[your 233 MHz PII has snappy performing eye candy because] it doesn't run Win32?
That's only half true - Wine or Crossover Office does Win32 just fine, but I have no need for either.
my computer's CPU sits on less than 5% use when i'm just moving windows around. Less than Windows XP. Why? Because the video card is doing the work, not my CPU.
That might be true, thanks to the hardware drivers provided by Nvidia and ATI. I've heard that many of those non free drivers have problems, but you might have one that works. Free accelerated drivers would be nice.
The difference is not enough to make me want non free software, especially when it's such a crap shot to get performance worth the investment. I can watch movies and that's good enough for me. No one ever promissed me better, and those broken promisses are what this article is all about. Free software has done what people told me it would do.
All the Linux evangelizers who boast about how low the specs are to run a system on Linux. But then if you want something like, say, any kind of serious DB pushing (SQL), or number crunching suddenly the specs go up?
It's hard to even begin to correct something as wrong as that. I'll make a short list and see if I can pick my jaw off the floor by the time I'm finished.
Tell me how many "consumers" are going to crunch numbers.
How is it that E16 gives gnu/linux users transparency and snappy response time on a 233 MHz PII but XP has a hard time on the same equipment.
What kind of super computer would it take to run Vista's DRM and email at the same time you want to crunch numbers.
It's more like this: Vista fails to deliver while free software is running rings around it. The difference is obscene.
... I bet the suit will be thrown out quickly enough.
Yeah, no customers means no victims, class or lawsuit. Nothing is selling, ha ha.
They were advertising a product with its niftiest features, but I think that about 15 minutes of research would have let someone know that they couldn't use the Aero interface.
Laptops, for instance, are designed around very limited power budgets. If you plug a 1000 watt USB hair dryer into it, how long are the batteries going to last? A solution I would be in favor of is building lower power peripherals.
The issue is how much nicer it would be to be able to run and charge devices with more than 2.5 watts. I'd love to be able to plug in my music player or cell phone and have it charge up quickly without needing to find or carry more than the plug to my laptop. As it is, my music player takes much too long to charge and my cellphone did not even come with an usb adapter. Even if the device is very low power, you still want to be able to charge it quickly and last a long time. Clutter removal for desktops and the ability to plug in everywhere would be icing on the cake.
The advantages are enough that I already prefer firewire.
Actually, jpeg images seem to be able to do it. Advisories are to read email in text mode and use Firefox. Interestingly enough, Tunderbird gets screwed just as bad as Outlook if you don't use it in text mode, highlighting the danger of running anything on Windoze. See here a summary of mitigation and links to same.
I would have thought they'd have learned about security rings while rebuilding their entire OS from the ground up (as Longhorn was reputed to do).
Legacy applications seem to run rings around security in the M$ world. IE 7 in Vista is safe if you run it in "protected mode" but Outlook! is not. See here for the rest of the information I found, including a summary of proposed mitigation and links to same.
Shit like this is the primary reason I hate Microsoft. The secondary and more important reason is that they force their shit on people by force and deception.
In fact, it has been all but ordered that people at the company participate in online communities daily and maintain their own blogs (especially on the Microsoft sites).
That would be good, but I'm afraid their PR machine does not work this way. It would be great if actual M$ employees were here reading what people really think and how quickly their company's propaganda is torn to pieces. They would quickly learn what about the rotten things their company does and M$ would be forced to change or loose people to competitors like Google. As Steve Ballmer brainwashed his own kids to avoid Google and iPod and other best of class things, I imagine Slashdot viewing is forbidden and that people posting for M$ are nothing more than paid PR and harassment droids.
I speculate that M$ has farmed out all of their dirty work. I'm sure M$ wants their people doing the job they pay them for. Second, they don't have enough people there to make a dent on a place like Slashdot. The basics of their techniques were worked out in the Steve Barkto and DRDOS cases: slam the competitor and encourage M$ use. The Apple Switcher and anti-trust astroturfing of legislators are both examples of where they have hired firms for questionable marketing. Questionable stuff like harassment by dorks like:
It does not really work, however. The circle of harassment is growing as fast as interest in other platforms and the two are linked. At some point the pawns get it.
Wake me up when you can copy and paste between applications as you can in Windows or on the Mac.
I'm not sure about Mac, but Windoze copy and paste would be a huge downgrade to what's available in free software desktops. KDE and Gnome co-operate well as do most other applications these days. Cutting and pasting preserves formats most of the time. For instance, I can cut a table in Konqueror and paste it into Gnumeric and have it line up right. The same thing happens with text editors... across desktops... across networks. I can compare this to the clumsy world of Windoze where cutting and pasting between non free applications is always a crap shot and the network is opaque at best. When I'm forced to use a Windoze machine, I feel like reaching for a floppy.
Office is second rate? And OpenOffice, by emulating it, is a first-rate product emulating a second rate product?
No, Office is a second rate imitation of Word Perfect, Latex, Emacs, Lotus, QuatroPro, FileMaker and a host of other better programs that M$ put out of business. Open Office, Kword, Gnumeric, Abiword and other free programs are better reimplementations of age old ideas if for no other reason than saving the user from the M$ data roach motel.
You probably think I'm part of some evil borg hive-mind now, but your characterization of Microsoft as one voice,...
Yes, because you are touting the M$ party line and saying things about me as if you know me, I can conclude you are a M$ Astroturfer. That does not mean you represent any of the people who work for M$, it just means you are paid to read a script here and annoy people. You may have been given a file about who Twitter is, which would tie in to this story very well. I fully expect M$ to be keeping a PR database that rivals those owned by Casinos. It's pretty clear they are not putting their effort into anything other than marketing.
The number of hysterical anti-Microsoft geeks is slowly decreasing...
There never was such a thing. Free software users are serene. It's your customers that have problems and act cranky. At the same time, you don't need to worry about people like me. I'm still outraged at the way your abuse your customers and other vendors in ways that make my life difficult.
A blatant Astroturfer pretends he masturbates over Forbe's glossy pages:
but it reads to me as a good professional briefing by an efficient PR outfit.... I totally agree. My first thought, before even finishing reading the memo, was, dang, how do I get these people to work for me?
Oh, sure everyone wants a world wide spy and spin organization preparing 5,000 word papers your other minions must read. There is nothing like having more power and paperwork than the UN and half the world's companies. It only costs a billion dollars a month to own that many slaves.
Come one, did you even read all of that crap? Would you really want to apply Peter Quinn type hit tactics to people?
saying "It also was strange to see just how many resources are aligned against me" is a complete giveaway of how highly this guy thinks of himself and how purposefully biased he is that he thinks MS's concern and attempt to show him things that might sway his opinion in the other direction is somehow being "against him".
His job as a journalist is to report reality. The forces arrayed against him finding reality included the 5,000 page paper and a series of interviews across the country. They wanted to guide him down the M$ path. It must be sobering to him to think what those agents could do to him if he has deviated from that path.
Consider the case of Peter Quinn. They smeared him, forced him to resign and are now trying to dismantle his former organization. This is no small effort, it's a billion dollar a month job.
All of this just to maintain a monopoly on an OS and a text editor. Strange? Yes but very real and threatening.
It'd be silly if the PR people would ignore Slashdot. They don't. [We are just like you, dear reader... and we care about you... sleep.]
Oh, that and Slashdot has a larger readership than Wired. Quit bullshitting.
Your PR goal, as is evident to your Wired target, is to make others carry your message. You dedicated 5,000 pages to that little spin how to. Your company's efforts here are just what they were for BBS's where you slammed and FUDed OS/2 and DRDoS. Your company also considers developers as pawns to be lied to, and slashdot gives you both - how convenient. The same tricks and bullshit are in play here today, but on a much larger scale.
It's not working. We know you for what you are and your "products" are things we'd rather avoid. The bottom line is that a billion dollars a month can't replace actual product. Zune, Vista and Office are second or third rate. Try as you might, the industry is liberating itself and the end of your monopoly is near.
According to this, they have gone 180 degrees from their former statement. They will go to the cost of tracking down IP addresses, deliver the "settlement" extortion email and deliver names if demanded by subpoena. Worse, they are telling students to cease using and remove all P2P programs, as if any use would make the person a target. This is a disappointment because the earlier quote made it look like they were going to ignore the whole thing.
under XP and Mepis does better than Vista on newer versions. Other than replacing the OS, I wonder what you did to get better results out of XP or Vista than the above cited articles.
That aside, this is just business.
Sure, it's bad business to sell things that don't work.
Really? You think that's the meaning of A Hard Day's Night? Methinks you're reading way too much into the lyrics:
I would be, but I'm quoting the movie, not the song. See for yourself.
SIMON (playing his ace) Only Susan Campey, our resident teenager.You'll have to love her. She's your symbol.
GEORGE Oh, you mean that posh bird who gets everything wrong?
SIMONI beg your pardon?
GEORGE Oh, yes, the lads frequently gather round the T.V. set to watch her for a giggle. Once we even all sat down and wrote these letters saying how gear she was and all that rubbish.
SIMON She's a trend setter. It's her profession!
GEORGE She's a drag. A well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things.
SIMON Get him out of here!!
I can and will say the same thing about paid bloggers. If you can't recognize it, you can't buy it. If it is not cool, you can't push it that way. The effort is doomed before it starts.
This is very difficult for companies that are used to filtering your culture and promoting only a small subset, which they consider exemplary. That kind of cynicism can be seen back as far as the Beatles "Hard Day's Night" where a company follows the advice of their "resident teenager". In a world where original content can and does come from everywhere, big companies are going to have to get used to being one of many equal players. Those that do will be cool by definition. Those that don't will increasingly become keepers of legacy and irrelevant entertainment, kind of like museums.
Cool is like stupid. Stupid is what stupid does. Both become apparent in time.
I think freedom of speech covers this list pretty simply.
No, the Bill of Rights does not apply to government institutions and can't for obvious reasons. A law must be justified and passed before government can spend your money publishing a list. Once mandated, that list may not violate people's rights, such as the right to fair and speedy justice or freedom from race or religious based discrimination. Likewise, there is no government right to privacy as all public spending should be transparent, or government freedom of religion because the government must never advocate any religion over others, and so on and so forth.
Threatening people with massive fines and jail time for accidentally selling a sandwitch to a suspect will cause a lot of pain and suffering for innocent people. It will cause sellers to discriminate against people with similar names. The idea itself is similar to the ancient Roman exile, where the proscripted were denied all comfort, fire and water within the empire - so that they had to leave, starve or live in the woods like a hermit. The difference in this case is that the proscribed are suspected rather than convicted offenders.
the rest of us can fight terrorism by not being terrified. By mocking terrorists we're showing that they're really not achieving their goals. Go outside and declare that you're not afraid; keep flying in planes, keep going on underground trains, keep buying exercise equipment.
And protest this fucking list as an expensive, impractical and unAmerican capitulation and violation of the US constitution.
Ah, that age old dream and nightmare of complete control
And [the Antichrist] causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save [except] he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Translated as:
there is no minimum amount of money attached to penalties for selling to someone on the list: selling a sandwich to a 'specially designated national' can have a fine for up to '$10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison.'
Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?'"
Why go through that kind of expense when cell phones can already be used that way? Cell phones are always in hearing range and can be programmed to be on when they look off. The cameras would increase coverage, but again private "security cameras" will do the job in all the places people care about if access is granted by law to government. Soon enough, people will want cameras in their "smart" houses to turn on and off lights and listen for commands. As long as non free software is used for this, the coverage will be complete.
Quiet, casual voice, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
There's a reason why CompUSA is closing it's stores. And it's not because of good prices and qualified tech staff.
I'd say it was because the upgrade train is not bringing in the big bucks promissed. This guy has not said anything about Vista that everyone else is not saying. Vista is not working in any sense of the word.
Nah, consumers have already rationalised their purchase of Vista. Even XP-loyal geeks have downgraded their opinion to "I guess it has some features I'd like on XP" and are seriously considering upgrading.
If by "consumer" you mean big box store shelf, you are correct. I'm not sure anyone with an IQ better than a shelf is really thinking like M$ wishes they were thinking, especially when they can't rationally name any real features. As people also noted M$ is stuffing the channels to make it look like anyone is buying Vista. They are not, any more than they are buying Zune.
Slashdot Mirror
Interactive proof system with a human prover == not terribly scary to me.
Yeah, but a patent on it is. Even more scary is a patent on a program that really just prompts the user for input.
[your 233 MHz PII has snappy performing eye candy because] it doesn't run Win32?
That's only half true - Wine or Crossover Office does Win32 just fine, but I have no need for either.
my computer's CPU sits on less than 5% use when i'm just moving windows around. Less than Windows XP. Why? Because the video card is doing the work, not my CPU.
That might be true, thanks to the hardware drivers provided by Nvidia and ATI. I've heard that many of those non free drivers have problems, but you might have one that works. Free accelerated drivers would be nice.
The difference is not enough to make me want non free software, especially when it's such a crap shot to get performance worth the investment. I can watch movies and that's good enough for me. No one ever promissed me better, and those broken promisses are what this article is all about. Free software has done what people told me it would do.
All the Linux evangelizers who boast about how low the specs are to run a system on Linux. But then if you want something like, say, any kind of serious DB pushing (SQL), or number crunching suddenly the specs go up?
It's hard to even begin to correct something as wrong as that. I'll make a short list and see if I can pick my jaw off the floor by the time I'm finished.
It's more like this: Vista fails to deliver while free software is running rings around it. The difference is obscene.
Yeah, no customers means no victims, class or lawsuit. Nothing is selling, ha ha.
They were advertising a product with its niftiest features, but I think that about 15 minutes of research would have let someone know that they couldn't use the Aero interface.
Vista has another feature that anyone might want?
Laptops, for instance, are designed around very limited power budgets. If you plug a 1000 watt USB hair dryer into it, how long are the batteries going to last? A solution I would be in favor of is building lower power peripherals.
The issue is how much nicer it would be to be able to run and charge devices with more than 2.5 watts. I'd love to be able to plug in my music player or cell phone and have it charge up quickly without needing to find or carry more than the plug to my laptop. As it is, my music player takes much too long to charge and my cellphone did not even come with an usb adapter. Even if the device is very low power, you still want to be able to charge it quickly and last a long time. Clutter removal for desktops and the ability to plug in everywhere would be icing on the cake.
The advantages are enough that I already prefer firewire.
Actually, jpeg images seem to be able to do it. Advisories are to read email in text mode and use Firefox. Interestingly enough, Tunderbird gets screwed just as bad as Outlook if you don't use it in text mode, highlighting the danger of running anything on Windoze. See here a summary of mitigation and links to same.
I would have thought they'd have learned about security rings while rebuilding their entire OS from the ground up (as Longhorn was reputed to do).
Legacy applications seem to run rings around security in the M$ world. IE 7 in Vista is safe if you run it in "protected mode" but Outlook! is not. See here for the rest of the information I found, including a summary of proposed mitigation and links to same.
Shit like this is the primary reason I hate Microsoft. The secondary and more important reason is that they force their shit on people by force and deception.
John Marriott, 506 E Sherman St, St. Joseph, 61873, United States
IT washout and Bartender.
In fact, it has been all but ordered that people at the company participate in online communities daily and maintain their own blogs (especially on the Microsoft sites).
That would be good, but I'm afraid their PR machine does not work this way. It would be great if actual M$ employees were here reading what people really think and how quickly their company's propaganda is torn to pieces. They would quickly learn what about the rotten things their company does and M$ would be forced to change or loose people to competitors like Google. As Steve Ballmer brainwashed his own kids to avoid Google and iPod and other best of class things, I imagine Slashdot viewing is forbidden and that people posting for M$ are nothing more than paid PR and harassment droids.
I speculate that M$ has farmed out all of their dirty work. I'm sure M$ wants their people doing the job they pay them for. Second, they don't have enough people there to make a dent on a place like Slashdot. The basics of their techniques were worked out in the Steve Barkto and DRDOS cases: slam the competitor and encourage M$ use. The Apple Switcher and anti-trust astroturfing of legislators are both examples of where they have hired firms for questionable marketing. Questionable stuff like harassment by dorks like:
It does not really work, however. The circle of harassment is growing as fast as interest in other platforms and the two are linked. At some point the pawns get it.
Wake me up when you can copy and paste between applications as you can in Windows or on the Mac.
I'm not sure about Mac, but Windoze copy and paste would be a huge downgrade to what's available in free software desktops. KDE and Gnome co-operate well as do most other applications these days. Cutting and pasting preserves formats most of the time. For instance, I can cut a table in Konqueror and paste it into Gnumeric and have it line up right. The same thing happens with text editors ... across desktops ... across networks. I can compare this to the clumsy world of Windoze where cutting and pasting between non free applications is always a crap shot and the network is opaque at best. When I'm forced to use a Windoze machine, I feel like reaching for a floppy.
Office is second rate? And OpenOffice, by emulating it, is a first-rate product emulating a second rate product?
No, Office is a second rate imitation of Word Perfect, Latex, Emacs, Lotus, QuatroPro, FileMaker and a host of other better programs that M$ put out of business. Open Office, Kword, Gnumeric, Abiword and other free programs are better reimplementations of age old ideas if for no other reason than saving the user from the M$ data roach motel.
You probably think I'm part of some evil borg hive-mind now, but your characterization of Microsoft as one voice, ...
Yes, because you are touting the M$ party line and saying things about me as if you know me, I can conclude you are a M$ Astroturfer. That does not mean you represent any of the people who work for M$, it just means you are paid to read a script here and annoy people. You may have been given a file about who Twitter is, which would tie in to this story very well. I fully expect M$ to be keeping a PR database that rivals those owned by Casinos. It's pretty clear they are not putting their effort into anything other than marketing.
The number of hysterical anti-Microsoft geeks is slowly decreasing ...
There never was such a thing. Free software users are serene. It's your customers that have problems and act cranky. At the same time, you don't need to worry about people like me. I'm still outraged at the way your abuse your customers and other vendors in ways that make my life difficult.
A blatant Astroturfer pretends he masturbates over Forbe's glossy pages:
but it reads to me as a good professional briefing by an efficient PR outfit. ... I totally agree. My first thought, before even finishing reading the memo, was, dang, how do I get these people to work for me?
Oh, sure everyone wants a world wide spy and spin organization preparing 5,000 word papers your other minions must read. There is nothing like having more power and paperwork than the UN and half the world's companies. It only costs a billion dollars a month to own that many slaves.
Come one, did you even read all of that crap? Would you really want to apply Peter Quinn type hit tactics to people?
N8F8 slams the victim and misses the point:
saying "It also was strange to see just how many resources are aligned against me" is a complete giveaway of how highly this guy thinks of himself and how purposefully biased he is that he thinks MS's concern and attempt to show him things that might sway his opinion in the other direction is somehow being "against him".
His job as a journalist is to report reality. The forces arrayed against him finding reality included the 5,000 page paper and a series of interviews across the country. They wanted to guide him down the M$ path. It must be sobering to him to think what those agents could do to him if he has deviated from that path.
Consider the case of Peter Quinn. They smeared him, forced him to resign and are now trying to dismantle his former organization. This is no small effort, it's a billion dollar a month job.
All of this just to maintain a monopoly on an OS and a text editor. Strange? Yes but very real and threatening.
It'd be silly if the PR people would ignore Slashdot. They don't. [We are just like you, dear reader ... and we care about you ... sleep.]
Oh, that and Slashdot has a larger readership than Wired. Quit bullshitting.
Your PR goal, as is evident to your Wired target, is to make others carry your message. You dedicated 5,000 pages to that little spin how to. Your company's efforts here are just what they were for BBS's where you slammed and FUDed OS/2 and DRDoS. Your company also considers developers as pawns to be lied to, and slashdot gives you both - how convenient. The same tricks and bullshit are in play here today, but on a much larger scale.
It's not working. We know you for what you are and your "products" are things we'd rather avoid. The bottom line is that a billion dollars a month can't replace actual product. Zune, Vista and Office are second or third rate. Try as you might, the industry is liberating itself and the end of your monopoly is near.
According to this, they have gone 180 degrees from their former statement. They will go to the cost of tracking down IP addresses, deliver the "settlement" extortion email and deliver names if demanded by subpoena. Worse, they are telling students to cease using and remove all P2P programs, as if any use would make the person a target. This is a disappointment because the earlier quote made it look like they were going to ignore the whole thing.
I own an HP Media Center and it works great.
Rob Pegoraro was much less than impressed by this line of machines,
under XP and Mepis does better than Vista on newer versions. Other than replacing the OS, I wonder what you did to get better results out of XP or Vista than the above cited articles.That aside, this is just business.
Sure, it's bad business to sell things that don't work.
They were smacked down by the University of Maine, which followed the University of Wisconsin in refusing to act as the RIAA's collection agent.
I read that Purdue also told the RIAA to get lost. Is it true?
Really? You think that's the meaning of A Hard Day's Night? Methinks you're reading way too much into the lyrics:
I would be, but I'm quoting the movie, not the song. See for yourself.
I can and will say the same thing about paid bloggers. If you can't recognize it, you can't buy it. If it is not cool, you can't push it that way. The effort is doomed before it starts.
Those that do not will die.
This is very difficult for companies that are used to filtering your culture and promoting only a small subset, which they consider exemplary. That kind of cynicism can be seen back as far as the Beatles "Hard Day's Night" where a company follows the advice of their "resident teenager". In a world where original content can and does come from everywhere, big companies are going to have to get used to being one of many equal players. Those that do will be cool by definition. Those that don't will increasingly become keepers of legacy and irrelevant entertainment, kind of like museums.
Cool is like stupid. Stupid is what stupid does. Both become apparent in time.
I think freedom of speech covers this list pretty simply.
No, the Bill of Rights does not apply to government institutions and can't for obvious reasons. A law must be justified and passed before government can spend your money publishing a list. Once mandated, that list may not violate people's rights, such as the right to fair and speedy justice or freedom from race or religious based discrimination. Likewise, there is no government right to privacy as all public spending should be transparent, or government freedom of religion because the government must never advocate any religion over others, and so on and so forth.
Threatening people with massive fines and jail time for accidentally selling a sandwitch to a suspect will cause a lot of pain and suffering for innocent people. It will cause sellers to discriminate against people with similar names. The idea itself is similar to the ancient Roman exile, where the proscripted were denied all comfort, fire and water within the empire - so that they had to leave, starve or live in the woods like a hermit. The difference in this case is that the proscribed are suspected rather than convicted offenders.
the rest of us can fight terrorism by not being terrified. By mocking terrorists we're showing that they're really not achieving their goals. Go outside and declare that you're not afraid; keep flying in planes, keep going on underground trains, keep buying exercise equipment.
And protest this fucking list as an expensive, impractical and unAmerican capitulation and violation of the US constitution.
Ah, that age old dream and nightmare of complete control
And [the Antichrist] causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save [except] he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Translated as:
there is no minimum amount of money attached to penalties for selling to someone on the list: selling a sandwich to a 'specially designated national' can have a fine for up to '$10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison.'
How nice.
Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?'"
Why go through that kind of expense when cell phones can already be used that way? Cell phones are always in hearing range and can be programmed to be on when they look off. The cameras would increase coverage, but again private "security cameras" will do the job in all the places people care about if access is granted by law to government. Soon enough, people will want cameras in their "smart" houses to turn on and off lights and listen for commands. As long as non free software is used for this, the coverage will be complete.
Quiet, casual voice, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
Love,
Big Brother
There's a reason why CompUSA is closing it's stores. And it's not because of good prices and qualified tech staff.
I'd say it was because the upgrade train is not bringing in the big bucks promissed. This guy has not said anything about Vista that everyone else is not saying. Vista is not working in any sense of the word.
Nah, consumers have already rationalised their purchase of Vista. Even XP-loyal geeks have downgraded their opinion to "I guess it has some features I'd like on XP" and are seriously considering upgrading.
If by "consumer" you mean big box store shelf, you are correct. I'm not sure anyone with an IQ better than a shelf is really thinking like M$ wishes they were thinking, especially when they can't rationally name any real features. As people also noted M$ is stuffing the channels to make it look like anyone is buying Vista. They are not, any more than they are buying Zune.
Hasta la Vista M$!