I know a while back some companies were pushing for a chain of trust for digitally signed applications.
TPM trusts BIOS, BIOS trusts OS, OS trusts hardware/software.
In this manner, everything is traceable assuming the only root certs that the system accepts are very secure and require verification prior to execution. The system would then not execute files that aren't signed.
If anything that is executed does end up causing harm, the signature makes it easy to trace back to the person and/or company.
The above method is what Microsoft uses on the xbox 360. So far, the 360 currently does not run unsigned code. And even with hacking I do not believe they've gotten unsigned code to execute.
As long as you're using Vista or 7, both of which include technology for low priority processes, MSE will be a negligible performance hit on your system.
I generally tell the program to exclude my games directory of real-time virus scanning. Most viruses these days aren't out to try and infect every application in your system, but to dump themselves in temp files or the windows directory (or in the future's case, somewhere in the user's home directory).
So really excluding the games folder for me isn't so much of a problem:P
Think of the XP launch event and how much that ran Microsoft. Now think of how much these will cost them. Nothing. Aside from that, only the "party host" is getting a free copy of Windows 7, not any of the attendees.
Reason why journalists hate it?
-Because they like to feel special and have special events with a reason to call out of work and to get free software.
It's easier and cheaper in the long run to just tell the person it's not doable than it is to try and explain to them the different technologies they have.
What the OP wants is not doable. That's not to say that there aren't situations where it is doable, but what the OP has asked for is not doable.
There are a multitude of technologies that can be used together to provide varying levels of internet access, but at some point or another you are going to trade off speed for availability.
In the absolute of remote locations, you will not have connectivity without having a satellite connection. But to the OP, the satellite connection isn't good enough--yet it is the only option in those areas.
A frying pan is a physical object you can take with you. Until you can take the internet with you on a chip, it's not happening.
The fact is, it's a service, like electricity and plumbing. And not every area is going to have said services, and it's not feasible to expect that sort of connectivity from everywhere. It's not that the OP is just satisfied with connectivity, he wants constant, low latency connectivity anywhere.
This is not doable. It's just not. Plain and simple.
Actually, I would peg this down to the OEM wanting to support 32 or 64-bit. It's not a pricing thing, since a license for 32-bit also nets you a license for the 64-bit of the same OS SKU. (Buying 32-bit Business gets you a license to use 64-bit).
It's not a driver thing, at least not with newer hardware, as in order to obtain the WHQL logo your hardware must have drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit.
Many desktops and laptops of this year have been shipping with 64-bit. Earlier this year I went to Best Buy and picked up a Dell Inspiron 530S for a friend's family and it came with 4G ram and 64-bit Vista Home Premium. It's the same on a lot of machines.
A) I'd rather pay a monthly subscription to a game than enter a game that has micro transactions for items. The potential for impulse buying is way too high. Yes, players should be more responsible with their money blah blah blah......but you tell me that impulse buying isn't going to be a significant problem for the players (obviously not for the company).
B) I don't like grinding--period. The only time I ever grind in wow is on the very rare chance I am bored and have nothing better to do. My grinding lasts no more than 30-45 minutes at a time. Grinding being: killing the same group of mobs repeatedly, flying around a zone mining, etc.
If the game requires any of these two elements, I just am not going to play it. If anything, I'd rather WoW become more difficult and skill-based to play. I'd rather the higher end content require more effort, coordination, and dedication than it takes now. Grinding for hours on end is not my kind of fun.
WoW's only-walking? What? WoW has flying in 2/4 of its continents, which was introduced to players at level 70 in the previous expansion (released in 2006). Flying continues to be enabled for players entering the Northrend continent from 77 onward. There are many different types of flying mounts from magic carpets, dragons, giant robot heads, giant red rockets, hippogryphs, etc.
It's a fucking Ebook. Why the hell do you need javascript?
From what others have been pointing out you've been trying to do something naughty or odd and you're getting called out on it. You just won't admit that you're at fault and would rather just take the shot at Apple.
I certainly rather enjoy that you make note to call out Apple for their vague reasons for denying your application, but yet you have not been very open exactly as to what has been rejected. You could very well post the source code to your application if you were this desperate to call Apple out, but you won't, because chances are someone, somewhere, will call bullshit on you. The fact is, that Apple is vague because they might not have all of the source available--but you do. And you are the only one that can change what you're doing, not them.
No. There would have to be some sort of vulnerability existing in the system to launch code, to then launch IE, to then exploit IE.......yeah....you can see the logic in that.
No, if IE is not running or being used, the exploit would not affect the system.
That said, this vulnerability does not affect Vista or Windows 7, or IE7/8 on those systems.
Really--people should upgrade. And furthermore, people should not disable UAC.
I believe what he means is the fact that in versions of Windows prior to Vista, Windows would run applications with the rights of the logged in user, whom would in 90% of cases be the Administrator of the machine. This in turn would give applications full access to many critical system areas.
I guess he has avoided Vista due to all the blog posts and hasn't realized that UAC was built to guard against this very thing, while still giving users Administrative rights over their machine.
Perhaps you haven't used Windows Vista due to many blog posts, but Microsoft hasn't allowed any code to do everything it wants since they released Vista in January of 2007. It is now coming up on 2.5 years later with yet another OS release which includes much of the same technology.
You should read up on the new technologies, such as process integrity levels and UAC as well as IE protected mode. And ask yourself this question: Why doesn't Firefox voluntarily lower its integrity level in Windows Vista/7?
Both IE and Chrome do so. Chrome does this in addition to its own unique sandbox features.
That said, medium integrity (the default operation of every application unless you elevate it with a UAC prompt) is still quite restricted, just not as restricted as a low integrity process.
Google for it, Microsoft has tons of documentation on the feature.
You're right, it doesn't explain anything about vendor response.
But in almost every severe case of a worm or trojan infecting Windows, at least ones that got large enough to gain media attention (Code Red, Blaster, Storm)--the vendor had a patch out that was available long before the worms existed.
This is proven and very well known. Even Storm's exploit was fixed in October of 2008, many months before the botnet gained media attention.
There are Windows installation methods and procedures that people on Windows forums tend to follow that make it significantly easier to exploit Windows even though they think they are doing other users a service.
It comes down to the fact that:
A. Any notable worm or trojan has generally used exploits where a patch was already available.
B. IE7/8 (and Chrome) under Vista/7 operate under a low security level which limits the potential impact of any known or unknown trojan or exploit. Safari, Opera, nor Firefox (even 3.5) voluntarily reduce themselves to a low security level.
C. All of the products have reasonable update standards. While Microsoft generally waits until Patch Tuesday to fix flaws (unless a severely critical flaw with known malware using it is running wild), each product does update itself automatically. Read my above statement regarding what people think they are doing "for the good of the PC" to see why there might be more to this particular point.
Unfortunately, your post is terribly worded. There haven't been as many holes in IE over the years as some other browsers.
FF3.5: 0, currently (it just came out 2 days ago) FF3.0: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/19089/ 81 vulnerabilities FF2.0: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/12434/ 154 vulnerabilities IE6: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/ 154 vulnerabilities IE7: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/12366/ 84 vulnerabilities IE8: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/21625/ 8 vulnerabilities
It's clear that IE and FF have the same general history with vulnerabilities, with the earlier products being much less safer than the newer products. Combine IE7/8 with Vista's UAC Protected Mode and you have further protection against system destruction due to a vulnerability.
I don't quite understand everyone's aversion to applications using memory. I mean--I'd much rather my applications take the time to use the memory I have, with all 4.5GB/sec of performance on sustained reads than my hard drive which is roughly about 3% of that speed on good parts of the drive structure with RAID0.
Application performance should never be about how much ram it uses, but how it uses it. I'm all for applications being efficient, but if it wants a bunch of ram to make things a bit faster--by all means, I've got 8G in my system, have at it.
This is one of the primary reasons I like Superfetch in Windows Vista/7--because it utilizes ram for application and data prefetching. What better way to use the ram than have the most frequently used programs and information cached and readily available at super high speeds?
I wish some of my applications used more ram (see: WoW) just to improve visible performance (I'd rather have a higher upfront load time than the loading/performance drops mid-game).
We both do agree, I would just be more cautious with the usage of "free market" as it means a whole lot of things to a lot of different people.
Currently on the internet, the more popular definition and usage is along the lines of "a market that exists with no government interference. Corporations are allowed to do as they wish because if they do something that hurts the public, the public will respond by not purchasing their products."
The "invisible hand" in this case is the one behind the scenes with regards to the money. That in a perfect world, the businesses won't do anything that would hurt their profit--and the consumers won't purchase anything that harms their well-being.
Of course, we both know how much a load of BS that is--but that's the more widespread use, unfortunately:/
On a technical note, this is all something being done mostly under the "free market". That is, it's completely up to the handset providers and the carriers to decide, freely, for themselves, if they want to have exclusivity deals. And it's completely up to the end users if they want to purchase them or not within the constraints of these deals.
Beyond that, you get into very hairy situations.
The key point though, is "Free Market" does not necessarily mean "Fair Market".
I am in no way a supporter of a "free market" and I believe in heavy regulation and oversight from 3rd parties to ensure that we have a fair market for consumers. I'm just simply pointing out that you can't have "free market" and "fair market"--it just doesn't work.
Some people would argue that a free market is a fair market in that anyone who wants to enter the market can do so by coming up with a better product or service and offering that. But unfortunately, under a completely free market that wouldn't happen--since the larger providers would enter agreements to force you out of the market.
So at the end of the day, a free market system is not the best--and a regulated, fair market, ran by 3rd parties unrelated to the corporate interests of those involved is the best type of market.
Of course....whether or not we have that today is a completely different debate. I'm simply pointing out the flaws in a "free market" system.
The large problem with Windows XP and SSD's is that Windows XP does not properly handle SSDs similar to how Windows Vista does not. You have to go in and manually disable these things to fix performance and increase longevity while it is handled automatically in Windows 7. You cannot expect end users to "tweak" their systems to properly handle these drives, so the real world benefit of paring Windows 7 and an SSD is there that beats out both Vista and XP.
You haven't provided enough information but let's look at it this way:
If he's paying his rent/share of the bills/whatever have you.
If he's doing fine in school while you all are busting your ass and studying...
Then stay out of it? Seriously. What he does with his free time has no bearing on you.
Just go out without him, do things without him. Eventually he'll want to go out, and just invite him out. Don't turn on him and say "WELL WE TRIED TO GET YOU TO GO OUT BUT NOW YOU SCREWED THE POOCH BUDDY!"
I always view story reboots and retellings with an open mind. There's always some artistic liberty that they can have. Obviously the exact bridge style of the original series would not have worked for a film over 40 years after.
All of the little liberties I really haven't had a problem with (the engine room, the phaser guns)--because they did a damn good job of keeping to the original characters.
The casting for this movie was absolutely fantastic, and really could not have been better casted. Chris Pine and Zach Quinto played fantastic characters. I've always been more of the "Spock" fan myself (hey, I'm a nerd who likes to think before acting) and the role was played EXTREMELY well. Not only was it played extremely well from an acting standpoint, but the writing for the role was great--the younger, more conflicted Spock. It was very good for the film and story, as it gives a bit more...individual character to Spock than the original series did.
As far as the enemy, the film wasn't really about the enemy they had to go up against. And to be honest with you, I'm sort of really tired of movies that show insurmountable circumstances with an over-confident near-invincible enemy but somehow some individual comes out to save-the-god-damn-day-when-nobody-else-could. There were obviously powerful things regarding this Romulan mining vessel and some of its capabilities, but not once did I get the feeling throughout the film that his vessel was invincible EXCEPT to the Enterprise crew.
If you need an example of the above paragraph of how NOT to do it, think Independence Day.
I don't mind the camera work that some people complained about, in fact, to be honest with you they're probably only complaining about the camera work because they have very little else to complain about, and they just like to gripe.
I've never had a problem with WGA or Activation on a full, RTM version of the OS--I purchased a legitimate copy of XP Pro OEM when it was released. I've been in the Vista beta and got a free copy from that, got Vista from the Server 2008 Launch also. I'll likely end up with Windows 7 (I'm in the beta for that as well).
I had a Vista beta deactivate itself once but that was about it.
I've never failed WGA--ever. So if your computer failed WGA you either have something that screwed with your machine, you're running a screwed up downloaded copy of the OS, or you did something to intentionally block it and now blame your woes on Microsoft.
Not necessarily the case. Since it's a "User Interface" we're talking about, the appearance of the GUI has everything to do with how well people work with the system. And how "fast" they work with it.
Just because a window may open quickly doesn't mean the user is going to be able to use that application very well. With UI elements and design ideas that are from dated periods of computer use (before massive widescreen LCDs, touch screens, and so forth) you will find yourself with a reduced productivity.
When people were working with small monitors the "menu system" was fantastic at hiding functionality of the product while increasing the working area for the end user--a great example would be a word processing program.
But now that we've gotten vastly larger LCDs, with 20+ inches being very, very common the old menu system is kind of dated.
And you certainly wouldn't use some of those dated UI concepts on something such as the iphone would you? But you did, and the elements were so small that they required you to use a "stylus" to access them at one point.
And people wonder why PDAs never took off while the iPhone has seen record sales.
Slashdot Mirror
I know a while back some companies were pushing for a chain of trust for digitally signed applications.
TPM trusts BIOS, BIOS trusts OS, OS trusts hardware/software.
In this manner, everything is traceable assuming the only root certs that the system accepts are very secure and require verification prior to execution. The system would then not execute files that aren't signed.
If anything that is executed does end up causing harm, the signature makes it easy to trace back to the person and/or company.
The above method is what Microsoft uses on the xbox 360. So far, the 360 currently does not run unsigned code. And even with hacking I do not believe they've gotten unsigned code to execute.
As long as you're using Vista or 7, both of which include technology for low priority processes, MSE will be a negligible performance hit on your system.
:P
I generally tell the program to exclude my games directory of real-time virus scanning. Most viruses these days aren't out to try and infect every application in your system, but to dump themselves in temp files or the windows directory (or in the future's case, somewhere in the user's home directory).
So really excluding the games folder for me isn't so much of a problem
There is a reason for these parties:
-It costs less money.
Think of the XP launch event and how much that ran Microsoft. Now think of how much these will cost them. Nothing. Aside from that, only the "party host" is getting a free copy of Windows 7, not any of the attendees.
Reason why journalists hate it?
-Because they like to feel special and have special events with a reason to call out of work and to get free software.
There you go.
It's easier and cheaper in the long run to just tell the person it's not doable than it is to try and explain to them the different technologies they have.
What the OP wants is not doable. That's not to say that there aren't situations where it is doable, but what the OP has asked for is not doable.
There are a multitude of technologies that can be used together to provide varying levels of internet access, but at some point or another you are going to trade off speed for availability.
In the absolute of remote locations, you will not have connectivity without having a satellite connection. But to the OP, the satellite connection isn't good enough--yet it is the only option in those areas.
A frying pan is a physical object you can take with you. Until you can take the internet with you on a chip, it's not happening.
The fact is, it's a service, like electricity and plumbing. And not every area is going to have said services, and it's not feasible to expect that sort of connectivity from everywhere. It's not that the OP is just satisfied with connectivity, he wants constant, low latency connectivity anywhere.
This is not doable. It's just not. Plain and simple.
Actually, I would peg this down to the OEM wanting to support 32 or 64-bit. It's not a pricing thing, since a license for 32-bit also nets you a license for the 64-bit of the same OS SKU. (Buying 32-bit Business gets you a license to use 64-bit).
It's not a driver thing, at least not with newer hardware, as in order to obtain the WHQL logo your hardware must have drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit.
Many desktops and laptops of this year have been shipping with 64-bit. Earlier this year I went to Best Buy and picked up a Dell Inspiron 530S for a friend's family and it came with 4G ram and 64-bit Vista Home Premium. It's the same on a lot of machines.
Something tells me the only reason Apple wants to do this is so they can say that you get more storage capacity in OSX than you would in Windows.
"LOOK, ON A 2TB DRIVE, YOU GET TO UTILIZE YOUR FULL 2 TERABYTES! IN WINDOWS, YOU ONLY GET ACCESS TO 1.8TB!"
A) I'd rather pay a monthly subscription to a game than enter a game that has micro transactions for items. The potential for impulse buying is way too high. Yes, players should be more responsible with their money blah blah blah......but you tell me that impulse buying isn't going to be a significant problem for the players (obviously not for the company).
B) I don't like grinding--period. The only time I ever grind in wow is on the very rare chance I am bored and have nothing better to do. My grinding lasts no more than 30-45 minutes at a time. Grinding being: killing the same group of mobs repeatedly, flying around a zone mining, etc.
If the game requires any of these two elements, I just am not going to play it. If anything, I'd rather WoW become more difficult and skill-based to play. I'd rather the higher end content require more effort, coordination, and dedication than it takes now. Grinding for hours on end is not my kind of fun.
WoW's only-walking? What? WoW has flying in 2/4 of its continents, which was introduced to players at level 70 in the previous expansion (released in 2006). Flying continues to be enabled for players entering the Northrend continent from 77 onward. There are many different types of flying mounts from magic carpets, dragons, giant robot heads, giant red rockets, hippogryphs, etc.
It's a fucking Ebook. Why the hell do you need javascript?
From what others have been pointing out you've been trying to do something naughty or odd and you're getting called out on it. You just won't admit that you're at fault and would rather just take the shot at Apple.
I certainly rather enjoy that you make note to call out Apple for their vague reasons for denying your application, but yet you have not been very open exactly as to what has been rejected. You could very well post the source code to your application if you were this desperate to call Apple out, but you won't, because chances are someone, somewhere, will call bullshit on you. The fact is, that Apple is vague because they might not have all of the source available--but you do. And you are the only one that can change what you're doing, not them.
No. There would have to be some sort of vulnerability existing in the system to launch code, to then launch IE, to then exploit IE.......yeah....you can see the logic in that.
No, if IE is not running or being used, the exploit would not affect the system.
That said, this vulnerability does not affect Vista or Windows 7, or IE7/8 on those systems.
Really--people should upgrade. And furthermore, people should not disable UAC.
Most average users these days will be using the OS with 2G or 4G of ram. Limiting it to 512MB of ram is kind of dumb.
I've got 8G in my system and the OS comfortably uses between 2 and 3GB.
Yes, Windows is *dynamic*.
drsmithy:
I believe what he means is the fact that in versions of Windows prior to Vista, Windows would run applications with the rights of the logged in user, whom would in 90% of cases be the Administrator of the machine. This in turn would give applications full access to many critical system areas.
I guess he has avoided Vista due to all the blog posts and hasn't realized that UAC was built to guard against this very thing, while still giving users Administrative rights over their machine.
jedidiah:
Perhaps you haven't used Windows Vista due to many blog posts, but Microsoft hasn't allowed any code to do everything it wants since they released Vista in January of 2007. It is now coming up on 2.5 years later with yet another OS release which includes much of the same technology.
You should read up on the new technologies, such as process integrity levels and UAC as well as IE protected mode. And ask yourself this question: Why doesn't Firefox voluntarily lower its integrity level in Windows Vista/7?
Both IE and Chrome do so. Chrome does this in addition to its own unique sandbox features.
That said, medium integrity (the default operation of every application unless you elevate it with a UAC prompt) is still quite restricted, just not as restricted as a low integrity process.
Google for it, Microsoft has tons of documentation on the feature.
You're right, it doesn't explain anything about vendor response.
But in almost every severe case of a worm or trojan infecting Windows, at least ones that got large enough to gain media attention (Code Red, Blaster, Storm)--the vendor had a patch out that was available long before the worms existed.
This is proven and very well known. Even Storm's exploit was fixed in October of 2008, many months before the botnet gained media attention.
There are Windows installation methods and procedures that people on Windows forums tend to follow that make it significantly easier to exploit Windows even though they think they are doing other users a service.
It comes down to the fact that:
A. Any notable worm or trojan has generally used exploits where a patch was already available.
B. IE7/8 (and Chrome) under Vista/7 operate under a low security level which limits the potential impact of any known or unknown trojan or exploit. Safari, Opera, nor Firefox (even 3.5) voluntarily reduce themselves to a low security level.
C. All of the products have reasonable update standards. While Microsoft generally waits until Patch Tuesday to fix flaws (unless a severely critical flaw with known malware using it is running wild), each product does update itself automatically. Read my above statement regarding what people think they are doing "for the good of the PC" to see why there might be more to this particular point.
Unfortunately, your post is terribly worded. There haven't been as many holes in IE over the years as some other browsers.
FF3.5: 0, currently (it just came out 2 days ago)
FF3.0: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/19089/ 81 vulnerabilities
FF2.0: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/12434/ 154 vulnerabilities
IE6: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/ 154 vulnerabilities
IE7: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/12366/ 84 vulnerabilities
IE8: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/21625/ 8 vulnerabilities
It's clear that IE and FF have the same general history with vulnerabilities, with the earlier products being much less safer than the newer products. Combine IE7/8 with Vista's UAC Protected Mode and you have further protection against system destruction due to a vulnerability.
I don't quite understand everyone's aversion to applications using memory. I mean--I'd much rather my applications take the time to use the memory I have, with all 4.5GB/sec of performance on sustained reads than my hard drive which is roughly about 3% of that speed on good parts of the drive structure with RAID0.
Application performance should never be about how much ram it uses, but how it uses it. I'm all for applications being efficient, but if it wants a bunch of ram to make things a bit faster--by all means, I've got 8G in my system, have at it.
This is one of the primary reasons I like Superfetch in Windows Vista/7--because it utilizes ram for application and data prefetching. What better way to use the ram than have the most frequently used programs and information cached and readily available at super high speeds?
I wish some of my applications used more ram (see: WoW) just to improve visible performance (I'd rather have a higher upfront load time than the loading/performance drops mid-game).
We both do agree, I would just be more cautious with the usage of "free market" as it means a whole lot of things to a lot of different people.
:/
Currently on the internet, the more popular definition and usage is along the lines of "a market that exists with no government interference. Corporations are allowed to do as they wish because if they do something that hurts the public, the public will respond by not purchasing their products."
The "invisible hand" in this case is the one behind the scenes with regards to the money. That in a perfect world, the businesses won't do anything that would hurt their profit--and the consumers won't purchase anything that harms their well-being.
Of course, we both know how much a load of BS that is--but that's the more widespread use, unfortunately
Bob:
On a technical note, this is all something being done mostly under the "free market". That is, it's completely up to the handset providers and the carriers to decide, freely, for themselves, if they want to have exclusivity deals. And it's completely up to the end users if they want to purchase them or not within the constraints of these deals.
Beyond that, you get into very hairy situations.
The key point though, is "Free Market" does not necessarily mean "Fair Market".
I am in no way a supporter of a "free market" and I believe in heavy regulation and oversight from 3rd parties to ensure that we have a fair market for consumers. I'm just simply pointing out that you can't have "free market" and "fair market"--it just doesn't work.
Some people would argue that a free market is a fair market in that anyone who wants to enter the market can do so by coming up with a better product or service and offering that. But unfortunately, under a completely free market that wouldn't happen--since the larger providers would enter agreements to force you out of the market.
So at the end of the day, a free market system is not the best--and a regulated, fair market, ran by 3rd parties unrelated to the corporate interests of those involved is the best type of market.
Of course....whether or not we have that today is a completely different debate. I'm simply pointing out the flaws in a "free market" system.
The large problem with Windows XP and SSD's is that Windows XP does not properly handle SSDs similar to how Windows Vista does not. You have to go in and manually disable these things to fix performance and increase longevity while it is handled automatically in Windows 7. You cannot expect end users to "tweak" their systems to properly handle these drives, so the real world benefit of paring Windows 7 and an SSD is there that beats out both Vista and XP.
You haven't provided enough information but let's look at it this way:
If he's paying his rent/share of the bills/whatever have you.
If he's doing fine in school while you all are busting your ass and studying...
Then stay out of it? Seriously. What he does with his free time has no bearing on you.
Just go out without him, do things without him. Eventually he'll want to go out, and just invite him out. Don't turn on him and say "WELL WE TRIED TO GET YOU TO GO OUT BUT NOW YOU SCREWED THE POOCH BUDDY!"
Showing ads and clicking on them are two different things. I don't click on ads--period.
I always view story reboots and retellings with an open mind. There's always some artistic liberty that they can have. Obviously the exact bridge style of the original series would not have worked for a film over 40 years after.
All of the little liberties I really haven't had a problem with (the engine room, the phaser guns)--because they did a damn good job of keeping to the original characters.
The casting for this movie was absolutely fantastic, and really could not have been better casted. Chris Pine and Zach Quinto played fantastic characters. I've always been more of the "Spock" fan myself (hey, I'm a nerd who likes to think before acting) and the role was played EXTREMELY well. Not only was it played extremely well from an acting standpoint, but the writing for the role was great--the younger, more conflicted Spock. It was very good for the film and story, as it gives a bit more...individual character to Spock than the original series did.
As far as the enemy, the film wasn't really about the enemy they had to go up against. And to be honest with you, I'm sort of really tired of movies that show insurmountable circumstances with an over-confident near-invincible enemy but somehow some individual comes out to save-the-god-damn-day-when-nobody-else-could. There were obviously powerful things regarding this Romulan mining vessel and some of its capabilities, but not once did I get the feeling throughout the film that his vessel was invincible EXCEPT to the Enterprise crew.
If you need an example of the above paragraph of how NOT to do it, think Independence Day.
I don't mind the camera work that some people complained about, in fact, to be honest with you they're probably only complaining about the camera work because they have very little else to complain about, and they just like to gripe.
I've never had a problem with WGA or Activation on a full, RTM version of the OS--I purchased a legitimate copy of XP Pro OEM when it was released. I've been in the Vista beta and got a free copy from that, got Vista from the Server 2008 Launch also. I'll likely end up with Windows 7 (I'm in the beta for that as well).
I had a Vista beta deactivate itself once but that was about it.
I've never failed WGA--ever. So if your computer failed WGA you either have something that screwed with your machine, you're running a screwed up downloaded copy of the OS, or you did something to intentionally block it and now blame your woes on Microsoft.
Blakey Rat:
Not necessarily the case. Since it's a "User Interface" we're talking about, the appearance of the GUI has everything to do with how well people work with the system. And how "fast" they work with it.
Just because a window may open quickly doesn't mean the user is going to be able to use that application very well. With UI elements and design ideas that are from dated periods of computer use (before massive widescreen LCDs, touch screens, and so forth) you will find yourself with a reduced productivity.
When people were working with small monitors the "menu system" was fantastic at hiding functionality of the product while increasing the working area for the end user--a great example would be a word processing program.
But now that we've gotten vastly larger LCDs, with 20+ inches being very, very common the old menu system is kind of dated.
And you certainly wouldn't use some of those dated UI concepts on something such as the iphone would you? But you did, and the elements were so small that they required you to use a "stylus" to access them at one point.
And people wonder why PDAs never took off while the iPhone has seen record sales.