Windows Vista RC2 Available

GarstMan writes to mention that Microsoft has released what it hopes will be the last version of Windows Vista to go through the testing process. From the article: "This new build of Windows Vista offers users a higher level of performance and stability - improving what was established in Windows Vista RC1. We were able to also fix many of your bugs reported from RC1 and implement them for RC2. Thank you to our beta testers for the bugs and feedback you submitted for RC1. The improvement shows as we raised our quality bar even higher! Platforms and Services Co-President Jim Allchin has just posted a special announcement letter of RC2 to Microsoft Connect for the Windows Vista Technical Beta Testers."

Comments

Waste of Time

[spiderbitendeath]

I for one am tired of our DRM loving monopoly overlords!

Re:Waste of Time

[Surt]

It's not a necessary evil. It's just an evil. Let the information be free, but pay for information you find valuable.

No one will be able to make their fortune with proprietary information, but on the other hand everyone will be so enriched that we'll all be sufficiently better off to make paying out for valuable info much more likely. Then people can make a sane living off of producing good information.

It's like writing shareware. If you work at it, and ask for a small, reasonable donation, you can make decent money off of it.

Re:Waste of Time

[cpt kangarooski]

Nobody likes DRM but it's neceassary evil.

It is not necessary; it's just evil.

Now, if there was standard DRM then books would be released electroically that you could search through or have search engines search through.

Actually, this is unlikely. And in any event, the benefit of making the book searchable is dubious given that the DRM could be used to limit your ability to search it, that searching isn't really important for some books (e.g. most works of fiction), and that the DRM could be set up so that it cost you money every time you used the book in particular ways, or at all.

I think that a better solution would be to a) prohibit authors et al from having copyrights if they use DRM at all, b) not just legalize circumventing DRM, but have the government help (with funding, coordination, and dissemination of the uncopyrightable plaintext), and c) to make some other alterations to copyright, such as beefing up deposit requirements (so that electronic copies are on file with the Library of Congress) and shortening term lengths (so that the book will enter the public domain quite rapidly, if the author et al even bothers to pursue copyright to begin with).

Don't be such a defeatist. Stand up for a change, and fight for what you want!

Re:Waste of Time

[trparky]

Yeah, and when have you ever had a donation? Yeah, I know, you may receive a donation from maybe 1 in every 200 people but the rest are just leeching off of you.

Why does DRM exist? Simple. Because people are dishonest bastards and will rob you blind the first chance they get.

Produce a song? Yep, someone will come along download it and give it to all of his (or her) "friends". Meanwhile, did you get paid for all of your blood, sweat, and tears? Did you get paid for producing that song? Nope. That's why DRM exists, because people are dishonest.

Now, if all people were honest and paid for the things they like (and those said items were sold at a fair price) then we would not need DRM, but since people aren't... we have this shit.

Don't confuse me for an RIAA-shill, I'm just here to say it like it is. Don't like it? Tough! It's the truth. People suck. Am I cynical? Maybe.

Re:Waste of Time

[mochan_s]

It's not a necessary evil. It's just an evil. Let the information be free, but pay for information you find valuable. No one will be able to make their fortune with proprietary information, but on the other hand everyone will be so enriched that we'll all be sufficiently better off to make paying out for valuable info much more likely. Then people can make a sane living off of producing good information. It's like writing shareware. If you work at it, and ask for a small, reasonable donation, you can make decent money off of it.

A famous quote, "nice idea, wrong species".

We're not an ant colony; we're primates who live in small groups. This massive scale social-good schemes don't work for humans since we're genetically made to be working for our own good (or of the group) and not good for the society as a whole.

Re:Waste of Time

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes, it is necessary, or else everything would be pirated to hell and back.

And piracy is bad, because?

Remember, while I'm a copyright lawyer, I'm also thoroughly a utilitarian when it comes to copyright. This means that I only care about what best serves the public interest (which is divided into three sub-interests: creating and publishing original works, creating and publishing derivative works, and having no or minimal copyright) and not at all about authors or publishers, save for how that might affect the public.

the issue of creators' rights

Their rights are what we choose to give them, and we should only choose to give them rights when, and to the degree that, it serves our purposes to do so. Copyright isn't a civil liberty or an inherent right. It's artificial and granted for the purpose of the public good, like a municipal cable TV monopoly.

Basically, you guys want to stack everything in favor of the pirates and against the creators.

No, only in favor of the public. If the authors benefit from this, good for them. If not, I don't care. I take into account how the public benefit is affected by the benefit of authors (in much the same way that a farmer who raises eating chickens is concerned for the health of his flock up until he's ready to slaughter them, since this is what is best for him -- that the chickens would prefer a long and natural life is of no concern) but I am never going to support giving authors anything that is purely at the expense of the public with no greater benefit involved. That would be waste.

This means that where pirates interfere with copyright that maximally serves the public interest, I am against those pirates, since they are ruining it for the rest of us. But where copyright is excessive (as it is now, IMO) and does not maximally serve the public interest, then some of the piracy is perfectly okay and in fact should be legalized, to reduce copyright down, closer to where it is ideal again. More copyright is not a good thing; in fact, it's generally worse than less.

But it would be quite unlikely for me to support no copyright at all, which is basically what you're accusing me of. I wouldn't say I never would, but the situation that would give rise to that is pretty improbable.

Besides, the GPL is essentially a form of DRM (digital rights management).

No, the GPL is basically a contract. It doesn't interfere with the underlying law, in the way that DRM invariably does. For example, it is possible to reject the GPL, and then use portions of GPL'ed code pursuant to fair use, and still be acting lawfully. Whereas, if a work is DRM'ed, then it is going to interfere with fair uses just as much as with unlawful ones, because it is a simple, stupid restriction that cannot tell the difference.

Re:Waste of Time

[cortana]

If you live in a country when it is illegal to watch your own damn DVDs then you have problems!

(insert anne rand quotation about the imposibility of governing an honest man)

Re:Not the last Beta

[voice_of_all_reason]

I honestly don't get this whole "release testing versions to the world" idea.

As long as this doesn't contain any bugs you can't deal with, can't your everyday non-pirate windows fan just download this version and keep it after vista comes out in stores? What's stopping them? It stops functioning after a certain time? It doesn't allow windows updates? Heck, those have got to be pretty persuasive arguements for saving a hundred bucks or two.

Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning

[rritterson]

I agree with the assessment that Microsoft's labeling of RC's is a bit silly.

But "If they are fixing bugs.... perhaps what they released was a beta" takes it a little too far. If they didn't fix any bugs, it would be simply a Release, not a Candidate.

Re:Not the last Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

It stops functioning after a certain time?

This is correct. It works until mid 2007.

I honestly don't get this whole "release testing versions to the world" idea.

There's a sub sandwich shop here that gives away free sandwich coupons every couple of months-- use as many as you want as often as you want. If you get addicted, you'll end up being their customer when it's no longer free.

Re:Not the last Beta

[nickheart]

Well yeah, they have to release a candidate with the new startup chime.

Perfect Timing

[JerkyBoy]

Nice how this follows on the heels of the previous story appropriately titled, "Any Prospect of Serenity Sequel Quashed." I'm _finally_ happy with the stability of Windows XP, and they want to go start the whole patch circus over again. I'm holding onto my copy of Windows XP until they pry it from my computer with a screwdriver.

Re:Can you beat a dead horse anymore???

[Waffle Iron]

No, RC is supposed to mean "We expect that this exact disk image will be the RTM unless the next round of testing finds a showstopper bug". Otherwise it wouldn't be a "candidate for release".

There isn't a single person on this planet, either inside or outside of Microsoft, who expected that Vista "RC1" had even an inkling of a chance of being the actual RTM image. That makes it just another beta release, nothing more, nothing less.

Perhaps this is asking for too much...

[GFree]

... but is there anyone on Slashdot who is NOT an evangelical geek who's tried one of the Vista RCs and has something useful to say about it? This joking/FUD is getting tiring.

For once I'd like to see an opinion from someone who tried Vista without any biases.

Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning

[jlarocco]

If they don't fix bugs between RC's then what, pray tell, are they supposed to be doing? Just printing the same discs over again with RC2 instead of RC1? BTW smart guy, they don't add features after RC1.

It's an RC. Release Candidate. By traditional labeling, a release candidate is a possible release. You release the RC, and in a few days/weeks/months, if no "major" bugs are found, you release it without change. Anyone who tried RC1 can tell you that it was most certainly NOT ready to release without change.

Right about now a million MS fanboys are screaming "But people found bugs, so they needed to fix them and make a new RC." But some of the bugs that were "found" and features that were missing were so glaring and obvious, there's no possible way MS expected it to be an actual release. I hate MS as much as the next guy, but they're simply not dumb enough to think RC1 could have been the real release. In the entire rest of the computing world, that's called a "beta." Like it or not, that's just the way it is.

Opera, for example, uses their final release candidate as the final release. Just check out their weekly builds. September 18 was RC1, September 19 was RC2 (with a single bug fix), and on September 21 RC2 was released as 9.02. Same build number and everything. That's how it's supposed to be.

Give it a try before you trash it

[agressiv]

While I'm sure I'll get some fairly smart-ass responses to this post, most of you trashing Vista probably haven't even touched it. Sure, some of the comments are funny, but most of its mindless trolling. Its more of contest for a "+1 Funny" than anything else.

For those of you who have tried it (at least since RC1, everything before that was junk), and don't like it, then its not for you. Stick with whatever you have and move along. Your decision to not purchase Microsoft software will send a message.

For those of you haven't, give RC2 a try, its free - at least for about 8-9 months or whatever. You can then judge all its flaws and gasp, maybe even give feedback to Microsoft so that maybe they can do something about it. Just make sure you are constructive rather than "get rid of DRM" which probably won't accomplish much of anything.

agressiv

Re:Can you beat a dead horse anymore???

[Waffle Iron]

You dont have the same guarantee with a Beta .... there could be drastic changes to the underlying mechanisms and APIs.

It doesn't matter how Microsoft defines "beta". The real definition of beta is that the software is feature complete and is in the final stages of testing (but not yet a possible RTM like RC really means). If drastic changes to the underlying mechanism and APIs are still possible, the software is still alpha, or more likely, it's not even out of the design phase yet.

By buying into these bogus definitions, you've been hoodwinked by Microsoft's marketing department into paying good money for unfinished goods.

Re:bloated software

[Anonymous Coward]

baaahh.... that's not that surprising that they don't understand completely... you reckon many people fully understand the linux kernel?.. vista (or nt,2000,xp) are massive ('distributed') projects!