Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Hits RTM At Build 7600.16385
An anonymous reader links to Ars Technica's report that (quoting) "Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware. The RTM build is 7600, but it is not the same one that leaked less than two weeks ago (7600.16384). We speculated that Microsoft may end up recompiling build 7600 until it is satisfied, but it only took the company one more shot to get it right: 7600.16385 is the final build number. Microsoft refused to share the full build string, but if you trust leaks from a few days ago, it's '6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255,' which indicates that the final build was compiled over a week ago: July 13, 2009, at 12:45pm. This would be in line with the rumored RTM date but it is also the day Microsoft stated that Windows 7 had not yet hit RTM. Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM."
Only 2 more service packs until it's stable.
I suppose it's true to the idea that 7 is "just a Vista service pack," but still seems odd.
English version will be available from Technet on August 6th.
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx
but it only took the company one more shot to get it right
Really?
Can I have a rain check on that?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Just like XP was a service pack for 2000 (XP is 5.1), nothing new here, same old Microsoft.
Do you D?
A fair few really stupid installers actually did this:
if (MajorVersion>5) and (MinorVersion>1) then { // compatible with Windows XP or later
}
Which is fine for 5.1 and 6.1, but crapped out in Vista (6.0), and would crap out if Windows 7 was 7.0 - so, 6.1. That's actually why.
It was a compatibility decision; since Windows 7 is close to 100% compatible with Vista they don't want to break dumb apps that would fail if the version number is != 6
Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM.
Not being a software developer, maybe I'm not understanding this properly. Does this mean that it really only needed a week of testing before it was ready to go out the door? I realize that there must have been a lot more testing on previous builds, etc but still - only one week?
Well service packs generally add functionality. They fixed Vista by removing "features" they put in to be more like Mac and are now trying to be more like Linux.
Personally I love Win7. Things just work on it. The last thing I want to do when I get home is trick my own damn computer into working.
Does this mean that they run the clock 10 minutes fast on the build machine to make them feel like they are ahead of the game ?
Nullius in verba
Flee for your lives...
For those that don't know and didn't want to RTFL, it will be available to MSDN subscribers on August 6th as well. If your company didn't pony up for one of the subscriptions, but does have Volume Licenses for Windows with a current Software Assurance, it will be available on August 7th.
Not at all. Vista has taken the punches, got a fat lip and two black eyes - so Microsoft rebrands it and it loses the bad name of Vista. I just installed Windows 7 RC - and it's nicer. There is new programming under the hood, particularly the UI and feels speedier - although I have to question whether that speed was all a result of improved programming or attribute some to the fact that it was a clean install of Windows erasing a cluttered and used OEM Vista install.
But given the driver model is the same, the lack of noticeable bumps on the alpha, beta, and RC compared to Vista woes - I can only assume it's really a service pack with an UI overhaul. Which is okay; Ubuntu and OS X both operate on the idea of short upgrade cycles that allows them to focus on goals and be a lot more evolutionary in a short time instead of trying to be revolutionary (longhorn) and failing miserably.
I just don't like paying full price as if this were brand new windows. Ubuntu is free and OS X license is relatively cheap, especially family packs. I'll pay $50 for Windows 7 as a 2-3 year upgrade to Vista, but don't forsee $100 as being inherently fair at all.
I'm glad slashdot is keeping us up to date on milestones like this. I look forward to the slashdot article about build 7600.16387 as well!
IANAMFB (I am not a Microsoft fan-boy), but I have to admit that so far, it looks like it is at least a bit exciting (especially from the rock-solid RC). Pretty much what Vista should have been.
As a true technologist, I try to stay technology-agnostic because good things often come out of the strangest places. Truthfully, many flavors of Linux are great, Mac OS is great, and Windows 7 looks like it should be great. Considering all these various flavors of greatness, I'd say it's still as good a time as any to be a techie! Maybe I'm just tired of all the negative slant the world puts on everything and am being overly optimistic.
Let's enjoy this new tech, welcome it, evaluate it and let it find its place in our toolbox, like every other tool before.
Discuss freely.
6d
Why is this marked troll? Vista vs Win7 is pretty close to how 2000 and XP can be compared (most changes in the UI, not the core).
Why is every Windows release candidate a Slashdot news?
...and Vista is close to 4% compatible with XP!
Because it is a troll; there are changes in the core, many, now there are not as many dependencies and it features a modular design (check the add and remove windows features dialog, you can get rid of everything there and leave only the core os); also UAC was changed, the ribbon is included in the core as an API, performance was enhanced so much that it can run on old Pentium CPUs and netbooks, etc. etc. In fact the thing that less changed was the UI (Still using the same glass Windows).
Do you even know what changed?
So lets see here. UAC was changed, thats no different than changing SELinux or Apparmor on Ubuntu, not a major change. Modular design, again, not a huge change just severed a few ties between IE and core system libraries. Ok, so there are a few new APIs, still, not a huge change. As for performance? That should be natural progress of development.
Regardless, it isn't a radical change. Just a code cleanup.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I built a machine around the time Vista came out and have been running Ultimate on it ever since. Initially I built it with 1GB of DDR3 and it's true that Vista was terrible. Soon after I bumped it up to 3GB, and I have to say that for all the bad press Vista gets, all you have to do is feed it like a pig and it performs. I can say that it's been nothing short of superb on this machine and I don't know if I'll be able to justify upgrading to Win7 to myself.
Check it out: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/dd420463.aspx
....just a couple seconds after MSDN.
- Win7 is marginally faster than Vista, and it will run on far faster, more capacious hardware (on average).
- The beta/RC was a huge try-before-you-buy program, which lends itself to a more positive view of the product.
- It finally fits on a netbook, and those will be the rage once they start becoming really sexy.
- $99 just isn't what it used to be.
There is more, what about live streaming your home videos to your work PC? What about connecting your phone to the computer, drag and drop any video file, and getting it transcoded to the best format for your device? Be it MOV, MPEG4, WMV, AVI, etc. you name it. These are huge changes that benefit the user; but you are just not going to change your mind, is Microsoft so it must suck.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-graphics-desktop-multicore-cpu,7643.html In Windows Vista, a single application could hold a system-wide lock on the GDI, basically creating a bottleneck, especially if there are other applications waiting in line to access the graphics stack. While such a design decision may have been okay in the past, it's been re-engineered for Windows 7. "This work also resulted in better rendering performance of concurrent GDI applications on multi-core CPUs. Multi-core Windows PCs benefit from these changes as more than one application can now be rendering at the same time," Chitre said, adding that the improvements worked to reduce response time issues. "Without the Windows 7 GDI concurrency, the rendering throughput of these applications is effectively limited to the performance of a single CPU core. Since only a single application can acquire the global exclusive lock while the others are waiting, this scenario doesn't benefit from multiple CPU cores. This demonstrates that GDI applications in Windows 7 are now much less dependent on one another."
I think it should be called Windows Vista SE.
It's not fair to those of you who were stuck with Vista; I think it's there to prevent those of us who skipped it from getting a free ride.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
if (MajorVersion>5) and (MinorVersion>1) then { // compatible with Windows XP or later
}
Which is fine for 5.1 and 6.1...
Don't you mean (MajorVersion >= 5) ?
Fixing a design flaw in GDI isn't a new feature, it's a bugfix.
Wrong. Changing the specification (the "design flaw") is a change in version.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Is not a design flaw when you don't multicore cpu's; and that's when GDI was designed. You can think of it as an update to GDI to make it current again, which is a good thing and a new feature, not a correction of a flaw.
I hope you are designing your software with the year 2019 in mind.
From the summary: "but it only took the company one more shot to get it right". I'm sorry, but has Microsoft ever "got it right"? I'm no MS hater, but for heavens sake, this is the company that invented Patch Tuesday!
I've been using 7RC and while I like it, it has some serious bugs to work out. I wouldn't bet the farm that they've all been caught...or that they ever will be.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
should have overloaded comparison operators on version data type.
I read that the speed of Windows 7 is a result of some under the hood programming. They implemented concurrency in the drawing component of GDI, which in theory allows for smoother graphics when multiple GDI apps are running. The old way of doing things was a single lock, and the time it took to lock/unlock is what seems to have caused past responsiveness issues.
It's the most secure Windows ever!
Seriously, how many Linux distros can make THAT claim?
Anyone worth half a karma point here will recognise 16384 as a power of two.
In my years of software development, numbers like this jump out at you, usually while debugging something that has crashed due to overwriting something, and suspicious powers of two just scream 'BUG' at me.
Perhaps this move to manufacturing has simply been caused by microsoft not allocating enough bits in the build number, and one more recompile has tripped the manufacturing release...
struct BuildNumber
{
int IncrementalVersion : 14;
int ReleaseToManufacturing : 1;
int FinallyBugFree : 1;
}
(and if this really is the source code, we'll have to wait until release 32768 for a bug free version, assuming we don't hit -32768 first)
...the time it took to lock/unlock is what seems to have caused past responsiveness issues.
Acquiring a lock or releasing a lock is a single, atomic operation that runs very fast (otherwise there would be ... so... many problems). The problem is that another process has the lock, and then you can't get it until that process is scheduled again, renders, and then releases the lock.
I realize you probably know this, but it's getting late in the day and I'm feeling pedantic.
Interesting.
I've been using the public beta since it came out, and the RC1 since the public beta expired, and all in all, it's pretty good. Takes forever for me to figure out how to do anything anymore, since I'm so used to XP (stripped down to non-flashy mode; more like W2K in use), but that's no biggie.
The big question in my life as a web developer is: When is IE gonna be a good browser? How many versions is it gonna TAKE?
I take solace in the fact that anyone upgrading to Wndows 7 is going to be forced to go with IE8 or some non-MS browser. No more IE 6 or 7. *whew* Hopefully the critical update and the enterprise migration tool thingy for IE8 coming soon will get rid of a large percentage of the remaining IE 6 users that aren't on something older than Windows XP. Win2K/ME/98/95 users, well, tough luck. Time to for you or your administrator to either upgrade to a netbook or install Firefox/Opera/whatever. Way PAST time, really. But if someone in your company was stupid enough to develop something requiring ActiveX, I guess IE8 is it for you. If you want the Gecko renderer from Firefox, but your system can't handle the overhead of a XUL browser, try K-Meleon.
Even real life highways have minimum speeds, you know. Get your Model T off the information superhighway, you're dangerous.
Yes, but in some cases there were still multiple CPU sockets available on one board, which logically is what a multicore CPU is. So it follows that the reasons to make GDI multi-threaded have been present since NT 3.5. On the other hand, if XP had a multi-threaded GDI implementation, Vista may have dropped that feature. Vista endured a total redesign of the graphics stack in order to simplify the graphics stack and make the stack more "stable".
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
The 3-machine family pack looks like it will be a better deal, even for 2 computers. Of course, in my case I have 4 ...
Windows 7 hits, RTFM
There, fixed that for you.
#DeleteChrome
I'd say it's probably closer to WinME and Win2k. Win2k was a decent OS, WinME was a disaster (perhaps even worse than Vista).
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Where is the torrent?
IIRC, they also offloaded most of the GDI rendering to the GPU. In Windows XP and previous, all drawing and compositing was done on the CPU. Vista added GPU compositing, but which is what Vista uses to implement the frosted-glass effect. The problem is that, since drawing was still done by the CPU and the system does compositing on the GPU, it keeps two complete GDI buffers for each window. On laptops where most integrated cards use system memory this was doubling the amount of system memory required for the GDI. Windows 7 changes this so that both compositing and drawing are done on the GPU, eliminating the need for a CPU window buffer. One of the things this does is cut total memory consumption in half, and eliminates CPU memory consumption by the GDI subsystem entirely. The other advantage is power- Vista's use of the GPU for compositing means more recent graphics chips are much better behaved when it comes to power consumption than they used to be. By doing the drawing and compositing on the GPU, Win7 doesn't draw as much power on modern laptops since the GPU can do that for less power than the CPU.
Small correction: Only 2 service packs until it is what a customer would call a release version.
Permanent sales message: "This version of Windows will be a good one."
Previous sales message: Buy Vista for the security.
Sales message before that: Microsoft Says Recovery From Malware Becoming Impossible . Therefore buy a new computer.
what about live streaming your home videos to your work PC
wow, i didn't realise microsoft have started bundling vlc in their core build these days... nice.
yep, that's exactly what i do every day on my linux boxes. exactly that. all day. constantly.
one day i might try to use a program on it, but that is probably pushing it.
anyway, can't stay to chat, my kernel just told me i have to recompile it again, since it has been over half an hour since i last did it.
People make this shit up at the drop of a dime. This is NT 6.1, simple as that. The "Windows 7" tag is meaningless bullshit, that bears no relation whatsoever to the NT version. The Windows version naming scheme had a little bit of meaning, up through NT4.x and Win98. Starting with Windows 2000 and WinME, Microsoft broke the naming scheme, intentionally, to confuse the public.
Trying to make up reasons for a new bogus naming scheme is only going to make people look stupid.
"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
The scheme was broken anyway.
The first version of Windows NT was named Windows NT 3.1, and was soon followed by 3.5/3.51.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Just steal one from your work's MSDN subscription...
The First Version of NT was Windows NT/Windows NT Advanced Server... The numbers weren't on the box (prominently anyway) until 3.5
Microsoft has actually addressed this before. Many applications pay attention to the major version number and refuse to work if they don't get something they recognize, so to retain compatibility, they bump the minor version. They did the same with Windows XP. This is the reason they gave in developer blogs, anyway.
Your UID is gh3y and you are a big cock sucking fag.
...was heard as Microsoft turned the motor of its marketing machine for Windows 8.
What's our over-under on when we start hearing about the next round?
You can do all that with OLE/ActiveX/COM and have been able to do so for at least 10 years. Unfortunately, that model doesn't work so well in practice.
Why the fear of x.2?
if (MajorVersion>5) and (MinorVersion>1) then { // compatible with Windows XP or later
}
Which is fine for 5.1 and 6.1...
Don't you mean (MajorVersion >= 5) ?
It's probably safe to assume that the Major/Minor version numbers are integers, so the two are equivalent. I mean, if you put your version number together by concatenation (Major version = 5, minor version = 1 => version number = 5.1) then it's really unclear what exact behaviour would make sense with a floating point value for major version.
The parent comment is marked flamebait. Are the thousands of Microsoft employees now modding Slashdot?
I have an MSDN Universal account and have played with each version of Win 7. I do like it much better than Vista. In fact, I have never used Vista for production work. Win 7 is a nice clean update and I give three cheers to MS for that.
However it is not anything revolutionary. Drag and drop a video? I am sure that WMV will be preferred. As others stated, VLC could do this for a long time now.
The MAJOR thing that pissed me off and made me wipe Win 7 was when I put a DVD (a real one I bought) in to play. The output was just horrible! I thought my monitor was going bad. I fired up VLC and played the same DVD and wow, it looked like it should. I tried it again with Windows Media "player" and a standard resolution DVD looked like crap on my monitor. WTF? Fire up VLC again and it looks great.
I am sorry, but I don't want MS telling me I cannot watch a DVD I freaking bought and forcing me to watch it in crap-quality mode because I don't have a certain connection type to my monitor.
I will stick with Ununtu for everything and use my KVM switch to my WinXP box when I have to do C# stuff from home. The great thing is, is that MS cannot force you to dump WinXP. Just keep using it as long as you can. The admins at the fortune 500 I work for hated Vista and would not upgrade. I Guess a Win7 upgrade may come in a year or so. But as long as VS 2008 works on WinXP I am golden for another few years.
The last thing I want to do when I get home is trick my own damn computer into working.
But spending hours hand editing .conf files and unnecessarily recompiling packages means that your an uber 1337 open sores fag!
I know you're just trolling, but in case anyone thinks there's truth to this, it's worth pointing out that editing conf files and compiling packages hasn't been necessary in Linux for a few years now. I haven't compiled a package or hand edited a conf file once on my 2 month old laptop, and don't expect ever to have to. Also, installing XP (It came with Vista, which I didn't want) and making it work properly with all the necessary drivers took about 3 times as long as installing Ubuntu, and was much more difficult and stressful.
The idea that Linux is harder to use than Windows is really pretty ridiculous.
Don't just paste whole pages of your talking points into the box. Tease it out a little. "Feature 1 is cool, but I really like feature 2." Save features 3-8 for the inevitable subthread. And log in - you can't accumulate 'karma' if you are not logged in. Seriously - use a little art. Don't just mail it in.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hard to do before they RROD... QQ
... when I see the torrent.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The new version of my NullProgNix comes out next month too.
Features:
No WGA Everyone is a thief because its free and they cant be caught. We don't care.
No Secure Audio Path We hold the electron path between the users CPU and soundcard as sacred.
No Secure Video Path We don't care what you watch.
The license Manager (CACL) checker doesn't do anything when you hook a printer up without a CACL We don't care how many connections your computer has.
To make Windows users at home Cron will launch a desktop/menu scrambler once a day. Bonus, it launches a Fibonacci sequence four hours a day to make your computer sluggish.
For $0 USD, the additional Family pack includes nothing you cant download from the repositories.
On Sale today, you can have the nullProgNix distribution for $0 USD. For an additional $0 USD you can choose the KDE/XFCE experience.
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Modded informative? Seriously /. ! The changes between Windows 7 and Vista are bigger than those between 2000 and XP and have taken longer, more builds by a much larger team of programmers. Granted, the vista platform is a bigger code base so net change is different matter to the gross improvements.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Come on, there can't be that many changes in the core, or it would be a new version number. Microsofts version numbers aren't a superstition you realise, they are based on some sort of logic.
What a load of bullshit, you people are constantly trying to defend this shit. It is no different here from 2000->XP, a new shitty theme, and some underlying changes. Woop de fucking do.
You guys are really trying hard to sell this, almost desperate, trying to convince us that this is no Vista. Yet you won't acknowledge that Vista is so shitty. Funny that.
Hopefully I won't get flamed for this (from both sides of the spectrum..lol). Regarding your comment about combining and recombining tools in the OS: What your describing in regards to scripting OS apps together to form new tools sounds like PowerShell for Windows. I'm actually excited that it will be included in Windows 7 from an IT perspective. I've had to program in it heavily for our Exchange 2007 migration and I've actually come to admire this tool. We were able to migrate 40,000 users to Exchange 2007 all in a fully automated fashion using load balancing on the target servers and totally seamless to the end user. It allows piping of just about anything, and it hooks extensively into the OS. It also supports plugins (although I've only had experience with the Exchange plugin). It makes it easy to pick up and hard to put down. Even doing something as simple as a directory info (DIR) and piping that output into a hash table becomes simplicity itself ($mydir = dir c:\). From there it's extremely easy to parse the $mydir hash for individual properties like filenames, access dates, file size, etc. The same is true for grabbing system tasks using Get-Process. Everything is exposed in a hash table with a single command and that easily piped into yet another command to mangle to your hearts content. After years of starving for a good shell, I think MS finally got this one right. If you haven't looked at it yet and you work in an MS IT shop, your missing out.
I can't say that I'm overly impressed with Windows 7 (yet...time will tell). It seems to run on par with XP performance wise, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. It does so with more security at least. I don't really care about the UI changes as they mostly seem cosmetic in nature. A few things moved around or a tad easier to navigate to or around, but nothing I'm finding is a must-have. The RC I've been using has been flakey in regards to bluetooth support, but generally the OS has been stable overall. I'm sure the bluetooth will be solid by release. I'm taking the same approach as I'm sure many folks who were burned with Vista are doing.. Wait and see. That said, the price seems very steep for a more secure XP with some window dressing. Make no mistake that although the feature set may be extensive for the techie crowd (depending on what articles you read), for the typical Joe User who only knows what he can see and feel, it's a more stable 'Vista'. Again that is not necessarily a bad thing (think Windows 2000/XP).
Arguably, with the right software and hardware, XP could be secured for typical use of browsing and e-mail leaving only the GUI changes lacking for Joe User on XP. It just seems extremely costly for all of these changes that the basic home user probably won't care about.
Typical Joe Users just wants to check their e-mail and get to their online poker game going with their buddies or what not. My only decision going forward will be if I want to continue to invest in Microsoft at home (work is a given at this point), or switch the last of my Windows machines to Mac. The pilot Mac I bought for my family has actually done rather well and the adjustment wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. It makes me want to take a harder swag at Linux as well given the easy transition I've had with Leopard. If Vista accomplished anything, it was to make people more aware of alternatives which is never a bad thing.
The idea that Linux is harder to use than Windows is really pretty ridiculous.
No it isn't, otherwise people would be using Linux instead of Windows.
Disk Corruption Disk Corruption Disk Corruption.......This OS is NOT ready for RTM!
.. it did not happen. ;-)
Back in the days of PARC, they had a device that you could manipulate the input on screen using your fingers. It was called a "Capacitance-Activated Tablet" or "CAT" for short. A few months later, someone developed a device that used a rolling ball and sensors on an X-Y axis to move the cursor, and pressing a button to initiate the action. Because of it's looks, and since they already had a CAT, they called it a MOUSE.
Unless the mechanism of the patent in question is different from the capacitance array, or unless this company bought the patents from Xerox, it seems that Xerox holds a patent on prior art. I'd like to see the working model they submitted with their patent...
Touch-screen technology at the time required little lamps around the bezel of the screen, and the location was done using the interference of the X-Y coordinates of the intersecting beams of light. Light-pens gave feedback to the actual pixel grid on the (phosphor based) screen.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Now maybe you can cut a couple people lose to write a decent User's Manual for the darn thing -- oh yes, and finish commenting the code.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Do you think there are betting pools for what the final version number will be?
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
... the mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute (later just SRI). And yes, it is true that Xerox PARC was a very early adopter of the technology.
While a citation for something this widely known and used shouldn't be necessary, here are 2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse
There is a good reason to use it: some forums filter 'ass' but accept 'arse'.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Kernel API compatibility. Just like the driver interface for XP (5.1) and 2000 (5.0) is the same (XP supports a few that 2000 doesn't, but not vice-versa), so it is with Win7 (6.1) and Vista (6.0). Among other things, this should greatly help with hardware compatibility issues, since Vista drivers are now extremely widely available.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Win7 is lighter on system resources, to be sure, but the real catch was the OEM bit. OEM Vista installations were uniformly absolute shit. All kinds of pre-installed crap that ran at startup (including things which are practically impossible to cleanly remove, like Norton Internet shitware), some truly retarded default settings (yes, worse than the Microsoft defaults), and poorly-tested replacements for Microsoft binaries (usually functionally the same, but OEM branded and typically shadowing or outright removing the built-in software) made the OS run MUCH worse than a clean install on the same hardware would. Hardware troubles and beta drivers aside, I have not (in almost 3 years since RTM) seen Vista BSOD or otherwise catastrophically fail on a clean install. Yes, it happens on OEM copies. It would might happen if you installed a trojan or something retarded like that. Barring such stupidity, however, Vista is an extremely stable OS that performs quite acceptably on systems with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.8GHz single-core CPU (my initial Vista machine, a laptop over a year old by Vista's RTM).
That said, Win7 is definitely a major improvement in many areas. Vista, especially at RTM, really did have some truly stupid bugs.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You realize DirectAccess is just a machine level VPN rather than a VPN controlled by the user ... right?
You realize that having that connection always on is not a good thing when you get infected with some silly virus that wants to probe everything it can talk to and infect, right?
There are about 50 billion reasons why this is a retarded idea, and about 3 for why its good. Considering VPNs can be configured to auto connect already its really silly that you're all excited over another VPN package made by MS, which has traditionally had an absolutely shitty track record for providing a secure connection.
So go ahead, be excited that you have Direct Access, but just try to get a clue and realize its just another form of VPN which you need to watch for security issues and requires you to be locked into MS due to the use of a non-standard protocol.
Go read up on IPSEC if you'd like to catch up to how everyone could do this 10 years ago, including Windows with 3rd party software.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I have Win7 RC installed and I haven't experienced this. My monitors are connected with standard DVI, and don't support HDCP. The Vista/Win7 protected path isn't even enabled unless you're playing Blu-Ray (not DVD). Your problem is most likely caused by a bug in pre-release video drivers or in Windows Media Player. WMP has had some of its codecs rewritten.
Not really. Back when Windows was designed SMP was rare. There wasn't need to have the GDI subsystem support 8+ CPUs, since none of the rest of the OS supported that many. A global GDI lock doesn't matter much when it's never running on more than 2 cores.
One thing I wish MS had was some facility to have Windows 7 on first bootup for a preinstalled PC have an installation script. If a user wants the crapware, they can click the checbox and have it. Otherwise, it will be not installed in the first place, and the user has the option for keeping the crapware MSI files or binning them.
Pretty sure (5 > 5) is not equal to (5 >= 5)
lol..
It's funny that whenever linux or FreeBSD removes a Giant lock it's hailed as major news here, like the transition from 2.4 to 2.6 because they are actually huge leaps forward. However, when MS does it it is just regarded as a bug fix. Essentially, all code is just a bug fix then, as it's all written one line at a time and relies on the the years of work to the code base that preceded it.
There are huge improvements on Windows 7, like multitouch support, etc. It's a really nice OS akin to XP. The problem with the zealots is that they create a list of complaints about MS and then when they fix it, you guys complain even more. MS actually pays their devs salary so they have to charge for their OS. Suck it up, if you don't want to buy it don't.
IMHO, the RC is more stable than Vista. I've been using it as my primary dev platform since a few weeks after it was released, and have had no BSODs yet even running mostly Vista drivers with it. It's rock solid and FAST and the new features are definite improvements.
But the commitment to quality that is present in Win7 and was sorely lacking in Vista should be applauded by all.
If anyone in the dev community has seen further, it is because we stood on the shoulders of giants.
The great thing with Win7 is that it's essentially optional. Most software still runs on Win2k. Just about everything runs on XP. I have never found an app that requires Vista or Win7. I have large clients that are still only half-way through their Win2k-to-XP migration. There's little chance they'll have to pay for a Win7 upgrade in the next few years.
With OSX, you're lucky if you can find software that doesn't require 10.4. Is there a browser that runs Gmail that doesn't require at least 10.4? I know Photoshop requires 10.4. And a friend of mine had to use her father's XP laptop to use her new iPod because she didn't want to fork over $129 to upgrade her PowerBook to the Tiger.
dom
WinMe was based on Win95/98 code, Win2k was based on NT code. The 95 legacy died with ME (thank god), so it's not really like me -> 2k at all.
"Microsoft refused to share the full build string, but if you trust leaks from a few days ago, it's '6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255,'"
Apparently it should really be called Windows 6! Just a rehash of Vista.
It's probably safe to assume that the Major/Minor version numbers are integers
I noticed.
Like the LOLing AC said, 5 !> 5. And so MajorVersion would return as false for 5.1. And since 1 !> 1, both 5.1 and 6.1 would be eliminated by MinorVersion.
It has nothing to do with what you think it does. It's a problem with VLC running under Aero. If you delete a single file in the VLC installation, video playback returns to what it was before. Has nothing to do with the connection type or drm.
I run windows 7 and vlc. No problems.
Logic: we're a company that makes money because people develop software for our platform. Some don't do it well, and only check the major version number. We had a core tenet that things working in Vista should work in 7. Now, we could either go and try to get each person who only checked major version number for compatibility to change that, or we could make the version 6.1 and endure the taunts of those slashdotters who haven't seen the light of day in years. Guess which was chosen?
Yeah, but if Microsoft had not released Vista, they could not have released as good an OS as Windows 7 now. Or then Windows 7 would have had as much trouble as Vista did, because or the new driver model and other stuff.
Well, that IS true...
But comparing the terribleness of Vista to the "terribleness" of 2000 (which wasn't really that bad) just doesn't seem to be sufficient. Only ME ranks up there for comparison with Vista; but from a technical perspective, you do make a valid point.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I think maybe you were looking for the touchpad patent article instead?
Win32 API is C-oriented by design (everyone can access that easily, while C++ APIs can only be conveniently consumed from C++). Thus, no operator overloading.
If you change the specification--change how a subsystem works, such as UAC, or the system library dependencies, or add APIs--you have, by definition, committed a major change because previous applications may now be relying upon an out-of-date specification.
The changes to the NT kernel did not necessitate significant and breaking changes, so it was incremented by a minor version number instead of a major one. The operating system package did, and was incremented differently.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
what about live streaming your home videos to your work PC
wow, i didn't realise microsoft have started bundling vlc in their core build these days... nice.
Score 5, Insightful... really? Perhaps it's time to meta-moderate some more... *sigh*.
The included MS Media Player is the best one yet, and works flawlessly and plays most formats. It doesn't play .mkv files though, so I can also report that vlc v.1 runs beautifully! The improvements are especially visible if you have multiple monitors.
Internally, we plan to upgrade all Vista laptops to Win7 as soon as we get an official version (all of our users hate Vista, but we haven't had the stomach to downgrade them to winxp). Windows XP machines will be phased out as users require new machines (or upgraded to Win7 if the specs can run Vista).
Normally we would wait until SP1 on any MS product, however Win7 seems unusually stable for a first release and WinXP is hopelessly outdated -- especially noticeable when you try to install it on modern hardware.
I have an MSDN Universal account and have played with each version of Win 7. I do like it much better than Vista. In fact, I have never used Vista for production work. Win 7 is a nice clean update and I give three cheers to MS for that.
I'm sorry but how can you compare vista with win7 if you say this? I've used Vista and XP in running production for years, I was happy with XP with no SP and SP1, after SP2 it just started to become bloated *sure it fixed security holes. but it's nothing a kick ass firewall and not downloading pirated shit from the internet won't compare too.* However, I've played around with Win 7 enough to see there is a huge difference in the way they run, granted I'll agree with everyone and say it's comparative to 2000 vs XP but this is more like them fixing something that should have worked in the first place, rather than appealing to the in crowd and making the GUI more Shinny.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
...to be used without waiting for another two service packs
God's gift to chicks
Ah, a person with clear, simple and *wrong* understanding of economics.
Dude, there's something wrong with your drivers. I watch movies on both Windows Media Player and VLC 1.0, on Windows 7. One on a DVI output, one on a laptop. No degradation here.
Interestingly, one time I did get a weird error: started Media Player Classic with the CCCP codec pack, the display driver had some kind of crash and the display reset itself to 800x600 and started showing the movie. Looked like ass. Closing Media Player Classic set the display back to normal, and from then on I stuck to VLC for playing anything not supported by WMP (i.e., anything other than WMV, H.264, MPEG-4 and some MOVs).
Go somewhere random
Aha! Thanks for explaining, at a stroke, why my i7 system has been hanging and locking up for months. I've been looking at Task manager, seeing the idle process running 98% of the time and 5GB of free RAM (plus pagefiles) - and yet the damn thing was completely ignoring my keystrokes and mouse movements.
Logically, I knew it had to be some basic design error in the OS, but I thought it was just dreadful scheduling. An artificial resource constraint from the 1980s - yes, that makes better sense.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Sounds like you had an issue with interlacing and/or the anamorphic video... VLC configures that stuff automatically when you watch a DVD - just compare, say, untweaked Media Player Classic and VLC, playing the same DVD. Media Player Classic has the wrong aspect ratio and shows a bunch of scanlines, whereas VLC is crystal clear.
SMP may have been rare when the original Windows was designed. But the crew from DEC (led by David Cutler) that Gates hired to write Windows NT knew SMP back to front. During the 1980s DEC software engineering learned more and more about SMP and how to nurse the best performance out of SMP servers and even desktop clients.
So Microsoft has had the know-how to fix this type of problem for over 15 years.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"Vista is an extremely stable OS that performs quite acceptably on systems with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.8GHz single-core CPU..."
Ah yes, I see what you did right. If you had 6 GB of RAM and a 4-core CPU your performance might have been substantially worse. I installed my copy of 64-bit Vista clean, avoided Norton and its ilk religiously, yet have endured months of hangs, complete freezes, and the occasional BSOD.
It's annoying when the fundamental reason for poor (and sometimes non-existent) performance is that your computer is too powerful.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Well... It's kind of, but not exactly, like how Ubuntu 8 runs a kernel whose version is 2.6
Windows Vista runs a kernel with version 6.0
Windows 7 runs a kernel with version 6.1
The biggest difference between the Ubuntu analogy is that the 7 in Windows 7 isn't really a version number.
It's part of a product name, like Vista or XP, made up by a marketing department and has probably been selected based on results from lengthy market research and analysis of how to best avoid having the new release being associated too much with the ill-received Windows Vista.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
This version of Windows will be a good one.
Forget what we said about other versions: Buy Vista for the security.
A bug in Windows Media Player, now there would be a shocker.
I only have two good things to say about Windows Media Player.
1: It's not QuickTime.
2: It's not RealPlayer.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Ehhh... I couldn't even figure out how to properly rip a DVD under Windows 7. I have a copy of Vista that gets me a free upgrade to Win7, but it won't be anything but a game loader for me.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
> it's worth pointing out that editing conf files and compiling
> packages hasn't been necessary in Linux for a few years now.
It depends what you're doing.
At work I've been putting together a demo OpenILS (Evergreen) server, and as part of the install process I had to do both of those things. Of course, this is software that you wouldn't generally install on a normal user's desktop, so if you were only interested in getting your email and browsing the web and so on, you wouldn't need to be able to do these things. But for all that, they're still undeniably useful skills for a more advanced user (such as a network administrator) to have.
Whereas, in the Windows world I think you pretty much have to be an actual application developer to have any practical use for the ability to compile software from source. (As for editing config files, in the Windows world these days you're more likely to have to edit the registry, but that's a fairly similar thing, conceptually.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The Win7 fix is huge. But it's coupled with nasty DRM which requires all kinds of fun anti-user licensing bullshit. Win7 is a game loader... I'll use Linux for multimedia. It actually works.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I've used Media Player Classic for many years and I guarantee you that it has always handled interlaced and/or anamorphic DVDs just fine, no matter if you have a widescreen monitor or if you play it in letterbox mode on a 4:3.
Windows Shell is indeed pretty cool, but there are two huge drawbacks:
1. It's an island unto itself. Any (practical) networking utilities require commandlets (or whatever in the hell they're calling them). So, no native SSH, no native SFTP. Oh, it natively supports BITS (background transfer). How useful.
2. It's slow as dogshit covered in molasses rolling up a sandpaper hill. It positively reeks of .NET in all the worst ways.
Automatically? I have 3 fresh-ripped Video_TS folders sitting on my desktop that say otherwise (MPC Homecinema v1.2.1008.0). The same DVDs play perfectly on VLC 1.0...
Either your rips are poorly encoded or you're trying to play the DVD directly by opening the first VOB file, which could be the reason why the aspect ratio is wrong. The IFO file (usually VTS_01_0.IFO or something like that) tells the player all the technical details about the video contained in the VOBs (like AR, sound codec etc.). If you don't use the "Open DVD" option, MPC won't automagically check the IFO file, which I suspect VLC does.
I _AM_ using the "Open DVD" option - on MPC as well as VLC :)
That's what's so puzzling about it. As for encoding... they're straight rips. No reencode whatsoever.
"Do you even know what changed?" - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22, @06:22PM (#28788821)
Yes, many things "for the good", but also, some for the "bad" (I also don't like what I see with OpenGL either, but that's another subject - this is about its networking & security + efficiency, read on):
Windows 7, VISTA, & Server 2008 have a couple of "issues" I don't like in them, & you may not either, depending on your point of view (mine's based solely on efficiency & security), & if my take on these issues aren't "good enough"? I suggest reading what ROOTKIT.COM says, link URL is in my "p.s." @ the bottom of this post:
1.) HOSTS files being unable to use "0" for a blocking IP address - this started in 12/09/2008 after an "MS Patch Tuesday" in fact for VISTA (when it had NO problem using it before that, as Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 still can)... & yes, this continues in its descendants, Windows Server 2008 &/or Windows 7 as well.
So, why is this a "problem" you might ask?
Ok - since you can technically use either:
a.) 127.0.0.1 (the "loopback adapter address")
b.) 0.0.0.0 (next smallest & next most efficient)
c.) The smallest & fastest plain-jane 0
PER EACH HOSTS FILE ENTRY/RECORD...
You can use ANY of those, in order to block out known bad sites &/or adbanners in a HOSTS file this way??
Microsoft has "promoted bloat" in doing so... no questions asked.
Simply because
1.) 127.0.0.1 = 9 bytes in size on disk & is the largest/slowest
2.) 0.0.0.0 = 7 bytes & is the next largest/slowest in size on disk
3.) 0 = 1 byte
Using a 0 also eliminates the need to perform the "decimal-to-hexadecimal" conversion process that 127.0.0.1, or even 0.0.0.0 go thru, since 0 decimal = 0 hex... plus, since the filesystem, memory mgt, & caching kernel mode subsystems of the OS itself use 4 kb sweeps/reads/passes to load up, using a SMALLER string via 0 usage (vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1) will tend to "pack" more records into each pass of the read being done, on disk & in memory, per pass/sweep/read as well.
Even "security guru" Oliver Day @ SecurityFocus.com sees using HOSTS as a good thing for added layered security AND MORE SPEED ONLINE -> http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/491
AND?? So do folks like "SpyBot Search & Destroy" also (since their app populates not only the HOSTS file, but, also files like Opera's Filter.ini, FireFox's block lists, & IE Restricted Zones also, for LAYERED SECURITY (this is the trend & recommended practice by security folks by the by, myself included))
Hey - Even this slashdotter, sootman, uses one & made many interesting points that support his usage of a HOSTS file, from mvps.org, here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1300193&cid=28677363
(& HOSTS files extend across EVERY webbrowser, email program, or in general every webbound program you use & thus HOSTS are "global" in coverage this way AND function on any OS that uses the BSD derived IP stack (which most all do mind you, even MS is based off of it, as BSD's IS truly, "the best in the business"), & when coupled with say, IE restricted zones, FireFox addons like NoScript &/or AdBlock, or Opera filter.ini/urlfilter.ini, for layered security in this capacity for webbrowsers & SOME email programs - HOSTS also provide a single easily managed point to control this, & if you can read english + use a text editor like notepad.exe? It is truly a good tool for extra layered security + an easily managed one)
Anyhow/anyways - by removing the ability to use 0 as a valid blocking IP address in a HOSTS file for VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7 - MS has literally promoted bloat in this file, making it load slower from disk,
Well, they could still be poorly encoded. I've seen horrific examples of this. Although, if it happens on *every* DVD you try, I'm afraid I don't have any more advice.
Hmmm, they're regular retail versions, as far as I can tell. As sold by every store in Germany...
The weird thing is that playing my DVDs in VLC or encoding to XVid with AutoGK or X264 with Handbrake results in pristine quality - the only part that doesn't fit into the equation is MPC. Oh well... it's not that important anyway. The DVD rips are just temporary until I can be bothered to reencode to X264 :)
Dissapointed to see that same winsxs folder growing to >5GB in beta. In vista its around 9GB now. Microsoft should learn a thing or two from the pirates who made microXP. Note: winsxs is a short form for windows sucks
Also, it fits well in the phrase "the system administrator simply cannot be arsed to do his job" whereas "the system administrator simply cannot be assed to do his job" sounds vaguely kinky.
"Win7 is definitely a major improvement in many areas" - by cbhacking (979169) on Wednesday July 22, @11:13PM (#28791099) Homepage
Well, "opinions vary", & yes - some of what's going on in Windows 7 is GOOD vs. VISTA... however, still? Well - I don't like what I have seen in regards to OpenGL gaming on VISTA (vs. older Windows models) & also some BAD things that have changed in terms of networking efficiency, & security, read on:
Windows 7, VISTA, & Server 2008 have a couple of "issues" I don't like in them, & you may not either, depending on your point of view (mine's based solely on efficiency & security), & if my take on these issues aren't "good enough"? I suggest reading what ROOTKIT.COM says, link URL is in my "p.s." @ the bottom of this post:
1.) HOSTS files being unable to use "0" for a blocking IP address - this started in 12/09/2008 after an "MS Patch Tuesday" in fact for VISTA (when it had NO problem using it before that, as Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 still can)... & yes, this continues in its descendants, Windows Server 2008 &/or Windows 7 as well.
So, why is this a "problem" you might ask?
Ok - since you can technically use either:
a.) 127.0.0.1 (the "loopback adapter address")
b.) 0.0.0.0 (next smallest & next most efficient)
c.) The smallest & fastest plain-jane 0
PER EACH HOSTS FILE ENTRY/RECORD...
You can use ANY of those, in order to block out known bad sites &/or adbanners in a HOSTS file this way??
Microsoft has "promoted bloat" in doing so... no questions asked.
Simply because
1.) 127.0.0.1 = 9 bytes in size on disk & is the largest/slowest
2.) 0.0.0.0 = 7 bytes & is the next largest/slowest in size on disk
3.) 0 = 1 byte
Using a 0 also eliminates the need to perform the "decimal-to-hexadecimal" conversion process that 127.0.0.1, or even 0.0.0.0 go thru, since 0 decimal = 0 hex... plus, since the filesystem, memory mgt, & caching kernel mode subsystems of the OS itself use 4 kb sweeps/reads/passes to load up, using a SMALLER string via 0 usage (vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1) will tend to "pack" more records into each pass of the read being done, on disk & in memory, per pass/sweep/read as well.
Even "security guru" Oliver Day @ SecurityFocus.com sees using HOSTS as a good thing for added layered security AND MORE SPEED ONLINE -> http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/491
AND?? So do folks like "SpyBot Search & Destroy" also (since their app populates not only the HOSTS file, but, also files like Opera's Filter.ini, FireFox's block lists, & IE Restricted Zones also, for LAYERED SECURITY (this is the trend & recommended practice by security folks by the by, myself included))
Hey - Even this slashdotter, sootman, uses one & made many interesting points that support his usage of a HOSTS file, from mvps.org, here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1300193&cid=28677363
(& HOSTS files extend across EVERY webbrowser, email program, or in general every webbound program you use & thus HOSTS are "global" in coverage this way AND function on any OS that uses the BSD derived IP stack (which most all do mind you, even MS is based off of it, as BSD's IS truly, "the best in the business"), & when coupled with say, IE restricted zones, FireFox addons like NoScript &/or AdBlock, or Opera filter.ini/urlfilter.ini, for layered security in this capacity for webbrowsers & SOME email programs - HOSTS also provide a single easily managed point to control this, & if you can read english + use a text editor like notepad.exe? It is truly a good tool for extra layered security + an easily managed one)
Anyhow/anyways - by removing the ability to use 0 as a valid bl
. But it's coupled with nasty DRM which requires all kinds of fun anti-user licensing bullshit.
Huh what? Can you elaborate what DRM got in your way?
This space for rent.
Any utility can be written and accessed via shell though. For instance a command line SSH tool could easily be called via PowerShell. I also wouldn't be surprised if someone didn't simply write a plugin to add native support which would be ideal. I have no idea how difficult the plugin structure is in regards to designing something from scratch.
I have to agree about the speed, but for most tasks, speed isn't mission critical. It's still miles above batch..(sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth...lol).
Wow, one of your DVDs don't play right so WMP must be entirely broken. Or it's the evil DRM gremlins *tinfoilhat*. Or something.
Or maybe you just need to learn how to play back video.
I have the 64bit version, so drivers have to be signed and have all kinds of fun locks. Not sure if that was part of it. But I just could not for the life of me figure out how to get a DVD ripped to the hard drive in anything but a DRM locked Windows Media copy. It's not something that's "legal" (according to the MPAA and the DMCA at least), so I don't expect Windows to support it, but I also don't expect it to get in the way of me doing it. Which it did. I couldn't get Handbrake or any other similar program to open up a DVD and rip it to a MKV/AVI/whatever. I can do this in minutes on Linux on the same machine, even having to compile the programs from source, so I know it's not hardware. The only thing left is that Windows somehow has DRM controls that prevent video DVD's from being ripped.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"As a true technologist, I try to stay technology-agnostic because good things often come out of the strangest places. Truthfully, many flavors of Linux are great, Mac OS is great, and Windows 7 looks like it should be great. Considering all these various flavors of greatness, I'd say it's still as good a time as any to be a techie! Maybe I'm just tired of all the negative slant the world puts on everything and am being overly optimistic." - by SixDimensionalArray (604334) on Wednesday July 22, @06:12PM (#28788717)
Agreed, 110%: I just want Windows 7 to be the BEST Windows NT-based OS ever, & I will voice my findings/opinions on what I see on it, even IF it makes me look like a "detractor" of Microsoft's (which I am not - they've kept me employeable actually) - I don't like what happened w/ OpenGL for gaming in VISTA (but, that's another topic entirely), & I do NOT like what I see in terms of security &/or efficiency in their latest networking stack either... read on:
Windows 7, VISTA, & Server 2008 have a couple of "issues" I don't like in them, & you may not either, depending on your point of view (mine's based solely on efficiency & security), & if my take on these issues aren't "good enough"? I suggest reading what ROOTKIT.COM says, link URL is in my "p.s." @ the bottom of this post:
1.) HOSTS files being unable to use "0" for a blocking IP address - this started in 12/09/2008 after an "MS Patch Tuesday" in fact for VISTA (when it had NO problem using it before that, as Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 still can)... & yes, this continues in its descendants, Windows Server 2008 &/or Windows 7 as well.
So, why is this a "problem" you might ask?
Ok - since you can technically use either:
a.) 127.0.0.1 (the "loopback adapter address")
b.) 0.0.0.0 (next smallest & next most efficient)
c.) The smallest & fastest plain-jane 0
PER EACH HOSTS FILE ENTRY/RECORD...
You can use ANY of those, in order to block out known bad sites &/or adbanners in a HOSTS file this way??
Microsoft has "promoted bloat" in doing so... no questions asked.
Simply because
1.) 127.0.0.1 = 9 bytes in size on disk & is the largest/slowest
2.) 0.0.0.0 = 7 bytes & is the next largest/slowest in size on disk
3.) 0 = 1 byte
Using a 0 also eliminates the need to perform the "decimal-to-hexadecimal" conversion process that 127.0.0.1, or even 0.0.0.0 go thru, since 0 decimal = 0 hex... plus, since the filesystem, memory mgt, & caching kernel mode subsystems of the OS itself use 4 kb sweeps/reads/passes to load up, using a SMALLER string via 0 usage (vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1) will tend to "pack" more records into each pass of the read being done, on disk & in memory, per pass/sweep/read as well.
Even "security guru" Oliver Day @ SecurityFocus.com sees using HOSTS as a good thing for added layered security AND MORE SPEED ONLINE -> http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/491
AND?? So do folks like "SpyBot Search & Destroy" also (since their app populates not only the HOSTS file, but, also files like Opera's Filter.ini, FireFox's block lists, & IE Restricted Zones also, for LAYERED SECURITY (this is the trend & recommended practice by security folks by the by, myself included))
Hey - Even this slashdotter, sootman, uses one & made many interesting points that support his usage of a HOSTS file, from mvps.org, here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1300193&cid=28677363
(& HOSTS files extend across EVERY webbrowser, email program, or in general every webbound program you use & thus HOSTS are "global" in coverage this way AND function on any OS that uses the BSD derived IP stack (which most all do mind you, even MS is based off of it,
If that's what it takes to get a system admin to put down the coffee and stop surfing porn, um, uh, I'll wait for the users to complain about shitty server response. Except for the email server. That server admin, she's cute!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Hurray Apple catches up to OS X 10.2 circa 2002 in terms of the GPU composting graphics. Hurray!!!! Oh wait.... http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/appleoshistory/10.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.2 Microsoft maintains it's consistent 8 year lag behind Apple, and no truth isn't a troll.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Windows GUI Usage Guide First things first. Handbrake on the Windows Platform does NOT decrypt Commercial DVDs. Let me repeat this. It does NOT decrypt commercial DVDs. Third-party software is required for this part of the process. (e.g. AnyDVD, DVD43 or DVD Decryptor) (Note: Please note that these applications are not legal in many countries. You should consult the law in your own country before using these applications. We do not provide support for 3rd party applications!)
Hope that clears things up instead of going up in arms about DRM. If Hollywood gets even a whiff of MS enabling any circumvention... bam.. billion dollar lawsuit.
This space for rent.
So... Vista's been an extended beta test?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I had some initial problems with the first Longhorn beta and the Vista CTP (both obtained from my good friend who works at MS). One system had frequent BSOD problems while the other did not. Eventually, NVidia managed to provide working Vista drivers, and afterward, the BSOD problem was resolved and has never returned. Both systems are now running on Vista SP2 and doing quite well.
The Windows 7 Beta and now the RC (Build 7100) have both run completely stable on all four systems I've installed. Never had any BSOD problems, and the OS never hung up on me once(though some applications, notably Quicken, have had some issues running under Win7). I'm a TechNet subscriber, so I'll be putting the RTM on all these next month when the final code is available to download. Of course, I'll still dual-boot with Ubuntu.
I am sorry, but I don't want MS telling me I cannot watch a DVD I freaking bought and forcing me to watch it in crap-quality mode because I don't have a certain connection type to my monitor.
It's not MS telling you that, it's the movie industry.
Did you have kernel debugging enabled on your Windows 7 test system? If so, that's probably why you had poor video quality from the Microsoft components. The video codec intentionally injects crap into the video stream when under the kernel debugger in order to discourage tampering.
The build number might be generated based on the date. So that build may have been produced on June 1st and only now are they able to call it "official". It takes a loooong time to validate any OS prior to shipping.
Many of Vista's problems were not caused directly by Vista, but the fact that it enforced security more and didn't allow 3rd party software anymore to do what ever it wanted.
Now things have changed, although most software still does not grasp the idea that a person may try to install software and not be an administrator.
it's worth pointing out that editing conf files and compiling packages hasn't been necessary in Linux for a few years now.
I run Gentoo you insensitive clod!
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
From one of MS's whitepapers:
If the driver model was the same I would be able to load Creative Audigy 4 drivers for Vista without any issues.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I know you're just trolling, but in case anyone thinks there's truth to this, it's worth pointing out that editing conf files and compiling packages hasn't been necessary in Linux for a few years now. I haven't compiled a package or hand edited a conf file once on my 2 month old laptop, and don't expect ever to have to. Also, installing XP (It came with Vista, which I didn't want) and making it work properly with all the necessary drivers took about 3 times as long as installing Ubuntu, and was much more difficult and stressful.
Try regularly moving your laptop between a few different docking station and external screen configurations, and let us know how you go.
I understand that Microsoft doesn't want to enable any circumvention. But they don't have to actively block it, either. They're acting like an arm of Hollywood rather than a platform provider.
I've installed all of those programs I could get access to, and it still seems to not work. It's still Microsoft DRM getting in the way of what is arguably fair use. THAT is my complaint. Not that they don't enable me to do everything I want, but that they actively deny me the ability to do things I want, rather than take a neutral stance. If they don't trust me, I won't trust or use them for anything but a game loader.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
There is a good reason to use it: some forums filter 'ass' but accept 'arse'.
The biggest good reason, of course, is that it's the correct spelling rather than some Americanised abomination of English. ;)
So you think Windows Media player is somehow making your dvd's look like crap because of... ? Copy protection or something? Microsoft INTENTIONALLY made it bad for you? Is that what you are saying? LMAO... You are obviously extremely lacking when it comes to a lot of things.
Ask your neighbor's kid to have a look at your stuff, because you can apparently not spot an error without going all bad-Microsoft-conspiracy-crazy on it!
I've installed tons of unsigned drivers on Windows 7. It merely pops up a warning, same as Vista. I've also ripped DVD's with it. I suspect you are merely *lying*
I have, both compiled and hand written conf files on Ubuntu 9.04. But I was installing Nagios. At home, I haven't done anything like that in over two years. the last time was when I had to manually extract a lib file from a NVidia driver, closed source driver issues can hardly be considered the fault of Linux or open source.
Before anyone asks, I chose Ubuntu to run a server application because this box is going to sit at my boss's house and he's completely lost without a GUI so I picked the friendliest Debian I knew about.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Microsoft's internal Sharepoint farm was down much of the week from instabilities on Windows Server 2008 R2. This is hardly a surprise, as the post-2002 model is to "eat your own dogfood." (This is of considerable relief, as it's much better to find these issues prior to the final release.) That said, there is a lot of excitement about the final release, for both R2 and Windows 7. (Just about everybody inside Microsoft uses Server 2008 or a Windows 7 RC--nobody, but nobody, is still using Vista. Most notably, Windows 7 frees up something like 1Gb of RAM...)
Please explain clearly and succinctly how exactly Microsoft are 'actively blocking' any DRM circumvention attempts? Just because Microsoft don't provide a mechanism for copying an encrypted DVD out of the box that doesn't mean that they're 'actively blocking' anything.
Just because you can't "figure out how to get a DVD ripped to the hard drive in anything but a DRM locked Windows Media copy" doesn't mean anything other than you've not worked out how to do what thousands of others have managed to achieve.
Actually, yes, there is such technology to degrade quality of some content when not using an HDCP-compliant display, to reduce quality of rips made by sniffing the monitor connection. (Of course, they're forgetting about LVDS. You can pop open an HDCP-compliant display, unplug the bare panel from the controller, and make a dummy panel that just gets the pixels decoded from the controller. Or, do it to a laptop with an HDCP-compliant GPU. Digital holes are a bitch like that, you can always get to whatever's driving the pixels, and IIRC, it's actually harder to decode TMDS than it is LVDS - hence why the panel is driven by LVDS.)
Take a look here: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html#quality
I just use VLC for everything, on any OS that supports and runs it well, so it doesn't affect me, but the issue is still there.
32-bit or 64-bit?
Because 64-bit versions of Windows require, IIRC, parameters to be passed at boot and a group policy edit to allow unsigned drivers.
It's a shame Windows Server 2008 R2 isn't available in a 32-bit version... all the benefits of a 32-bit version, and you get to use over ~3 GiB RAM.
Nobody has disproved the points in that post about hosts files and windows filtering platform though.