It will only be in Enterprise and Ultimate Vista... I'm guessing it's an optional feature.
NTFS is "optional" too and was once only available for their most expensive offerings, with the best of expensive hardware. For a long time now, however, it's been the default system with your OEM "restore" disk that will only create a single disk hogging partition. It took years to get around NTFS resizing and read/writing. It might not be possible to get around this stupid kludge. It will suck to not be able to use the nicer equipment they will polute, and soon enough it will work it's way down to every major vendor's cheapest junk.
Encrypting a filesystem prevents arbitrary operating system from accessing it! I mean, isn't that the whole idea?
Apparently, keeping you from seeing your data without Windoze is the idea, thank you.
Encrypting a whole "volume", aka the mindless single disk windoze partition, is a tremendous waste. There's no reason to make the user wait as every single file is decrypted for every dinky application. Hard drive access takes long enough when you don't have to decrypt temp files and IE's 500 MB of binaries every time. It's not wonder they gave up their vapor ware database filesystem. On top of the waste of time, system recovery is going to be more... interesting to say the least. When your Vista system goes tits up, how much is it going to cost you to get your data back?
M$ has lost it on this one. The performance, cost and ease of use difference between Windoze and free software is going to be worse than ever. Vista is going to destroy them.
Think about business usage. They're going to want to encrypt everything by default.
Why on Earth would you want to encrypt system files and programs like calc? The overhead is going to make Vista suck more than ever. It would be much better to encrypt user created content exclusively. There's much less of that and they system should be able to discern the difference if simply encrypting the/home and user scratch spaces is not enough.
It may not be compulsory but most likely all the OEM's will have it as the default File system much like NTFS is now for windows XP.
and the "restore" disk will only allow a whole disk hogging, exact partion reinstall. This will force the user to have a second hard drive and much more complicated boot mechanism if they want to get their money's worth out of the M$ tax and still use Linux. This assumes a chain loader will be able to deal with the encrypted volume without hardware drivers and DRM keys.
Although experienced linux users will have no problem with reformatting and creating new partitions
Experienced users will be able to do that if they can mount the drive in the fist place and don't mind wiping out the partition.
Like NTFS before, it will take years to get around this crappy little roadblock M$ is creating. New hardware is going to suck more than ever for a few years.
Bitlocker is a whole-volume, hardware based encryption system... Not only is this functionality optional, and requiring special hardware support, but it is a bonafide feature.
So, without hardware drivers and DRM keys you can't see any of the drive unless you never use it? If you do use it and then install a bootloader, won't that foobar everything windoze on your computer? I think I can see how this is going to make running anything but windoze on any pc a royal pain in the ass.
There is no filesystem specific overhead because it's transparent to the filesystem
Are you saying that this will work as fast as the same drive without any encryption? Will it work faster than a system that only encrypts a file or two, but does not carry the encryption overhead for every single file you touch? Somehow I don't think this feature is much of a feature but is just another M$ roadblock.
Is it so slow that when you watch american kung fu flicks (chuck norris) they automagically get the "out of sync english voiceover" effect?
Only if Bill Gates tries to port Windoze and WMV to it. I've never had sync problems with xine like that, even on a 233 MHz PII. This machine should work as well as a PIII and that's good enough to play movies and do other things at the same time. That S video will be nice to have.
There is a danger that GNU/Linux will get a bad name because it mostly installed on very cheap systems.
Not if they work. Unless the hardware is complete crap, it will work. The same factories are already making reliable electronic devices, including PCs that everyone else rebrands. If they don't work, the reputation will be cured by the next $100 device that does work.
This is just the first of the cheap machines. There will be many more and the price point won't support anything but free software. As long as they don't have DRM dongels built in, all sorts of things can be made with them.
imagine Ubuntu on all Dell, HP... systems.
I can do that myself already but I don't unless I haul it out of the trash or a used computer shop.
Those major brands have major problems and repair records show that people are happier with cheaper hardware. While 3/4 of all PCs are white boxes, the majority of computers that show up at the computer store are major brand. It may be that major brands are brought to the computer store because people think their computer is worth repairing, where the white box owner just buys a new one. In any case, the legions of people working on both home and office PCs indicates a serious reliability problem.
You make an interesting argument, but I don't know if I fully agree. Let's say Microsoft wants to keep Linux buried in litigation through this organization.
Nokia might not like seeing its patent troll baby being used to quash one of its own business partners. So what happens when this sort of conflict of interest arises?
Do you think Nokia would care about Slashdot if they were offered ownership of Linux? Make no mistake, the ultimate intent of patent legislation is to own, "IP", the market and your very hide.
I find it hard to believe this troll group will be used for the evil people seem to be claiming.
You might as well tell me that the BSA does not sue public school systems for copying word processors. Same people, same principles, the same actions.
the group exists to allow for a collective means to *defend* from REAL patent trolls.
If amassing $400,000,000 worth of business method and fat line patents is not a troll, what is? You and your real invention?
ATT has something like this called Publius. Scientific American reviewed it and, in a most unscientific and unAmerican opinion, called it "irresponsible." The goal was not just storage, but publication.
It's nice to see another attempt that's free. Free speech requires anonymity.
it's going to take far far far less technical knowledge to turn on the outbound firewall than what it will take to download a Linux Distro and put it on CD. That's the long and short of it.
Oh yeah, because one task will be buried less deeply? I'm shocked by how difficult commercial CD burning software has made the easiest of tasks: burning an image byte for byte. In the firewall case, the user will have to go through similar voodoo to become the "Administrator" and will then be presented with an information free tool that IT "pros" will love to hate.
About a week ago there was an article about Linux snobs, these kinds of posts prove the arguement. LINUX ADVOCATES: Please understand that most users will be able to turn out the outbound firewall and probably won't have a problem getting past these "nag" screens.
Some people like to sleep on beds of nails. At least they have a choice. People who pay for Vista and then get nag screens are going to be pissed off about it. The whole M$ experience is already painful. Beg screens straight from Bill Gates will make it insulting as well.
Linux distributions come with fully functional graphical firewalls like KDE's Guarddog. It's those M$ dorks who claim the task is difficult and then hand out sub par tools that make it so. Zone alarm agrees with them about the difficulty of using their tool and I'm sure that anyone who tries to use it will come away cursing. It's not because they are stupid, it's because M$ wants to make money by selling software that sucks.
... failings of the OSS community.. you are completely out of your mind!
Yeah, yeah, fuck you Astroturfer. Why don't you go waste some time insulting people at your local bar?
Really, how many *average* home users know what ports their programs use?... MS probably doesn't have a smoother way to make managing the firewall any easier than anyone else out there. It's a tough problem, especially for non-technical users.
Anyone who uses KDE's Guarddog knows exactly what program uses what port. It's grouped by type of application and has nice little pictures to clue you in. Knowing port numbers is not rocket science. M$ needs to be at least as smooth as anyone else, even as smooth as they previously have been. As planned, they are treating "security" as a "profit center" by removing features so that a lack of flexibility will force an "upgrade".
I don't understand the complaint here. MS is listening to their customers.
Reasonable defaults can be found in any modern GNU/Linux distribution. They are all about the same and better reflect user demand than M$'s demented policy, which will polute the world without the option to turn it off.
We are talking about web design and you're comparing NExT to Windows...? And Enlightenment...? What exactly is your point here? What's with the "M$" deal?
The article is all about what a second rate piece of work IE and Vista are. The author argues Vista is so poor because M$ wasted resources on IE. I agree with the author and offer examples of both by people who have better things to do than break other people's code. Get it yet?
85% and falling last year, actually. It should be about 80% by now. Not all of that is IE6, which the article claims is required.
You can quibble over the fine points, but you can't avoid the cost and outrageousness of such a mail service. Somewhere between 1 and 2 of five people will have to do something to their computers to use this steaming pile of M$hit just to read email.
I'm sorry, but anyone who claims all links on all websites everywhere are "supposed to be" blue with underlines clearly has absolutely no idea about branding, design or the fact the web has moved on in the past decade. Maybe all the clothes you wear should be grey, all the furniture in your house should be bright orange... [blah blah]... I'd hate to see the ugly grey sludgy mess the web would be with people like you making design decisions.
Ah yes, it's true the first web pages were seen in grey scale. The links were underlined and turned blue in color. It seemed to have worked then and it's still a choice most browsers give the user. Interfaces have moved on and some people have fun with successfully and not so successfully.
The M$ people have yet to catch up with the overall UI provided by Next. Window Maker is a much easier to use desktop than any version of Windows. Enlightenment is better than either.
What's with eliminating the standard menus that every other Windows program uses? - Oh, they're eliminating those too.
So much for the bogus issue of retraining costs keeping people from using free software. People waiting for Vista should just put GNU/Linux on their current hardware.
Microsoft bundles IE with Windows to leverage Windows' monopoly to gain marketshare for IE. Once IE has high marketshare, then Microsoft can control indirectly the website developers. Have you ever noticed how many websites are written to accommodate the bugs in IE?
I'd like to see M$ own up to such a strategy because it's against the law. It may be true and they have been convicted of it, but they had better not admit to it.
Dorvak's accusation forces M$ to admit anti-competitive practices or lose face on Wall Street. The second rate nature of both their browser and OS are now apparent. The only way to justify continued profits in the face of superior and less expensive competitors is to promise monopoly rents. Investors should be aware in either case. A company that screws it's customers is not much better to it's employees or investors.
[resources wasted on IE could have made Vista better]... that's like saying GIMP is unnecessary, the developers' time could be better spent on Konqueror
That would be true if both projects were non free kludges dependent on Bill Gates for funding. M$, for all it's billions, has a limit on what they spend to develop software.
The interesting part will be seeing how M$ explains their waste to Wall Street without admitting to anti-competitive practices. It's pretty clear they have some second rate stuff, Wall Street wants to know how they are going to keep selling it in the face of superior and free alternatives.
Do they really think they're going to compete with gmail that late in the kids' lives?
Kids still use Windoze? Not the ones with a clue, and that's a much greater percentage than the adult population.
This will force them onto a M$ OS. Most schools require a daily check of your school email address. The "service" does not forward your mail. They are going to have to hike to a public terminal or have a windoze computer in their dorm. Sooner or later, they will have a Windoze partition, just for this stupid email service.
By so many people, you mean the part that aren't in the approximately ninety percent that almost exclusively use Microsoft products?
The Microsoft platform monopoly is very weak right now. Any web application designed for a single version of M$ will fail for about half of your users. While they still have sizable majority of OS use, you can't count on a specific version being present. When you permutate that with browser used, your numbers fall even more.
Even M$ OS share is slipping. XP, the "dominant" platform only has 79% of the market. If you take out what people use at work, the Linux + Mac percentage is probably better than 10% now.
So, while IE 6 is "available" to a majority of users, 25% prefer something else. In short, they care.
If your school cares, they won't be using this service.
Sun's interest in free software use should be as clear as day. Sun will be pushed out with M$ in control of the corporate desktop. M$ will continue their nauseating push into services that Sun is in a better hardware and software position to provide. Free software makeres will happily take advantage of hardware Sun makes.
there is only one other good use for my tongue, and my girlfriend agrees.
Somehow I doubt that use is scintillating conversation and that's too bad for you. With these strips, she won't need you anymore. Then again, you won't need her either.
If Microsoft had realized the production problems they were going to face
They knew they their main problem would be selling. You might remember that the shortages were intentional. It's the only way they could create buzz for such a third rate product. M$ is all about market share, and they are deservedly still a trailing third or fourth. No one has been fooled, despite massive Astroturf, marketing and supposed losses producing and promoting the garbage.
This article, blithering about "premium" prices, completely misses the point that the Xbox was never excellent. It's just more BS marketing from the kings of pushing second rate stuff.
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NTFS is "optional" too and was once only available for their most expensive offerings, with the best of expensive hardware. For a long time now, however, it's been the default system with your OEM "restore" disk that will only create a single disk hogging partition. It took years to get around NTFS resizing and read/writing. It might not be possible to get around this stupid kludge. It will suck to not be able to use the nicer equipment they will polute, and soon enough it will work it's way down to every major vendor's cheapest junk.
Apparently, keeping you from seeing your data without Windoze is the idea, thank you.
Encrypting a whole "volume", aka the mindless single disk windoze partition, is a tremendous waste. There's no reason to make the user wait as every single file is decrypted for every dinky application. Hard drive access takes long enough when you don't have to decrypt temp files and IE's 500 MB of binaries every time. It's not wonder they gave up their vapor ware database filesystem. On top of the waste of time, system recovery is going to be more ... interesting to say the least. When your Vista system goes tits up, how much is it going to cost you to get your data back?
M$ has lost it on this one. The performance, cost and ease of use difference between Windoze and free software is going to be worse than ever. Vista is going to destroy them.
Why on Earth would you want to encrypt system files and programs like calc? The overhead is going to make Vista suck more than ever. It would be much better to encrypt user created content exclusively. There's much less of that and they system should be able to discern the difference if simply encrypting the /home and user scratch spaces is not enough.
and the "restore" disk will only allow a whole disk hogging, exact partion reinstall. This will force the user to have a second hard drive and much more complicated boot mechanism if they want to get their money's worth out of the M$ tax and still use Linux. This assumes a chain loader will be able to deal with the encrypted volume without hardware drivers and DRM keys.
Although experienced linux users will have no problem with reformatting and creating new partitions
Experienced users will be able to do that if they can mount the drive in the fist place and don't mind wiping out the partition.
Like NTFS before, it will take years to get around this crappy little roadblock M$ is creating. New hardware is going to suck more than ever for a few years.
So, without hardware drivers and DRM keys you can't see any of the drive unless you never use it? If you do use it and then install a bootloader, won't that foobar everything windoze on your computer? I think I can see how this is going to make running anything but windoze on any pc a royal pain in the ass.
There is no filesystem specific overhead because it's transparent to the filesystem
Are you saying that this will work as fast as the same drive without any encryption? Will it work faster than a system that only encrypts a file or two, but does not carry the encryption overhead for every single file you touch? Somehow I don't think this feature is much of a feature but is just another M$ roadblock.
You should compare it to a mac mini and tell me if anything is not made in China these days.
Red Flag, Microsoft, same thing. Good thing you don't need either. Expect to see a lot of activity with Debian MIPS.
All I could think when I saw the specs was YowSeR, YowSer, YowSer! The Mac Mini purchase just got put off indefinitely.
Only if Bill Gates tries to port Windoze and WMV to it. I've never had sync problems with xine like that, even on a 233 MHz PII. This machine should work as well as a PIII and that's good enough to play movies and do other things at the same time. That S video will be nice to have.
Not if they work. Unless the hardware is complete crap, it will work. The same factories are already making reliable electronic devices, including PCs that everyone else rebrands. If they don't work, the reputation will be cured by the next $100 device that does work.
This is just the first of the cheap machines. There will be many more and the price point won't support anything but free software. As long as they don't have DRM dongels built in, all sorts of things can be made with them.
imagine Ubuntu on all Dell, HP ... systems.
I can do that myself already but I don't unless I haul it out of the trash or a used computer shop.
Those major brands have major problems and repair records show that people are happier with cheaper hardware. While 3/4 of all PCs are white boxes, the majority of computers that show up at the computer store are major brand. It may be that major brands are brought to the computer store because people think their computer is worth repairing, where the white box owner just buys a new one. In any case, the legions of people working on both home and office PCs indicates a serious reliability problem.
Dell, HP and others will follow or die.
Why should you say so when they have spoken for themselves? "we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy" says Steve Ballmer. The SCO case speaks louder than words about intent.
Nokia might not like seeing its patent troll baby being used to quash one of its own business partners. So what happens when this sort of conflict of interest arises?
Do you think Nokia would care about Slashdot if they were offered ownership of Linux? Make no mistake, the ultimate intent of patent legislation is to own, "IP", the market and your very hide.
I find it hard to believe this troll group will be used for the evil people seem to be claiming.
You might as well tell me that the BSA does not sue public school systems for copying word processors. Same people, same principles, the same actions.
the group exists to allow for a collective means to *defend* from REAL patent trolls.
If amassing $400,000,000 worth of business method and fat line patents is not a troll, what is? You and your real invention?
It's nice to see another attempt that's free. Free speech requires anonymity.
Oh yeah, because one task will be buried less deeply? I'm shocked by how difficult commercial CD burning software has made the easiest of tasks: burning an image byte for byte. In the firewall case, the user will have to go through similar voodoo to become the "Administrator" and will then be presented with an information free tool that IT "pros" will love to hate.
About a week ago there was an article about Linux snobs, these kinds of posts prove the arguement. LINUX ADVOCATES: Please understand that most users will be able to turn out the outbound firewall and probably won't have a problem getting past these "nag" screens.
Some people like to sleep on beds of nails. At least they have a choice. People who pay for Vista and then get nag screens are going to be pissed off about it. The whole M$ experience is already painful. Beg screens straight from Bill Gates will make it insulting as well.
Linux distributions come with fully functional graphical firewalls like KDE's Guarddog. It's those M$ dorks who claim the task is difficult and then hand out sub par tools that make it so. Zone alarm agrees with them about the difficulty of using their tool and I'm sure that anyone who tries to use it will come away cursing. It's not because they are stupid, it's because M$ wants to make money by selling software that sucks.
Yeah, yeah, fuck you Astroturfer. Why don't you go waste some time insulting people at your local bar?
Anyone who uses KDE's Guarddog knows exactly what program uses what port. It's grouped by type of application and has nice little pictures to clue you in. Knowing port numbers is not rocket science. M$ needs to be at least as smooth as anyone else, even as smooth as they previously have been. As planned, they are treating "security" as a "profit center" by removing features so that a lack of flexibility will force an "upgrade".
I don't understand the complaint here. MS is listening to their customers.
Reasonable defaults can be found in any modern GNU/Linux distribution. They are all about the same and better reflect user demand than M$'s demented policy, which will polute the world without the option to turn it off.
We are talking about web design and you're comparing NExT to Windows...? And Enlightenment...? What exactly is your point here? What's with the "M$" deal?
The article is all about what a second rate piece of work IE and Vista are. The author argues Vista is so poor because M$ wasted resources on IE. I agree with the author and offer examples of both by people who have better things to do than break other people's code. Get it yet?
You can quibble over the fine points, but you can't avoid the cost and outrageousness of such a mail service. Somewhere between 1 and 2 of five people will have to do something to their computers to use this steaming pile of M$hit just to read email.
Yeah, I read that. The article is old enough for the rest of the population to have caught up by now. You can see it in Google's numbers.
Ah yes, it's true the first web pages were seen in grey scale. The links were underlined and turned blue in color. It seemed to have worked then and it's still a choice most browsers give the user. Interfaces have moved on and some people have fun with successfully and not so successfully.
The M$ people have yet to catch up with the overall UI provided by Next. Window Maker is a much easier to use desktop than any version of Windows. Enlightenment is better than either.
So much for the bogus issue of retraining costs keeping people from using free software. People waiting for Vista should just put GNU/Linux on their current hardware.
I'd like to see M$ own up to such a strategy because it's against the law. It may be true and they have been convicted of it, but they had better not admit to it.
Dorvak's accusation forces M$ to admit anti-competitive practices or lose face on Wall Street. The second rate nature of both their browser and OS are now apparent. The only way to justify continued profits in the face of superior and less expensive competitors is to promise monopoly rents. Investors should be aware in either case. A company that screws it's customers is not much better to it's employees or investors.
That would be true if both projects were non free kludges dependent on Bill Gates for funding. M$, for all it's billions, has a limit on what they spend to develop software.
The interesting part will be seeing how M$ explains their waste to Wall Street without admitting to anti-competitive practices. It's pretty clear they have some second rate stuff, Wall Street wants to know how they are going to keep selling it in the face of superior and free alternatives.
Kids still use Windoze? Not the ones with a clue, and that's a much greater percentage than the adult population.
This will force them onto a M$ OS. Most schools require a daily check of your school email address. The "service" does not forward your mail. They are going to have to hike to a public terminal or have a windoze computer in their dorm. Sooner or later, they will have a Windoze partition, just for this stupid email service.
The Microsoft platform monopoly is very weak right now. Any web application designed for a single version of M$ will fail for about half of your users. While they still have sizable majority of OS use, you can't count on a specific version being present. When you permutate that with browser used, your numbers fall even more.
Less than 60% of people use IE 6. That means about two in five people will not be able to use this stupid service.
Even M$ OS share is slipping. XP, the "dominant" platform only has 79% of the market. If you take out what people use at work, the Linux + Mac percentage is probably better than 10% now.
So, while IE 6 is "available" to a majority of users, 25% prefer something else. In short, they care.
If your school cares, they won't be using this service.
Somehow I doubt that use is scintillating conversation and that's too bad for you. With these strips, she won't need you anymore. Then again, you won't need her either.
They knew they their main problem would be selling. You might remember that the shortages were intentional. It's the only way they could create buzz for such a third rate product. M$ is all about market share, and they are deservedly still a trailing third or fourth. No one has been fooled, despite massive Astroturf, marketing and supposed losses producing and promoting the garbage.
This article, blithering about "premium" prices, completely misses the point that the Xbox was never excellent. It's just more BS marketing from the kings of pushing second rate stuff.