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Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud
A few days ago, we ran word of a report alleging that Windows 7 consumed more memory than it should, based on a report from Devil Mountain Software; a followup post linked to Ars Technica's robust deconstruction of that claim. Now the story gets weird: Fred Flowers writes The original story quoted the company's CTO, Craig Barth on the issue. Now, InfoWorld editor in chief Eric Knorr has still more to add. From Knorr's blog at InfoWorld.com: 'On Friday, Feb. 19, we discovered that one of our contributors, Randall C. Kennedy, had been misrepresenting himself to other media organizations as Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software (aka exo.performance.network), in interviews for a number of stories regarding Windows and other Microsoft software topics. ... There is no Craig Barth.' Knorr's post goes on to say that Kennedy has been fired from his blogging gig at InfoWorld over this 'serious breach of trust,' and that his blog will be removed."
See http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10532-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=75498&messageID=1468379 for what he claims he is and does.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I like UAC, and I'm kind of an MS fanboy, but that's just wrong. There are solutions like gksudo that work much like UAC, including a user-friendly GUI and caching of credentials. Not to mention PolicyKit and other capability-based security mechanisms. Every major distro (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) has these features by default.
That guy was behind a lot of anti-Vista FUD, especially stuff that was reported here on Slashdot.
Some samples here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/1710245
Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance
Researchers from the Devil Mountain Software group is claiming that a series of in-house benchmark tests showed that users hoping to receive a speed boost from the update will be disappointed.
"Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a "barn burner" -- dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory -- to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut. 'One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn't make a difference,' said [CTO Craig] Barth. 'SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.'"
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/18/2016228.shtml
One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?
"More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/02/1418252
IE8 Beta 2 Fatter Than Firefox and XP
"Consuming twice as much RAM as Firefox and saturating the CPU with nearly six times as many execution threads, Microsoft's latest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 is in fact more demanding on your PC than Windows XP itself, research firm Devil Mountain Software found in performance tests. According to the firm, which operates a community-based testing network, IE8 Beta 2 consumed 380MB of RAM and spawned 171 concurrent threads during a multi-tab browsing test of popular Web destinations. InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy speculates that Microsoft may be designing IE8 for the multicore future. But until your machine sports four or eight discrete processing cores, IE8 will remain 'porcine,' Devil Mountain's Craig Barth says."
This space for rent.
Depends what you mean by "vetted"; the NSA created SELinux, so nothing really compares to that, but they've regularly put out security guides in conjunction with Microsoft for every major Windows release (as well as for other operating systems). They're always comprehensive and a very solid resource on hardening Windows systems to varying extents, not to mention good learning material. Just don't get too overboard, a lot of the suggestions take security to extremes, to the extent that you'll definitely break a large number of programs by removing permissions and modifying defaults that they'd never expect to encounter (I say this from experience). They definitely don't get the attention they deserve:
Windows 7 Security Compliance Management Toolkit
If you actually read the story in question on Slashdot, you'll see everyone point out what an idiot whoever put the story up is and explain that the whole point of memory is that you use close to 100% of it since every byte you use makes things go faster. It's been this way for years. kdawson et al's anti-MS biases get on the front page, and everyone kicks them down (unless they're justified).