This is not exactly true. XP only automatically connects to networks that have already been added to Wireless Networks list in interface properties. It means that the user must manually connect to unprotected network for the first time in order to add it to the list. After that, XP will autoconnect to this network when available (until it is removed from the list). I'm not sure if XP connects to all networks with this SSID ("linksys" being the popular one), but I assume it does.
I am typing this from a 600 MHz / 256 MB machine that is running KDE, and I assure you that Opera is the fastest browser I tried - not even KDE-native Konqueror can match it (I've been using Opera since version 6). Websites that make heavy use of Javascript (digg, google apps, etc) are absolutely unusable in Firefox (3 had some improvements over 2, but it's still slow). While I do use Firefox on my home computer, there is no match for Opera on older machines. I wish Opera developers found a way to port AdBlock and Flashblock plugins - these are "killer" plugins that prevent me from switching to Opera completely.
I am amazed how a closed-source app like Opera can outperform open source browsers that can supposedly integrate into the enviroment much better by such a high margin.
No, it was removed in 3.0b3. The problem is that it is not available through about:config or any other option. You can install Oldbar extension, but it only changes appearance of the address bar, not the sorting algorithm. You will still have results from your bookmarks and random pages.
It looks like Mozilla developers are going Pidgin's way by ignoring their users. Many of us don't like new "smart" address bar that uses some arcane algorithm to sort suggested results. Unfortunately, there is no way to change address bar behavior to Firefox 2 style (when I type sl in the address bar, I want to see slashdot.org as my first result instead of some combination of my bookmarks and random pages). The worst thing about it is that there is no way to disable this "feature". I don't really mind when they bloat Firefox with some features that might appeal to some users, but I *do* mind when they make no option to turn them off.
I would probably go crazy if there was no way to change default Windows theme to Classic.
If you work with Active Directory, a lot of things cannot be done without CLI tools, such as advanced domain/trust management, or mass modification (or import/export) of objects.
Configure the bootloader to have two options -- boot normal OS, and boot re-image PXE boot is nice, but it doesn't always work. It's a huge Fortune 100 company that uses several images, and it's just not possible to configure each subnet/router/tftpd to forward PXE boot requests to the appropriate server. That's why we use boot CDs.
User calls helpdesk, helpdesk says "Well, it looks like you have a virus. Could you press the re-image button?" It may work for BOFHs, but in most cases users need to have their data backed up prior to re-imaging. And if the OS is unusable, it means hooking up the hard drive to another computer. In a perfect world everything is stored on the network shares, but there is always some Very Important Spreadsheet that the user kept on their local drive.
Actually you answered yourself -...And I know, this only works right up until the CEO needs to be re-imaged.
It doesn't have to be CEO, re-imaging anyone 4 levels down from CEO without a notice will get your ass handed to you.
First: 8 hours? WTF? 1. PC is re-imaged.
2. Patches are applied / Software is installed.
3. Entire hard drive (80-120 GB) is encrypted.
Also there is a company policy (which I find quite sane) that no equipment is to be delivered to end users without being 100% encrypted.
And do you really have your desktop support techs sitting there the whole fucking time?? No, but it still takes time. Moreover, remote users have to ship their laptops to techs, who do the imaging and ship the machines back to the users. And that takes no less than 3 days.
Keep at least one or two spare boxes around, or at least hard drives. You are right, but this only works in smaller companies. In large companies departments are so separated that IT dept. can't really loan any equipment to the business unit. And business units don't usually have spare machines lying around.
I currently work for a company small enough where there is no official IT department -- users fix their own problems, and everyone is knowledgeable enough to do so. I mostly deal with financial/insurance folks, and they tend not to be that tech-savvy.
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.
How many households nowadays do not own a PC? Most people have at least one computer at home. Since you have to buy it anyway, why would you shell out $350 for a redundant device (console) instead of investing this money into higher-end PC? My gaming rig doesn't only play games, it also allows me to run a couple of virtual machines and develop in a resource hungry IDE without slowing the system down to a crawl.
No. Apple updater should offer updates only for software that you currently have installed. If Apple wants to offer users ability to install other software, they should create a utility "Apple software manager" or "Apple software installer" and offer to install other software like Safari through it - the way Linux package managers do it.
Have you seen what recent high-end video cards look like (especially two-slot ones)? Do you think it's possible to fit this thing into a laptop? No, because laptops are mostly engineered to be space-efficient, and have long battery life by using less power. You can't have high performance and low power consumption, these things are just not compatible. You can pick one at the cost of another one.
The advantage of using multiple devices to do different things is that each device can be designed for a particular function and perform it better. If you truly need portability, you'll probably go with ultra thin laptops. If you need high performance, you will go with a workstation. However if you want to combine both and use a regular laptop, you will get good portability and good performance. There is nothing wrong with it, and it may perfectly suit your needs and do all kinds of things for you. But agree that you will get neither maximum portability as you could get with an ultra-portable, nor maximum performance as you could get with a workstation. It's like a battlemage character in RPG games - you get the best of both classes, but you won't be 100% perfect in particlar skills. That's the nature of multi-functional things.
Why, exactly, would you compromise, especially if your laptop is your only machine
Get over it, and think of all these convenient features of a laptop that you gained by not being able to play 3D games at max settings. There's always a trade-off.
So, what's the advantage of your situation?
Well, the advantage of my situation is that I have better gaming experience for the same price ($1300). There is a number of disadvantages, but this is a different issue.
Laptops are not intended to be used for 3D gaming. Buying a laptop for $1300 doesn't entitle you to expect good performance in games. If you wanted to play games, you should have selected right tool for the job - a desktop computer. Laptops are supposed to be portable and used for productivity, hence their light weight and low power consumption. Some manufacturers make attempts to create "desktop replacement" monstrosities, but they're just deluding customers into thinking that these laptops are as good as desktops.
You're mistaking "gamers" for those people on the cutting edge who actually spent money on SLI video cards. Enthusiasts.
There are many midrange video cards for ~$100-200 that offer good performance. People buying 8800 GTX and SLI video cards for >$350 can be called enthusiasts.
And guess how much this laptop cost? 1300 USD.
I can buy Vertu phone and complain about its signal quality and battery life not being superior to other phones. High price doesn't mean that the device will be doing something better than others.
I also shelled out $1300 on a new machine not long ago. However I knew that I would be using it for games, thus I selected desktop with Q6600 CPU and 8800GTS video card and have no problems maxing out settings in latest games. My P-III Gateway laptop is still doing just fine for documents, e-mails, and remote administration with 4 hr battery life. It's all about using the right tool to get the job done.
Another reason would be because Microsoft needs to add selling points to its product (Windows). Would average consumer buy new OS because of improved memory management, filesystems, and such? I doubt that. But when you add "wow experience", such as fancy GUI, bundle OS with media players, browsers, and other userspace apps, you can convince the consumer to buy new OS. Sure, there are always things that need to be improved - multi CPU support, filesystems (*cough* WinFS), security, and support for new hardware features (SSE1/2/3, NX bit), but they are not being noticed as much as eye candy. I think the peak of Microsoft operating systems was Windows 2000 family; after that they just started to bloat their products.
Where I work (large financial company), *no* USB drives are allowed without exceptions. If employees need remote access, they are given laptops and VPN access. All laptop hard drives are encrypted. There is a registry key that allows to disable write access to USB drives, and in most cases users are not given admin rights to their computers - so you don't really need to maintain a list of approved device IDs.
Is it ok to "visit" a publicly available URL that contains SQL injection string in it? It can even be hidden behind tinyurl or similar service. It actually happened to me when I clicked on a tinyurl link that redirected me to injected URL - I have their preview cookie enabled since then.
Not that I don't agree with you, but still there are some exceptions.
The purpose of paying to be default search is to get people who ordinarily would use another search engine to use Google instead. While I agree with your comment, this statement is not true. Those who would willingly use another search engine (i.e. they know that it works better for them) would most likely change default search provider. However, those who are OK with the default (Joe Average) will use Google, and that's what they are paying for.
It so easy to change default search engine (you don't even need to go to Options for that), that those who are at least slightly interested in changing it will do so.
Yes, they "force" on you google as the default engine and home page Well, you have to come up with a default engine, don't you? If they selected Live search, you would as well that they "force" you to use Microsoft search. Or is it better if they displayed annoying first-run wizard (like IE7 does) where you had to select default search provider? I'm personally better the way they have it now, and I'm sure I am not alone.
no Aero, no interface changes.
You can turn it off. There are some interface changes that can't be "turned off". One of the examples is new "breadcrumbs" address bar in Explorer. I know that many people like it, however I don't understand why MS didn't include a checkbox somewhere in Options where I can change it back to classic mode. There are some third-party hacks, but it should be configurable using standard OS tools.
Yeah, those evil greedy Credit Card Companies screw everyone and make them pay high interest! Except that as for now, I have paid 0 (zero) cents to credit card companies, and in fact annually make >$100 in form of 1-2% cashback on purchases (except when I had no credit history, and had to pay one-time $30 yearly fee on a Secured Visa card, but that's understandable).
If Joe Average can't control himself and gets into $10k dept (and pays high interest as a result), that's not companies' fault. It means that poor Joe can't control his finance and desires - well, that's too bad for him. There is a simple rule that I follow when buying with a credit card - if I can't pay it off in full in a month (during grace period), I don't buy it. If I *really* need something, I don't buy it unless I can pay it off in three months.
Credit cards are not supposed to be used for big purchases; there are specialized types of loans with much lower APRs for that (cars, furniture, etc). I really fail to see why would you pay for something big with a credit card, unless there is emergency.
I, for one, welcome our not-really-new making-money-off-idiots credit card overlords!
Remember that without Red Hat there would be no CentOS. Supporting commercial Linux vendors is important, so if your company wants to pay money to Red Hat (for "support" or having somebody to point fingers at), let it be so.
Everybody wins with this model: Companies/PHBs who think that a product has to have a vendor and has to cost something are happy to be able to pay for Linux and have somebody to blame; commercial Linux vendors make a profit and increase market penetration/awareness; small businesses and individuals take advantage of free-as-in-beer builds (such as CentOS).
1. Antiviruses, anti-spyware and personal firewalls use too much system resources. Last time I checked my corporate machine with all this stuff installed booted about twice longer that a comparable home computer without it.
2. Unlike worms that can infect even advanced users' computers, it is very easy for an experienced user not to get infected with viruses/spyware. I don't think anyone reading this post will open a photo.jpg.exe file or execute an email attachment such as coolscreensaver.scr.
3. You mentioned that you had Ad-Aware pro. Not everybody wants to pay money for such software, especially since most of us slashdotters have multiple computers.
Do you drive your car without insurance? Even if liability insurance wasn't required, I would still have it because I can't rely on my car. While I can be pretty confident in my driving, I can never be sure that my brakes/steering/etc will not fail at any moment (and even regular service doesn't give you 100% confidence).
I use antiviruses in non-resident mode only to scan cra^H^H^H software that I downloaded from questionable sites, and last OS I had infected was a DOS system (with infamous TIME virus). I guess it all depends on common sense.
True, but if it was enabled by default, everybody would complain about evil Mozilla sending URL history to Google, and rightfully so. The best way to handle it would be to ask the user in the same first-run wizard where they ask to import bookmarks from other browsers.
What makes you think that those people were idiots? Your computer doesn't get immediately infected if you click on a hyperlink that says "It will be infected if you click here". I would have clicked on it just out of curiosity to see what it would try to do (wouldn't use IE for that, though).
Slashdot Mirror
This is not exactly true. XP only automatically connects to networks that have already been added to Wireless Networks list in interface properties. It means that the user must manually connect to unprotected network for the first time in order to add it to the list. After that, XP will autoconnect to this network when available (until it is removed from the list). I'm not sure if XP connects to all networks with this SSID ("linksys" being the popular one), but I assume it does.
It's not exactly as automated as ABP + EasyList + EasyElement. These lists take care of 95% ads without me having to manually enter each filter.
That's what different profiles are for.
I am typing this from a 600 MHz / 256 MB machine that is running KDE, and I assure you that Opera is the fastest browser I tried - not even KDE-native Konqueror can match it (I've been using Opera since version 6). Websites that make heavy use of Javascript (digg, google apps, etc) are absolutely unusable in Firefox (3 had some improvements over 2, but it's still slow). While I do use Firefox on my home computer, there is no match for Opera on older machines. I wish Opera developers found a way to port AdBlock and Flashblock plugins - these are "killer" plugins that prevent me from switching to Opera completely.
I am amazed how a closed-source app like Opera can outperform open source browsers that can supposedly integrate into the enviroment much better by such a high margin.
No, it was removed in 3.0b3. The problem is that it is not available through about:config or any other option. You can install Oldbar extension, but it only changes appearance of the address bar, not the sorting algorithm. You will still have results from your bookmarks and random pages.
It looks like Mozilla developers are going Pidgin's way by ignoring their users. Many of us don't like new "smart" address bar that uses some arcane algorithm to sort suggested results. Unfortunately, there is no way to change address bar behavior to Firefox 2 style (when I type sl in the address bar, I want to see slashdot.org as my first result instead of some combination of my bookmarks and random pages). The worst thing about it is that there is no way to disable this "feature". I don't really mind when they bloat Firefox with some features that might appeal to some users, but I *do* mind when they make no option to turn them off.
I would probably go crazy if there was no way to change default Windows theme to Classic.
If you work with Active Directory, a lot of things cannot be done without CLI tools, such as advanced domain/trust management, or mass modification (or import/export) of objects.
User calls helpdesk, helpdesk says "Well, it looks like you have a virus. Could you press the re-image button?" It may work for BOFHs, but in most cases users need to have their data backed up prior to re-imaging. And if the OS is unusable, it means hooking up the hard drive to another computer. In a perfect world everything is stored on the network shares, but there is always some Very Important Spreadsheet that the user kept on their local drive.
Actually you answered yourself -
First: 8 hours? WTF? 1. PC is re-imaged.
2. Patches are applied / Software is installed.
3. Entire hard drive (80-120 GB) is encrypted.
Also there is a company policy (which I find quite sane) that no equipment is to be delivered to end users without being 100% encrypted. And do you really have your desktop support techs sitting there the whole fucking time?? No, but it still takes time. Moreover, remote users have to ship their laptops to techs, who do the imaging and ship the machines back to the users. And that takes no less than 3 days. Keep at least one or two spare boxes around, or at least hard drives. You are right, but this only works in smaller companies. In large companies departments are so separated that IT dept. can't really loan any equipment to the business unit. And business units don't usually have spare machines lying around.
I currently work for a company small enough where there is no official IT department -- users fix their own problems, and everyone is knowledgeable enough to do so. I mostly deal with financial/insurance folks, and they tend not to be that tech-savvy.
reimage, reimage, reimage until the user learns
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.
How many households nowadays do not own a PC? Most people have at least one computer at home. Since you have to buy it anyway, why would you shell out $350 for a redundant device (console) instead of investing this money into higher-end PC? My gaming rig doesn't only play games, it also allows me to run a couple of virtual machines and develop in a resource hungry IDE without slowing the system down to a crawl.
No. Apple updater should offer updates only for software that you currently have installed. If Apple wants to offer users ability to install other software, they should create a utility "Apple software manager" or "Apple software installer" and offer to install other software like Safari through it - the way Linux package managers do it.
Have you seen what recent high-end video cards look like (especially two-slot ones)? Do you think it's possible to fit this thing into a laptop? No, because laptops are mostly engineered to be space-efficient, and have long battery life by using less power. You can't have high performance and low power consumption, these things are just not compatible. You can pick one at the cost of another one.
The advantage of using multiple devices to do different things is that each device can be designed for a particular function and perform it better. If you truly need portability, you'll probably go with ultra thin laptops. If you need high performance, you will go with a workstation. However if you want to combine both and use a regular laptop, you will get good portability and good performance. There is nothing wrong with it, and it may perfectly suit your needs and do all kinds of things for you. But agree that you will get neither maximum portability as you could get with an ultra-portable, nor maximum performance as you could get with a workstation. It's like a battlemage character in RPG games - you get the best of both classes, but you won't be 100% perfect in particlar skills. That's the nature of multi-functional things.
Why, exactly, would you compromise, especially if your laptop is your only machine
Get over it, and think of all these convenient features of a laptop that you gained by not being able to play 3D games at max settings. There's always a trade-off.
So, what's the advantage of your situation?
Well, the advantage of my situation is that I have better gaming experience for the same price ($1300). There is a number of disadvantages, but this is a different issue.
Laptops are not intended to be used for 3D gaming. Buying a laptop for $1300 doesn't entitle you to expect good performance in games. If you wanted to play games, you should have selected right tool for the job - a desktop computer. Laptops are supposed to be portable and used for productivity, hence their light weight and low power consumption. Some manufacturers make attempts to create "desktop replacement" monstrosities, but they're just deluding customers into thinking that these laptops are as good as desktops.
You're mistaking "gamers" for those people on the cutting edge who actually spent money on SLI video cards. Enthusiasts.
There are many midrange video cards for ~$100-200 that offer good performance. People buying 8800 GTX and SLI video cards for >$350 can be called enthusiasts.
And guess how much this laptop cost? 1300 USD. I can buy Vertu phone and complain about its signal quality and battery life not being superior to other phones. High price doesn't mean that the device will be doing something better than others.
I also shelled out $1300 on a new machine not long ago. However I knew that I would be using it for games, thus I selected desktop with Q6600 CPU and 8800GTS video card and have no problems maxing out settings in latest games. My P-III Gateway laptop is still doing just fine for documents, e-mails, and remote administration with 4 hr battery life. It's all about using the right tool to get the job done.
Another reason would be because Microsoft needs to add selling points to its product (Windows). Would average consumer buy new OS because of improved memory management, filesystems, and such? I doubt that. But when you add "wow experience", such as fancy GUI, bundle OS with media players, browsers, and other userspace apps, you can convince the consumer to buy new OS. Sure, there are always things that need to be improved - multi CPU support, filesystems (*cough* WinFS), security, and support for new hardware features (SSE1/2/3, NX bit), but they are not being noticed as much as eye candy. I think the peak of Microsoft operating systems was Windows 2000 family; after that they just started to bloat their products.
Where I work (large financial company), *no* USB drives are allowed without exceptions. If employees need remote access, they are given laptops and VPN access. All laptop hard drives are encrypted. There is a registry key that allows to disable write access to USB drives, and in most cases users are not given admin rights to their computers - so you don't really need to maintain a list of approved device IDs.
Is it ok to "visit" a publicly available URL that contains SQL injection string in it? It can even be hidden behind tinyurl or similar service. It actually happened to me when I clicked on a tinyurl link that redirected me to injected URL - I have their preview cookie enabled since then.
Not that I don't agree with you, but still there are some exceptions.
It so easy to change default search engine (you don't even need to go to Options for that), that those who are at least slightly interested in changing it will do so.
It's a good suggestion if you are working as a service technician. Average person isn't going to have 9 failed ipods.
You can turn it off. There are some interface changes that can't be "turned off". One of the examples is new "breadcrumbs" address bar in Explorer. I know that many people like it, however I don't understand why MS didn't include a checkbox somewhere in Options where I can change it back to classic mode. There are some third-party hacks, but it should be configurable using standard OS tools.
Yeah, those evil greedy Credit Card Companies screw everyone and make them pay high interest! Except that as for now, I have paid 0 (zero) cents to credit card companies, and in fact annually make >$100 in form of 1-2% cashback on purchases (except when I had no credit history, and had to pay one-time $30 yearly fee on a Secured Visa card, but that's understandable).
If Joe Average can't control himself and gets into $10k dept (and pays high interest as a result), that's not companies' fault. It means that poor Joe can't control his finance and desires - well, that's too bad for him. There is a simple rule that I follow when buying with a credit card - if I can't pay it off in full in a month (during grace period), I don't buy it. If I *really* need something, I don't buy it unless I can pay it off in three months.
Credit cards are not supposed to be used for big purchases; there are specialized types of loans with much lower APRs for that (cars, furniture, etc). I really fail to see why would you pay for something big with a credit card, unless there is emergency.
I, for one, welcome our not-really-new making-money-off-idiots credit card overlords!
Remember that without Red Hat there would be no CentOS. Supporting commercial Linux vendors is important, so if your company wants to pay money to Red Hat (for "support" or having somebody to point fingers at), let it be so.
Everybody wins with this model: Companies/PHBs who think that a product has to have a vendor and has to cost something are happy to be able to pay for Linux and have somebody to blame; commercial Linux vendors make a profit and increase market penetration/awareness; small businesses and individuals take advantage of free-as-in-beer builds (such as CentOS).
2. Unlike worms that can infect even advanced users' computers, it is very easy for an experienced user not to get infected with viruses/spyware. I don't think anyone reading this post will open a photo.jpg.exe file or execute an email attachment such as coolscreensaver.scr.
3. You mentioned that you had Ad-Aware pro. Not everybody wants to pay money for such software, especially since most of us slashdotters have multiple computers.
Do you drive your car without insurance? Even if liability insurance wasn't required, I would still have it because I can't rely on my car. While I can be pretty confident in my driving, I can never be sure that my brakes/steering/etc will not fail at any moment (and even regular service doesn't give you 100% confidence).
I use antiviruses in non-resident mode only to scan cra^H^H^H software that I downloaded from questionable sites, and last OS I had infected was a DOS system (with infamous TIME virus). I guess it all depends on common sense.
True, but if it was enabled by default, everybody would complain about evil Mozilla sending URL history to Google, and rightfully so. The best way to handle it would be to ask the user in the same first-run wizard where they ask to import bookmarks from other browsers.
What makes you think that those people were idiots? Your computer doesn't get immediately infected if you click on a hyperlink that says "It will be infected if you click here". I would have clicked on it just out of curiosity to see what it would try to do (wouldn't use IE for that, though).