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Koreans Advised to "Avoid Vista" for Now
An anonymous reader writes "The Chosonilbo reports that several government ministries in South Korea are advising users not to install Windows Vista, at least until popular online services can be made compatible. The problem is that ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace, employed by everyone from web games to online banking. Upgrading to Vista is expected to render many of these services unusable. Portions of the popular "Hangul" word processor, a major competitor to Office in that country, are also not functioning under Vista. The Ministry of Information is planning to publish compatibility information for popular websites, and urging users to carefully research the implications of upgrading."
The Chinese Purification has alrady begun in Asia!!!
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Many people ask me why I insist on server side web apps unless there is absolutely positively no way around it. Now they know why. Client side processing means client side requirements. Server side processing means the client can be using anything from a PC with Firefox to an iPhone with... oh wait :P
I hate printers.
ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace.
They should move to something that work in linux, mac os, and windows.
The more promising the view, the steeper the cliff...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I think we're going to see Vista be the most slowly adopted OS Microsoft has ever released.
I thought all businesses were avoiding Vista...
Perhaps they are. While businesses are computer users, not all users are businesses.
Did someone forget to install the memory and update Korea's firmware again?
I never upgrade when there is a new release. This is responsible thinking and planning on the Korean government's part. Now, if we could only convince our government and other consumers to follow suit.
my mom posts on slashdot.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Wait, Battle.net isn't compatible with Vista?
I've been telling all my friends buying new PCs to avoid Vista as well, until at least the first service pack is released.
Maybe you shouldn't use Slashdot as your source of news? Just a thought.
A company in the midwest I do some consulting for just did a 1,200 desktop test rollout to one of their divisions. They didn't have any legacy problems and were upgrading to Office 2007 anyway, plus they had fairly new machines.
Like XP vs W2K before, Vista uptake will necessarily be slow, but eventually it will be installed everywhere. In fact, I'm guessing it will be even a bit more successful than XP because all those Windows 2000 holdouts are probably overdue for a machine upgrade as well.
In Korea only old people use ActiveX.
I'm surprised to find a windows consultant claiming that a new version of windows will be successful. It's almost as if his business depends on people paying him to install this kludgy piece of crap, but that just makes no sense.
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm and the cheap shot.
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I thought only old people in Korea used ActiveX components.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
So says the Ministry of Information? Like, the Ministry of Truth? "Don't install Vista. Drink Victory coffee."
Install Vista? In Korea? Heaven forbid! They might get...get [whispers] security. OMG!!! Repent, repent, ye lost souls! Let ActiveX be thy savior!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Why would anyone upgrade yet anyway? Doesn't everyone remember all of the many problems XP had when it was first released? I didn't upgrade my PC to XP until SP1 was avaible and probably won't upgrade to vista any time soon either.
You mean... Slashdot doesn't always tell the truth?
I thought the whole point of ActiveX was to be incompatible with anything but Microsoft products. Apparently their Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy worked a bit too well.
Anyone know what this is all about - they must still be aiming to support old ActiveX stuff, right?
The real reason is that Windows Vista does not yet offer in-built protection against attacks by giant North Korean rabbits.
What the heck are they using now?!?!?
Ran into this with my partner, who is Korean. Her online banking uses incredibly invasive, poorly conceived and programmed software called nProtect. Which installs a bloody device driver to function. It actually blue screened Vista randomly. It does not install without Administrator level access to the machine (obviously). In addition, it required that you run IE7 in Administrator mode when attempting to log in. Also, many many websites did not function reliably with Vista and IE7, their ActiveX controls expecting to have administrator level access to the machine. Advanced technologically? Hardly. Just proprietary and locked in, and not very security conscious. The amount of times I had to click "Allow this website to install an ActiveX control" is just insane, I don't want to think of the amount of remote code execution vulnerabilities present on a machine with all these controls installed. They're pretty much conditioned to allow the website to install any old thing, really, since so many of their websites require it.
If the execs running Red Hat or another Linux distro had the killer instinct that Gates and other Microsoft execs have always had, then every single obstacle to "upgrading" Windows to Vista would be greeted as an offramp to Linux. Packages that reinstalled Linux would be marketed as "Windows recovery tools" to people evaluating Vista. Bundled with Office workalikes and training videos, and clickable data conversion tools.
It's easy to blame MS for being bad. It's harder to blame Linux distros for being bad at being as good at being bad.
--
make install -not war
Vista will be Microsoft's best seller ever. You wait and see.
In fact, I will bookmark this comment and see when that statment will come true.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
They create ActiveX; it's has its uses but the security flaws are far too large to ignore.
...
People criticize MS for ActiveX, so...
They remove ActiveX; now there's less of a push for it but existing ActiveX systems are screwed.
People criticize MS for removing ActiveX, so...
PROFIT?
You must be new here...
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
One would think that the PHB's in Redmond would have considered the ramifications of being sooooo special that it disconnects a whole high tech country from your product. I'm am so glad I dumped all my MS stock 3 weeks ago.
blah blah blah
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
Legal copies of Vista will be bundled with most new computers, and this alone will make it a best seller. Also, many corporations will upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
I believe Microsoft has a very good idea of what's going to happen. They understand the business and marketing aspects of selling software better than anyone else.
I am not a "windows consultant", whatever that might mean. And even asuming that your ("your" as in people like you) prophecies of doom and gloom about this "kludgy piece of crap" become true, simple and sheer inertia will make sure that Vista is installed eventually everywhere.
When i listened to national public radio the other day they were advising the same thing. To wait on Vista until all the bugs are worked out. I really fail to see why the fact that Koreans were advised the same thing makes that big a difference. The title should have been "Users warned to wait until upgrading to Vista".
Corporations don't buy used computers. And Joe Windows doesn't normally hop on eBay to buy used computers.
... until Hangul don't run! (there goes my karma!)
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh!
Don't I know it!!! I assume you mean client-side VBScript, which only works in IE. Server-side VBScript (in ASP, or VB.NET in ASP.NET) works just fine, since plain HTML is sent to the browser.
Recently, while troubleshooting an error in one of our customer's server-side code, I came across a web-form with a client-side VBScript validator. Underscoring the fact that the "developer" didn't understand what was going on, there was a disclaimer on the page that the form only works on "Internet Explorer and other browsers that support ASP". Of course, ASP had nothing to do with the incompatibility, it was the client-side VBScript.
It almost goes without saying, but the code had FrontPage written all over it!!
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
No, the problem is that incompetently created websites use delicate nonportable nonstandard proprietary software that is only interoperative with one single obsolete platform.
Don't blame Vista; blame people who aren't responsible, experienced, or forward-looking enough to see why complying with standards is so necessary.
Now let's see how people will fix their glaring mistake. Will they "fix" it by repeating it (i.e. rewriting ActiveX controls to be compatible with Vista, so that they can get paid to screw their customers again in 5 years when the next version of Windows comes out) or will they fix it by removing the irresponsible dependencies?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe you shouldn't use Slashdot as your source of news? Just a thought. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't. Perhaps you've heard of hyperbole? So anyone with fairly new machines is good to go. That's great if your company has the cash, but for many companies, upgrading computers that already work is seen as an unnecessary expense. Let alone replacing computers that "work just fine". The company I work for is looking at Vista, but it's likely we won't implement it for years, because there's no perceived benefit to moving to Vista. ...eventually it will be installed everywhere.
Heh. Yeah. Aside from totally different operating systems, you realize that there are people running Win95, Win98, Win2K, etc. out there still, right?
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but CRTs are superior to LCDs for gaming in every way but the usual reasons to buy LCD, size and weight. LCDs have one resolution, CRTs can do many resolutions (and true multisync CRTs, which are admittedly a rarity these days, can do all KINDS of things.) The best LCD has a refresh rate and is chunky compared to a CRT, which has persistence due to phosphors.
SED is supposed to address the issue of persistence, but won't solve any of the other issues.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not hardly. I won't ever install even XP here. And I am one of the people who pre-registered to pre-order Windows 2000. W2K is good enough, and the kind of software that I need to run on Windoze will continue to run on it. All my more interesting machines now run something else.
And, no, I am not a 'software luddite.' The people who are clinging to the same old/new buggy crap from Microsoft are the luddites, who are scared to move on. Microsoft is over, man. It still runs on Business machines, but businesses also still buy Swingline Staplers, Xerox copiers, and other tired, tedious things for utility purposes.
This assumes that one of two things will eventually happen:
As for the first, it's possible that MS can decide later that it "degraded the user experience" with Vista with regard to ActiveX and loosen the restrictions on it with SP1 (thus, degrading the user experience when the next generation of ActiveX exploits get into the wild).
For the second, it would take a lot of time for these things to get ported to non-MS (not necessarily Open) solutions such as Flash.
Which will come first?
Seems MS has created quite a dilemma for themselves. No doubt Korea isn't the only country where this will happen.
Yes, assuming they want to pay for it. Which brings us to:
That's great if your company has the cash, but for many companies, upgrading computers that already work is seen as an unnecessary expense.
So they won't be upgrading. Your original post claimed for some reason that *everyone* was avoiding Vista, which I can assure you is clearly not the case. Nowhere did I claim that *everyone* would be upgrading in the next three weeks, either.
Heh. Yeah. Aside from totally different operating systems, you realize that there are people running
Yes, I do. And your point here is? If your cousin Joe Bob is running Windows for Workgroups 3.11, he can continue to do so as long as he wants, I guess. When he buys a new box, chances are it will come with Vista. If he never buys another box then Microsoft is probably not interested in him anyway.
I think your problem is that you seem to be insulted by the idea that *anyone* would consider Vista, and then get defensive when someone points out there are lots of people out there already doing that.
That and all the health and environmental hazards associated with CRTs.
Cathode= Very high voltage at the back of your computer
Ray= Stream of electrons hitting the phosphor, producing visible light and also ultraviolet and higher light that is shielded from french frying your face by the three or so kilos of lead inside your monitor
Tube= Vacuum Tube that is just itching to implode
Not that these are things to absolutely alarmist about, but if CRTs were being developed as a new technology, with our health, safety and environmental concerns we have now, noone would ever go for it.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I go to University Surplus Equipment auctions where the small businessmen who sell to 'Joe Windows' buy the used machines cheap. Believe me, there is a thriving business for used PCs. So much so that now Dell is trying, in the false name of 'recycling', to suck all the old gear back to Dell Central so they can make sure it's dismantled and (most likely) shipped to China for disposal.
A lot of the buyers of the used PC gear at auction now are people of color, who recycle/rebuild for their local communities. Lotsa good stuff gets out to people who can make good use of it that way. It's only a matter of time before these people discover they can continue on using the inexpensive machines much better and even use current software by not letting anything Redmond touch the hard drives.
I think your problem is that you seem to be insulted by the idea that *anyone* would consider Vista, and then get defensive when someone points out there are lots of people out there already doing that.
Hardly. I've installed it on my home PC, primarily for testing purposes, though I'm also gaming on Vista. It's even a legal copy.
I'm sure that not everyone was avoiding it...my experience with non-IT businesses leads me to believe that most will wait-and-see how Vista does before installing it. I'm surprised at the size of the rollout you mentioned, but not that it has happened.
I no longer know what my original point was. I guess it was just that I was surprised that the Korean government felt the need to issue an APB. Stupid forgetting to format my last post correctly.
Ah gee, like there will be 8 billion cool new pcs shipping with, what?, oh, Vista installed over the next few years. Ugh...cannnn'tttt --- sssstopppppp --- Visssstaaa (horrifying scream followed by dull thud).
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!
But you can beta the service pack right now!
Whats that? Vista's not even on the shelves yet?
It all depends on what the first normal users think of it.
If your average user buys a new PC with Vista on it and he doesnt like it then he'll tell his friends to avoid Vista.
While I'm sure Vista will be installed everywhere I'm not too sure about what will happen after Vista.
Linux is getting more and more polished and Windows upgrades are becoming less and less worthwhile.
Sooner or later the scales will tip.
You are certainly entitled to not install "crap from Redmond". Thankfully you have options, like Linux and OS X.
Having said that, you and the other N hundred thousand people who suffer from that "I hate Microsoft" syndrome will never make a significant dent on the sales of Windows. That's just how it is. This techno-religious disdain for Microsoft does not usually percolate up to normal consumers.
But again, you're certainly entitled to it.
There is one right way to enable active-x on a website that pervasively needs it. That is to add the website to your trusted sites list and change the settings only for trusted sites to allow active-x. I'm sure a lot of people just edit their settings for all websites though after getting tired of clicking allow 20 time in one banking session.
Why would I want your 300 MHz celeron?
I can get Dell Optiplex GX1's with P3-500s and usually 256M of RAM, for like $6.
I don't hate Microsoft. But they've ballooned into a company that produces tedious bloated software and OSes that isn't particularly interesting. They're on the way down. They make boring shit.
Get a fast responding LCD monitor ( 16ms), get a good graphics card and play your games at native resolution. There, problem solved.
And LCDs do not have a "refresh" rate like CRTs. 60Hz on an LCD does not cause eyestrain in any applications I've used. This is because the light producing element in an LCD is a fluorescent backlight that refreshes at the equivalent of several thousand times per second. True, the LCD crystal orientations may only change at 60Hz or lower (depending on their *response* time), but this doesn't create eyestrain. What it can cause is blurry moving images, which as I mentioned, can be alleviated by using a model that has a fast response time.
About the only thing that LCD hasn't quite solved is obtaining ideal contrast and color accuracy for graphics work at reasonably low brightness levels. This is starting to change though. In 5 years I predict CRTs will be almost completely obsolete, even for the most demanding CRT users.
"I'm actually a MS user and I don't have a rabid irrational hatred of them like many around here."
Au contraire, mon ami. Many, if not most, of us are M$ users and we have developed a thoroughly rational hatred of the company, based on our experiences of bloated, bug ridden, excessively expensive software, their constant undermining of standards, and their elevation of their opportunities to make money above user convenience. (My favorite was the Win98SE installer that asked if you wanted on-line services, and installed them anyway if you checked no.)
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
No, I'm New Here
See the title.
Bingo, exactly correct. This is not a Vista problem, it's a problem that various suckers used ActiveX and other non-standard features in the first place. And me without mod points, too.
Brett
Sadly SP1 will release in next couple months. http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/22/microsoft_sp1_vi sta_tap/
Vista will be Microsoft's best seller ever. You wait and see.
I don't have to wait - the Vista upsell has already generated record interest in my desktop Linux class. As the bad reviews continue to pour out, Vista is going to sell the competition like no Windoze before.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"If Vista is proven to cause spontaneous human combustion..."
You mean it doesn't?
Except some LCD makers are starting to improve their products' perceived response times by adding a mode that fades the backlight in and out 60 to 75 times a second.
About the only thing that LCD hasn't quite solved is obtaining ideal contrast and color accuracy for graphics work at reasonably low brightness levels.And price.
Is that bookmark the one beside where you say it'll be a dismal failure?
*runs off to post & bookmark a dozen very definite predictions for elections 2008*
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
So smart... yet so ActiveX...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Her online banking uses incredibly invasive, poorly conceived and programmed software called nProtect. Which installs a bloody device driver to function. It actually blue screened Vista randomly.
Right, so they are going to be buying yet more stuff that does not work? Be on the look out for LAMP jobs.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Like XP vs W2K before, Vista uptake will necessarily be slow, but eventually it will be installed everywhere."
... about 4 years now. Most of those people will not be in the USA at first, but I fully expect us to catch up with the rest of the world once a few folk over here realize how hopelessly comic our floundering around has become.
Does that mean that before Vista can be installed everywhere W2K has to be installed everywhere? Because as far as I know that has yet to happen.
There will be a steadily growing number of people like me, who haven't used Windows of any kind for
Overly verbose does _not_ mean it is easier to read. Get real. Overly verbose means it takes more code to do the same thing. Overly verbose means it is designed for "programmers" that cannot understand a real programming language that was designed to be concise and efficient. Ever program in COBOL? I had to, when I converted a legacy system to a modern system. COBOL and VB were made for a certain type of "programmer". If you fall into that category, well, I am sorry. Go do a little studying and learn to use a real programming language. It really is not that hard, honest.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
The Korean governmnent isn't telling the people to wait until Vista's security policy changes.
It's the other way around - the Korean government is telling them to wait until third party vendors (including the Korean governmnent itself) adopt to the new Vista security model.
I actually hope Vista adopts a REALLY harsh security model, so that the ill-designed, ActiveX-cluttered website designers have no choice but to design their site so that they have no administrator privilege.
Vista salesman to Chevy Chase...
Tell you what, you give me half the money you were going to pay for Vista and Office 2007, we go out back, I kick you in the nuts and we'll call it a day!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Yeah, common sense is not something you'd expect from businesses.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Have fun with your predictions for the 2008 elections. I know you'll get some of them wrong.
rewriting history since 2109
...and if there is only one browser used, well, you're compatiblity woes were just eased quite a bit.
.Mac? .English And those are just half the examples from clicking one single click down on their topmost interface.
Microsoft has made significant efforts to make Windows/Office/etc responsive to the needs of Korean developers and users, just like they do everywhere else. I don't know many of the specifics about the Korean effort, but the Office Japan team did some serious surgery because typical Japanese documents are structured differently than typical American documents (to make a long story short, think tables. LOTS of tables), and as a result Office is a big player in Japan (along with a few Japanese competitors) and many foreign developed programs like, oh, that "OpenWhatever" thingee are not. (My boss, who is in charge of OSS promotion at my technology incubator, calls it OpenWhatever. He tried it once, and uninstalled it within 15 minutes because he couldn't coerce it into writing a travel report in the form our employer requires.)
What have the other browsers/OSes decided to do for Korea, other than saying "Well, we'll provide the tools and the Koreans can build themselves usable software to compete with the Microsoft ones that already work"? Browse on over to Apple Korea's website and you can tell that they really value that market... click on "Switch" and you're taken to a wonderful presentation on the benefits of Mac, written entirely in English. Whoopsie! Well, at least you can use all the wonderful Made4Mac software... oh, English again.
Well, maybe OSS is doing a better job? Depends a lot on the distribution. I prefer Ubuntu personally, but good luck using it with an Asian language. After you've installed it you've got about 15 minutes worth of configuration to do (using a command line, naturally) to enable non-critical features like, oh, typing in non-Western scripts. I rather doubt you'll have to hexedit any config files in Vista Home Premium (Korean edition) to be able to type in hangul.
Korea might not be compatible with Mac/OSS... what has Mac/OSS done to be compatible with Korea?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Snicker all you want, Slashdot, this is certainly the way to bet. The number of installed computers in the world is increasing far faster than Mac and Linux's market share is. If it isn't Mac and it isn't Linux in 6 years it will run Vista.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Outside of any environment run by empire builders regulating as much as possible to get more staff it would not be a problem - and those situations are not as common as people who really want to flout the sort of regulatations we had fifty years ago would like to have you believe. Get some perspective - you probably have mercury in a stable and safe form in your teeth in the form of fillings.
No. Slashdot is always truthful.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You know, I could have sworn Hangul was a writing system used for the Korean langauge, and that various word processors supported it. I seem to recall knowing a guy in college who had the Hangul version of Word Perfect, for instance.
Is there really also a word processor _called_ "Hangul", or is the article writer just deeply confused?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Propellerhead Software is the name of the company which makes the software package called Reason, a complete software music studio package for the PC running Windows, among other music software.
Please, do try and keep up and at least make a minimal effort to stay informed before making ignorant comments. I realize this is Slashdot, and ignorance rarely restrains people from commenting, but still...
This will be true some day, but not anytime soon. There are a lot of Windows 2000 installations still running, even 7 years after it was released. Right now if I installed Vista on my fairly new machine, the only difference I would see is prettier screen art and slower performance. Therefore I should "upgrade" to Vista for what reason exactly?
Now it could be that I am crazy and don't understand the absolute dependence that koreans have for activex, but surely it would be benifical for everyone to change to vista while activex isn't functional so that internet developers HAVE to create programs that use other technologies, even if they aren't open they have to be better than activex.
I work in the IS dept at a major oil and gas company. We skipped XP altogether... this company is pretty tight with the IT budget. Everyone still has 2000 boxes on the desktops, and we just upgraded to exchange 2003 from 5.1 last summer.
We're internally evaluating Vista machines right now, and it looks like it will probably happen in the next 12 months or so. There's some nice group policy stuff in there.
Jeremy
You know, you really look like a cretin when you go on about so and so "loves" $thingyoudislike and "hates" $thingyoulike. It makes you look very insecure.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I want to wake up from this nightmare.
On the other hand, the irony that heavy reliance on a proprietary Microsoft standard is now preventing people from buying the latest Microsoft product is delicious.
That's because MS has heard people will wait until first SP before changing OS. Now they'll release the SP1 as soon as possible. They'll do anything to sell Vista.
We better wait until SP2..
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_Ray_Tube#Heal th_danger
I am not making this up. I did say, most of these health dangers have been dealt with. But the point is, if you had a Cathode Ray Tube without all the safety features that were later built in, such as leaded glass, seals to protect the vacuum for imploding, and ways to protect the high voltage cathode, it would be a very dangerous thing. It is now a protected danger, but still not the most elegantly put together technology ever, since some of the remedies (such as leading the glass) themselves present hazards.
There is a big difference between a monitor and a microwave. Microwaves, strangely enough, don't actually produce ionizing radiation, at least not directly. Microwaves produce radiation that is, IIRC, on the order of 12 cm long, which is extremely low energy for EMS. Monitors, on the other hand, are producing light with a wavelength as small as 380 nm (violet light). X-Rays start at 10 nm. Ultraviolet starts around 300 nm. So while it doesn't make much sense for a microwave to do much to you directly, since the radiation it puts off is some 10 to 100 million times less intense than an X-Ray. On the other hand, CRTs are putting off radiation that is only a few dozen times less intense than X-Rays, and is only marginally less intense than ultraviolet. So there is more reason to suspect them then microwave ovens. It should also be pointed out that you probably don't spend hours at a time six inches in from of a microwave.
Anyway, in past times, I would have probably said something sarcastic. But, I will say this directly: you said I used pseudo science and yet your arguments seem to not address what the stated information. Of course, neither of us is using science at all, since we are quoting authority and reasoning, instead of doing experiments (such as putting an X-Ray detector in front of my monitor). But my reasoning is more explained than your straw man attacks.(connecting me with other health scares) and vague political allusions (that my belief that a specific technology is harmful somehow connects me with 'empire builders regulating as much as possible to get more staff') So, in other words, explain what is non-hazardous about a 32,000 volt anode (which is how energetic they can be) shooting radiation (light, UV and X-Rays) through a vacuum tube that naturally is an implosion hazard. If you can't explain this, you lose.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
... that "I hate Microsoft" syndromeFunny how pretty much all defense of Microsoft products is based on name calling like that. Even organized defense like the astroturfers, both announced and unannounced, on Wikipedia. If MS products could stand up to competition on technical merits, then the solution in that case would have been to publish a white paper and let the facts stand for themselves. However, everyone, including the politburo in Redmond know that any white paper would get ripped to shreds and leave no doubt as to the problems with their technologies, thus the name calling route.
You forget or want to forget that brand recognition works both ways. Microsoft has an established and well-documented history of shit-poor quality, high prices and illegal, anti-competitive business methods. Lack of quality you can see for yourself by evaluating any of the technologies and comparing them. Or you see how licenses and other maneuvers prevent reviews, inferring that the product can't stand on its own. You can see the high prices by looking at the company's SEC fillings, or by reading the findings of fact from the multitude of States and nations that had filed lawsuits for overcharging. Likewise, the courts' findings of facts and even decisions and decisions after appeal point to strong dependence on illegal, anti-competitive business methods.
Then you can add other shining moments like the then CEO's perjury on the stand and forged video evidence during trials. That goes beyond bad judgment far into disrespect. A group that has so little respect for US laws, US courts and the US people appears by its behavior to be both anti-American and a threat to the nation. So you could say that the company and it's management have worked very hard for decades to earn and keep the all-around poor reputation.
Brand recognition hurts if you product and your company suck: It's not about an arbitrary like / dislike, despite however much you want it to be that way. It's about sucks / doesn't suck and from that people tend to dislike things that suck. Like / dislike is earned.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
That's why it's a good idea to learn AWK at the same time...
I'll get my coat...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Vista is not done until Hangul won't run.
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
Just in case you needed a confirmation on that Seoul is on of the World's most intelligent cities, here it is. :)
I don't know Twitter, but we have learned in the last few days that Bill Gates does indeed pay people to post trash. How big of a jump is it to think that Microsoft is paying people to astroturf this place?
Hell, man, the Worldwide Islamocommunofascist Conspiracy sends me a few bucks now and then to say "George W. Bush is a Dope". I think they're paying a lot of us, huh?
Cha-ching.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I cracked the "I'm waiting for service pack 3 first" joke to a MS employee. He wasn't at all amused. "know your audience" I suppose
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
IMHO I believe the reason why there are people out there that are using Windows 2000, and haven't upgraded to XP, is because XP doesn't offer the user anything over Win2K.
My own personal feelings about Vista versus XP is that, apart from new hardware support, Vista doesn't offer me anything over XP. In fact going to Vista at the moment, seems to be a step back due to all of the DRM et al. that Vista has.
We ran a beta of Vista at work to make sure our software worked on it (it did), but Vista straight out of the box was so annoying telly tubbied, that our QA guy walked off is disgust. The setup got perhaps 45mins of actual use, and has never been fired up since. So my first impression of Vista are not "glowing"
My God! That's so scary! Hey! I just heard about this dangerous substance. You should be careful about that one, too!
The answer to all this is not to operate the television set with all of the inner parts exposed. I suggest you read the quoted article again and take a less emotional view of the things written there. The modern world is as full of dangerous things as in previous times but we can take care to use them responsibly - hence keeping the lid on the TV set and not touching the high voltage parts. Also consider the radiation that gets through the screen is in the visable wavelength and has very different effects. It isn't that easy to make an x-ray machine - you can't just make a third world hospital x-ray by taking all the sheilding off a TV to expose a film - you would need a different voltage for a start and a much larger current.
Flavio wrote and included with a post:
I agree that as far as sheer sales go Vista will probably be a best seller because of bundling. But this could also result in lower sales for the home market due to the upgrade issue.
My reasoning is that many home users have computers that are fine for running Windows XP, but are not capable of running Vista without a significant upgrade. Since it is likely that the cost of an upgrade would be expensive, this could result in many home users given both Mac and Linux a serious look.
If my understanding is correct, my current system will require, at minimum, a 300% increase in memory and an upgrade of the video card before I can even consider trying to run Vista. Due to this, it has led me to look at both Mac and Linux as an upgrade option since they are both likely to be less expensive than purchasing a new Vista-capable system, a new monitor (I'm currently using a 14" CRT), and new software applications to replace the ones that will not work with Vista.
Now where will I download my hacked copy of Vista?
There are only two steps in the gathering of ultimate knowledge. Open your eyes and, RTFM!
Great idea! I'll get a different LCD monitor for the resolution of every game I want to play, since some only support 4:3 ratios and up to 1024x768, and some support the full resolution of the panel (1680x1050 in my case at the moment - the display built into the laptop.)
Yes yes, I know. *handwaving* However they have a different kind of refresh rate and it can make watching video pretty unbearable, and it DOES make playing games horribly annoying. Even a display with a 12ms flip speed is pretty damned annoying, ESPECIALLY while playing first person shooters or any other game where there's full-screen motion that fast.
Also, many of us live in an imperfect world in which it is not always practical to use the full resolution of our display. Make the world perfect and CRT will have no advantages.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sounds like the Koreans had no concern for security, and went bonkers on worst security practices.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Is that why Korea can't upgrade to Vista... it doesn't play Starcraft correctly?
Oh well, I guess that means they have to wait for the Vista enabling patch.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
you forgot to fuck off
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And I've told you a lot of times that that post ignores reality and is bullshit, and that my post stating precisely that is clearly visible beneath it.
You fucking cretin.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Man
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
The "Windoze monopoly", that's classic.
I'm not sure what kind of income you get
You hilarious flocktard, I was using that as an example. I really don't the time to explain to you how much money I made last year on the "Windoze monopoly", but that's just as well. You'd probably have a seizure anyway.
software resembles your comments
twitter, if you resemble your comments ever so slightly then I pity any person that has any sort of social contact with you.
Their stock price certainly doesn't reflect this.
qa
Who the f*ck would mod that troll? Inconsistency of tagging and verbosity are major problems with VB. Yeah, good code can be written in it, undoubtedly, but the markup has a pretty heavy overhead. It has its uses, and good code can be written in it, but it definitely falls short on quickness of coding and terseness (and hence productivity) compared to equally functional models.
Somebody mod the parent up.
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
In pretty much every way (technical, marketing, whatever), Vista is the most significant release of "Windows" since Windows 95. It's difficult to see how it _wouldn't_ be a runaway success.
I don't hate Microsoft. But they've ballooned into a company that produces tedious bloated software and OSes that isn't particularly interesting. They're on the way down. They make boring shit.
Compared to _what_ ?
My reasoning is that many home users have computers that are fine for running Windows XP, but are not capable of running Vista without a significant upgrade. Since it is likely that the cost of an upgrade would be expensive, this could result in many home users given both Mac and Linux a serious look.
A Ghz+ processor, 1G of RAM and a US$30 video card is all you need to comfortably run Vista.
Due to this, it has led me to look at both Mac and Linux as an upgrade option since they are both likely to be less expensive than purchasing a new Vista-capable system, a new monitor (I'm currently using a 14" CRT), and new software applications to replace the ones that will not work with Vista.
An entry-level PC capable of comfortably running Vista will set you back about US$500 at most.
If you don't want to use Vista, just say it. Don't use lame "it needs too much hardware" justifications (*especially* when offering OS X as a possible alternative) as an excuse when they are so trivial to demonstrate as ridiculous.
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but CRTs are superior to LCDs for gaming in every way but the usual reasons to buy LCD, size and weight. LCDs have one resolution, CRTs can do many resolutions (and true multisync CRTs, which are admittedly a rarity these days, can do all KINDS of things.)
What do you mean by "true multisync" ?
Because there is no compelling reason to get it? Because people are sick of MS underhanded strong-arm tactics (and I mean regular people I talk to, not nerds)? Because of crippling DRM? Because of incompatability with legacy software? The list goes on and on.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A true multisync display will handle any appropriate combination of sync rates between its maximum and minimum. Most so-called multisync monitors, however, only handle certain combinations of rates, they're actually a multiple-fixed-sync display. A real multisync monitor can handle weird resolutions that are in between the typical offerings.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Compared to all the cool applications and projects underway for the freenixes.
There simply isn't a community of programmers doing anything interesting on 'doze except for in the cases where they can release a crippleware program and entice you into spending $30-80 for the non-crippled version- hard-code licensed to one CPU, the way XP does it.
Vista will be Microsoft's best seller ever. You wait and see.
That's a no brainer because it is simple mathematics. 12 years after Microsoft promised and swore to repeal their "tax" to the DOJ (that's right, in the first antitrust case they had), it is still going strong. Every computer sold must come with a Windows license no matter what. Every year more computers are sold than the year before. Therefore Windows will continue to sell in record numbers every year.
If they had to actually compete and there was a real choice and they had to actually sell their product like everyone else there might be a different result. Unfortunately that is a lot of "ifs" and to date no commercial venture has been able to compete with their advantage and no open source venture has been able to beat the technological edge on the desktop. So for now such happenings are relegated to pure slashdot fantasy.
A Ghz+ processor, 1G of RAM and a US$30 video card is all you need to comfortably run Vista.
I'm not sure what you mean by "comforatbly." Perhaps with all the bells and whistles stripped down to Windows 2000 era functionality you might be able to run Vista by itself on such a rig, but not much else and if it is anything like previous versions of windows running on such a reduced rig (far less than Microsoft recommends) must surely affect performance. Quite apart from the fact that Microsoft has routinely given far lower system requirements than are really required to actually run the system with applications without constant thrashing from paging, etc, Microsoft recommends a 3d card with 128MB of memory just to hold the textures for the GUI. One shudders to think what you need to actually play a 3d game on such a system. It is true that they are claiming you can run on the reduced rig you describe, but again that is without any of the new interface features running.
Given that they are saying 1GB is required, it is likely that the reports that 2GB is really the requirement to run smoothly are not out of line. Historically Windows memory requirements have included the requirement of a paging file of 2x memory which is constantly thrashing just to run the OS at the amount of memory Microsoft claims to require, which really leads one swiftly to the conclusion that 2-3x the claimed requirement is necessary to prevent excessive paging (which really slows things down) and give at least some breathing room for an application or two. This is especially important when one considers how much memory the MS Office suite will tend to require and the fact there is a new version involved there as well.
I seriously doubt the 40GB HD is realistic here, either since they say at least a hefty 15GB is required for the most stripped down install of Vista itself. The only saving grace here is that you basically can't buy drives that small these days; even laptop drives are getting more respectable in size. BUt you are talking about the upgrade case, and an old XP system with a hoary 40GB drive is likely not to make it through an upgrade.
As cheap as video cards are these days and as cheap as memory is we are still talking a few hundred dollars to upgrade a lot of computers that ran XP pretty comfortably. Much much cheaper than a new Mac, even than a Mac Mini. But it's silly to suggest that moving from a system that runs XP very well to barely running Vista without any of the new interface features is an "upgrade." Why would you deliberately make your computer run slower? If you want to upgrade to the new OS it only makes sense if you have the beef in your system to really run the full monte. None of this "Basic" business. Ultimate or nothing. If you can settle for less, you may as well stick with XP or 2000.
"I'm surprised to find a windows consultant claiming that a new version of windows will be successful."
I am not a "windows consultant", whatever that might mean. And even asuming that your ("your" as in people like you) prophecies of doom and gloom about this "kludgy piece of crap" become true, simple and sheer inertia will make sure that Vista is installed eventually everywhere.
You yourself said in this comment:
A company in the midwest I do some consulting for just did a 1,200 desktop test rollout to one of their divisions. They didn't have any legacy problems and were upgrading to Office 2007 anyway, plus they had fairly new machines.
So you admitted that you are a consultant who installs Windows for a living. What's so dirty about that that two comments down you can't admit it to yourself? Why further down you profess even to be doing well for yourself in this practice:
I really don't the time to explain to you how much money I made last year on the "Windoze monopoly", but that's just as well. You'd probably have a seizure anyway.
So what's the deal? If it weren't for the fact you've at least made a few points in between all the "blastin on fools" you've done in this flamewar I'd be more certain you were trolling. And from the looks of it with quite a bountiful harvest!
No, sucktard. A company I consult for installed Vista. I did not install it, nor did I have anything to do with that. Entirely orthogonal to what I actually do for them.
And from the looks of it with quite a bountiful harvest!
Aren't you quite the defender of the faith.