Slashdot Mirror
FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign
FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."
...they included some of these shortcomings. I was expecting a good read, which RMS is usually keen to offer.
Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!! After all, the FSF already hates Microsoft with a passion, and this is just another axe to grind here. I doubt they actually have even seen Vista or used it to know what exactly it is.
Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.
Be careful what you wish for, Moglen, Stallman et.al. You just might get it.
Duh...
-b.
Wow...
No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.
While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.
Where's the "here is how you do that in Linux" part of the movement?
It's all well and good to say that Vista is a "don't upgrade" for the next twelve months -- but there are improvements in it, some of which rise to the level of intuition, and right now there's no Free way to get those improvements.
Joe Vista user reading that explanation is going to quit half way through wondering wtf this lunatic is babbling about and probably thinking the author must have sadly neglected as a child to be so angry about something that works fine for Joe at home.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I hate negative marketing.
All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.
Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.
How about a GoodLinux or something campaign as well?
(I didn't read the article)
...plenty of ignorant MSFT-aplogists' bitching about how the "zealots" are going "mad" about "Windows being teh suxx" and all after this campaign has been announced, but, please, care to tell me where the FSF fails to tell the truth with such nifty things as "signed drivers only", "protected audio path" an the like coming after consumers, which are being promised an overall richer and safer experience in casual computing, but are being entirely stripped of their fair use rights by these "added features" instead?
Vista - it's a trap thing, really. Break out as long as you can.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
While we all may know and accept this, i wish the luck getting this data to the masses. I am not saying they shouldnt try, but i do feel that its a lost cause and you really cant stop the train.
At least we can still jump off at the next stop.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Proprietary" does not mean what you seem to think it means...
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
This kind of overhyped FUD campaign just makes the FSF look like a bunch of nutty hippies. People don't give a shit about losing a little bit of control over their PC. The care about features. So unless someone can offer a competitive OS that offers the features (not just technical features) that users want and on top of that offer more control over one's PC they're not going to care.
Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!
Really. :) I think the message that the site wish to send is good - don't use Vista since it limits your freedoms. OK for me. I can take care of my freedoms on my own no problem.
But the point I am making is the site is crappy. The site is ugly. It consists of bunch of long TEXTS (like anybody likes to read long texts). It should communicate better with some pictorials and clear picture of what Vista will not allow you to do.
I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.
RMS is the definition of a modern politician. His campaigns are "XXX IS TRASH BECAUSE IT RAPES YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS AND KICKS YOUR DOG AND TOUCHES YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER DON'T EVER TOUCH XXX BECAUSE IT WILL CHAIN YOU TO YOUR CHAIR AND GLUE YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU GIVE YOUR SOUL TO THE BIG GIANT HEAD!!!!!!!111111111" I'm sick and tired of him, and his GPL (LGPL is a great general purpose license), and his bullshit. The only time he says something nice is when XXX becomes GPL XXX; if you want free marketing, start your new product closed source and get RMS to shriek at you, then open source it so he gives you tons of free positive press for 5 weeks.
Why can't we have someone out to show how great Open Source Software is? Talk about what Ubuntu Linux offers, what RedHat and Novel can do for you, what people like about Debian and Gentoo enough to make them use those over more sophisticated derivatives (like Ubuntu), and the various applications. Don't come out here spewing about how everything else is crap, because ONLY the fanatics care; anyone else either wishes you weren't representing them, doesn't care because they're already using OSS and never actually listen to you talk, or uses something else and doesn't quite get why you're such a nutball over this "DRM" and "proprietary freedom restrictions" crap.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I'm not a dedicated MicroSoft hater, but I do miss the days when I gave my computer "commands" not "suggestions". Nothing is quite so aggrivating as hidden directories and being told that I cannot delete something.
We are all just people.
see topic
Its so bad.
God spoke to me.
Is the FSF seriously backing a "distro" that's just Ubuntu with the logos and useful software taken out and calling it gNewSense (which sounds a /lot/ like gNuisance)? One that requires 35GB of HD space to create and install? Yes, this is a great way to get people to avoid Vista!
I'm not trolling... It is seriously unfortunate that they do not make more realistic recommendations that people might actually consider.
I think that depends on whether or not the claims the FSF is making are true. FUD is caused by the unknown. So if the arguments presented by the FSF are unsubstantiated or nebulous, then I would agree with you.
On the other hand, if they present a clear description of what Vista does and does not do, it seems to me they are only providing people with the information they need to make an informed choice. Given the benefits of a new upgrade cycle to Microsoft and much of the computer industry, negative information is hardly likely to be broadcast widely.
What is Linux without GNU! It's GNU/Linux/GNU, you insensitive clod!
- St. Ignucious (aka RMS)
According to the article, They mention the Treacherous Computing nature of the OS and that the Genuine checks cause problems with upgrades. Though more details would be helpful.
Eventually MS and others pushing [Un]Trusted Computing and Digital Restrictions Management will find out that the strangle grip is not the best way to hold and attract costumers.
I like linux and prefer it over windows. And i'm not a microsoft fan either. but i must say that i don't like the sound of this particular FSF project. if you have a product (Linux) you should spend your time promoting it and enhancing it. not trying to degrade you'r competitors product (no matter how truthful it might be).
I find the user experience on all these platforms to be greatly wanting! In addition, all user software I have seen on these platforms still sucks big time!
With each new update, M$ is going to continue to release more and more restrictions in their OS,
to the point that before users know it, they end up wrapped in a virtual straightjacket.
Of course, if they tried to do it all at once there would be a huge outcry, but add it in
S__L__O__W__L__Y.........
It just doesn't always do what you want it to do. For us, this is a good thing(tm).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
It's not FUD if it's factual.
Now, whether the FSF can hold to the facts, I have more faith in them in that regard than Microsoft.
Although I don't like the Microsoft company for the way they do business I think the FSF is portraying itself like a dumbass here. Sure, you can now gloat about how Windows has several new exploits. I seem to recall the Linux kernel, as well as several other open source projects, to suffer from just the same thing.
But most of all... Please, please, please, don't start dissing other products when you can't do much better yourself. I can still run my old Doom DOS executable in Windows Vista. I can't run SquidGuard (MUCH newer than Doom) on a current Linux distribution because certain components changed in such a way that they're not backwards compatible. Yes, I can hear people shout now: I can download the components and install them besides the current ones so that it will run after all.
Now care to sum up all the software which CAN'T be run this way?
FSF has its place and so does Vista. Its really showing a bad taste if one of them starts cricizing the other as if it is so much better. It isn't. And yes, for the record: I can also come up with plenty of reasons why Vista sucks when compared to FSF "products", but thats not the topic here.
I can't shake the feeling that it's not appropriate for a political organization to make web pages about the failings of it's opponents. It's lame when candidates for Prime Minister take out TV ad campaigns against the opposition and it's equally lame when the FSF does things like this. Besides, it's not like anyone except linux users will ever know it exists.
How do you kill that which has no life?
So don't force what doesn't come naturally. You'll be much happier if you stick to an OS that suits your personality. And you'll be doing the rest of us a favor, too; you leave Macs to Mac users, and we'll leave beige to you
Good Lord... the history of Apple is painted in beige.
As for the rest of your pointless post, well... you're clearly one of those guys that actually believes those Apple/Mac guys represent the current state of technology. It's probably not even possible to educate you out of your opinion.
Okay, actually visiting the site on Vista (RTM release), and the site wants to run MSXML 5.0? Why? I mean, if you are doing a site on how MS stuff sucks, maybe you should have a webpage that doesn't use any of it? Just an idea.
Doesn't this joker realize that hating microsoft is such a 90s thing to do?
Here in the 00s we hate on google instead.
Has he used the RC? I'm finding it a huge upgrade on just about every front. A welcome improvement that will increase my productivity. Of course I'm going to need to upgrade my system to get the most out of it, but I was planning on doing that in February anyway.
This is nothing more than a giant pile of FUD. Accountability in drivers is a huge upgrade, not some soul sucking attempt to steal your humanity. Besides... since when did 'freedom' apply to our computers and operating systems. What's next? My office chair needs the freedom to vote? If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do, I don't care if Stalin programmed it and titled it "3D Studio Max for the advancement of the Social Utopia and down fall of Democracy." It works it works. Vista works very well. Windows XP hasn't let me down yet, and I'm looking forward to some new glitz and sparkle.
My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission. but wait... my Operating System... THAT's a holy grail of democracy and freedom. I use almost 0 Open Source software day in and day out, because in my field, it's all worthless except for linux. Gimp? Pfff... yeah why don't I just use MS Paint?
If the author drives an open source car, lives in an open source house, uses only open source hardware, only eats food from freely available recipes and sleeps on a mattress with a freely available design I'll give a shit.
"""
the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does
"""
So, who's opinion is this? B/c I know that my parents and any "normal" person that I've run into couldn't care less about ultimate control over there computer aside from being able to install M$ Word, etc and run a few games on it like MahJong. Since I do believe that Vista will allow this, I really don't think that any other freedom that might be limited will even be noticed.
So, how important is this to the average user?
On the flip side, those that need and/or want to have total control over what there computer does are probably already running a Linux/BSD/etc. That or they know how to bend windows to meet there needs.
All this campaign will do is further confuse an already very confusing issue for the average user.
That's right. The best way to attract costumers is with fun costume parties around the end of October and during Mardi Gras.
Actually, the campaign's agenda is to promote software freedom. Microsoft Windows doesn't do that, regardless of version. That OS is nothing but non-free software. gNewSense GNU/Linux does that because that OS is nothing but free software.
Also they wouldn't call "Linux" an OS when it's a kernel, denying themselves credit for their own OS project called GNU.
Digital Citizen
honestly it doesnt matter how good or bad vista is. you HAVE to buy it with a new PC there is no alternative unless you switch to a Mac. You could buy a new laptop and install linux and MS doesnt care because you paid for and bought vista.
In a nutshell we all know vista is monkey poo. We all also know it will be on every desktop in 2 years.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I am sympathetic to the FSF's objectives here, but judging by the reaction here on Slashdot this isn't the way to go about it. It's pretty clear what the benefits of a well-funded PR machine are. If they'd done a couple of focus groups or surveys, this might have been shut down pretty quickly, or modified so it didn't irritate people so much. But I doubt they can afford to do that.
On the other hand, maybe the Slashdot crowd is a special case. We have advocates of free software, for whom software freedom is a political issue. We also have technical pragmatists who argue that software should be chosen solely on its technical merit and politics has no place (which is, of course, a political position). We see this campaign in political terms. Joe consumer, on the other hand, with no attachment one way or the other, may simple see this as new and potentially useful information.
Regardless, it seems to me that alienating your natural supporters is not a good approach unless there's the potential for significant gains. I guess have to see what happens.
Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software.
Forget Linux, I'm waiting for GNU/HURD. Any day now...
No, because it's not fear, we're all certain of what Vista will include (many have already seen versions of it, including the version that will be distributed to millions of users), and therefore there's no doubt as to what Microsoft Windows Vista will do to a user's software freedom.
You talk about Microsoft and the FSF as if they're equivalent yet they're not. One has a history of locking-in users to software they can't run, inspect, share, or modify anytime they want for any reason. The other promotes those very freedoms.
What you really don't like is that talk of software freedom reframes the debate away from what Microsoft can compete on. Microsoft, despite having a budget so many orders of magnitude greater than the FSF, chooses not to deliver software freedom to its users. Therefore, advocates for software freedom reject what Microsoft distributes and they warn others of what's in store should they choose to use non-free OSes including Microsoft Windows Vista.
Digital Citizen
4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.
This is not Vista-specific, same thing happened in e.g. Windows 2000. Or Windows 95. Or other significant upgrades. Trust me, this will become less of an issue or "bad thing" in 2007, and then, once again, competing operating systems are likely to be worse off in the driver area. Unfortunately. The most common OS developer tend to get the best drivers because driver developers likes making profit from supporting the most common operating systems.
And of course MS made most built-in drivers. They always do in the shipping versions of large OS upgrades. If third party devs aren't done in time, MS will ship reduced functionality to give the user at least something to work with until the real driver is done. NVIDIA, Creative Labs and more are currently developing more complete Vista drivers. You can even read up on this on their sites.
6. Memory
Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.
1 GB works here on my test install. I can run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007, Guild Wars.
Can they be more precise about "real-world needs"? Working at rendering industry buildings in 3D Studio?
8. Activation
The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
That's why there are KMS servers to reduce it to only one server connecting to MS every half a year per company with 25+ installs, i.e. "mass deployments".
9. Storage Space
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Is 10 GB making up a large part of current hard drives? I see similar sizes in competing operating systems.
10. Backup
See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
See above.
11. Urgency
Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
Was suddenly security looking like hell in Windows 9x and XP non-issues? Interesting how they're only issues when it's suitable to complain about them, otherwise not. Vista may still have its share of these issues, but it's way too early to say there are no must-have reasons behind Vista compared to earlier Windows releases. There may not be in case of trouble, but there may also be big ones. They should not make this judgment at this time as it's premature.
12. Learning Curve
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
Did this stop KDE's first release? Gnome's? Windows 3.0? Windows 95?
Do this author think Windows XP's UI therefore is excellent?
What is the problem exactly, or is the author only stating the blindingly obvious?
13. Cost
Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
Yes, moving to new OS's tend to cost a lot. That's why we're still running even Windows 2000 at places.
And again, I'm not sure of what hardware upgrades they're talking of.
Memory = see above, graphics cards = similar to in XP if you don't need the Aero eye candy which I can't see too many companies really hungering for.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
However, note how they conveniently fail to compare to other operating systems, Microsoft's or others.
I'm sure I can find hardware where a full install of Mandriva will take "hours" on as well.
On my 4 year old hardware, Vista install took ~25 mins.
21. 50 Million Lines Of Code
Even with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vis
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"There is also no doubt - you click "I agree" and the rights are gone... "
Which contradicts the other bit of slashdot "legal" advice. EULA's aren't valid.
I dunno, for me the most important thing about owning a computer is productivity - to be able to do the tasks I want to do. I could migrate to a non-proprietary system, but I would not benefit if it had fewer applications that I find useful. I can't write my own high-level applications. Nor do the Open Source and Free alternatives meet my needs yet. Of course, control is nice, but my proprietary OS (MacOS) gives me more control than I actually use, in addition to great applications. If it stopped me from working with those apps, or locked up the media I used, then it would be an issue.
An analogy might be automatic transmission on a car, or electronic systems in a car. It gives less control and serviceability - but most users find the benefits of automatic transmission and electronics to be worth it. I could buy an old Chevy that I could fix myself - but then I would suffer many drawbacks in actually using the vehicle. Or games consoles - they are not as customizable as a PC system, but most people just want to play games, and a console makes this goal a lot easier to accomplish.
It's rather annoying when people assume what the most important thing is to me.
... and then they built the supercollider.
From your attitude and misrepresentation of RMS, I'm guessing you weren't working in the computer industry during the mid 1980s. You may not have even been born yet at that time. Regardless, most of us had the same attitude that you currently have.
There we were, using Ultrix, System III, Xenix, HP-UX, SunOS, and a whole host of other proprietary UNIX systems. Then RMS came along, and started the FSF and the GNU project. Many of us thought he was a fool, spouting endless crap, and that his efforts wouldn't produce anything worthwhile.
Holy shit, look how wrong we were. I mean, we weren't just wrong. We were completely fucking wrong. Wrong to the point of commercial UNIX being nearly dead today, mainly replaced by Linux and the BSDs, running large amounts of GNU software. Even on the few remaining commercial UNIX systems (Solaris, HP-UX and AIX), many of us prefer to install the GNU utilities as they're far superior to the utilities from the vendor.
He proved us wrong. He was a visionary. Most of us who were around at the beginning of the FSF now freely admit how wrong we were, and how well he understood the future of computing. Were it not for his visionary efforts, we'd likely not be anywhere near as well off as we are today. Systems like Linux are a pleasure to use, mainly because of the excellent quality of the GNU software. The licensing schemes he helped create have proven extremely valuable, enabling the entire open source movement to flourish.
You know what, he'll be right about Vista, too. Maybe some of us, like yourself, don't realize this yet, but with time you will. Maybe in fifteen years you'll be writing a post similar to this one to some young person who wasn't around to experience the doubt around RMS, and just how wrong the doubters were.
I must of entered the twilight zone..
I never thought I'd see so many rabid slashdotters ATTACKING the FSF and DEFENDING Microsoft.
It's the beginning of the end!!!
This page says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:
The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control? If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.
The site strike me as poorly executed to the point of silliness.
It need a better looking website and having convince contents. It is going to be very difficult to convince people to care about dumping MS cruft, and the contents do not help either.
The anti-FSF is high right now. But to FSF, VISTA is the enemy as everything properitary softwares are enemies. Don't be surprise that FSF is anti-vista or even anti-Microsoft. Microsoft just happen to be the no. 1 public enemy to FSF.
Anybody who is using proprietary softwares will at some point be urged by the FSF not to use it, and instead use Free softwares. Do not forget FSF's contributions, or there are no Free software movement, or even the Open Source movement.
Of course, I don't speak for the FSF. I do strongly agree with the FSF's philosophy.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-RMS
Yeah, I invite my friends over to show off how much control I have over it.
this is just asinine. The most important aspect of ME owning and using a computer is that it does something useful for me. (like letting me post on slashdot or look at porn) If I was interested in control, I would use a pencil and paper.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I wonder what's taking the lawsuits so long...
All vendors are pushing ("recommending") windows because they're punished if they don't.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
That website is pretty low on content and for the heck of it I read the links on the right as well. The 25 shortcomings one is pretty ludicrous. You should read it.
.doc files but I don't use them so much anymore.
Most home users don't give a shit about SMB2. Most users are going to get Vista with new hardware, so their needing new hardware point is moot and really is it a shortcoming of Vista that it won't run on old hardware or is it a shortcoming of the hardware. The 2 gigs of ram to run Vista is bollocks - these guys havent even booted upto the RCs have they. He complains about a lack of driver support from the hardware manufacturer - how can you spin a hardware manufacturers problem into a shortcoming of vista?
They talk about lack of compatibility with AV products but do fail to mention a lot of things M$ is doing better with security. He actually complains that there is a learning curve with Vista - that its different enough than XP that users and technicians will need retraining - I've tried it - I don't need retraining. And whats the alternative - switch to linux - I run Debian in lab and Zenwalk at home and have run a whole bunch of other distros and I can assure you that any users that switch will need retraining there too.
By the time he gets to 20 he isn't he making grammatical sentences and he actually claims that theres bound to be bugs in 50 million lines of code and a five year beta test period - I'd agree but it isn't because theres 50 million lines of code because dear lod Linux also has a lot of lines of code. THis also sounds little better than SCO claiming well theres millions of lines of code in linux - some of it is bound to be ours.
I'm not going to go on bashing the article - its pretty obvious its biased and badly written in about 15 mins and he isn't even trying. The most valid point for me is going to be the inability of wordpad to open
Heres my list of things that are Bad with Vista
1) DRM - especially the Hollywood mandated HDCP and its Protected Video Path crap. The minute they roll this out you will see studios using HDCP because they can and if you don't have a brand spanking new monitor then there is a nice little ICT to drop your content straight back down to 480p and good riddance - now if I just bought HD content and have hardware perfectly capable of running it without needing an upgrade except to satisfy the Hollywood moguls then I damned well expect it to run and don't like being shafted. Even if movie studios do decide not to enforce ICT until 2012 (bollocks they will do it in a couple of years because they can)
2) UAC - this is a great idea in principle but the last I checked in implementation it was too goddamn annoying and I'm sure most people will just turn it off.
I used to have an issue with the limited license transfers but they've taken care of that one (not if you get your Vista from an OEM in which case you get what you paid for imho) I had no driver issues. If I did I don't think I'd be blaming MS and rather my shitty hardware manufacturer.
Thats it. Thats my list of woes with Vista. Now I'm not going to add my list of things that are bad with MS....
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
Purely speculative.
More guesswork.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
WHAT THE FUCK? It's an overall regression when I go to install some software to find that I've got to spend half a day downloading updated (or in some cases older) libraries to have along side the existing versions which different software needs then fuck about with a .config file I altered in the first place to get my computer working the way I wanted to because this new program doesn't quite like the way I've decided I want to have control over my computer.
Sound familiar? It should. Welcome to Linux in 2006. Still having these backwards issues long after Windows did away with them a decade ago.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
No registration required either,
e 6ce37920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&rf=bm
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=d14603c1e23
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The answer in the consumer market will be "Hell, Yes." No one there wants to deal with the internals of the machine on anything but the most superficial level.
The iTunes Music Store?
(okay, that was actually four words...)
How often do you upgrade the engine in your car?
That's about what upgrading an OS is to most people. Your OS comes with your computer. When you get a new computer, it comes with it's own OS, probably pretty close to the one you had last time, or a newer version.
That's what MS is up against, and why Vista may be very slow in rolling out.
And while "freedom" is nice to talk about, a computer program cannot take away your freedoms. If you didn't have the computer at all, you'd be have fewer options, and be less free. Some computers and software may give you more options and abilities than others, but none take things away from you (at least in the context we're discussing).
"4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista. "
Right, like linux and bsd have tons of drivers provided by the hardware manufacturers.
That leaves a question:
If a human user can only get up to "high," who can get the privileges of "system" or "trusted installer"?
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
While informing the public about the shortcomings of Vista is important, it won't actually sway the public. Also in the end this campaign will reach the ears of people who already know what they are preaching. IMO I think the time and money put into this could be better used promoting free operating systems to the public. Many people say that its pointless because the general public won't switch without wide spread support from companies, but the larger the user base, the more support there will be. We need to get common computer users to recognize that there are free alternates to Windows and as long as we have small projects like this we won't get anywhere and you can spread all the praise you want but without unification you can only get so far.
I don't know exactly where Microsoft is going with the Novell agreement but I say we turn that around on them and tell the world that Microsoft approves of Linux. If the deal is going to stay in place we might as well get the most out of it. Also, we need to promote the advances Linux has made over Windows such as the beautiful AIGLX and easy Synaptic.
Sometimes here on Slashdot we forget that everyone doesn't know about the things we know about. We need to rally together not to shoot down Microsoft but build up the project that so many of us work on mold.
LostHobo.com
Soup Kitchen of the Internet
The most valid point for me is going to be the inability of wordpad to open .doc files but I don't use them so much anymore.
.doc viewer that works well.
a milyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displa ylang=en
"Evil" MS has a free
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?f
actually, the most important thing about my computer is that it does what i ask it to. satisfying that requirement depends on what i ask, and what i deem as a passable attempt at "does".
There are not too many things i do on my main desktop at home:
- read email
- post to slashdot
- view RSS feeds / general websurfing
- listen to free&clear mp3s
- watch anime
- instant messaging
- dabble with visual studio
I have been doing all of these things on Vista without difficulty. Whatever it allegedly doesn't let me do - I can tell you that I'm not missing it.
Freedom in a theoretical sense _is_ important. I'm glad that the FSF and others are making software that respects my freedoms. But when I get home from work, I don't always have the energy to be a freedom fighter. Sometimes I just want to read about old cars or watch this weeks episode of "Death Note" or whatever. Vista doesn't make that any worse - in fact, it makes it a bit better (mostly via the per-app volume sliders, my #1 favorite feature)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
An issue that has received little to no press is Vista's environmental impact. If Microsoft succeeds in convincing users to upgrade to powerful graphics cards to handle its new Aero user interface, power consumption will dramatically increase on hundreds of millions of computers around the planet.
It is ironic that the Gates foundation has been performing such good works in Africa while at the same time, Microsoft is on the verge of releasing a disastrous contribution to global warming.
Can you say this again a little louder? Maybe someone at Microsoft will hear it.. They've got the promoting part down pat... and they have what they call "enhancements"... but that whole "not trying to degrade competitors" thing they seem to be missing.
chown -R us
So, in other words, GNU should stoop to Microsoft's level?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.
Yeah, people speaking out against wrongdoing is so overrated.
RMS is the definition of a modern politician.
And yeah, modern politicians are so notorious for sticking to their principles and speaking frankly.
It's easy to see the crap, but we need not look to RMS for it.
But I'm not paying $200 for my Gmail account, and Google isn't deleting my mail without permission.
Actually, his e-mail is right there in the post header, and it's a Yahoo address.
Maybe he's a Yahoo sysadmin where only he has access to his account, and no other does.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Crap! no mod points
Plain and simple.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Propaganda? And ineffective propaganda at that.
Please, if you're going to give, donate your time and/or money to projects that you use and like.
This whole software activism thing is a huge waste of resources.
You want to fight the power? Build alternative software which doesn't suck.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Also, #18:
Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.
And, #25:
Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open
#8:
I suppose the author of the article missed the article on their own website about key management servers, and also on the Microsoft support website, which states:
Last but not least, #6:
No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.
"Seems to me people are flocking to be 'a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control'."
Just because there are not free alternatives for everything, yet, or that some people will choose to give up their freedoms for extra features does NOT mean that the FSF fighting for freedom or trying to inform people isn't a worthy cause.
So let the other people 'flock' towards systems where others are in control, if they do not put a premium on their freedom then that is their choice - the best anyone can do is try to inform people of the short comings of non-free software, and the alternatives, which is exactly what BadVista is doing.
Upton Sinclair long ago figured out how cash is converted into opinions:
"It is hard to make a man understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
In particular, the following explains the pro-Microsoft comments we are seeing on Slashdot: Microsoft Shilling and Astroturfing
This is probably going to be a massive "M$ IS TEH SUX" and "Windoze crashes every five minutes, use Linux instead" religious FUD campaign, except that now it will be officially sanctioned by the FSF.
Silly Buggi, the FSF is tells you what they are doing - they are going to carefully outline how Vista restricts user freedom and put alternatives in their hands. Spreading freedom has always been their core mission. The poor performance of Vista has been adequately covered by the mainstream press, but they will soon forget what they said when M$ starts passing out advertisement money.
Be careful what you wish for, Moglen, Stallman et.al. You just might get it.
What, like people using free software? I'm sure they would be thrilled. You have claimed to live in Baton Rouge, Buggi old troll, why don't you stop by the CCCC Linux Desktop SIG and see it all working? Bring a box and we'll set you up - it's an install fest. I'm sure you will be happy with the improved performance of your hardware.
Do you still have bad things to say about Bruce Perens? You can bring that too, but no one will know what you are talking about.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control?
Actually, yes. A lot of people don't realize you can become financially a lot better off by renting a place instead of buying. Before you rip me a new one, I'll admit there are a number of variables that affect the calculation, and non-monetary considerations, so I agree that claim doesnt hold for everyone. However, too many people assume that if you can afford the mortgage payments and can get someone to lend to you, buying is a no-brainer. They act like renting is "throwing away money". But when you buy, you also throw money away -- it's just called "interest" and "property taxes" instead of "rent". This site has a sample calculation for San Francisco:
Renting:
Rent: $1,800
Monthly Loss: $1,800
Buying:
Property Tax: $486 ($729 per month at 1.25% before deduction, $486 lost after deduction.)
Interest: $2,333 ($3500 per month at 6% before deduction, $2333 lost after deduction.)
Other Costs: $450 (Insurance, maintenance, long commute, etc.)
Principal loss: $1,667 (Modest 3% yearly loss on $700,000. Reality will be much worse.)
Monthly Loss: $4,936
Even if you strike the principle loss, that's still worse. And of course, the monthly expense doesn't cover the mortgage payment going to principle, which, while nominally "coming right back to you" is locked up in a highly illiquid asset that can only be draw on at sale or by borrowing against it at interest. (Or transaction costs.) If you rent and invest the savings in a well-diversified portfolio (e.g. covering large caps, small caps, foreign, and bonds in proportions appropriate for your age), taking advantage of the various tax-advantaged vehicles (Roth, 401k), you can be much better off financially. (Again, *can*. I'm not saying this is right for everyone, just pointing out the considerations.)
I know, this has absolutely nothing to do with Windows. I just wanted to dispel the notion of renters as being necessarily exploited.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Why does any OS need roughly 10 GB for its own files?
Revive the Constitution.
Since it's a campaign against Microsoft and, at its core, against "Treacherous Computing", why doesn't the FSF team up with the EFF for something like that? IANAL, but 2 groups are better than one.
What are you waiting for?
It exists. It works.
The driver support and performance arn't super, but it is a real working system.
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
We all should be very grateful about these guys calling a pig in lipstick exactly what it is.
I've been trying to tell everyone, for some time, that Microsoft is playing a game where they have been testing the waters on increased privacy violation and spying.
Honestly, the WGN portion of the Windows Genuine Advantage was just that. It was a trial on XP to see how people would be reacting if they implemented it in Vista. I don't think for a moment they ever had the intent of removing anything from it if we all created a huge uproar. I do think they were trying to see how big that uproar could become.
Microsoft has this incredibly incorrect belief that they hold a special place in the software arena. They have to feel they have all this right to do thing that no other software company would try--particularly pertaining to our privacy. It is pretty sickening to see Microsoft, month after month, make out like Windows the OS is special and thus excluded from being handled in a manner that does not invade upon the users. You really think any other software company would attempt to spy on you the way Microsoft has.
I guarantee you that Microsoft has done much more and hidden much more into the OS that people don't know about. I'd be confident to say that they have worked with the Department of Homeland Security to put hidden features to spy on what everyone is doing. I don't doubt it for a minute. It isn't just that the DHS warned everyone to upgrade to SP2 for their own good. They have to have worked with Microsoft in a covert way to implement features that would only work if the majority of people used SP2. To this I would also say that they are giving Microsoft special dispensation for doing this.
I know that sounds conspiratorial. I am not one to be sucked into anything conspiratorial, but this just makes sense. They tested the activation process to keep people from finding out how to break it. If they could implement that in a hidden covert way they could add any number of features to it which we would not be privy to.
It just bothers the hell out of me that the DHS told everyone to upgrade to SP2. What, are they going to be telling everyone to upgrade to Vista? If it is just a matter of really holding onto our security and protecting us then they'd not feel it is inappropriate to tell everyone to upgrade to Vista. why did they not tell everyone using OSX or Linux to implement their security patches?
Anyway, there are features that Microsoft has put in that whittle away at our rights to own and operate our computers. Nothing positive can come from them being so invasive. It is about time someone spoke up and brought to light those things that Microsoft is implementing in Vista.
Vista has always been a pig with lipstick. There's no compelling reason to upgrade and every reason to stay back. There's no reason to not implement DX10 in XP except to extort you to buy Vista. Something's wrong with the whole Vista picture.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I'm confused as to what the *point* of HURD is. I understand the historic legacy of it- it was originally supposed to be the free kernel and all that- but once Torvalds made Linux and GNU latched on to that, why not simply abandon HURD and unify under one free OS (ignoring BSD for a moment here) instead of wasting effort on HURD?
Is it simply the need to not leave the project unfinished, or is there an actual advantage that could be gained by using HURD over Linux?
Care about privacy? Read this!
Just looking at the article makes the organization behind BadVista laughable and completely immature. There are quite a number of significant problems with Windows Vista, yet the site seems to make the most mention of problems that, as said before, are completely speculative and misconstrued.
I will disclaim here that I have no problems with GNU/Linux Operating System. I have used several distributions in the past, but despite its problems, I think it is a decent OS. With that said and the fact that the FSF is behind this, I think that the group should have thought of how many of their 'not-have' reasons apply to their favorite OS as well:
Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.Has anyone tried to access SMB1 shares on Fedora Core 5 or 6? It's horror! I could go on and on, but it just shows that this is opinion.
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.Uhmm...maybe it's because it hasn't been publicly released yet? Counterexample: ATI just updated their drivers four days ago as their last preparation for RTM release. And this begs the question: where are the Linux drivers, FSF? I would love to get my external 5.1 surround sound card working sometime before I graduate (3 years from today)...
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.Has this guy tried to install a full Linux install. NO, I'm talking about the install that actually gives you everything. That's well over 10 GB.
The funniest one on that list to me was:
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.Obviously, FSF or whoever did not really use Vista before making bland assertions like this. Vista may have lots of GUI improvements, but a lot of knowledge about XP's GUI can still be applied here. It took me about 5 minutes to get used to Vista, and I'm sure a lot of users won't take much longer than that. And there are Linux professionals and experts who only know a fraction of the operating system; the learning curve is Mt. Everest steep.
There are a whole lot more than can be made fun of, but it just comes to show that organizations such as these give themselves a bad name by doing things like these. Bad mouth Vista all you want, but at least be factual about it...
To me, my computer is just a tool. As such I want it to get what I want done with a minimum of fuss. OSS solutions don't do that for me. I'm not willing to compramise my tool for some ideals. A computer isn't a quest for me, it's a means to an end. Also a big problem I find is that the peopel screaming about DRM and control don't understand what they are talking about. I don't care about the DRM in Vista if it doesn't mess with what I want to do. Ok, so I can't watch HDDVDs unless I want to play ball with their DRM. Fair enough, but that's true in Linux as well except since there's no way to play ball there's just no way to watch. I think I'll just ignore them and keep using the DVDs I have.
It's not like Vista had an OS wide DRM that is some evil thing lurking below the surface that prevents you form doing random things. All it's got is support for media DRM. Ok, don't care, I don't buy any of that. What I do continues to work fine, and that's all that matters. I'm also not prevented from switching, should something change. If I decide that Vista does something that does make it unworkable, I can get rid of it and install Linux, it doesn't permanently make my system Vista only.
Ultimately, I'll make my OS choice based off of which OS does the post of what I want, for the least hassle. Right now, it's Windows by a huge margin. I refuse to deliberately cripple my computing experience for flimsy ideological reasons.
This discussion seems to be separating into predictable groups. One problem is that there is a profound philosophy discussion behind all this, with lots of psychology on top.
However you rate their presentation, at its best the FSF is trying to carve out a world with restriction-free software. Because of the raw economics, some of the fancier features/programs are not yet available in Linux. But Linux has grown in awareness, if not as much in full usage. Ask an ad company: awareness is the first stage, to precede use. People "receive exposure", then think about it, check with friends, read up, etc.
Large swaths of the Pro-Microsoft posts here run: "Give me my Functionality, and I'll live with some social nuisance intangibles". Here's two areas to ponder.
Now Vs. Trend.
Vista is quite clearly more restrictive compared to prior OS's in terms of user flexibility. The benchmark of comparison for MS these days is the pair of Win2000/XP (take your pick.) Are the specific security features of MS worth the other downsides? I do not think so. My chosen solution to the security problem: a Darkbox for serious Windows Only processing protected by a NetScreen for filtering, experimental scouting and so on. I have heard other users come up with different approaches to security.
I have seen several anti-productive results out of Vista. The champion is... MS Office 2007! I peeked at an example beta copy our other IT guy was experimenting with - and I find it utterly unusable. Therefore I will be using Office 2003 on some machines and OpenOffice 2 on others.
IE7 is almost as silly. Here I only use 7 functions, but I waste time and displeasure at the jarring interface. (I did finally stumble on someone's registry patch that replaces the menu bar as the top row of the app.) Result: I use FireFox except in specific cases where FF crashes, typically with Flash.
The other trend is that "Vista may be barely okay now, but look at the trend". MS *does* have a history of sneaking in undesirable elements, and only backing off at the last minute if they are sufficiently pressured. There may be a real issue with Today's Productivity, but there could be trouble in the future arc mapped out. The question I would ask that crowd is "*if* the apps *were* available in Linux, would you choose Microsoft because you actually approve of their corporate policies?"
I'd like to think that with some coordinated efforts, within 8 years most of the serious applications can be operated in Linux, making it the valid third part of the OS trilogy. Unfortunately, I do see it as 8 years and not 3, because the sprawling scope of Linux's philosophy seems to dissipate some energy away from tight focused delivery.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might conclude that this was sham to discredit the FSF movement.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
OSS people focusing on something they don't like and missing the big picture. As the parent noted, you are in NO WAY REQUIRED to use Vista's DRM. You can still play your MP3s, LAME still runs fine, Winamp still runs fine. You can do as you've always done in XP. They'll be new DRM'd music and stores with it, which you are free to ignore. I'll repeat again: This changes nothing with what you have already.
So yes, Vista's DRM support does give you more choices. You have the choice to get access to the restricted material, if you want. I don't think it's a good idea, but it's available. However you can also use all the content you have in the past, no problem. You do not have that option in an OS that doesn't support the DRM, the restricted media just won't work. Now you probably don't care, but you can't pretend like yo have more freedom because the user of the DRM enabled Vista system has the freedom to use what you do AND the restricted content.
I know that some people would like to believe that the big, bad MS is going to go and lock down everything on your system and encrypt your MP3s in your sleep but really, I've used Vista, nothing changes. Your unprotected media works as it always has. The DRM isn't a useful new feature, but it doesn't hurt, you cna just ignore it.
I'm not sure twitter. Do you still have bad things to say about "Ali Baba" or whatever the hell you were trying to do with this post?
BTW, I'm delighted that you saved one of my posts for future reference. Me, I filed this one away once. Always comes in handy when you try to be clever.
There is one absolutely obvious and necessary reason for Vista to exist; Microsoft has finally addressed in not-uncertain terms much of the security nightmare that was previous editions of Windows. Every process in Vista runs effectively in a jail, a heavily constrained user token, regardless of the actual user context. And in Vista Internet Explorer 7 runs in a second jail on top of that, limiting the interaction the browser is permitted to have with the host OS through a very constrained broker API for only very specific functions. For applications that expect to have Administrative access for such retarded purposes as writing to the local machine hive of the registry or the system directories will have their file access "virtualized" or redirected to a file structure under the user context.
UAC and whatnot may seem obnoxious at first, but it will have to effects. First it will immediately cut into the attack vectors for any given program. Second it will force ISVs to correctly respect the security model which has existed in Windows for over 12 years. Both are exceptional.
I can understand prefectly why you say you don't like other people telling you what's most important to you. But your argument seems incomplete to me. You're making a real trade-off here (as am I - I'm also running OS X) and I think it's important for that to be clear, so I'm going to be a bit of a pain in the neck.
You disagree that the most important aspect of owning and using a computer is control over what it does. You say the most important aspect is that it does what you want. It seems to me you're drawing very fine distinctions here, and I want to make sure I understand. So between a computer that you do not control - but that happens to do what you want - and one that you do control, but that isn't capable of everything you want, you prefer the former?
If you don't control it, someone else does. That means that even if your wants don't change, it might not continue to meet them. You seem to be willing to (potentially) sacrifice future wants for current ones. This is fine, but I'm sure you can understand why many people would feel differently - and why people who don't know there's a choice to make might appreciate finding out.
I want to pick on one last thing you say. You talk about free software not meeting your "needs". Of course freedom to satisfy these is much more serious. I wouldn't want to give up control over that, though if free software doesn't do the job I guess you don't have a choice. Or possibly they're really not needs: in a subsequent reply you write, "I'm not forced to use my computer". The point being, if they're not needs, then you really do have a choice to make. You could use free software.
The wonderful reality, of course, is that if proprietary software becomes too oppressive - as I felt Windows was when they introduced Activation - we have a choice. Long before I made the jump ship, I made sure my data was open (I used Thunderbird and OpenOffice), so that when the day came, I could make the switch. That time will likely come again. My freedom to control my computer in the future depends on free software today - even though I'm not using it.
The ad companies have it wrong - in their typical egocentric way. First comes the idea - then that idea is made into a product. You need to have a product to sell before you advertise it. There's no point in advertising if you have no product. Yes, marketers do like to think the world revolves around them - but they only fulfil an ancilliary function.
I'd say: "build it and they will come," not "talk about it and maybe we'll build it someday."
Large swaths of the Pro-Microsoft posts here run: "Give me my Functionality, and I'll live with some social nuisance intangibles". Here's two areas to ponder.I hope you're not talking about me, because I am not pro-Microsoft. You also misrepresent my position. I do not live with any nuisances in my choice. I've never had a problem I couldn't solve on my chosen OS, and I do not believe it to be ethically or socially wrong in any way. However, if I switched to an alternative product, I would suffer from nuisance.
What I'm saying is that I'm not suffering at all. Everything works great.
The other trend is that "Vista may be barely okay now, but look at the trend". MS *does* have a history of sneaking in undesirable elements, and only backing off at the last minute if they are sufficiently pressured. There may be a real issue with Today's Productivity, but there could be trouble in the future arc mapped outSure, I agree microsoft is shit, and increasingly harms the user. That's why I never use Microsoft products. But the FSF would also be against me using MacOS, simply because it is proprietary. Even though Mac users get treated better than basically any other OS around, IMO. Mac developers have usually been much more focussed on the user than either microsoft, or F/OSS developers.
Basically, why should F/OSS be the only option? I don't believe proprietary software is inherently evil - even though I do recognize that there are many "evil" proprietary developers who screw their users. But I don't use that software.
The question I would ask that crowd is "*if* the apps *were* available in Linux, would you choose Microsoft because you actually approve of their corporate policies?"I certainly would not.
Unfortunately, I do see it as 8 years and not 3, because the sprawling scope of Linux's philosophy seems to dissipate some energy away from tight focused delivery.Indeed. And I don't think the FSF rhetoric helps that. they don't even seem to acknowledge things like usability or user friendliness, or support - other than from the perspective of someone who wants to tinker with software themselves. They barely acknowledge the end user as anything other than a political pawn in their agenda.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I used to contribute to various open source projects a few years ago. I thought it was fun and it helped my skill set as a software engineer. The number one reason I stopped was that I couldnt stand that I was fueling some kind of holy war against virtually all commercial software companies. (mainly MS)
I wish open source development was more about people creating software because they have a passion for it and they can learn from the experience. It seems like its been hijacked by these crazy people who go on these rants. When I say I have contributed to open source projects the LAST thing I want is to be associated with morons like this.
7. Five Versions: The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
:P]
The five versions are nothing complicated. They are well explained on the box and on Microsoft's website. You can upgrade between versions and this even is well described on Microsoft's website.
8. Activation: The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
Vista has automatic activation 3 days after installation. Once again, not complicated or wasting time.
9. Storage Space: With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Vista only requires 5-6gb. Your drive will however show 10-11gb used and this is because of the service called Volume Shadow Copy, this basically allows you to revert back to previous versions of folders/files. Also the thing about fast drives is slightly wrong. The first time you run windows it will be slightly slower than subsequent runs because of a service called SmartFetch. This service monitors how you use your computer and over time increases performance.
You do not need a top of the line computer to run Vista. An example was when I had to use 1gb ram [I have 2gb but one of the chips stopped working] and noticed Vista was using up 700mb ram. This made me wonder how will I play games properly, so I loaded up a game and started playing for a few minutes and then alt tabbed and my ram usage dropped to 300mb. Vista is very efficient and good at managing whatever resources it has available. I know a friend who managed to install a very old build [4744] on a pentium 2. After disabling the visual effects and a few services it runs quite fast. [Btw RTM is faster than all the previous builds, just incase you didn't know it
About the difficulty of using Vista, nothing is totally different to XP aside from UAC [User Account Control] and this is pretty obvious anyways. So training won't be costly.
This type of thing is why I'm all for Vista. The more Microsoft tries to lock down the computer, the more frustrating it is for the end users, and the more people will flock to OSS, and the greater market share may make it profitable for someone to figure out why the sound on my Ubuntu box is about half as loud as it should be. I'm not smart enough, but dammit if more people are involved in the market someone will figure it out for me. So bring on the DRM and trusted computing and locked-down everything, only not for me. Keep screwing those other guys so Linux will get more users and developers and I get more help with the piddly annoying things like that damned sound issue.
In the consumer market, the answer will be hell no. Once the computer starts trying to control the uninformed massess expect an enourmous backlash as the frustrations set in. Those user will expect to be able to keep doing what they are currently doing and any interruption of that will be nasty. M$ is welcome to try to convert users home and business PCs into xboxs against the users wishes, it can only help the alternative offerings.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
One minor point, so you are saying that you are smarter than all those investors, who invest in properties and rent them out, gee they must all be pretty stupid, perhaps you should advise them of the folly of property ownership.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
If a media corporation could remotely monitor the contents of your HD and selectively delete files for which you don't have a license on file with them, would your computer be a "domain for 'freedom'" yet? At what point does interference with what you can do become a "freedom" issue?
My computer is mainly a portal to the internet, but I also read, research, watch movies, listen to music, write papers, write blog entries, and so on. It plays a prominent part in my intellectual life, and is very much a "domain for freedom." What the hell were you thinking when you wrote that?
I have no personal complaint against Vista, though quality-wise, experience-wise, MS software seems to be getting worse, not better, so I'm a bit worried. I'm sure I'll be subjected to Vista at work eventually, and I'm not looking forward to it. I know that Office 2003 is a royal pain for me as an end user. It screws up my email formatting, Word opens up in some bizarre viewing mode that I don't want, and god knows what else. Windows 2000 and Office XP seemed fine to me, but obviously Microsoft has to make more software and push it down the pipeline if they want to stay in business.
The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.
This is pure crap... Anyone with 2 brain cells has heard of UAC, even if why people hate it. The baseline is, running as administrator, you can elevate all the way to the top, this is trusted installer, and what the UAC prompt is all about.
As default, administrator on Vista is not like root on *nix. This is a good thing considering the level of 'knowledge' that most Windows users have about computing. So even if they leave the system running with an administrator account, the system will ask for permission to get to a higher level if a process or application requests it.
The whole post starts off via some idiot's rant about the 'potential' of Vista be 'closed source'. (Truly read what the people are saying, it isn't about Vista being crap, it is about Vista has stuff we don't know what it is and can't see the source code for.)
This is insane, Vista is a closed source OS, and not even the only one in world - there is no story here. OSX and many DVD Players are closed source as well, but that doesn't mean we have to create a conspiracy theory about how they they are phoning ET just because we can't see the source or dislike that they use a non XWindows GUI.
Yeah, people speaking out against wrongdoing is so overrated.
(You) Tee *squeeze on ass* (Girlfriend) *giggle* *swat* Naughty! ^_^ (NOW) YOU SEXIST PIG! DID ANYONE SEE THE INAPPROPRIATE CONTACT HE JUST MADE! SHE DIDN'T ASK FOR THAT KIND OF PHYSICAL ADVANCE!
"Speaking out against wrongdoing" and "screaming insults and gloom-and-doom like a bloody moron" are two different things. The groups I mentioned are all extremists: PETA will go nuts if you swat your dog on the side for disobeying; gay pride practically tries to shove homosexuality down everyone's throats; and NOW and other femenist groups often have members that come up to you and start talking about how "sheltered and misguided" you are if you're a female and feel that you'd rather stay home and raise the children than go get a job. They're all morons.
Similarly, RMS likes to come out and say, "It's your RIGHT to see the source! These companies are taking away your basic human rights! Don't let them do it any more! Don't touch their mangly, trashy, venemous crap!" It's like a politician coming out and talking about how horrible his opponents are-- have you seen the last few years of politics? "BUSH IS AN IDIOT" "KERRY IS A COWARD" "BUSH LIED" "KERRY LIED" "BUSH AUTHORIZED TORTURE" "KERRY SHOT A KID IN THE BACK" that pretty much sums up our 2005 election campaign.. well, the Bush campaign direct had "We need to fix XXX and YYY.." at least in a few places but give it one or two more cycles and that kind of campaigning will all go away.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I like how you compare spending $1,800 on one side vs. spending, what, $6,000 on the other. No wonder you're "losing" five grand. Now run the numbers on renting $1,800 a month vs. an $1,800 a month house/insurance payment...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If the FSF had any credibiilty I think this has to pretty much remove every last shred of it. This is the least professional piece of ranting FUD I've seen by ANYONE. Half of the items are just plain wrong and the rest are either nothing new or of no consequence at all to 99% of all computer users anyway. Some of them like the driver thing are like some kind of stupid freudian slip, points that apply to Linux far more than they apply to Windows... uh-mazing. I mean... it's shocking to see such low class work.
:(
This is just UTTERLY the worst way to go about getting your message out.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.
But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.
This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.
You are saying that you will OWN a computer in the midst of your living room, install a piece of software in it in order for it to work, you are going to do internet banking over it, send and receive private emails to your colleagues, family, loved ones and friends over it, preserve your private documents on it, and yet, you are o.k. with someone in a remote location having more control over it than you do ? To the extent that they can override whatever you want to do on it ?
What kind of over-trustful approach is this ? Are you living in a place where people still can sleep with their doors unlocked at night ?
Read radical news here
The post is NOT about why Vista is bad, it is about FSF's launch of a site to explain why Vista's bad. One sad thing about \. is how everybody has to comment on articles, even if there's nothing to comment on. (Myself included.)
/. being reversed to \. is intentional, I hope someone gets it.
Let's wait on criticizing what they criticize or don't explain until a couple days after the day after the site launch. I'm not sure they were looking for this press on \. yet. I hope. And don't lump the Free Software Foundation in with all of Open Source. Neither camp likes that much.
BTW, one post recommended showing what Free Software can do. Excellent suggestion. I use Fedora Core 6 for everything, have transparent Windows, even a transparent Desktop through which I can see the other four transperent Desktops behind it which form the sides of a cube I can rotate at will. My windows, tooltips, menus are all animated and occasionally even burst into flame. Unless I am doing something memory intensive. Search for Linux + Beryl on youtube or some such site to see some demos. Or kde-look.org.
And the
Steve
Don't fight FUD with FUD. BE the better man.
Sure, if you want to live in a run down half-room shack that you bought. His numbers are to rent vs buy an equivalent home.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And the home you could get with that mortgage payment would be worse. For it to be a fair comparison, you would have to set the living arrangements in both options equal, not the dollar cost equal. Remember, you can always say "well buying a home is better than renting a room in the Four Seasons for the rest of your life", or that "renting the basement of Farmer John's outhouse is cheaper than a mortgage on a home in suburbia". Neither would prove much. That was why the example added the expenses you don't have on one side (commute/greater insurance costs on renting) to the other side. The point was that for living in the same kind of property, you can be better off renting.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Viruses
Intruders
Spyware
Trojans
Adware
Nope. UAC can elevate programs from normal user permissions to admin permissions. Getting system permissions will require messing around with some ACLs, and I don't think anyone but MS developers would need to or want to go through the trouble of getting trusted installer permissions. The trusted installer permission is something called Windows Resource Protection, and it's applied to resources that shouldn't be modified (not to configurable settings, for example). The only process I'm aware of that runs as trusted installer is, as you might expect, the Windows installer.
So I guess it must bug you that NT has never allowed you to log in and browse the web with the SYSTEM account?
Get a grip. This is the architecture of NT, it's not anything new, and this isn't some secret attempt to lock the user out of having control of their system. They've just separated SYSTEM, NETWORK SERVICE, LOCAL SERVICE accounts into a more finely-grained system. The purpose is to further adjust the capabilities of each individual system account, so that it can do what it needs to do, and nothing more.
It's actually a good thing. Shocking!
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
But I think you already miss an important point of the Open Source community and why it already blows other models away: you can go right now on the ALSA mailing list or join an IRC chat room and be able to correspond directly with developers involved in the project and find answers to your questions. You are focusing too much on the "what" rather than seeing the massive beauty that is already there in the "how".
This is only true if the product is not one of the flawless Microsoft launches we've come to expect. I mean, hasn't it been like FOREVER since there was a buggy launch of M$ software?
My little site.
It all depends on the timing. The control freaks are doing this step by step:
That last step will effectively lock out all but "special" versions of Linux. The big content providers and Microsoft together represent a large enough influence over the government that the last step will most likely be mandated by law. Instead of being mandated directly, it may wind up being mandated by requiring ISPs to enforce DRM requirements on subscribers who wish to connect to the internet.
This may sound like paranoid ranting, but then so did the warnings we got 20 years ago or so that software patents would greatly hinder software development. People back then didn't believe it would ever happen, either. And while not all paranoid rantings come true (of course), the ones that do tend to be the ones where those in power stand to gain the most. As is the case here.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Yes. Good examples, except one thing. I didn't buy Google, I didn't pay for the servers google is running on, I don't expect Google to bend to my will or help me work (though it does at times). An OS is supposed to be an operating system. Not a Media center / word processing / DRM providing / internet browsing magical box. I have programs that do all of that, I don't use Windows Media Center, Word Pad, IE, for them.
As computer users we have slowly been giving up more and more of our computer to Microsoft and other OSes (even Mac is starting to expand). I think it's time we start saying "Fuck you" to people who over charge us so they can take our computer and run rampant on our hardware. I don't think it's time for Linux if you don't already run it. But it's time for us to remain on Windows XP. It's time to demand that DirectX 10 get ported to XP if you need it. It's time to basically stop taking shit from OSes and start demanding a better OS. Dos could give you a disk operating system for 640k, All I want a simple GUI, that all the programs now run on. Why am I sacrificing 2 gigs of memory just to my OS when it's something that should only require a couple megs if done properly. If we want to clog our systems it's our option.
That's my opinion. But i believe it's anyone else who is sick of being forced to upgrade every 3-5 years to an OS that takes at least double the processing power. Moore's law? Didn't know Moore's first name was Peter.
I have seen several anti-productive results out of Vista. The champion is... MS Office 2007! I peeked at an example beta copy our other IT guy was experimenting with - and I find it utterly unusable.
Doesn't really seem like the best way to evaluate a product...
IE7 is almost as silly. Here I only use 7 functions, but I waste time and displeasure at the jarring interface. (I did finally stumble on someone's registry patch that replaces the menu bar as the top row of the app.) Result: I use FireFox except in specific cases where FF crashes, typically with Flash.
I don't use IE7, but I just have to ask - what do you regularly use the menu for in a web browser ?
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control?
So I can't use Linux then, because even Linux has processes that run above any privilege level that root can get
I forgot to mention why this depends on the timing.
If Linux develops a large enough following soon enough, then it will become politically unpalatable to mandate DRM, and without that your vision that DRM will go by the wayside due to the popularity of Linux may happen. But unless Linux develops a large enough user base fast enough, the DRM mandate will happen and, at that point, Linux will literally disappear from everywhere but maybe the server room, because the entity (most likely Microsoft, but it might wind up being some group controlled by the **AA and friends) that controls the signing keys will want it to disappear from the desktop.
Regardless, if such a mandate comes to pass, free software development will almost certainly grind to a screeching halt, as development will require, at a minimum, the acquisition of a very expensive set of keys. And that assumes that such keys are available to free software developers at all. Those who control the keys will almost certainly preferentially favor their "friends", and that won't be anyone who likes free (as in speech) software.
DRM that is controlled by anyone but the end user is ultimately and fundamentally antithetical to "free speech" software.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Most home users don't give a shit about SMB2. Most users are going to get Vista with new hardware
Which is why consumer unions need to get into the act. Why the f* in 2006, going on 2007, is M$ still able to lock OEMs out of selling even dual boot systems? Special "advertising" partnerships f* customers just as badly as the original OEM contracts that the DOJ v MS cases banned explicitly.
There are a couple of things you have left out of the calculation, though.
The first is that after the mortgage is paid off then the advantages begin to stack up in favour of owning, especially after you are retired and don't need to commute. So assuming you pay the mortgage for 30 years then live another 30 years and that the principal loss is minimal (reducing the $4936 to $3269) then the monthly effective loss, over 60 years, for buying is around $1600, rather than $1800. At the end of your life you have then made a saving AND have an asset.
The other thing that you have missed off is risk. A house will tend to be worth a house in the same market, or in other words buying a house is a hedge against the cost of a house that tends to match the cost of a house in that market. Stock market and other vehicles are potentially subject to much higher levels of risk. Again going back to the retirement option, if the stock market underperforms and you have been renting then your 401k may be worth less than you anticipated AND the money invested when renting may not cover your rent in old age AND you don't have any other significant asset to trade in for income.
It is entirely possible for the stock market to outperform property prices (and it tends to over long periods of time) but you lose the asset and the hedge against housing costs by not buying a house. If you are lucky and have a reasonable startup capital and good stock picks, though, then going the renting-and-stockmarket route could work out.
Considering the typical positive response that anything anti-Windows gets on slashdot (including WAY more blatant FUD than this), there's no way these replies are all legit. Not only is the tone abnormally pro-MS (with a lot of anti-Linux comments mixed in), but the number of replies seems too high for something posted as recently as this...
This is hardly new. Other people have already pointed out how your criticism applies equally well to services such as gmail, so I'll just point out that the system account has always existed in NT-based systems, and has never been available for interactive log on. It's never been a problem, however, as there's nothing that you need that level of access for - you can maintain the system, install and uninstall applications and even - if you wish - delete critical system files without it; Administrator is perfectly sufficient for that.
If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.
Nice FUD, but not being able to log in with a machine account is hardly a basis for claiming that you don't own the OS; it will still do exactly what I wish it to.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You ought to send this to the FSF - I like it..
Insert
You're such a drama queen. And hyperbolizer (boderline slanderer). And, dare I say it, probably a liar.
Who are you talking to where mentioning open source contributions makes the guy wonder if you're the next Kosinski? And can you NAME these supposed hijackers of open source? Didn't think so.
& I have never run into a coder who thinks they're in some kind of holy war or religious struggle. It's people like you spreading bile that casts dispersions on the developers. And if you knew any of these people, you wouldn't be writing such tripe...which leads me to believe you never contributed anything, and if you did you must have been laughed at.
Somebody has a website with some political stuff on it woooo scary stuff, and really quite odd to see something like that on the internet of all places. It must mean all open source coders are jihading commies. dumbass.
Wow! Slashdot is full of Microsoft shills now. A sad day this is.
There is no cabal
Okay, that's the first 5. Sometime later I might bother responding to the rest. Seriously, it's not hard coming up with answers to these, if you know the normal computer user very well (and powerusers can deal with these "shortcomings" theselves, usually quite easily).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The site is in English but has an extremely annoying setting (presumably in plone) that makes everything but the text of the articles into your local language. So if I am surfing in Japan (and I am) based on the browser locale perhaps it generates dates, whole webpages on accessibility, sitemap, etc. in Japanese. There is no way to change the language of the site yourself that is obvious. Since articles are in English it would be very useful to make everything in English. Google and some other sites do this auto-locale sensing and I absolutely hate it.
The funniest propaganda I've ever seen... How come there's no "It's funny. Laugh" icon?
What are you waiting for?
Let's start with Hurd task 5458 (currently 0% complete): Design and implement a sound system.
If someone else is hosting the service, sure.
Are you content to use bandwidth that's ultimately controlled by someone else (your ISP)? How about email, do you run your own email server?
Someone providing a service is completely different from someone providing a product. If i purchase a product (some software) and use it together with another product i already own (a computer), i don't want to relinquish control over any of my existing products. They are my physical property, and should be under my total control.
On the other hand, if google are providing a server hosted on the internet and allowing me to use it (either for free or by paying for it) i don't expect to have total control of it, because that's not the service being offered. If i want total control, i can buy server colocation easily enough.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I was talking about FOSS in general, but I can focus in on operating systems. Trying to be a better Windows than Windows is a losing game, on which has been lost over and over (OS/2, GeoWorks, etc.). To do that, Linux would probably have to be ten times better. To succeed, Linux needs to redefine the game - and this is what it has been doing.
When Gutenberg produced the first printing press, he felt he needed to compete with handwritten manuscripts. He put a lot of effort into producing multiple variations of each letter, producing full justification, placing dashes in the margins, and so on. The first Gutenberg Bibles are still famous for their beauty. But even then they couldn't compare to an illuminated manuscript. And what happened as print became widespread? The complex fonts, justification, and so on when out the window. Printing took over the world because it allowed for cheap copies.
Linux costs nothing. It runs on many architectures. It is compact. It is flexible and modifiable. It allows organizations to take control of their own future. It lacks the transaction costs of proprietary software (license monitoring, for example). It is based on an incredibly effective model of development and governance. These aren't just variations on what Windows or OS X are doing; they're entirely different approaches. And in many spaces they're winning: embedded devices, servers, dedicated systems. These are areas of growth. Meanwhile, it's slowly catching up on the desktop; in contrast, improvements in Windows have slowed as it appears to be reaching the limit of its development model. Remember when the Mozilla decision to toss the code and start over was a joke? It took a while, but they delivered.
For many people and organizations, Linux is a superior choice right now. Some chose it for the desktop. Not me - I'm running OS X, though I believe the day will come when I switch. As it will come for many others. For Linux, costs will only go down as quality goes up. For Windows, the opposite seems to be true. In the long term, the trends and the benefits of shared development are too overwhelming. Free software will dominate most well-understood domains - including the desktop.
Instead of providing a very insightful response filled with examples of how GPL programs blow Windows-only programs out of the water, and how Linux has saved me literally tens of thousands of dollars in the audio/video post-production space alone, and how I used to run Windows until it nose dived irrecoverably and I was forced to choose between paying for another install CD and/or support but finally decided it was time to try Linux full time, and how Linux programs benefit MS users by allowing them to run the very same programs, and how you are a daily user of Linux whether you like it or not, but are instead completely blind to the operating systems powering your favorite websites...
Instead of all that, I'll just say...
O RLY?
I8-D
I installed Vista RC1 on a relatively new desktop to check out what'd been done on it, and created a 9 GiB partition to put it on. Vista ate it all, and immediately started complaining about not having enough space. Yes, it had used all of that space, and it would probably use even more if it had the chance to do so.
The computer I use now is a laptop, and I don't have more than 54 GiB total space on it. I'm running GNU/Linux, and the system plus all the applications I've put on it after initial install don't use more than 4 GiB. If I were to run Vista here, there would be a huge cut in space for my files.
The tantalising features - to encourage Windows users influenced/informed by the 'Bad Vista' campaign enough to finally make that big break - are listed here and include:
That, sadly will look like complete bollocks to anyone other than a well-versed Linux user.
What is 'firmware, 'Ubuntu', 'emacs' and 'build-essential'? Where are the screenshots? On the main gnewsense page there is nothing about how one should actually aquire the distro, merely a link to an ISO, which people are supposed to intuit how to burn?
Compare that to opensuse whose first page includes the languages of people that (shock) may not speak english. It has all the hand-holding any trembling gnubie needs to get them going. Ubuntu, clearly layed out and friendly, a ton of documentation - in many languages - and direct in-roads to an enormous community of users sharing information and providing assistance around the world, around the clock. Most of the popularity of Ubuntu, for instance, is due to it's incredible community. People will climb a wall if they know someone is on the other side to help them down. Binary blobs aside, GNewSense has a long way to go before it's anything close to a sane option for the switcher.
I created my post after surveying about 3/4 of the posts. I tried to indicate this with the term "large swaths" implying some variation among individuals, but an overall summation of what DealBreaker point the pro-MS people are spotlighting. It's perfectly natural to use something, and wish matters were otherwise.
... MS still has a foothold.
... With a gloriously varied spread of distros and versions per distro.
Currently, I perceive the dealbreaker that MS has built is: they have forced many companies to adopt them as a standard beyond simple document creation, but for secondary functions like exporting. A simple example is programs that export into Excel, and haven't yet added direct support for Open Office Calc. If I may borrow one of your phrases, "Sure, I agree microsoft is shit, and increasingly harms the user." Yep. But until a software vendor bothers to add export functionality into Calc,
I do in fact recognize that OS X is indeed proprietary, and they simply used a legendarily stable core to help advertise security. I give them credit for a powerful comeback from a comatose company, into the second of the trilogy of OS's. Because I am aware of the Animal Farm effect, (Windows Bad - Leopards & Jaguars Good) I am fiercely avoiding apple purchases.
There really are only three choices, but the subdivisions are a little distracting.
1: Microsoft
A. 2000/XP
B. Vista
2. Apple OS X series
Most of the incarnations are not dramatic.
3. Linux (and variants, I plead ignorance)
To summarize, Having totally discarded Set 2, and 1B, that leaves me with MS - 1A, and Linux Set 3. (Distro not yet decided.)
The following snip is exactly what I hoped to aim for:
"The question I would ask that crowd is "*if* the apps *were* available in Linux, would you choose Microsoft because you actually approve of their corporate policies?"
I certainly would not."
Exactly. My overall approach is now to begin work on parallel systems. One fading legacy Windows machine, and soon a Linux investigation that will turn a hair or two gray before I settle upon my choice of variant.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Something tells me you don't jack about the difference between proprietary software and free software...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"I really think that most people here don't at all understand what DRM is."
:)
Gee. What was your first clue?
From above:
.xlsx format .docx format, but windows disingenuously called it "Word". It failed to import into a program our tablet uses. I had to turn extensions on, discover that it was not in fact labeled with an icon that says "word 2003", change the format, and re-import it.
"I have seen several anti-productive results out of Vista. The champion is... MS Office 2007! I peeked at an example beta copy our other IT guy was experimenting with - and I find it utterly unusable.
Doesn't really seem like the best way to evaluate a product..."
We were talking about productivity, right? I took one look at Office 2007 to evaluate it. I lost my first hour to:
A. Strange placement of menu fuctions.
B. One machine failed to load the update to read the
C. Someone else's machine was set to hide extensions. Except one of the Word files was now a
In short, I evaluated, found it non-productive, and reverted to my TWO alternate choices. (Office 2003 and OpenOffice 2.)
As for browsers, I am a medium-heavy user of the menu commands. Most of the file menu, Edit-Find, View-Source, Tools-Internet Options, and more, for IE7. The equivalents are a little different in Firefox. I use them interchangeably as features require. Viewing source in IE7 is still a little different than in Firefox. I haven't tried Opera yet though.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...To quote the film Brewster's Millions, "None of the above."
I heartily recommend evaluating FreeBSD. For people seeking something a little less prickly than the vanilla tree, PC-BSD is also available, which adds a graphical user interface by default and a more graphically oriented form of package management, among other things.
Stallman raises some valid points with regards to how Vista users are likely to get the shaft...but what Stallman isn't likely to want you to know is that there is a third option, which means you don't have to climb aboard the FSF/Linux bandwagon either.
FreeBSD is a very solid system. The Linux binary support means you can get such things as Adobe's binary browser plugins working with it, and FreeBSD also has native binary nVidia video card drivers available, meaning that you can play World of Warcraft and all of the usual 3D games with Wine. Ports, the package management system, has makefiles for over 16,000 applications, and it's also pretty much the only package management system I've used that I consider genuinely reliable and decent.
You will possibly see some people aligned with the FSF shouting me down for writing this...Stallman doesn't want anyone using FreeBSD or the BSD license, and the reason why is because if people do, that's less people who end up seeing him as an authority figure, or who he has to use as extra bodies for his activism.
It's got to the point where to a large degree, using an operating system associated with any particular group means you're vulnerable to control by that particular group. With Microsoft, sure, you end up with DRM. With Linux, you end up with *only* the license/s Stallman wants you to use, and no other...as well as possibly getting conscripted for his activism if you become sufficiently close with the FSF.
The only solution I've been able to find is to seek an operating system which isn't affiliated with any particular group...or at least controlling agenda. FreeBSD is one, and is probably the most mature that I've been able to find...but there are a few others, for people who want to investigate those. That however is what we need...an operating system, without economic, political, or technological control. Microsoft want economic and technological control of people...Richard Stallman wants political control of people. The reason why I don't find the offerings of either of those two camps appealing is because I value self-determination...the ability to make my own choices.
#1: Paper.
#2: Pencil.
There now, you have all the messaging, data storage and retrieval, and multimedia you really need.
Why not? Because when you created an account, you explicitly agreed to their terms of use, which grant them permission to delete your mail at any time and for any reason whatsoever. (They also have your permission to lock you out of your account permanently, at any time and for any reason, and to give your email address to someone else without even bothering to tell you.)
I'm totally behind these guys. There's no way I'd shell out these kinda of big bucks just to have my drivers not work.
www.americanjapan.com
Fuck seeing the beauty. Fix the fucking sound.
"That website is pretty low on content and for the heck of it I read the links on the right as well. The 25 shortcomings one is pretty ludicrous. You should read it."
..
.."
/ vistas-user-account-control-one-click-and-its-gone 3 615936
I'm confused. How can it be and still have 25 shortcomings spread over two web pages.
"Most home users don't give a shit about SMB2. Most users are going to get Vista with new hardware, so their needing new hardware point is moot and really is it a shortcoming of Vista that it won't run on old hardware or is it a shortcoming of the hardware."
Why, in your opinion, is breaking SMB support in Linux not a problem. Considering that MS is all about inter-operability. Did the MS Linux Lab not even test it with the current Linux distros. If not why not?
I don't understand that you speak for the vast majority of home users. But isn't it true that they won't actually have a choice as to what to get with their next round of Windows/Vista upgrade. So what the home users give a shit about is a little moot.
It's also a demonstration in circular logic: To get Vista, 'home users' have to get new hardware. Since they don't have any choice the point is moot.
"The 2 gigs of ram to run Vista is bollocks - these guys havent even booted upto the RCs have they"
Do you think a PC running XP on 1GB will run faster or slower on Vista.
"He complains about a lack of driver support from the hardware manufacturer - how can you spin a hardware manufacturers problem into a shortcoming of vista?"
The trolls round have always criticized Linux for lack of hardware support. Why isn't that also a problem for Vista.
"They talk about lack of compatibility with AV products but do fail to mention a lot of things M$ is doing better with security"
Like locking out the AV companies from the kernel. And most of the new security feetures have been broken already.
"I run Debian in lab and Zenwalk at home"
I like Linux and really want it to be better.
"By the time he gets to 20 he isn't he making grammatical sentences and he actually claims that theres bound to be bugs in 50 million lines of code and a five year beta test period - I'd agree but it isn't because theres 50 million lines of code because dear lod Linux also has a lot of lines of code"
Criticise the form of the msg. Why wouldn't 50 million lines of nearly new code be the cause of some bugs slipping through.
"I'm not going to go on bashing the article"
As he goes about bashing the article
"Heres my list of things that are Bad with Vista"
"1) DRM
His billness has already criticised this. Is msDRM already in the works?
"2) UAC - this is a great idea in principle but the last I checked in implementation it was too goddamn annoying and I'm sure most people will just turn it off"
You mean it didn't work as there were so many thing a user had to do as root, sorry administrator. Sudo seems to work OK under Linux.
"I had no driver issues. If I did I don't think I'd be blaming MS and rather my shitty hardware manufacturer"
You must be the only one. The HW manufacturers write to the specs. How is it the shitty fault of the manufacturers when the driver don't work on Vista. The drivers would have been certify by a MS test suite, else they wouldn't have made it into Vista.
was bad article- my list for BadVista. (Score:5, Astroturfing)
http://www.ubersoft.net/
http://www.apcstart.com/site/jbannan/2006/09/1330
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/
davecb5620@gmail.com
This is pure crap... Anyone with 2 brain cells has heard of UAC, even if why people hate it. The baseline is, running as administrator, you can elevate all the way to the top, this is trusted installer, and what the UAC prompt is all about.
Score:4, Insightful?!? Gahhh!
More like Score:-4, Misinformative.
Did you miss the umpteen stories about PatchGuard and the various anti-virus companies complaining and Vista DRM systems and the one about some security researcher finding a way to break the driver security model?
Every single story comes down to the same fundamental point... Vista is designed to be secure against the owner.
What you said about User Account Control (UAC) is totally wrong. User Account Control ONLY elevates you to hand-cuffed-Admin level. You are still locked out of System level. It is impossible for you to install third-party anti-virus software because you are NEVER permited system level access. This is the exact reason for all of the stories about the security companies being pissed at the anti-competitive lockout. Even using User Account Control it is IMPOSSIBLE for an owner to reach the System level access he needs to install security software.
Microsoft's newfound zeal for "security" is about securing the system against the owner for DRM enforcement. If you try to use an unapproved video driver you get LOCKED OUT of much of your own computer, including the entire new user interface. You get dumped down into deliberately brain damaged restricted mode. User Account Control don't do squat for you there.... because it only raises you to the hand-cuffed-Administrator level. It does not get you up to system level to make the changes you would need to make. And the reason for that is if you could get up to System level you could override DRM systems. If you could install the video driver that you want, you could use that video driver as a backdoor to get around the DRM systems. You could use your video driver to break the entire new security model.
The story about the security reasercher's system hack, that hack required you to already have total Admin and User Account Control to work, and what it did was elevate you to the forbidden System level. It got you into the ABOVE-Admin-level system drivers. It gave you ownership and full control of your own computer. Microsoft patched Vista to close that avenue before Vista was released.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Well, I probably shouldn't respond, because an AC isn't going to be around to even read it, but since others might, I should list how much you got wrong:
1) How much start-up capital you have wouldn't affect the calculation, since for a fair comparison you'd have the capital on both options.
2) At no point do you "pick stocks" -- I mentioned picking indexes.
3) The stock market has lower risks because a) if forced to sell you don't have to pay transaction costs, b) you can diversify to account for the many risks that can hit your investment, while with a house you are locked into one kind of asset in one region.
4) The value of your investments can be enough to buy a house at the end of the 30 (or whatever) years, meaning you're better off than if you had bought the asset.
5) You could just as easily say that if real estate underperforms (likely in an era of declining population growth) you have far less in assets to trade for income.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
If you haven't realised that Linux, the kernel, has nothing to do with the FSF, and that Linux is not an "FSF product", I'm afraid you don't really know what you're talking about.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
No, the more I read about this the more i agree with parent, but for a different reason. This Badvista idea is trying to fight Microsoft on its home turf: marketing. If it's true that Microsoft allocated half a billion worth of marketing money for Vista, to try to beat them on their home turf is just pathetic. How much TV airspace is badvista going to buy for clever advertisements? How many PC magazine columnists should be bought?
I think it would be better to go a completely different direction, and ask e.g. the EU to ask Microsoft whether Vista's purported SMB2 is 100% compatible with SMB, and if not, whether they'd please provide the differences in the spec as addition to their punishment-document (1200 pages IIRC is a punishment for both parties), ASAP, or else explain why they are trying to dodge the anticompetitiveness lawsuit AGAIN.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
The Hurd and Linux are quite different beasts. The Hurd is supposed to be run on top of a lot of Microkernels(Mach is the one that's working for now), and as such it is very different from Linux. Do a Google search for monolithic and microkernel and be enlightened. They both have merits, pros and cons.
-- Linux user #369862
You state what you think your top priority is. You clearly assume that this matters more than other issues, such as upholding an ethical position. You likely believe that non-free software is not unethical. Is your understanding of the issues perfect? Of course not -- no one's is. Therefore, consider a little argument against the notion of things such as non-free software (not from RMS or the FSF, BTW):
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Why is the abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information unethical?
The abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information (as defined in USC 17) is unethical for three main reasons, all taken in conjunction with each other:
* Arbitrary copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information generally does not cause harm to anyone. When someone makes a copy of a certain piece of information that is published, there is no information lost. The person from which the information is copied (say an author or an inventor) retains the information in exactly the same state. What has happened is that two copies of the same piece of published information arise. What is done with the second copy does not affect what is done with the first copy, ceterus paribus.
* Abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information generally causes harm to the progress of the sciences and the arts. One instance is in the case of software. Suppose I publish a program that does rational drug design (makes it easier to find drugs for diseases) and is generally found useful by individuals all over. Suppose you're able to modify the program and make it even more better at rational drug design and distribute it. I can, under current Copyright and Patent law, for whatever reasons I wish, control you and prevent you from doing this even though your modification would be beneficial to everyone. This causes a lot of harm to people, even though the modification itself does not cause harm to me.
* Abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information also abridges your freedom of speech, expression, and your freedom to think freely. As in the above situation, suppose I publish a program for drug design, and claim all "intellectual property rights" associated with the creation. You can't even begin to do research (legally) on the program without licensing it from me, i.e., your freedom to even think about what the program does and improve its workings is abridged. Further, you're forbidden from repeating the program (and its improvements) to someone else. In other words, you're forbidden from telling people what your thoughts are, even if they are so uncreative as to be identical to what you've heard or seen before. What this ultimately boils down to is that your freedom to obtain knowledge, store and process that knowledge, and spread that knowledge as you see fit, is abridged. Thus people are constantly forced to re-invent the wheel rather than copy and use or modify existing information.
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(source: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/copyin g_primer.html)
If you disagree with the given ethical position, please falsify it.
From what I can tell, this is already happening. We already have all the textures in main memory. Unused textures fall out of GPU memory to make way for more textures from main memory, but they're all still in main memory.
Or is the idea here that you can have less main memory, because it'll actually remove stuff from main memory when it goes to the card, and read it back from the card when it falls out of that card? In this case, I think it'd be faster and cheaper to buy another half gig of system RAM than to buy Windows.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
... then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
Thank you for the cut-and-paste from your econ 101 textbook. Might I suggest a rereading though? If apples are more reliable or efficient than the alternatives then in the long term it will increase your ability to satisfy other wants and needs. As a Linux advocate I would have expected you to understand this, or did you not realize that you are arguing *against* Linux because of the initial higher cost due to retraining. Once past the retraining the cost savings come in, not before.
In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
Nonsense. *Any* web or email client facilitates free speech. Whether it is proprietary or open source is irrelevant. You might also want to return to your Econ 101 textbook. If in some far-fetched ultra-paranoid future a common browser began to censor communications then a need would arise and the market would provide a solution. As Firefox did when the market developed a need for a more secure browser.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays.
More nonsense. Then release your music as a DRM-free MP3 and it won't be subject to such restrictions.
UAC can elevate programs from normal user permissions to admin permissions. Getting system permissions will require messing around with some ACLs,
This is FLAT OUT WRONG...
Yes UAC will elevate a normal user to Admin if needed, it will also elevate an admin or normal user to 'trusted installer' which is above 'system'.
If an admin couldn't push past the 3rd tier of access as the post suggests, then no one could ever install an application on the system.
An admin CAN push to the top level of access and even have control over System, that is how you kill SYSTEM processes, etc.
An admin can do anything on the system, but certain areas are going to require a security jump to allow them to do it, that is why even running as Administrator on a system, you will get the UAC prompt if you want higher priveledges.
Admins are NOT locked to the third level of security as the article and parent post suggests.
Go look this stuff up, I am so tired of the uninformed me too posts.
The only process I'm aware of that runs as trusted installer is, as you might expect, the Windows installer.
PS Windows Installer is not the only process capable of pushing to trusted installer level of access. A 1991 VB 3.0 setup application can request trusted installer just like a 2006 Windows MSI Install script can.
It's the " /. " symbol! :)
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Sorry - it's an involuntary reaction. If you want people to use OSS, then that's all very well and good. You've put blood sweat and mother-fucking tears into some code, you're proud of it and you want people to use it. Grand.
Continuously bashing the shit out of MS is not going to win anybody over. Linux is free. I mean FREE.
Do you think that maybe if you're giving something away for free and people still are choosing to pay for something else, then maybe it's you that has the problem, not the person managing to sell the software?
I've dabbled occasionally with Linux and yes it's very nice, but I always go crawling back to XP when I simply bit a wall of frustration with one stupid little problem I can't get around (the last one was trying to get Ubuntu to work with the Wifi in a T21).
In my humble opinon with Linux is that it's Linux. All these OSS fans will swear it'll all be better if you come over to their side - then once you're there you realize nobody can decide what the best productized version is - or in fact what the best way of doing anything is. The MS side is just simpler. I have XP. I get an XP driver. I install it, my wifi works. This simple process is the same for millions of people, they all do it the same way, ontop of the same OSS and it just 'works'. Same goes for OSS.
I think I've tried a few times over the years with RedHat, Suse and Ubuntu - but every time I hit problems, run out of time trying to fix them and go back.
Easiest switch is a corporate one. You switch XP out for Linux across hundreds of identical machines, make sure all the Apps/drivers work - and that's that. I just don't see how the humble and curious home-user is supposed to make the switch. You shove in the DVD you've downloaded and it probably gets most stuff working - but those things that didn't work.. Where next? Huge effort has been made in creating these LiveCDs/EasyInstall CDs but that's it. They just leave you hanging.
Have any OSS fans ever thought of setting up a free support system? You get your Linux CD, you install it, you have a problem, you go to a site and some nice Linux Guru can remote desktop across, chat to you, explain stuff etc? Once the knowledge spreads then that person can help out others, but currently there's just no bridge between those that write the code and those that try to use it.
Did you miss the umpteen stories about PatchGuard and the various anti-virus companies complaining and Vista DRM systems and the one about some security researcher finding a way to break the driver security model?
Every single story comes down to the same fundamental point... Vista is designed to be secure against the owner.
What you said about User Account Control (UAC) is totally wrong. User Account Control ONLY elevates you to hand-cuffed-Admin level. You are still locked out of System level. It is impossible for you to install third-party anti-virus software because you are NEVER permited system level access. This is the exact reason for all of the stories about the security companies being pissed at the anti-competitive lockout. Even using User Account Control it is IMPOSSIBLE for an owner to reach the System level access he needs to install security software.
You have SO many things mixed up...
First you go off about DRM and then the 64bit driver security, which doesn't even apply to the 32bit versions, then you go off on UAC and how it is somehow related to the Symantec and McAfee complaints.
You need to get this information straight.
Vista x32 - there is no 'signed' driver requirement. Vista x64 - there is a 'signed' driver requirement - meaning that developers must have their driver signed if it RUNS BELOW user mode on Vista x64. User Mode Drivers are NOT affected.
UAC CAN push the Administrator User all the way to the top of the security chain. This is how admins kill processes, install applications, and can even modify Windows files if they truly are stupid enough to do so. There is NOTHING in Vista that prevents a person from DOING ANYTHING TO THE OS at an Admin level if the administrator is stupid enough to elevate themselves.
The UAC is more in place to prevent 'automated' priviledge elevation, in other words, the user/administator has to specifically CLICK on the UAC prompts, and these cannot be circumvented with keyboard or mouse hooks. So a REAL person has to authorize any elevation.
The part McAfee and Symantec COMPLAIN over in Vista, is that MS created a unified API and security center for Vista for 3rd parties to plug in their anti-virus software for monitoring by the system. THIS PISSED OFF McAfee and Symantec, as they don't just sell anti-virus software, they sell 'security' systems that take over the firewall, the network stack, etc etc...
This is also why their products SUCK, as they are touching parts of the OS no Software vendor should EVER have that much control over. It is also why you didn't see companies that sell ONLY anti-virus software and not 'security suites' complain or even CARE, as they can fully integrate as they always have with Vista, and now there are even stanrdard APIs they can use to report back to the system and get access to information on things they need to. This is a good thing for a 'real' anti-virus company, and not a company what wants to replace everything and turn off the Vista security center.
People like you can complain that Vista secures against the owner, but it is the same fools that bitched that WindowsXP didn't enforce the NT security model far enough and why Windows was left so wide open. A Vista owner can replace anything on their system, hell even boot into the new mini-boot PE mode of Vista and then access your HD and change everything you want.
You can even slimstream the Vista install, all with MS tools to add ANY feature and remove ANY feature from the OS and EVEN replace system files that would make Vista not even run.
This is ALL IN A USER'S CONTROL, just as it was in previous versions of Windows; however, with Vista, from inside Vista, processes do not automatically get root level rights to run crazy on your computer.
Now why don't you write us a great post on how closed OSX is, and why it sucks. Heck even maybe a post on the new Sony 7.1 receivers and how they are closed source and as far as we know they are emailing the pentagon about ever
I think this is the real issue, which never gets the attention it deserves. The FSF and Open Source movement seem to be focused so much on the freedom of source code for applications. But most people have no need for source code, or to modify their apps. What everybody DOES need is interoperability of their documents. I think that open standards and file formats are much more important than Open source code. I'd much rather use proprietary software, with common open file formats, than use Open software with obscure file formats.
If something uses common open file formats, I can easily switch apps. This is good for competition, and more simply, makes life easier for users. This is what has always shit me about Microsoft. The anti-trust case went on about "bundling," which doesn't matter much to me - but never mentioned the Office file format conspiracy, which is so annoying. The number of times I have had to work with bad microsoft file formats that clients have given me is staggering. Sometimes Microsoft's products can't even handle their own file formats properly! They refuse to properly document them.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Vista 32 detects when unsigned drivers have loaded, although it will let them load. If you have a single unsigned driver in your system, Windows Media Player will refuse to play protected songs. Also, Halo 2 will refuse to run whenever that comes out, because it is based on "protected processes" as well.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
That apples may be more efficient has no impact on the high costs of monopoly. You're welcome to propose that a monopoly product does exist, and that it's "more reliable and efficient"; that only reinforces the need for alternatives.
As for retraining, there is an added cost for switching, as you point out, but: a) this doesn't apply to everyone, b) users of the monopoly product need to spend money on new software and training during upgrade cycles (the scenario we're envisioning, because if they're not upgrading they're not shopping), and c) those who upgrade within to a new version of the dominant product can still benefit from lower prices and/or better software (IE 7 anyone?) if other products are able to compete with the monopoly.
Ta-da! My point exactly. MS stopped improving IE when they achieved a monopoly (80-odd percent of the market). Free software provided a choice. That choice underwrote browser improvements for everyone - including those now using IE 7. If Firefox had not done it, who would have? Would a proprietary browser with a price tag on it have been able to force fixes in IE? The success of free software is the reason that my scenario is so "far-fetched".
Incidentally, in my "far-fetched ultra-paranoid future" the browser doesn't censor you, the web hosting service does - like Blogger in China, but with different priorities. It is limited because it's built on a proprietary platform with features to reject spam, piracy, and obscene material. Small hosting outfits are rare because of the high costs of participating (software costs, costs to interoperate with the security features, and so on). In order to interconnect fully, their software needs to be certified and include proprietary patented mechanisms. There are a few alternatives on the fringes, but their services are slower and less secure; they constitute more of a shadow Internet than part of the main one. This suits the big boys just fine, because it limits competition and keeps government and Hollywood off their backs (in fact, many of them own or are owned by entertainment companies).
Uh, Zune? I didn't name it because I don't want to make this about Microsoft. All my examples are hypothetical, but they are all exaggerated variations on technologies we have today. I am arguing they cannot happen today, in no small part because we have free alternatives.
Um... no. There is extensive research into how social factors influence the development of technology. Proprietary software is subject to certain pressures and is heavily influenced by certain groups; free software is subject to different pressures and influenced by different groups. The governance structures of companies and FOSS projects differ. And the results differ too. Who innovates and who immitates more (FOSS may not win this one)? Who keeps their protocols and file formats secret, and who open? How many non-proprietary DRM technologies are in use? Who puts the most effort into "
FSF fails for preaching to the choir.
It's been a long time.
Microsoft makes all their protocols available for license (some royalty free) in MCPP program, they will do this with SMB2 like they did with CIFS. MS have done this ever since the original US anti-trust. The european thing was because they didn't like the format of the documentation.... go figure.
In short, I evaluated, found it non-productive, and reverted to my TWO alternate choices. (Office 2003 and OpenOffice 2.)
Maybe I'm just weird, but if I were evaluate something as big as Office 2007, I'd take at least on the order of days, preferably weeks, of full-time use to do so.
As for browsers, I am a medium-heavy user of the menu commands. Most of the file menu, Edit-Find, View-Source, Tools-Internet Options, and more, for IE7. The equivalents are a little different in Firefox. I use them interchangeably as features require. Viewing source in IE7 is still a little different than in Firefox. I haven't tried Opera yet though.
Sounds to me like you're complaining because something's different, not because it's worse.
developers must have their driver signed if it RUNS BELOW user mode on Vista x64
You tried to claim UAC enabled "you can elevate all the way to the top" access. You just admitted I (and the earlier poser) were right. IT DOES NOT.
User Mode Drivers are NOT affected.
Yeah, as I said and as the earlier poster said, UAC only allows this lower level of access.
The part McAfee and Symantec COMPLAIN over in Vista, is that MS created a unified API and security center for Vista for 3rd parties to plug in their anti-virus software for monitoring by the system.
And as I said, the problem here is Microsoft DENYING the owner the access level he needs... an access level above the hand-cuffed-Admin level... the access level he needs to be able install more powerful security software he may want to install. With the INCOMPLETE UAC access Microsoft permits, the owner is only permitted to install restricted/crippled security software that is trapped inside the little API box of what Microsoft chose to allow.
If the owner *could* simply use UAC to install general competing security software, then Symmentec and others would have had nothing to complain about.
If you try to exceed the level of access and control Microsoft PERMITS you to have over your own computer, Vista deliberately lobotomizes itself and deliberately locks you out of all or parts of your own system.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
[stuff omitted] and
Ok, suppose the *developer* pays this sum and gets the SMB documentation.
You said "some royalty free". I lookup File Server protocol, "Server Message Block Protocol", and it says 4% royalties for a software product. That means, that any Microsoft-sanctioned FOSS software implementation is out of the question, AFAIK.
If I'm wrong I'd like to hear it.
BTW I think 12000 pages of documentation is a calculated insult, not a protocol description. But maybe that's because I'm a European..
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I don't think this is going to do anything to make people stop using Windows. In the end, most people just want a computer that runs the software that they want to run. They don't even really care about the operating system. Most don't even know what an operating system is. I doubt third party software (read: game) vendors are going to suddenly start releasing software for GNU/Linux any time soon, so ... what good is any of this really?
Not saying that no one should be talking about it, but it would be nice to figure out a way to make some significant changes.
P.S. GPL3 seems to be a similar step in the OTHER direction to me.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Look at the bright side, when MS does upgrade Windows, at least they expend an inordinate effort to provide backwards compatibility so that you aren't forced to upgrade/replace all your applications. There is no denying that backwards compatibility is something the other OS vendors (*cough* Apple) could learn to do a much better job on.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I think this is actually an example of Microsoft marketing. Office 2007 is in fact ... not big. It's a new version of Office. One Of Many, to reference our little B(ill)(org) icon we use.
... in the first hour! If I extrapolated out a true-cost of time lost, I can easily see another 25 hours slipping away. Productivity, right? The fleet is finally orchestrated to a unified Office 2003. People are productive. My company is one of the smaller ones so that the few IT guys don't have days, let alone weeks to churn wandering around behind people completing questions like "Why can't I ... " "Because that guy over there didn't save-as in the backward-compatible format".
... and solved the problem.
Tying in with the themes of this whole thread, we have a typical organization that has a few medium-strong users, and a *whole lot* of weak users. I saw no functions that looked valuable enough to replace the entire fleet of Office 2003 installs. I did see clear problems that would completely distract us in the worst way after the other colossal upgrades we just performed.
Those were the problems that arrived
To restate, I studied the software from a deployment view, and I also happen to dislike it. However, I routinely scout out clever tricks buried in software for me to use singly, to arm management with a few tricks for their meetings.
Topic 2: Internet Explorer 2 arrived trumpeting security enhancements. Great. However, the question was "why was I affected when they removed the menu bar?". I answered that. I am also not the only one to feel a clash from the deviation from software function placement standards that Microsoft themselves championed. It was addressed in Slashdot comments elsewhere. I simply restored the menu, restored its position at the top of the App,
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The first thing I will do after installing GNU/HURD is listen to Chinese Democracy.
I can't do most modifications that I think would be fun, and still legally drive on the freeway, and I can't even put it up on blocks in most neighborhoods that I'd want to live in. ... what modifications do you want to do? Install a turbine?
What is your problem with "putting it up on blocks?"
a) You would need to do this why?
b) Who is going to stop you? If a neighborhood committee or something thinks it's an eyesore, well, there's a reason God made garages and backyards.
+++ATH0
Windows is "good enough" for most of the people in the world - and for some, Linux is not good enough.
FUDdy duddies... GET OFF MY LAWN, VISTA!!! Nothing to see here, move along.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
>> 1. SMB2: Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.
> Purely speculative.
In the sense that "the sun will rise tomorrow" is speculative, yes. I take it you haven't read what Microsoft thinks of Samba. Also, going by past history (e.g. the sun has risen every other day I can remember, too), it's likely to be a very accurate guess.
>> 7. Five Versions: The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
>> 8. Activation: The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
> More guesswork.
Guesswork!? C'mon, who are you trying to BS here? Activation *IS* a pain now. I guess you've never had to talk to that stupid program over the phone before? It's a PAIN IN THE ASS. And them doing even more of this sort of crap can't be good. As for the versions, probably won't affect me, but I don't do phone tech support, I do it live. Trying to get people to know if they have business/ultimate/whatever versions isn't going to be easy and you'd KNOW that for a fact if you had any sort of clue.
>> 10. Backup: See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
> No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
Norton Ghost. Like I have a choice. I don't have time to screw with anything else. Throwing a few more HDs into the RAID isn't so bad, the trouble will be having to wait for backups over the network to finish.
>> 11. Urgency: Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
> That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
It means that we techs (and it's pretty clear that you're not one) will be forced through yet another worthless upgrade cycle. And for what? Shiny new themes? What the hell good do these millions the corp. is paying for the site license do for us? Now we have an endless upgrade cycle driven NOT by any business needs, but by Microsoft's profit needs. All because we have to remain compatible with other people stuck on the Windows upgrade treadmill. Basically, there are a whole lot of corps saddled with 3rd party software on Windows who are held slaves to an arbitrary upgrade cycle simply because everyone else is, too.
>> 12. Learning Curve: Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
>> 13. Cost: Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
> These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
Well, they'd be good reasons to consider something else if we were in a position to. Our big problems are:
A) Legacy software coded by people no longer with the company.
B) We have to service our customers who, alas, are using Windows too.
C) 3rd party software which only runs on Windows.
For A we can (and probably should) rewrite the crap. B, you can manage somewhat with OpenOffice, etc., but it's not easy. And with C, I just don't think anyone makes the stuff we need and I sure don't know how to control the industrial hardware it does. There are also CAD programs, etc. that I don't personally know of free replacements for.
In other words, all transitions suck and we'd honestly be ahead if we could break the cycle but no one wants to because it's not yet painful enough. Just expensive, annoying, frustrating...
You apparently are not going to read, so blah blah blah Vista is Evil blah blah blah...
Vista is a freaking closed source OS, and you are complaing that you can't change the guts. Are you mental?
So, now you get it?
... only a small percentage, but hear it is growing.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You called it "pure crap" when quentin_quayle stated that "The owner of the computer, even with root ('Administrator') status, can have at most only the third privilege level.", you went on to rant that "Anyone with 2 brain cells has heard of UAC, even if why people hate it. The baseline is, running as administrator, you can elevate all the way to the top, this is trusted installer, and what the UAC prompt is all about."
You started flinging feces, you started with the cracks about intelligence, and you were wrong.
And after after running head first into your own statement demonstrating that you were wrong, you now have the gall to rant that *I* not going to read?!? You have the gall to accuse me of being mental?!?
If you wanted to state that you don't mind Microsoft denying you control of your own computer, if wanted to state that you don't mind the fact that Microsoft forbids you anything above the THIRD level of access on your own computer even using UAC, you could have done that. But you didn't.
Heck, if you wanted to go further and say you think Trusted Computing is the greatest thing since sliced bread and you like the fact that Trusted Computing forbids you to know your own master security key and you like the fact that it locks you out of your own files, you could even have done that. But you didn't.
You called his TRUE statements "crap" and you started insulting intelligence, and you were wrong. I don't need to get into a mud-slinging fight with you trying to pound it through your thick skull why we object to Trusted Computing. You've already been Owned. You were wrong and you were OBNOXIOUS-and-wrong and you were Owned on it. You can't dig your way out of OBNOXIOUS-and-wrong by continuing to be more obnoxious. It's time to tuck tail and go home.
If you still want to argue in defense/support of Trusted Computing and the like, I suggest you wait for the next such story to come up and try again.... and try to get your facts straight. And refrain from the mudslinging. At a minimum make sure your opponent has actually screwed up before you start mudslinging. You can dig your way out of an honest error, but you can't dig your way out of obnoxious-and-wrong.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I thought trolls gave up after a few attempts to sound credible.
Vista is essentially no different than XP except for the required driver signing on the x64 version for non user mode drivers. This is why it is 'closed' source software, they get to control the coding too.
If this horrifies you, then buy the x32 version or if you have no plans to use Vista, then you have no business worrying about or replying to posts about Vista.
Go back to your blah blah blah Windows Vista Evil blah blah blah...
CRN TEST CENTER
.doc files has been removed.
25 Shortcomings Of Vista
By Frank J. Ohlhorst,
9:00 AM EST Mon. Dec. 04, 2006
At this point, solution providers have heard plenty from Microsoft and others about all the benefits that the Windows Vista operating system will bring businesses and other users.
But what are some things to watch out for with the new OS? The CRN Test Center compiled a list of 25 items that VARs should bear in mind when using and deploying Vista.
1. SMB2
Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.
2. Hardware
For Vista to perform adequately, PCs may need significant hardware upgrades.
3. Antivirus
Vista does not bundle an antivirus application, and most third party antivirus applications are not yet compatible with Vista.
4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.
5. Compatibility
Vista does a good job of running most common applications, but many third-party applications are not yet fully supported.
6. Memory
Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.
7. Five Versions
The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
8. Activation
The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
9. Storage Space
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
10. Backup
See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
11. Urgency
Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
12. Learning Curve
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
13. Cost
Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
14. Hardware Vendor Support
Tier-one and tier-two hardware vendors seem to be taking a slow approach to offering "Windows Vista Capable" systems.
15. Windows Backup
Vista's backup application is even more limited than XP's, forcing users to select third-party backup applications.
16. Windows Meeting Space
Lacks so many features that it's all but useless. No VoIP capabilities or shared whiteboard.
17. User Access Control Center
Lacks intelligence and forces users to approve the use of many native applications, such as a task scheduler or disk defragmenter.
18. Buried Controls
Many options and controls are further buried, requiring a half-dozen mouse clicks or more to get to. Network settings and display settings are offenders here.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
20. HHD
Hybrid Hard Drives. These are potentially a huge performance booster, but there's little information and support is available (even though should be available).
21. 50 Million Lines Of Code
Even with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vista, undiscovered bugs are sure to turn up.
22. Volume Activation 2.0 (VA2)
New volume-licensing technology limits installations or requires dedicated key-management servers to keep systems activated.
23. Missing Features
When first envisioned, Vista promised a new file system (WinFS), virtual folders and many other features that have just plain disappeared.
24. Some Protocols Eliminated
Vista does not include support for IPX, Gopher, WebDAV, NetDDE and AppleTalk.
25. WordPad
Ability to open
"It's not how many people I've killed - it's how I get along with the ones that are still alive."