Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Hits Build 7600 (Possible RTM)
An anonymous reader writes "One Microsoft Way is reporting that Microsoft has significantly incremented the build number of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: 'Reports across the Web are pointing to a build 7600 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is significant because the bump in the build number would suggest that Microsoft has christened this build as the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build. The RTM is expected to be given out to Microsoft partners sometime later this month and launched on October 22, 2009, the day of General Availability (GA). The build string is "7600.16384.090710-1945," which indicates that it was compiled just a few days ago: July 10, 2009, at 7:45pm. Microsoft only increments the build number when it reaches a significant goal, and the only one left is the RTM milestone. The last builds that were leaking were all 72xx builds, so such a large bump is suspicious but at the same time it is something Microsoft would do to signify that this is the final build.'"
"First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedest on to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." Amen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For the rest of us: Not so much.
I have a question I've been trying to figure out. What exactly is going to be the effect of Windows 7? I think there are a few issues, but I haven't been able to come to a clear conclusion. There are a few issues:
* Windows 7 is like Vista, except without as many obvious bad things.
* If Microsoft writes it, people will put it on their systems. OK, Vista showed that's not entirely true, but it didn't cause a switch away from Windows, only down to XP. So, will people begin to switch away from Microsoft, or move on to Windows 7? All it has to do is be no more annoying than XP.
* Netbooks: hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper. WIll this cause people to switch to Linux (it's a $50 - $100 savings on a $200 computer)?
* Apple: OSX keeps getting better and better. Will they make enough improvement that people want to switch away from Microsoft?
I don't really know the answers to these issues, but I've been trying to figure out.
Qxe4
This does indicate it may be the RTM build, but not because it has a new build number... but because it has a build number ending in 00.
Larry Osterman's post Thinking about Windows Build numbers goes into this in more depth.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Gaming.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Seriously? Windows 7? People are really going to play that game?
Yes - it seems there's genuine excitement about Windows 7. From what I can see, it does fix some of the glaring problems with Vista, and adds a few features:
* The backup utility actually lets you select what files to backup again, rather than just "Pictures" or "Documents".
* You can burn ISO files straight from Explorer.
* It's easier to enable BitKeeper. BitKeeper is pretty crap - it needs about 1.5GB unencrypted space to hold the 'system' files - but the installer now creates this space by default, so it's easier to actually turn encryption on.
But, as always, there are caveats:
* The backup utility actually stores backups as sets of 200MB zip archives. What. The. Fuck? Is something like Time Machine (which is like rdiff-backup) so complicated?
* You might be able to burn ISOs, but you still can't mount them. Loopback device anyone? Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?
* BitKeeper is still only available in 'Ultimate' form.
Probably the most useful new feature is the Linux-like window manager shortcuts, so you can maximise, snap to left/right of the screen etc. I've been using these in KDE for donkey's years.
I'd like to see nicknames, like:
Bellicose Bill
or
Ballistic Ballmer
or
Screamin' Steven
rather than boorrrrring build numbers.
Just sayin'.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
"As Microsoft strives to migrate their core technologies from the desktop onto the Web, so too is their propaganda machine migrating from the established press to the informal social web. Microsoft shills are invading social web sites everywhere - in forums, discussion groups, comments to news items, edits to Wikipedia, manipulation of search engines, comments to blogs - posing as innocent participants to promote their agenda and counter wide spread complaints about their shady marketing practises. Even in the comments section of blogs by Microsoft employees on their own corporate site they employ sock puppets to say the things the author felt inappropriate to say directly. They race to place their shill postings at the top spot in the comments section of news and blogs, or perhaps they are given advance notice enabling them to do this where they are a sponsor. The evidence is here on Slashdot for all to see, without embellishments from me. What I say here is amounts to only a digest of hundreds of postings by others. A careful investigator can see for himself the evolution of discussions on Microsoft related issues, especially those accusing them of their usual hard ball tactics. As one reads from Slashdot's historical record on through to recent times, the evolution of Microsoft's efforts to pervert Slashdot's discussions becomes readily apparent. Microsoft's ambition is to twist internet discussions around a full 180 degrees until these discussions become a platform for propaganda from Microsoft's "Ministry of Truth". A study of the comments of the shills posted here can be cross-correlated with postings on other sites. Their pattern of saturating a discussion with shill postings, and the repeating of mindless memes becomes obvious. Their harassment, ridicule, and suppression of criticisms is designed to intimidated those who would speak out against them. They seek to establish and enforce a discipline of giving Microsoft "fair treatment" and their propaganda the same consideration and respect a real person would deserve. In the process they are destroying Web 2 as we know it. This insidious attack on the infrastructure we rely upon to form our opinions in a complex world has both a direct and an inhibitory effect on free speech as a side effect. We must stop this while it is in its infancy. Once it fully established, it will become much more difficult to root out, and other ruthless corporations, organizations, and even governments will want to emulate the success of Microsoft's campaign. This is the nightmare vision of the end of the social internet as we know it."
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1284651&cid=28502473
That's nice but wake me up when it leaves beta^H^H^H^H SP1
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
While I think all MS products are pretty craptacular, and I'm mostly a UNIX fan for desktop / engineering work, I did buy the $99 Win 7 Pro upgrade preorder just to keep up with a reasonably modern generation of windows. Pragmatically I realize that for at least a couple of more years there will still be a lot of software that runs on Windows and not UNIX / MAC / whatever, so it is good to be able to run Windows when needed (even if only from a VM under your desktop UNIX / MAC). ...), networked backup, transportable file metadata, good integrated search/metadata database based content organization functionality, decent file systems [think ZFS], decent backup, or decent drive content organization. Abolish the registry, turn it into a SQL database if you must, make it possible to in
Now that 64 bit hardware and 4G+ RAM is so ubiquitous, and relatively inexpensive, I find that virtually all the PCs my family has or would be likely to get would be best served by a 64 bit OS, and having 4GB or or likely more of RAM. Thus I feel that XP-32 has pretty much outlived its usefulness as a primary desktop OS for mid-range or better new desktop hardware. That's also true because it seems likely that evolving security patches, security products, as well as media application products will likely function better on Windows 7 / Vista than on XP SP3 as 2010 and beyond progresses and XP becomes more and more of a legacy OS and Vista/Win7 become more and more mainstream.
The things I like about Win 7 are that they upgraded Media Center / Player for H.264 / Divx etc. They didn't go nearly far enough in terms supporting of other codecs (no Ogg, etc.), bad media format / file portability, no intrinsic HD-DVD / Blu-Ray playback (WTF?!), still bad DRM, etc. But at least the more ubiquitous Media Center functionality with integrated H.264 is a good step forward. I'm not thrilled about Silverlight / WPF, et. al. but I concede that to the extent that they'll be perhaps popular, Vista / Win7 are reasonably convenient desktop media platforms to run them on.
They got a clue and included all the features (supposedly) of Home Premium (e.g. Media Center) into the Pro. version, which I applaud -- doing otherwise in Vista was simply deplorable. Personally I think they should have just let all the features of Ultimate be the standard for Home and Pro use, and I think their crippled feature edition product differentiation still sucks (no ubiquitous Home/Pro bitlocker and no Home EFS and no 'full' Home backup tools?! WTF?!), but at least they've taken a tiny step toward making their mid-range Pro edition useful for cases where multimedia support and less crippled networking/security/backup [relative to 'Home Premium'] is important.
So basically I think that 64 bit is the 'killer feature' for mid-range or better desktop use for either Vista or Windows 7. It is good they decided to include 64 bit versions for Home and Pro editions, they should REALLY push for 64 to be the primary installed product, with 32 basically being for some netbooks and really underpowered legacy hardware with 1-3 GB RAM. In the respect of facilitating 64 bit access, Win7 is better than Vista since they made you jump through hoops to get Vista 64 Home/Business in many cases. Maybe by the time they get to Win 8 we'll finally get decent backup / RAID / NAS support, a better filesystem with WinFS and reasonable metadata support and no crippled path length limitations on NTFS, better codec / transcoding support, and truly ubiquitous encryption access/support. By Win 8 they ought to bundle next generation "home server" cloud support into the "family pack" too and have some kind of distributed secure cross-PC "cloud" sync/incremental backup system with transparent file synchronization and off-site encrypted backup integration APIs for internet hosted services like Carbonite, Wuala, Mozy, Windows Live SkyDrive, etc. too -- it's all overdue by years.
They apparently just don't get it about providing good file security (including bitlocker, PGP, ACLs
A while back coke.. err i mean microsoft.. introduced "new coke".. err.. i mean windows vista.. which was an unfort--*cough*purposeful*cough*--unate flop.
Then, they released "coca-cola classic".. err.. i mean windows xp again...err.. i mean "windows 7".. which the public raved was so much better than before!
HURRAY! *cough*and microsoft gets away with zero innovation by simply engineering expectations*cough*
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
A lot of builds for 7 go on internally that aren't released to the public as Betas or RCs. Most of them have been leaked to BitTorrent. I can promise you that there's a newer build number available after 7100.
It is so funny, When XP was released I couldn't wait, and loved it, but a lot people said, that they were going to stick with win98, Then vista (which I liked) comes out and everyone says "i'm gonna stick with XP". Just accept it and move on.....
Does that justify a multi-hundred euros upgrade?
Wow, something that it's being done in linux since... 2003? And what timing. Who burns CDs anymore? Microsoft releases that functionality exactly when people are starting to use memory cards, USB flash drives and external HDs instead of CDs (measly 700MB of data) and even DVDs.
So what exactly does windows 7 have that is either exciting or even worth a hundred euros?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
You can fool some of the people All the Time ...
"And that's our target market", said the marketing droid.
This is quite astute.
I'd also like to point out another story detailing a strong statistical anomaly in the speed at which anti-microsoft and pro-linux stories get "buried" on social news sites.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So what exactly does windows 7 have that is either exciting or even worth a hundred euros?
Support for third-party applications that require Windows 7, and security updates past April 8, 2014. Whether that's worth 100 is subjective, of course; personally, that's only worth about 40 to me.
It's actually called BitLocker, rather than keeper. ;)
Dude, you need to stop eating toe fungus. I like linux but my customers use Vista & I forced myself to use it. After SP1 it wasn't the doom & gloom everyone here made it out to be. The more you scream stuff that don't match users experience the less persuasive your argument becomes. It makes you look like a ranting lunatic. BTW Vista has a larger OS market share than linux + apple combined .. not exactly an appeal from death row.
I pre-ordered a copy for myself and my son.
Of course my Laptop will dual-boot both Windows 7.0 Pro and Fedora 11, so that if Windows 7.0 fails me, at least I have Fedora 11 to use. I will try to use the Windows XP virtual machine option with 7.0 Pro to run legacy software.
My son has been begging me for Windows 7.0 so I got him a Windows 7.0 Home Premium, I could not afford two 7.0 Pro copies, so I bought him a Home Premium version. If he needs the 7.0 Pro version Microsoft allows an upgrade to 7.0 Pro via the Internet and I can afford that later if needed.
If the XP virtual machine does not work to well, I'll be buying two old copies of XP Pro from pricewatch.com and run them in Sun VirtualBox later. I hope I don't have to do that, but the current Windows XP licenses would be invalid after the upgrade to 7.0.
My son's system uses a wireless adapter that does not have Linux support, and he showed no interest in Linux, most of his games work in Windows XP, and if they don't work in Windows 7.0 I'll look for upgrade patches to work with 7.0 or he'll have to skip playing those games until I can get a virtual machine set up to play his games.
Both systems were Vista boxes, downgraded to Windows XP Pro, so they should run Windows 7.0.
I know I am taking a risk, but I hope to find out what problems friends and relatives will have when they upgrade to Windows 7.0 as they'll be calling me and asking for help. Upgrading from XP requires a reformat and reinstall, and most of my friends and relatives are using XP and some are using Vista.
I preordered before July 11 to qualify for that half off special on upgrade copies. I am not sure if the old XP licenses will still work if Windows 7.0 fails and I have to reinstall XP, or if I have to buy new licenses for XP to switch back to XP.
Anyway I could always buy my son a wireless card that works with Linux and install Fedora 11 with WINE and see if that runs his video games better than Windows 7.0 and save money on XP licenses and virtual machines, and teach him how to use Linux as an alternative. But it is more important that he learn how the Windows upgrade process works and any troubles with it and how to resolve them. Right now to him the Windows 7.0 is cool, but if there are issues and it won't run his video games, he will learn that sometimes newer technology is not always better and even if it looks cool, it might not always do what he wants it to do. Because eventually they will upgrade to Windows 7.0 in his school, too bad they don't support Linux.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Oh, you mean, random shit that used to work, doesn't anymore?
Why can't I connect to my wireless network at home?
Why does krunner randomly crash? Or Plasma?
On second thought, maybe you're right. It's things like this that are the reason I left Windows in the first place. Maybe it's time to go back.
Ubuntu is unabashedly and unequivocally built around gnome.
complaining about kubuntu not performing properly is like complaining a stretched hummer limousine doesn't perform to proper off-road specs. Sure they're based on their respective distro/model, but they're both a completely new animal.
If you want a true offroad vehicle you get a military surplus HMMV, if you want a truly seemless out-of-box KDE experience you should get a linux distro built around KDE.
Though, to be candid, I think GP's comparison of windows to kubuntu is humorously apt given the kludgy nature of windows in general (for the record, I use neither windows nor linux, i'm a mac man after a decade of using windows and 2 years of trying out linux distros)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And those Seinfeld ads were brilliant!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You can keep burning those Linux discs, sure. The Mac DVD's probably aren't legal, though.
If you're setting them on fire, put them on your junk first. It will melt into a permanent condom. You'll need it for Windows.
Then, clearly, you're either masturbating incorrectly, or having a heart attack (or both). Unfortunately, the corrective actions for each are contradictory...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
They are still making "Windows?"
That's cute. I guess there's always a market for retro stuff.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'd suck nine dicks to get a job posting pro-Microsoft stuff online. Just got laid off and would LOVE to get a check while still being able to troll people like you.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Windows 7: There are so many versions to choose from...
As opposed to, say, Linux distributions?
You can start with mine.
-- Steve
Performance numbers so far show the games to run at the same speed _or_slower_ under Win7.
Google begs to differ: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/25/windows-7-edges-out-vista-for-gaming-in-thorough-benchmark-tests/
However, common sense does tell you not to benchmark a beta OS.
He meant gaming. Not shitty not-supported almost-works-properly retrogaming.
Although I'm not really doubting your FPS stats (and I actually quite like Win7, and generally despise Vista), I think a large portion of people touting Win7 is "way better than Vista" is because their Vista installation has been there for 2 years and has a bunch of stuff installed in it, their Win7 was probably cleanly installed a month ago after the latest Beta/RC.
* You might be able to burn ISOs, but you still can't mount them. Loopback device anyone? Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?
As far as I know Daemon Tools is not spyware-infested.
The dd command's been around for almost 40 years, and does about the same thing.
Yes, but whatever Linux distro I install, I can make it work like any other without having to pay extra.;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The main change is that Microsoft goes back to marketing a product people actually want. From what I can see, pushing Vista damaged their credibility pretty strongly, but with 7 they'll likely regain much of that trust, and in fact already have with the open beta/RC.
Let's fix that - a product people might actually want. It's well established that Vista is a product that people don't want. Whether or not Vista 7 is a product people actually want will depend on what's in the RTM version: whether it's more useful than XP, if it's not more painful to use, if it supports enough hardware and software, if it includes enough new functionality to replace the utility of the inevitable incompatibilities, if it's secure enough to get through the first six months without a major worm.
Since we don't have it yet, we don't know yet how it weighs in the balance.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'll bite, you troll
The big complaint is that Apple has chosen to leave a huge gap in its product line between the Mac mini and Mac Pro.
Citation needed.
Citation needed.
Irrelevant. Unless of course you want to prove that WINE is faster than / as fast as native execution. AND that Wine is compatible with everything. Why don't you go work on those three things? Then perhaps the scorn you are receiving from almost everyone here will fade.
Although I'm not really doubting your FPS stats (and I actually quite like Win7, and generally despise Vista), I think a large portion of people touting Win7 is "way better than Vista" is because their Vista installation has been there for 2 years and has a bunch of stuff installed in it, their Win7 was probably cleanly installed a month ago after the latest Beta/RC.
That this would matter is amusing to a *nix user.
huh?
Karma is for whores
Microsoft's (technically unsupported) ISO mounting tool: VirtualCD
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/620/xp_small_free_way_to_use_and_mount_images_iso_files_without_burning_them/
In all fairness, dd is a bit-for-bit image. That works fine except that it creates files that are just as large as the disk. Backing up a 40GB partition with 1GB worth of data on it creates a file 40GB in size. Not so great if you want to store multiple sets of images. Programs like Ghost and other more elaborate imaging tools know the format of the filesystem and copy only the actual data of the partition, making the file only as large as it needs to be, and making it possible to restore it back to a partition of an arbitrary size rather than only the exact size that the image came off of.
There are some tricks you can do to reduce the size of a dd generated image - namely defragging and zeroing out all unused space before imaging so that compressing the image eliminates much of the space, but that's a hassle and still carries the limitation of only restoring back to a partition of equal size.
Like most pro-Unix arguments that basically equate to "*nix has had xyz for ages.", saying dd is "about the same thing" is a gross oversimplification of the issue. dd has it's uses, but for most hard drive imaging tasks there are better ways to do things. I love Linux. I've used it for years, but the automatic tendency to assume that any and everything that ever occurs on any other platform has already been done better on Linux is just offputting, and usually not accurate.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's one. I know dozens that have had fits with their el cheapo laptops. The damn things are cheap for a reason. Quality is dismal for the most part. Sure some of them work okay...lots don't. Good for you that you're one of the lucky one. Keep on rolling the dice and you'll come up snake eyes. I've seen some nice Sony and Toshiba laptops with great build quality....and they cost about the same as Apple.
Gaming.
Wii.
The Wii is great, if you're not into gaming. Or if you're 9.
Advice: on VPS providers
Just for reference, Microsoft offers the Virtual CD Control Panel which will let you mount ISOs. I started using it sometime in late 2k5, not sure when it actually came out, and appearently it can be made to work in Vista at least.
http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2007/05/14/virtual-cd-rom-control-panel-on-vista.aspx
I did some quick Googling and could find the main link to the MS product page for it. Prolly should have used bing, but I refuse to use a search engine that has changed names to get market share.
Anyway, if you actually use the MS Virtual CD control panel you'll quickly understand why they didn't include it. The management interface is some basic windows app that would have been accepted during the win95 internal builds, before the betas, not any time after that. But it does indeed work, after you figure out the sequence of button clicks required to get you going since it doesn't do anything other than what the button says, such as loading the driver automatically rather than requiring you to go to a different dialog first to enable the drive than come back and add a drive. Its just not end-user friendly. Geeks will figure it out quick enough though.
Interestingly enough, my Ubuntu install doesn't just let me double click on an ISO to mount it out of the box. Do any distros work this way? I'll fully accept it may be due to my futzing. I'm a FreeBSD user mostly, just play with Ubuntu so I have a general idea whats going on in the Linux desktop arena, and I've done some weird crap to it so it wouldn't surprise me if I pissed off some automounter gods or something.
I seem to recall it being more than a single mount command to do it in FBSD although I know it can be done with just a couple.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The only things that run better (like video) are due to MS spending all of their time streamlining the DRM code that will prevent you from using *your* legally purchased files wherever you want.
The DRM systems are only active when DRM-encumbered media is being played. Further, the apply no more restrictions than any other DRM-enabled player capable of playing such media.
CowboyNeal?
Now - that being said. Eventually I found answers for those issues, and I'm pretty pleased with Win 7. There are a couple of quirks, but I'm fairly hopeful that the final build will have them fixed. However... discrediting every pro-Win7 poster as "shill" sounds a bit ridiculous. So with that in mind, where's your evidence that this is the case? You say it's "clearly visible" -- where is your "clear proof" that GP was a shill? Am I a "shill" now because after my initial issues I have had a relatively good experience (and holy shit, a TON better than Vista - even under SP1/SP2). How do you tell the difference between real people who like Win7 and shills?
Amusingly, your post - a copy-paste of someone other AC's unsubstantiated rant actually got modded "interesting", while mine will likely get modded down.
Quad-core Mac Pro + Applecare (to match the Dell's warranty): ~$2750.
Precision T3500, 2.66Ghz quad-core, 3GB RAM, 750GB drive: ~$1750.
Studio XPS, 2.66Ghz quad-core, 3GB RAM, 640GB drive, 3yr warranty: ~$900.
For nearly everyone, the $900 Studio XPS is equivalent to the $2750 Mac Pro.
nice job missing the point though. bravo.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Your announcing on a technology site that you just pre-ordered TWO copies of an OS that's in a free public beta? See if you can cancel the order, create a (free) technet account and download then burn your disks. You can use this version until March 1, 2010 and then decide if it's worth your money.
Quack, quack.
Um, dude, I'm sure I'm being trolled here but... are you complaining about wasting 6 bytes in your hosts file? If that's your big objection to Windows 7, then they've done a bang-up job IMO.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Wow. Helluva rundown. Almost over my head, too. Now I have to do some reading, to see how well I can really understand all that. Oh, don't worry, I got the "in a nutshell" idea of it. Firewall is a layered defense, and Microsoft took away the layers. Which just begs the question: do 3rd party firewalls provide the layers of defense, or do they just rely on Window's API's? And, if 3rd party firewalls provide a good layered defense, which ones do so?
I'm glad I have a good gateway machine, lol. I just didn't realize how important it might be!!
And, I understood the HOSTS thing just fine.
Thanks for the info, and I'm off to find more. :-)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
On what basis would you expect it to have marketshare even remotely close to XP's ?
The pirates would have moved to Vista right away if it was worth a damn. That's half of the market right there. By Microsoft's own licensing numbers, Vista should have passed XP sometime last year. Apparently a whole lot of people bought Vista who didn't want it. Why is that?
If even the people who steal their software won't use it, that's a damning condemnation right there.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm not so sure that they are just clueless fanboys instead of paid shills. For example, there was one clueless fanboy here the other week that was convinced that RMS had written linux and that linux needed a "runas" feature despite the fact that it had been in linux since 1991 and other forms of *nix long before then ("su" and more recently "sudo"). A paid shill would know more. It's just like the cult of Apple cheering for the technological underdog this time.
Despite the hype MS Windows will get better, and hopefully by the time MS Windows 7 is released it will actually recognise my IDE DVD drive and actually install from it (yes I know it is a beta).
While 0 is a valid IP address and should work in a hosts file, dude, STOP ABUSING the hosts file like a clueless idiot! Seriously, 14MB of plain text that needs to be parsed for every lookup? That's the most retarded thing I've ever seen.
At those proportions, there are WAY more efficient methods. Think about it, a hosts file can only match fully-qualified host names. If you want to block a whole domain you waste enormous amounts of space because you have to specify each and every host. Following that, you should instantly realize that security doesn't work with blacklists, i.e. if you know that domain evil.invalid is hostile, you can't afford to miss some hosts below it. Otherwise, what's the point?
And anyways, diverting traffic to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 is changing semantics in so many ways. Suppose you start running a local HTTP server for testing purposes and all that traffic is suddenly hitting it. It's just wrong.
"Blocking" hosts by listing them in the hosts file is an evil evil evil ugly hack conceived by clueless idiots that can't manage to run a local proxy where you could block domains with simple regular expressions and only for protocols which need them blocked. Or running a local DNS cache where you could blacklist domains so you get a semantically correct (for your purpose) NXDOMAIN error.
If you weren't abusing it like that the whole 0 vs 0.0.0.0 issue would fly past you because noone ought to modify the hosts file anyway these days. That's what DNS is for.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
man nice
PS: That's no compliment, type it in a shell :P
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
At which point you're back to spyware-infested.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
I see a lot of people saying that win7 is going to be a viable OS for netbooks. I just installed it this weekend on a netbook, and frankly it was a miserable experience. When finished, it was totally unusable for two primary reasons. First the netbook has a 1024x600 10" screen, once windows was done drawing all its art in the form of huge taskbars and big ribbons, plus assorted other screen junk, about 1/3 of the extremely limited screen remained. Secondly, it was just a dog, the 1G memory and low end CPU just makes it crawl along.
Yes, but whatever Linux distro I install, I can make it work like any other without having to pay extra.;)
That's why I use rpm pointed at the fedora repos with my Kubuntu install. Your right I don't have to pay extra.
But I haven't gotten it to work either. Maybe I'm not not l33t enough. ;)
I'll bite, you troll.
Have you actually looked at the PCs in those office buildings full of thousands upon thousands of cubicles. The current hardware refresh is 1GB XP (or 2GB Vista) entry level core 2 duos.
Most big IT shops supporting thousands of users wants standardized PCs that they can swap the monitor out when it dies without having to touch the pc. And if the hard drive goes they want something they can open, plug a new one in, image it, and send it back. ditto the power supply and optical drive. And if the motherboard fails they just replace the PC.
So the imac and mac mini are both out of the running.
The problem isn't that the mac pro isn't good value for what's in the box. The problem is that almost nobody needs what's in that box. And Apple doesn't sell a box with the stuff business needs the way business wants it. They want imac specs in an easily maintained box, separate from the screen.
Apple refuses to make one, and simply puts themselves out of the running in this market.
Daemon tools lite is a grand total of $0.00 and spyware free.
The AC is a retard.
NTFS reads blocks. If your hosts file is smaller than 1 block, it doesn't make a disk I/O difference HOW BIG each address is.
String parsing is fast. Perhaps it would be a reduction of a couple dozen CPU cycles to read a "0" rather than "127.0.0.1", but that actually might be offset if the code to look for 0 caused a page fault due to code bloat to support special cases. Under the covers Windows would still have to alloc a SOCKADDR so we're only talking about a difference in parsing complexity.
Plus, the AC poster obviously isn't familiar with Windows DNSClient service. It is not actually necessary to parse LMHOSTS every time a network connection is made by name; the file is only parsed when it changes.
I just realized that the things that will make me the happiest about Win 7 (potentially) are really totally indirect effects, but ones that will really help the overall computing world / experience.
No I'm not shilling about how great Win7 is -- LINUX has done most of this stuff well / much better for years, but the point here is that the UBIQUITY of market adoption of capable OS / HW platforms will enable better momentum for these technologies / opportunities than if they were just "niche market" demands as they currently are perceived to be.
* One: 64 bit windows will be a mainstream OS that 3rd party software / hardware vendors just CANNOT ignore anymore. I've been using 64 bit for years with Vista, but lack of good 64 bit SW/HW driver compatibility has been painful. Now that a good percentage of people who buy new PCs will be having Win7/64 by default, finally SW / HW makers will support it properly just due to their bottom line.
* Two: I realize that there's nothing special about 64 bit vs 32 bit for legacy hardware, but RAM is CHEAP now (at least DDR2 is). Moore's law tells me that 8GB, 16GB, 32GB RAM will be cheap in the near future. 32 bit OS/SW was a MAJOR obstacle to taking advantage of cheap RAM more than 4GB, so getting widespread vendor support for that means we can all have more cheap RAM and not have it be considered some "power user" or "enterprise" or "server" high end thing to have 8GB, 16GB+ RAM. Maybe they'll even start putting enough RAM slots in *consumer* motherboards and add the CPU support that you'll be able to install 32GB, 64GB+ cheaply within 3 years without a server class CPU/motherboard. More RAM is one of the best/cheapest upgrades you can get for a PC, even if it is just used mostly for disc cache, that's OK. With 1TB hard drives being cheap / common, we NEED lots of disk cache RAM just to speed up the disk metadata searching and filesystem journaling / buffering. 8GB RAM is less than 1% of the capacity of a $90 1TB disc, so really we've sorely needed more/cheaper RAM just for disk buffering for a couple of years.
* Three: This is the potentially BIG thing for usability as well as the environment. The system will boot faster, shut down faster, but most crucially, it will SLEEP better, and because it will be widespread, PC / hardware / driver / SW makers will get crucified if they DON'T have BIOS / drivers / software that don't deal well with ACPI / PC sleeping / "instant on" etc. This hopefully will enable MANY more people to actually make effective use of the power saving sleep / hibernate features of their PCs, saving a huge amount of energy and energy resources and TIME. It will also greatly increase productivity for people who don't want to wait for slow boot/shutdown times, sleep/hibernate functions that don't work right, etc. I think the OS functionality has sorta started being usably reliable since Vista SP1. Now with Win7, I think the OS vendors and BIOS / SW vendors will really focus on making instant-on PCs and fast boot/shutdown a reliable "it just works" situation. Maybe we'll even start seeing ability to "snapshot" your system state hibernate style, but "bookmark" various "sessions" of the entire PC's application state so you can quickly switch between "desktops" relating to working on one thing vs. working on another thing, etc. Combing quick boot + VM technology + hibernation etc. and you could see whole new paradigms of organizing your workflow on PCs where you can load / unload whole PC configurations and application suites in a few seconds. Replace the old "dual boot" with "oh just load up this bookmarked VM or hibernated snapshot in 5 seconds" and you're running something completely different / task-oriented. Have 10 word documents, 10 PDFs, 30 browser tabs open for a single project, e.g. doing your taxes or whatever? Just have ways to snapshot/hibernate/bookmark that whole set of context as a "desktop context" and quick-boot back to it as an hibernation context or migrate it transparently to a VM snapshot or whatever when you'r
The "spyware" is something you can opt for (not sure if it's opt-in or op-tout) during the installation. It's not like they're not being upfront about what it is and what it does.
Been using daemon tools for ages, never seen anything unexpected from the app or the stuff it installs.
Matter of fact, considering how long I've been using it I should probably pay for it anyway :/
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
For mounting ISO's under WinXP, this has worked for me. It's small and simple and doesn't have any extra crap:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
"Spyware-infested" if you say yes to the clear and unambiguous "Install Daemon Tools browser toolbar" option in the installer.
Hello girls,
I am sorry for interrupting your discussion:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/620/xp_small_free_way_to_use_and_mount_images_iso_files_without_burning_them/
This app is provided by microsoft (without warranty and support, as with most microsoft products). It lets you mount your warez^H^H^H^H^H personal backups and Linux ISOs.
I'm no shill. I have several linux boxes at home and a mac mini in addition to my windows pcs, and I run a whole ton of linux servers (debian, ubuntu, vyatta) at the office running the website, imap/squirrelmail, DNS, VPN, some DHCP, a bunch of routing boxes and some fileservers. We run server 2008 for active directory, and linux for virtually everything else server-wise.
That said - ubuntu still sucks on the desktop for me, especially on laptops. I've tried to love it, I really have. But when you're running half the stuff you need in a virtual windows instance, you might as well just run windows native as save the grief.
Windows 7 is what vista should have been in the first place. I've replaced every single vista box with windows 7 RC. It's faster, it's snappier, ejecting usb keys is finally sane, media centre is a metric shitton faster and better, my other half loves the snipping tool. Is it faster than XP? I think so - my eeepc certainly runs better on 7 than XP. The hardware support is *much* better (built in AHCI support), I actually prefer the interface, and it's not about to be retired, either. Is windows 7 the best OS ever? No, there's still room for improvement. Is it better than linux? Depends upon what your needs are. Is it the best version of windows yet? Holy hell, yes, easily.
Would I pay full retail price for windows 7? No. Will I be taking advantage of technet, discounted upgrade pricing (when it finally starts in europe), OEM copies and using my schools agreement at the office to skip vista entirely and go straight to 7? Yes.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
You think CLIs are bad? Have you tried using something like Ubuntu WITHOUT the CLI? It's even worse - 5 ways to change the same setting, and only half of them work. Oh, and only one of the five options corresponds to the one you can set via the CLI...
Sure, if all you need is Firefox and Thunderbird you're not going to be changing a lot of system settings, but even simple things like changing screen resolutions or refresh rates for multiple monitors (stuff that takes seconds in properly thought out operating systems) take hours of tweaking and research...
All in all, I don't think Linux without the command line is feasible at the moment... it's just not functional enough without it.
"RTHDRIBL"
I'm sorry... do you need a tissue?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I use this rather arcane procedure. I fetch a small box from a shelf, take a metal-coated plastic disc from within it, put it in my computer, and the film starts playing just like magic!
So I've never heard of you before, but you seem to like throwing your initials round APK, or Alexander Peter Kowalski.
Your initial comments seemed idiotic, you were complaining about your 15mb+ hosts file being slow to load. Sorry, but what the fuck? You have a 15mb+ hosts file? are you really that clueless about IT?
But you try and justify it all by talking about security so I figured hey, I'll see what this guys credentials are. Well, a quick search turned this up:
http://www.ca.com/us/securityadvisor/pest/pest.aspx?id=51276
A piece of software that can arbitrarily run applications invisibly? Sorry what, did you really try and throw such a security threat onto consumer's PCs??
But wait, it appears you didn't stop there, I also found this:
http://www.thorschrock.com/2008/05/19/how-to-respond-when-people-threaten-to-sue-you-on-the-web/
So not only do you produce an app. that is a massive security risk, not only do you fail to see why it has been validly categorised as such, but you throw a hissy fit and threaten to sue? Not only that, but continue to spam the comments section of that site for over a month continuing to whine?
People make mistakes though so fair enough, I figured I'm sure there's more to this guy. I found this:
http://www.thenewtech.com/forums/chit-chat/today-4378/index32.html
Er, a program built entirely around breaking the hosts file using it for purposes it is simply not intended? Again, do you have any idea about the subject you preach? Do you realise that your very own programs pose a security risk? Do you realise how trivial it would be for Malware to hide malicious redirects in hosts files of the size you are talking meaning yet another one of your programs is a vessel for anti-security?
And there's more:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/51009562/m/3680937305
Threatening to sue again on online forums because people didn't like the fact you were using them to advertise your dodgy Delphi programs?
Other than that, all I could find was a couple of dead web pages of yours and mention of a couple of long obsolete Delphi programs.
Your complaint is about the performance of using the hosts file for something it's never meant to be used for and the resultant performance drops of reading such a large file.
The fact that using the hosts file so incorrectly inherently severely decreases performance of DNS lookups anyway seems lost on you.
You talk of security yet you produce applications that are security threats.
You threaten to sue anyone who points out that your applications are security threats, you threaten to sue people who do not like you using technical forums to advertise your programs.
You complain here about how people obviously aren't programmers because they disagree with you yet your language of choice is object pascal via Delphi, hardly the language of choice for an expert programmer and second only to pre-.NET Visual Basic for the horifically bad bloatware it results in.
Do us all a favour, quit posting anything to the internet, spend a few years updating your knowledge to learn a worthwhile language like C++, Java or one of the .NET languages. Get a clue about security and understand why your applications are a far bigger security risk than anything you talk of and finally, stop threatening to sue anyone you disagree with.
Win7 was probably cleanly installed a month ago after the latest Beta/RC.
Sure that could be it, but in cases where this is NOT true, the performance differences are still present.
This old laptop I am using at the moment was a Vista RTM/SP1/SP2 (SP2 Beta insstalls even) Win7 Beta 1, Win7 RC (using modded text file to allow upgrade. This computer is nothing special execpt it is my 'testing' work horse that I throw lots of crap at all the time and for its 'time' (2005) was a nice model, having a nice P4 and a 7950 GPU.
The main thing about performance gains with Win7, and I will speak in general, but it applies very directly to this laptop, is there are lots of 'UI' level optimizations that give a faster feel. This means when you open 'Computer' or 'Documents' it pops open and subsequent use of Explorer continues to be snappy and you get around at speeds that are beyond even what Explorer in XP felt like. (In fact some of the bug reports dealt with on Win7 have been from the Explorer UI responding too fast while scrolling, etc thus making the user not fully double click as the UI has responded faster than the User.)
So there is the 'feel' and this goes beyond Explorer and also just 'feel'. Many applications have a bit more of a lightness and spark to them (3rd party as well), and this has to do with DWM optimizations and other little refining steps. There are also less 'locks', as with XP and even some with Vista, you would find the Control Panel locked up while the system was applying a setting or a dialog stick to the screen, etc. These types of locks in the OS applications and Explorer and hard to find now.
Technically there are also reasons why lower level operations in the OS not only work a bit faster, but are also smoother, as granularity has been combed through in Win7, with many kernel and various layer locks removed as they are no longer necessary.
The memory footprint and memory usage is also a big thing, and helps performance, even on higher end systems with extra RAM.
On low end systems like 512mb or 1gb of RAM, the service model has changed in Win7 with a new event based service handler, this keeps services 'alive' but not 'running' in a classical sense, which reduces the service footprint considerably.
On high end RAM systems, the flipping in and out of RAM was improved in Vista, but again refined with a few new rules in Win7. This keeps Superfetch doing good things better and also lets some of the RAM flagging added in Vista smooth out for better overalall usage of RAM for Video and other things 'extra' RAM is used for.
Gaming does see improvements in Win7.
Part of this has to do with the RTM Vista Video drivers from NVidia and ATI sucked, and where barely working, let alone optimized. As everyone here should know, Vista introduced WDDM and this was not a 'revision' but a ground up re-write of video drivers. This was great for progress, but sucked for gaming as all the years of optimizations used in games and by the video drivers either no longer applied or had to be done another way. About Jun-Sep07, this changed as the NVidia and ATI drivers caught up to the XP speeds users had 'expected' out of Vista.
So going forward with 'more' optimizations and implementation of the WDM 1.1 specifications that give the OS more 'scheduler' level control of the GPU, brings the performance up a bit from Vista. Some GPUs will see minor improvements, some will see large improvements, and as the newer WDM 1.1 revisions are optimized, these 'boosts' could even grow, while giving the GPU multi-tasking abilities of the OS a more smooth experience.
On this 2005 laptop, I see about 5-10fps boost in games between Vista SP2 and Win7. It isn't massive, but helps. On an even older laptop at my house that is a P4 with a Geforce 5600M GPU, game FPS jump about 1.5 to 2x what they ran in Vista. The funny thing about this laptop, is that it has to use the same Vista drivers from Dec 2006, as NVidia doesn't update the driver for the FX 5xxx cards past
Seriously, 14MB of plain text that needs to be parsed for every lookup? That's the most retarded thing I've ever seen.
While I agree with you, Vista has two technologies which speed up this sort of thing. Actually, three. Two are shared with XP, one of which is shared with pretty much everyone in existence. Vista has disk caching, which will probably keep that 14MB in RAM at all times. If it doesn't, and you have some ReadyBoost-enabled flash hooked up, then the file will probably end up copied to flash because it will be very frequently read. Three, XP and Vista both reorg files to be contiguously located on the disk to speed up boot time.
Obviously, tampering with DNS results is a better solution than tampering the hosts file. It's not available to dumbasses though... but it seems like it should be, and it wouldn't be that hard to just give people a package that would provide it. I wonder if you can run dnsmasq on Windows :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> This is absolutely not true at all.
Gutmann's FUD has been refuted numerous times. Further, it's so stupidly trivial to demonstrate (eg: output video to an analogue connection) he is wrong, it's plainly obvious he didn't do even the most basic testing.
No DRM-encumbered media == no DRM systems active.
Any company that employs a public relations company has had the opportunity to pay for astroturfing for years. In fact, I sort of wish we could recognize and reward the companies that don't do it. In Microsoft's case, there are documents from the Iowa case which basically lays out the tactics, like astroturfing, they use to influence the public perception of their technical merits.
Now, over at ZDNet, all the Windows 7 articles are accompanied by legions of talk backs wherein the writer relates how flawlessly the beta and RC of Win7 have operated. Then, the weekend that the Wall Street Journal reports Jobs' liver transplant, Dan "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons makes a blog post wherein he describes his frustration in trying to write an article in Word on Win7 beta while it kept crashing. He had to go to his Plan B, write it on his Mac, and he excoriated Microsoft for the quality of its software. His commenters took issue with him critiquing a company for beta software, which is a fair point. But, in one place, dozens of testimonials that they are testing it and there's never a cough in the carload and it's ready to ship now, and at another place, for an arbitrary user, it fails when he needs it to get his job done. It's possible that that's just the way it broke. I think it's more probable that some of the "flawless" posts are pr product.
Mine is only 216k and comes from here.
At those proportions, there are WAY more efficient methods...
I use a custom
I agree that it's not perfect, but it's not like I run around engaging in any risky behavior just because I have a custom
And anyways, diverting traffic to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 is changing semantics in so many ways. Suppose you start running a local HTTP server for testing purposes and all that traffic is suddenly hitting it. It's just wrong.
Well, first of all, I don't care about being theoretically "wrong" if the actual, real-life result is "just fine." I have noticed NO ill effects from running a custom
"Blocking" hosts by listing them in the hosts file is an evil evil evil ugly hack conceived by clueless idiots that can't manage to run a local proxy where you could block domains with simple regular expressions and only for protocols which need them blocked. Or running a local DNS cache where you could blacklist domains so you get a semantically correct (for your purpose) NXDOMAIN error.
Yeah, but it works. And it's easier than installing and maintaining yet more software. (I've tried a couple proxies in the past and both were non-trivial to get working.) And regarding this: "Or running a local DNS cache where you could blacklist domains"--didn't you just say "you should instantly realize that security doesn't work with blacklists"?
All I know is that whenever I go to another computer and get swamped by ads, I'm reminded of how great my little system is.
One more thing: if all you want to do is block an ad or a software update or a validity check, WHO GIVES A FUCK if you get a "semantically correct NXDOMAIN error"?!?!?!? I don't lie awake at night wo
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Buying laptops for everyone would be even more retarded. They cost more, break more, are harder to repair, run slower, are more easily stolen, have shorter lifetimes, have batteries that wear out, and have poor ergonomics (unless you spend even more and buy extra keyboards/mice/monitors). It really only makes sense to buy a laptop for those that actually need one for their job, and unless they are almost always traveling they'll probably want a desktop too.