maybe its expensive compared to Websphere.... AIX? Okay, so you can download a copy of (insert your flavor here) linux from the net and get it up and running and rely on your administrators google capabilities for support or you can buy a support license for a linux distro, or you can buy a copy of windows... Either way, you're still spending money. I think that the idea that Windows is more expensive in an enterprise environment compared to linux is kind of silly now days.
... lol!
Signed,
A Ubuntu Linux Admin
No, desktop to desktop networking is working flawlessly, and has been since 95... Next time you can't see Bob's computer, just start/run \\bob and his share should appear right away, even if you can't "see" him. If you can't see the shares, it's off the network, for sure.
That would be the discovery portion that is broken then. You see, it is hard to type "start/run \\bob" if you don't know if Bob's share is called "bob" or "grobertson" or "bobs_evil_box." Having to use a CLI work-around to get part of the functionality to do something so simple is like using Linux in 1989. It sounds broken to me.
Amen
If you want Samba (and NFS and LDAP and Kerberos/AD) to work correctly, use RHEL/CentOS/Fedora.
/the latest SRPM of samba hosting shares and an NT4 domain and it stays up until I shut down the machine. Nothing too exciting about it.
SuSE patches their supported Samba something fierce... I don't know why.
I've got stock RHEL 4
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Here you go..you're welcome.
r entVersion\
Explorer\Remote Computer\NameSpace
http://www.tweakxp.com/Article37934.aspx
or here -
http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips250.html
or for the extremely lazy -
Who knows why, but XP first checks for scheduled tasks on a target machine before it will list the files and folders for that target machine.
In regedit navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
And delete the following key:
{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}
Close regedit and reboot.
This should turn off the check for scheduled tasks before browsing... and get rid of that blasted delay.
"But this one goes to 11!"
$55 billion in 2 years? Sure, that sounds impressive, but what about the losses to piracy? Hm?
5 billion people in the world
2.5 billion don't own a computer
250 million buy Vista
200 million buy office
So, that's 2.75B copies* of Vista at $100 ea, plus 2.3B copies of Office at $150 each for $620 BILLION in lost revenue to pirates. I feel sorry for all the microsoft investors out there who will have to deal with the 565 billion in losses, and the virtual crippling one of the biggest players in the IT market. It's shameful, I tell you, and the BSA should do everything in it's power - and beyond it's power - to see that this travesty doesn't occur!
*We're assuming that there will be a reasonable number of folks who obtain Vista illegally twice in the two years (for patches, upgrades, and such), and feel that they should be counted as two lost license sales.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The security alerts are only prominent when you are using stuff that is:
1) Trying to install a Service
2) Modifying settings in controlpanel
3) Modifying the registry
and even then, most 1,2s and 3s are caused by non WDDM drivers, older software (unwise which isn't vista aware) and trying to make changes to the system that are "permanent" that you should be reminded of.
Oh, and you can disable all of the alerts if you bother to look for the way to do so.
at least it isn't security through obscurity and believe me there is plenty of help, wizards and assistance in trying to find out what it is warning you about and why.
Many years ago there was a mass suicide where most everybody in a cult drank poisoned punch. What ever the punch was, it was associated through re-telling with an American product called Kool-aid.
http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinktheKool-Aid.asp
Kool-aid is a brand of punch which comes in a little envelope with coloring and some artificial flavor. You mixed it with a ton of sugar and water. Many kids drank the stuff.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
20 is a good start.. I'm probably going to have to go ahead and say everything.
popular computing is getting to be a joke.
this is also slashdotted..maybe someone could provide a mirror?
Strip out NetBIOS and rely on Active Drectory's sane and sensible DNS services (requires an all-Win2k+ environment) and it's like magic.
Strangely enough I don't carry a Windows server to the coffee shop with me. I just open the lid on my laptop and a few seconds later all the machines with ZeroConf advertised services, like chat, filesharing, streaming media, collaborative editors, printers, and the like automagically appear in available to applications. It's a fun way to meet new people too. That whole carrying a server around with me sounds tempting and would probably help me meet new people too, when I tried to get them to configure their machines to use it, but nah I think I'll stick with peer-to-peer.
My time is worth more than the small amount of money it costs. YMMV of course, but personally I value my time rather highly. If I run out of money I can go out and earn some more, but when my time on Earth is up....
This issue is that on a linux or mac desktop you can delete icons from the desktop or change your desktop background without nag screens. Vista pops up auth dialogs for these seemingly simple operations (and as the flickr link posted earlier in this thread shows, it goes way overboard).
:)
I have no problem for vista prompting me if a program tries to change my homepage, or install a new device driver, or when I'm installing a new application. That I agree is wanted behaviour (though not when I change my homepage by hand of course, only if done programatically
More than 1% of laptop users have decent video cards. However, you've got a point -- most laptop users probably will have to replace their systems if they want to run Vista.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have a decent memory card. It works fine with most Linux apps - it's just the WinXP overloads.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yet your claim is that the boxes are so ubiquitous they interfered with the normal operation of the computer.
Since deleting a desktop shortcut is such an uncommon task that a half-dozen pop-up confirmation dialogs won't be too much of a bother, after all.
Your sig must be true, because that post made no sense.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hint: Buy a better wireless network card. The free-after-mail-in-rebate-from-BestBuy DLink wireless card is going to suck in Windows and be inoperable on Linux. I use an Intel a/b/g card it it's good. The software utility and driver are seamlessly integrated into Windows. The software is easy to use.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Vista pops up auth dialogs for these seemingly simple operations . . .
.the first time. Still, I've had to support a few systems where such might actually have been useful. There are people who delete/change things by accident and then get really weirded out by it.
Yeah, that would get annoying about. .
If you're inclined to include this sort of annoying shit in your software the solution is already known and widely implimented: A STFU check box on the popup. At least that way you only annoy people once per function.
KFG
1. ...
Ok, I give up. What am I supposed to like about Vista???
#1: Vista is angry. You wouldn't like it when it's angry.
I guess it's not the DWL-G650, which works fine on my Linux box (remember to get those madwifi packages).
So now Windows is *too* secure? When are you GPL-zealots gonna be happy? I've played with the latest Vista beta, yes, there are lots of pop-ups, mainly when you run an app for the first time, install an app, or an app makes an outbound connection for the first time (like any desktop firewall will do) but for being the most attacked OS on the planet it's really got its guard up. And anytime you install something on OS X it prompts you for an admin password as well. Damned if you're not secure, damned if you're too secure. Perhaps there's a way to still be secure but in a less intrusive way. I'm sure there's a way to turn off the different types of popups and run in a more trusted mode but out of the box Vista is very locked down, like it or not.
The issue is that Vista makes it way harder than it needs to be -- like the "seven popups to delete a shortcut" example floating around the 'net. Requiring admin privelages for things that really shouldn't require them. I'm sure it will get better as Vista nears its release date (whenever that rolls around), but I wouldn't want to put up with what I'm hearing about either, although it doesn't bother me a bit under Linux, which was designed to be used with non-admin accounts.
OK, even if I don't have centralized servers I can typically get a small peer-to-peer network setup in a few minutes. And when did peer-to-peer mean zero configuration? I don't get that. If you want your machines to be able to see each other, you have to agree on a couple of things, and that involves configuring your system. If you don't know how to do it or can't be bothered to spend a couple of minutes figuring it out, of course it's not going to work right.
My book, podcast
http://www.worddisplay.com?vistahttp://www.worddis play.com?vista>
sorry, meant video card. good catch.
however, my comment in regards to WinVista video cards was mostly meant as a joke. But I do expect many unsuspecting laptop users will get very irate when they find they have problems, as it's no mean task to upgrade the video card on a laptop.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
. . .like the "seven popups to delete a shortcut"
Really! Shouldn't take any more than five.
KFG
What kills me is while I sit there waiting patiently for Windoze Exploder to deliver a simple fucking list of hosts and/or shares, I can open up a dosbox, type "net view" and hey presto, instant peer list... meanwhile Windoze spends another 30 seconds showing me an animated flashlight for no good reason.
If I can get it instantly from a CLI tool, what the hell is Explorer doing for 30 seconds? Auditing a database in Mongolia? Cripes.
especially with all the chrome of the unnecessary windows transitions, fading, transparencies and other crud they overloaded video with by default.
If it's anything like XP, you just have to make sure that "adjust for best performance" is selected instead of "adjust for best appearance."
Oooh...that was tough.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. M$ can't win with you guys...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
OK, even if I don't have centralized servers I can typically get a small peer-to-peer network setup in a few minutes.
The problem is, the performance is spotty, have problems auto-detecting, and can take hours to reappear after a reboot.
And when did peer-to-peer mean zero configuration? I don't get that.
The original discussion was about file sharing on a LAN, which includes both discovery and file transfer. Zero configuration is, of course, the ideal. It also works just fine in other OS's and has for years.
If you want your machines to be able to see each other, you have to agree on a couple of things, and that involves configuring your system.
That's funny, because I can just walk into the coffee shop and within 30 seconds of opening my computer and selecting a wireless network (I actually only did this once when I first when to that coffee shop) I can see a half dozen other machines and all their shared services, including file sharing, chat, streaming media, printing, etc. Of course that is only the non-Windows machines. Windows hasn't bothered implementing ZeroConf despite it being a ratified standard with a free reference example, and open implementation on several platforms for years. Luckily everyone else, including most printer manufacturers did.
Besides of making a sudo clone that requires administrator access for everything including deletion of shortcuts. Will Vista really be secure? After all most of the vulnerabilities in windows 98 - XP didn't involve the user doing things he shouldn't but the OS letting some other people to do whatever they want with their PC thanks to all the holes and the time it takes to MS to fix them
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
So what's 00?
Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean you have to mod something informative.
Stop! Dremel time!
They can still change the name from Vista to Vii !
"So who is forcing you to write open source as your only occupation?"
Well if a certain zealot has his way, then it will be OSS + McJob. Oh screw that! It'll be McJob + Walmart.
"Nothing has changed except installing high priority Windows patches (which you can't avoid) -- nothing else has been installed, and the games were patched only on day 1."
Is that unavoidable because ninjas will come through your house and force updates on your machine? Either disconnect the Internet connection or setup an intermediate machine that blackholes all MS.com traffic. There is no such thing as an update you can't avoid.
As someone who owns a Powerbook which gets restarted only when an update needs a restart (and then only when I get around to it on a weekend, since most don't require a restart), I can appreciate what you mean by laptops that don't suspend properly. I have seen this behaviour on Windows. However, just because of that, it's hard to make the jump that Windows will degrade over time.
I do have a couple of VMWare instances of WinXP and Windows 2003 Server, as well as Windows 2000 on a dual-boot Ubuntu/Windows test bench machine. The only software changes are the Windows updates which I let through -- these installs are still as stable as I've come to expect Windows to be. Unless you have done some serious OS dissection, I'm hesitant to say that right off the bat it's Windows, and not some squirrely 3rd party driver, 3rd party program, or other combination of these bugs that causes Windows to degrade in your instance, especially since my anecdotal evidence is different than yours.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
criticising MS for favouring security over..... well anything
/. think more of implementing a secure design at an architectural level. As the author mentions, much of what Microsoft does is "protecting users from their own stupidity". While this addresses security, it is not an effective solution to security problems. While Microsoft has made some effective security changes at lower levels (services off by default, user vs. kernel space for drivers, an installer service that runs under a more appropriate security policy, etc) there is still a lot about the upcoming Windows that is architecturally flawed. Instead of making design changes MS has elected to take the band-aid approach of trying to direct users away from pitfalls due to these architectural flaws (firewalls set to "maximum nag" mode, anti-virus to the hilt, "are you sure" dialogue boxes warning of potentially dangerous consequenses every few clicks...).
It isn't that favouring security is the problem, because it is not. MS has finally got priorities straight. The problem is what KIND of security on which they have elected to place their emphasis. I think that many of us propellerheads on
Perhaps after another bets build or two MS will have tuned things to make Vista more pleasant to use. However, I expect that for novice computer users Vista will make them frustrated, intimidated and perhaps even afraid of the computer. I can just see how a WWW surfing experience would go in spiffy new Vista-enhanced IE7 (especially given the typical kinds of sites that novice users end up stumbling upon):
*MSN message pops up from buddy with a link to get "these cute little smilies"
*noobie clicks on link and IE7 opens with gaudy, blinky ad-ridden website
*IE7 pops up a status message saying "The website you are viewing is trying to launch 7 pop-ups. Do you want to see them?
*noobie has enough clue to say no. A modal dialogue pops up saying "This website is trying to install an unsigned control . Unsigned software can be used by malicious users to steal sensitive information or damage your computer. Review the information below carefully before proceeding ". The information below states "This whiz-bang addon will enhance your cmputer's performance and make searching more effective by delivering you the latest special offers from our industry-leading partners! You must install this to make full use of our software!"
*noobie is confused--is this bad or good? He clicks Yes. An adware BHO is installed but noobie gets cool MSN smilies! OMG! Ponies!
*Vista Enchanced Security (R) (TM) springs to action. Firewall brings up dialogue "The Application 'Whiz-Bang' is trying to open an internet connection . Permit? ". At the same time, Antispyware pops up "AntiSpyware has determined the application 'Whiz-Bang' may be spyware . Do you want to disable this application? .
*noobie is frustrated--he said he wanted no pop-ups but Vista has "popped-up" three windows in quick succession.
I know all these things can happen in XP if SP2 is on it and it is configured a certain way. However, I suspect Vista will arrive from the factory with all of the MS features that are currently downloadable add-ons bundled right in. Furthermore, I suspect that default settings will be at or near "maximum annoyance" mode. I think after enough of these experiences of continual confirmation box bombardment and warnings about what evil things might happen to your computer if you proceed will make Mr/Ms Noobie either too afraid to do much with their computer, or determined to learn how to disable all these features (after which time Noobie neglects to learn how to keep things enabled without the nagging, resulting in a comprimised machine).
While improvements in Vista will certainly reduce the frequency of serious, high-profile security incidents it'll be a slow reduction and many years before we are at an acceptable state of affairs.
He's reviewing a BETA RELEASE as if it were a final product.
"How come modern computers can't do that? This is so old that even the patents (if any) have expired. (Okay, snapshotting network state is problematic, but everything else would be good.)"
See headline.
My trick. Set up one linux box. Start DHCP server. Install samba. Start nmbd in master mode.
Funny, never a problem after that. Somebody really ought to make a set-top box with this solution, perhaps integrated into those little dlink/netgear/linksys routers.
No, I don't mean like OpenWRT. I mean for sale in the store, just plug it in and it works.
That's not a CLI workaround, that's the equivalent of launching Explorer and typing \\bob in the address bar.
Other than that, I agree; the network share discoverer has been flaky for as long as I've known, and really needs to be fixed. I've lost count of the number of times I've been unable to find a network resource yet have had no trouble accessing it when I typed the address in by hand (not that that's a problem for me, but hey)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Linux only takes four. FTW!
usrmgr.exe?
Or dsa.msc?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
In the Windows world, "browse the web" means to download/install/execute potentially-hostile code and run it with full privileges with access right down to the hardware, all without any more user-interaction than a mouse click or two. Are you sure you "never change anything"? ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Go ahead and tell me that Jane Receptionist or Bob Architect is going to be using the iSCSI Initiator control panel applet or anything else that requires admin priv's on a daily basis. Go ahead. Tell me.
Of course they'll not be using iSCSI. But they may well want to delete a shortcut someday...
The article very reasonable explains to people that may not know how the whole experience with the security agent could be very annoying - but then at the end states that Microsoft is aware the expereince is not a good one currently and is seeking to improve that, probably in release candidate one. How is that not fair?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not sure why you think it's xml...The only time you even see an > or < is if you click buttons and that just means "type something here".
I never use the mouse to hunt and click to input formulas. The syntax is very simple once you get used to it, and is very similar to latex.
It's relatively easy to type something like
(and arguably more intuitive than the latex equivalent: )
And I've had more luck getting the summation ranges looking pretty in OO than in latex for equations like:
Heh. The worst Windows networking I have seen so far is what my father's PC does. Ever since the last reinstall NTLOGON will not accept any logins from another computer. I can connect just fine but any kind of remote authentication fails. This is the same PC that our only printer is hooked up to. As a result getting data from my computer to his for printing means either putting it into my Apache's doument root and then downloading it from his computer via HTTP or using a USB drive and sneakernet.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Administrate is a perfectly legitimate word and is used correctly here in the sense of 'act as administrator'.
Obviously its hard for some people to understand why others would not want to use their computers as a lifestyle choice, or indeed realise that this might appear a bit tacky or mindless (in a sad consumerist way.) Now, I'm not saying that its a self-esteem issue or that all mac-users are generally unable to express themselves without getting their credit-cards out, but sometimes i do wonder.
Given how vocal this minority are, there has to be more to it than meets the eye; indeed there is a definate psychological pay-off for certain groups - they like to isolate themselves and make a real mission out of their lifestyle choice. In what seems like a heartless world they need something to believe in, to fight for, and if they lose sight of the fact that at the core of their cause is a bunch of overpriced plastic tat then thats exactly what it takes, thats why they're apple fans.
Interestingly, and Jobs knows this, the more they're asked to pay, the more they feel they're getting out of it (ask any scientologist about their pay-as-you-go religion + if its worth it.) If you're expected to buy a new Ipod every year then thats what it takes, its worth it!
Now, with the open source movement you can see a political dimension, and the way its growing in size and in what it can offer is undeniable. And when you consider the potential that linux might have in the future, its not surprising that the advocates are quietly confident and not quite so evangelical, in that empty, creepy and spooky mac way.
Think different? I'd rather spend my money on a holiday cheers.
I recently worked for a campus in Indiana where I was in charge of 8 computer labs. We found that Windows XP's (and possibly other versions) Master Browser service is totally hosed. Totally. Especially if machines are on separate subnets (although this is minimized if you use a Windows based PDC).
They thought I was crazy when I came up with the solution, but we went from machines hardly ever seeing each other, to always working.
The solution is to go to every single Windows XP client and disable the Master Browser service. Then get an old cranky machine out of a closet (we used 90mhz Pentium Pros) and install some version of linux or BSD that will install with the amount of RAM you have. You will need one machine per subnet. Set them all up with Samba and tell them to be Master Browsers (but not domain masters). Point them all to the PDC, or if there isn't one, make one a PDC.
You must have a PDC for Windows networking across subnets. Some people have occasional luck without, occasional being the key word.
The only time we had trouble, was when someone would get into a network closet (someone that shouldn't have, but that is a long story), and physically unplugged the power to a Samba machine to plug in some random idiotic device for 10 minutes, then forgot to plug the Samba machine back in.
I'm no linux zealot, far from it, but I do use linux. And trust me, with XP if you want windows networking to work, you need a non-windows machine to do Master Browsing.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Vista is currently at Beta 2 (Build 5384) and Thurrott's opinion of Vista's UAC feature has changed. That link has a full review of Beta 2's current implementation of UAC and offers the following opinion:
Since Bruce Schneier seemed to base his opinion on Vista UAC on other bloggers' experiences, his current opinion might be different now.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
It's more like always getting the shotgun before you answer the door, when all you get is boy scouts selling cookies.
If the Reavers start trying to come in, then head for the shotgun - Vista is just scaring little kids.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another one that drives me NUTS is this: if, while using firefox, you click your mouse on a link, inadvertently move it just a tad, and then release the mouse, the "stupid assumption" is that you intended to drag the link, image, or whatever somewhere- so the "drag" operation stays in effect (even when you're not actually dragging anything), until you click the mouse again (presumably "dropping" what you intended to be "dragging"). I can't put into words how annoying this is.
Right-click on the icon and select 'Explore' - you should now be able to explore the network drive you were having trouble with.
Points to the people modding this comment funny.
FYI if you've never done a linux installation. As I recall, the order of events one or two ways:
1. Reboot after files copied onto drive and bootloader installed.
2. Set root password
3. Create user account, set password
4. Login as user.
OR
1. set root password and create user account
2. Reboot
3. Login as user.
At this point, the better distro's forbid logging in as root from a gui desktop manager.
In Longwait they HAD the opportunity to do it right AND they had plenty of other OS to copy, but they didn't. Perfect example of security as an afterthought.
I wish Microsoft would just pay me to promote their OS. Because this is too easy.
Thank you!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This is different from other versions how then?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Judging from the screenshots, it appears that the "oh so talented" designers at MS have lifted the brushed aluminum look that everybody poo-pooed in Mac OS X.
Oh, and has anybody else noticed how they really went a little overboard with the Mac OS X Dashboard widget glossiness that they appropriated for WMP 11. These guys don't have an original bone in their collective bodies.
It's also quite amusing that Aero requires such hefty hardware when a Mac can handle even better looking layered graphics with a minimum of 32MB graphics memory. I know it's obvious, but I'll point it out anyway. Mac icons and windows look so much more elegant and substantial than MS's latest lame-ass attempt at eye candy on display in those screeshots.
I guess once the rip-off artists over in Redmond see Leopard this fall, they'll have to push the Vista release date back once again, because Apple is going to raise the bar even higher!
Karma Schmarma
I can leave my powerbook asleep for 6 days before it runs out of battery. I can leave it off for.... 6 days before it runs out of battery. That tells me that the amount of electricity I'd be saving by shutting down instead of sleeping is too small to measure casually.
Er.. actually, I think it tells you that something's gone horribly wrong with your "shut down" feature. If your laptop is turned off, the battery shouldn't be dead in 6 days. What could it possibly be using that electricity for? Refreshing the clock? My wrist watch can do that for years with a battery the size of a nickel!
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I'd imagine it's not so much the split screen as having to jostle for keyboard space, desk space, leg room.
In my den I have a PC across the room from a 27" SDTV display and four gamepads connected through a USB hub. Some people have a PC connected to an even bigger TV and running, say, Windows MCE or MythTV or Front Row. So why aren't more PC games designed around this setup?
the computer is still fundamentally designed around being a one-user-at-a-time machine.
But why does this have to be? Is this gap an opportunity for independent computer game developers, or is it there for a good reason?
Mod parent funny!
Had I been drinking, it would be a mess all over the screen.
Uh, last I checked, XP had no problem with that. Obviously, other than printers, the rest of your examples would not be items included in the OS. Network shared printers and folders/drives do show up. You can use iTunes for the music sharing. You can use any Bonjour/Rendevous client you want. I do not know of any collaborative editing applications, but I would be surprised if none that run on XP supported what you descibe.
Centralization breaks the internet.
and now everyone complains about how enhanced security is hurting productivity LOL. My god MS could find the holy grail and folks wouldnt be happy.
Yes, XP has "that thing." It's also on by default.
Explorer: Tools menu -> Folder options -> View tab -> "Automatically search for network folders and printers"
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
either that or you could have used some basic intelligence here and setup a WINS or DNS service and disabled master browser service altogether, but hey you were working in a UNI, can't expect you to use intelligence.
1. "Microsoft is building some of the most ambitious security components of Windows Vista not for its customers, but for itself." Well, duh.
.... or, in Linux's case, to log in as root, which requires authentication". Sorry, I'm not quite sure I understood the requirements; could you just run them by me once more?
2. "With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability." Have you ever tried to be truly productive with Mac OS X compared to well-configured on Linux? I have tried and failed. I am greatly uncomfortable with window-specific menu functions residing in a session-wide screen fixture instead of windows themselves, cannot tell the difference between launchers and running applications when looking at the dock, and generally find it excruciatingly painful to perform tasks that are, on other systems, second nature to me.
3. "I see Linux and Windows 2000 as being roughly tied another notch or two below Vista, with XP being only a half step better than Win 2000." Your article is concerned mostly with GUI changes. Do you realise how many window managers, GUI toolkits, and "desktop environments" are available on Linux? Also, do you know that modern Linux (and/or generic UNIX) applications and environments can replicate, after a fashion, all of Vista's big graphical and usability improvements? However, I must admit that some of the software I'm referring to is itself beta at best.
4. "It's also intent on raising the bar to 64-bit architecture, driving the need for advanced video hardware and dual-core motherboards and pushing the RAM standard to 2GB -- all to help spur hardware and software sales over the next several years." Well, seen from a purely capitalist point of view, you got the motivation right. From a developer's point of view, you missed the fact that they don't seem the slightest bit interested in reducing bloat - yet point out elsewhere how smooth Mac OS X's visual effects are on less powerful hardware. "Although the cool video features in Vista Aero are nice, Apple was able to provide a lot of the same functionality working with my Power PC-based Mac Mini M9687LL/A, which has only 32MB of video RAM."
5. "With notebooks becoming the primary form factor in many companies and homes, the artificially short half-lives of these computers need to be lengthened." Half-lives? Laptop computers (sorry, I point-blank refuse to call them "notebooks") are radioactive, are they? I also despise the phrase "form factor", although I can't fault you specifically more than I can fault anyone else who uses this horrible phrase.
6. "more main-system RAM hungry". Here's a tip: don't invent long-winded, annoying-sounding phrases just because you think they sound more 'technical' than existing ones ('memory hungry'). Is that "main-system" as opposed to additional-system RAM? Perhaps it can dynamically borrow RAM from other systems one has lying around?
7. "Windows NT, 2000 and XP have always had log-in-based system privileges, but they're cumbmersome." On the Web, nobody can hear you proof-read.
8. "Given that both Linux and the Mac require users to authenticate
9. "Vista requires you to create an administrator-class account name as part of installation or first boot, eliminating a major vulnerability. That means, by default, no one is running with the Administrator log-in." When I installed Windows 2000, it asked me to enter a password for the administrator account - sounds like creating an administrator-class account to me. Plus it isn't obvious from the quote, or its context, exactly how this prevents people using the Administrator account. Stop and think: remember that your subject matter is an unreleased operating system, and that Joe Public is at present likely to be entirely unaware that "administrator-class" and "Administrator" refer to two different concepts; then, bearing that fact in mind, read the sentences back to yourself. You will find th
Your mouse sensitivity is probably way too high. I've never had a problem with this (and I use a clumsy ergonomic mouse).
Point 2 - "well-configured on Linux" should read "well-configured on Linux".
... " should read "Yes, I know an awful lot of people and interfaces use 'login', and variations thereon, as nouns; ... ".
:)
Point 10 - "Yes, I know an awful lot of people and interfaces use 'login', and variations thereon;
Point 12 - "Hint: it was a bug you encountered in the first sentence, not a feature." Replace "first" with 'second'.
Point 13 - "intended to pointing" should read "intended to point".
Only bothered with the above since I made a point of criticising grammar in TFA. I did write this stuff at 4AM, though, so please forgive me.
It's intended as a kind of open letter - and yes, I know, authors of these articles aren't going to go to Slashdot and read every article. I was thinking of emailing it to him personally as well (corrected, of course).
In either of those two sequences, the first user created is an Administrator. You just don't get to choose the name you give to the user...
The widgets are just like OS X. They are interesting, but I have no real use for them on my laptop.
Wifi meter and battery life are 2 quite nice widgets for a laptop, at least using konfabulator. I agree with you about widgets like "what the moon looks like today", etc.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
> The solution is to go to every single Windows XP client and disable the Master Browser service.
Disabling the MB service is correct. Going out to every box by hand shows that you guys have no fucking clue.
The issue of course is that if there are too many the user is numb to them and just clicks 'ok' each time, and eventually doesn't notice that foobar24.js is doing something instead of rundll32.exe (and to the common user, who can tell the difference between those filenames?).
:( Oh well, they have 9 more months to fix things like this.
Also as the article noted, there is no STFU checkbox
Now you've got it, and you're still bitching. Cripes, you can't find anything good about them! The least you can do is admit you're deliberately on the attack. All this "informational bulletin propaganda disguised as legitimate criticism" is getting a bit old, don't you think?
Just make a "Microsoft-bashing" department, and be blatant about it! Stop hiding behind the ineffective veneer of objectivity, you pussies.
1: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED ....
2: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED
3: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED
4: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED
5: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED
6: INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED
You get the idea.
Computer science has transcended normal humanity. On the internet, because ideas are objects anyone can replicate for free, selling ideas is no longer a valid business model AT ALL. The entire industry is obsolete, just like the entire horse carriage industry is now.
They've tried legal force. It hasn't worked so far.
Now they're trying harder to use market (monopoly) force through Windows. Don't think Macs are any different in this game. They're trying to force us into a world where information and music still has a cost. Once the music belongs to the internet, and since everyone owns the internet, everyone already owns the music.
So copyright has lost it's meaning.
- The user is a beginner
- The user is experienced
Why not?Then the user will get the neat-looking desktop with lots of colors, sounds (even the click sound when you click your mouse) and all the other crap like tutorials and "click here"-balloon messages.
This way, Windows will deliver maximum performance (ha ha), turn off those annoying sounds and let you be in charge.
"Way too high" as in "able to move the mouse from one corner of the screen to the other without the mouse falling off the table"? Yes, I have the mouse speed (and PS/2 sample rate) set to max, otherwise it takes way too much movement to get from one corner to the other.
An no, "sensivity way too high" should NOT cause a program to try to drag and drop when I'm NOT holding down the f**king button.
Apparently it takes a good deal of effort to delete a shortcut in Windows Vista. I have a feeling this humorous picture sequence anonymously posted on Flickr won't last too long so I'm reposting it here and linking the original image. Chances are that by the time the retail version ships, deleting a shortcut will be much the same as it is now but this is worth a posting for a laugh.
& size=oD g5NUxRSkp0S3J6aTZfMV8xX2wuanBn
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=151250154
http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE0OTExO
It's simple, you get the ip of the computer and go \\192.168.1.3 and avoid using the \\computername format. Of course, you need to know the IP, which sometimes isn't possible. It would be generous to call this "trick" a workaround, it sure as hell isn't a solution.
Another wonderful MS innovation is if you drag a file over a shortcut to a share on a box that is down. ~30 second lock of the desktop and explorer. Note that I didn't say drop, just drag over. Annoying as fuck? You betcha.
You'd think they would of have fixed this by now, if you positively, absolutely need to check to see if the box is up, perhaps a seperate process or something that wouldn't cause the interface to hang for 30 seconds.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Duh ... Where are my mod points when I need them :(.
When I was a kid at school, my teacher taught us how to remember the spelling of the word necessary -
Never
Eat
Chips
Eat
Salad
Sandwiches
And
Remain
Young
From your friendly neighbourhood spelling Nazi
You'd better say "The only 5 things you'll like about Windows Vista" :P
I like more security, but is msft's approach the only way? *Constant* pop-ups asking "do you really want to do this? It might not be safe!" Of course the user will always chose "go ahead" it's not like you have all day to read every pop-up.
Frankly, I get the idea that msft's "security" is actually more about blame shifting. When you get rooted by a word processor macro, it's going to be *your* fault because you hit the "go ahead" button.
I don't have any problems with security on linux system, and I don't get those constant pop-ups either.
...I'd already have every copy of Vista.
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
Not that I'll remember that. But thanks.
Sorry, I normally use a spell-check, but I haven't found one that works in my browser on my office machine. (I know of the Firefox one, but I can't get Firefox to run on that machine, just an old version of Mozilla.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
FTFA:
The software giant is favoring security and IT controls over end-user productivity
How many times will a user be pestered by the UAC when doing such things as editing documents, sending email, or browsing the web?
Does the "average" user install 15 apps a day? Change system settings *constantly*? Hell, FTM, does an admin?
The article is just crap. He can't whine about Vista being insecure, so he's going to whine about it being secure. I'm left wondering what MS could possibly have done to please this guy, but, of course, that would assume this guy *wasn't* biased against MS prior to reviewing Vista.
Why are we giving this idiot free advertising?
Yes, XP has "that thing." It's also on by default. Explorer: Tools menu -> Folder options -> View tab -> "Automatically search for network folders and printers"
Interesting. I don't admin Windows boxes these days, but we plugged in a new printer on our network a few weeks back. Neither of my coworkers using Windows XP Pro could find it without manually adding the IP address for the printer. It showed up automatically as an option when printing on all the Macs. It seems to me, it needs work.
1) within a day of it's release there'll be more vista desktops than linux
2) within a week of it's release there'll be more IE7 users than Firefox
I haven't had occaision to fiddle around with group membership with the GUI tools. Also, the times when I hit usrmgr heavily was when using the TDB backend, not the LDAP backend, and for some reason I had good luck with that. I think the locking and round-trip complexity of the TDB is simpler so Samba is less likely to screw up when using non-native tools.
I think the web front end you're speaking of is LAM. Looks pretty cool. Also check out "gosa".
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Was it an IP printer? JetDirect, etc? It won't pick up on those unless they support UPnP. Printers connected to Windows machines will show up automatically. I admin the networks on about 15 cargo vessels, and this feature has always worked on every single ship.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
>>you'll make money selling to those who want the option of support
But can you earn a living? It seems like you are architecting, building, then giving away houses but hoping to cash in on the routine maintenance (cleaning windows, painting, fixing mechanicals). Would not be long before you spent less time architecting and building houses, just to make ends meet.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Linux start up:
-User- account and password normally required to login. I won't even get into how well other aspects of email attachments and downloads work.
Longwait start up:
Go straight to Administrator, no password. It's a system that will be compromised/hosed sooner rather than later.
Any rational person will come to the same conclusion.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Was it an IP printer?
It was an IP printer and it connected via ZeroConf to the macs, as shown by the way the printer was listed. It did not show up on the Windows boxes, thus either the printer's ZeroConf implementation is broken or Windows is or Windows discovers it, but screws up after the fact.
It won't pick up on those unless they support UPnP.
If it can't discover them via ZeroConf, and needs UPnP, then it does not support ZeroConf, now does it? Or were you referring to something else, since your statement is a little ambiguous.
Click on the "print this article" link if you want it on a single page. Of course it doesn't make it shorter but at least you don't have more than one ad.
"Because computers don't normally have multiple inputs. That's why networking is where it's at."
Because households don't normally have multiple gaming PCs. That's why USB hubs are where it's at.
"Even if there is a device for attaching multiple joysticks to a PC, and I'm sure there is... somewhere"
Leeloo Dallas MOOL-TEE-TAP
"You could still do Gauntlet over the network."
Not if you can only afford one node for the network.
I'm happy for you. The first user created on both systems is still an Admin ...
On XP, you go to "shut down", hold shift, and the "standby" button turns into "hibernate". Not intuitive, but it's there.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My XP system restores from Hibernate to password prompt in about 5 seconds. The progress bar is literally 1 second. It's the other 20-30 seconds from crap my BIOS is doing that bothers me -- flash my video card's amount of RAM, then get to the actual BIOS, watch it autodetect for 5-10 seconds, then have it sit at my Nvidia RAID screen for like 10-15 seconds every boot, just in case I might want to change my RAID settings, then back to the BIOS for maybe another 5, then it finally hits the hard drive and I get GRUB for 5 seconds. Grub boots Linux by default, so I have to be there for the 3 seconds or so it actually gives me to select Windows, and then I get 5 seconds to resume.
So, it actually takes less of my time to boot Linux, simply because it's set as my Grub default. I'd estimate the amount of time needed to boot either at about 20 seconds to password prompt, then maybe 10-20 seconds to desktop on Windows, 2 seconds (maybe) on Linux -- yay Fluxbox.
Ok, I understand the need to change settings -- I built this computer -- but I wish my entire boot process would just assume that everything's exactly the way it was last time it tried to boot, and ignore the CD and Floppy drives. I wish we could all settle on something like what Lilo does -- or used to -- where if you're holding Alt, you get a menu, otherwise, it boots your default OS without waiting for you to do anything. And I wish I could come up with a sane way to decide what my computer boots by default -- I want a "Hibernate and resume other OS" option.
Why? Because most storebought computers boot faster than mine. Oh, sure, once I actually get to an OS, either of them will absolutely scream through the boot process. But my father's Compaq, couple years older than my custom-build box, boots faster simply because it blinks for maybe two seconds of POST before booting, whereas mine takes at least 30.
But while I'm wishing for impossible things, I wish we'd replace Hibernate with something better. Right now, Hibernate in all its forms suffers from having to save large chunks of RAM you probably won't need. Software Suspend avoided that problem a bit by not always saving many of the buffers/cache, and pushing programs out to swap, thus keeping the kernel image it had to write much smaller. But then, you resume, and as everything's waking up, you find how much of the cache was really needed -- the system positively thrashes for way longer than it would take to just read in a saved cache. So I guess the best solution for now is maybe to be a bit more conservative about what parts of the cache are really needed, and drop the unused parts.
But most of the time, if you think about it, how much time does it really take to load Firefox or OpenOffice? And how big is a list of URLs or an OpenDocument? Most programs could be written so that, if you told them the system was shutting down, they could save and restore their state much more quickly and efficiently than your OS could. In fact, this has been done -- it's called Session management or somesuch. In GNOME, you can choose to save your session when you logout, so that you'd find everything just as you left it when you login -- but I don't know of anything other than Nautilus and maybe one or two GNOME programs that actually follows that. Most of the time, it just means that when you login again, all the programs you left open will re-open, not that they'll have all their state saved.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I tried running the upgrade advisor but it failed on SuSE. I guess Microsoft doesn't want me to upgrade. Oh well!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
When you restore from sleep, usually it's the OS and drivers that have to go around waking most things up. Older versions of Mac OS have been incredibly bad at multitasking -- that might explain it.
I'm just guessing, though.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sigged as honest-to-god truth.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
From TFA:
That's a pretty good solution for balancing the need for improved security and enforcing proper design, and continuing to allow poorly-designed apps like Quickbooks Pro to run. It's a hack to be sure, but a pretty clever one really. I wish they had done this back in the days of Wimdows 2000.
Also, I suspect that this will help to limit the problems wiruses can cause on Windows. If applications are in essence sandboxed like this, it is less likely the average script kiddie will be able to pump out viruses to wipe out entire systems. The user account will obviously remain vulnerable, but of course $HOME/%userprofile% is the most critical place to back up (in most cases) anyhow, so of course you'll be backing up your home directory on a regular basis - right?
Last thing on this subject: Do you all think that this encourages the likes of Intuit to be lazy and demand this faux-superuser access to the system since "Microsoft is handling it for us, we don't need to fix anything" or do you think these third parties will get the hint that the free-for-all access they've insisted is "essential" for all users as deprecated and fix these design problems in following releases? I tend to think that they'll continue to leave things as-is, letting Microsoft deal with the problem with this hack. This is where Microsoft catches a bad rap; they've published guidelines for proper data storage (locations, APIs to use, etc.) since Windows 2000 was in very early data, and publishers STILL insist on coding in such a way that Admin access is required. Do you think they'll view this as time to clean up, or simply let Microsoft continue to make it easy for them to be lazy?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This is a much better use of idle time:
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Create a new deployment image with Master Browser service disabled.
Or any of a dozen other methods you could use.
Sometimes people just use conversational english. It is quick and easy, and personally I assume that the people in that situation know good ways to deploy the solution. If you need to be hand held all the way through, might I suggest Google?
Shawn's Tech Articles
UPnP is ZeroConf. It's one of the handful of service discovery protocols that fall under the umbrella of the name "ZeroConf."
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
UPnP is ZeroConf. It's one of the handful of service discovery protocols that fall under the umbrella of the name "ZeroConf."
You're mistaken. ZeroConf is an IETF standard protocol. UPnP is a non-standard prtotocol and suite of software that attempts to provide many of the same features. From Answers.com, "UPnP shares some features with Zeroconf, a widely used zero configuration technology implemented by Apple with its Bonjour software and by others. They both use link-local addressing for IP assignment and both provide service discovery, but each use different protocols (see Zeroconf)."
You seem to imply that Admin is the default user and nothing is further from the truth.
The default user has *user* privileges. That's it. Users can't screw up their system.
Longwait on the other hand, default user has full privileges.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Who the heck said anything about default user? The original complaint was the the *first* user created on the box is always an Admin.
Gah I hate that. It is convenient to have the thing on the desktop, but having it doing that each time when dragging a bunch of files to folders near it is really shitty.
You know, now that I think of it, I haven't touched the other PC for a while... So at least I can just move the networked folder somewhere else for now.