Having worked on and supported several different server operating systems over the years, Windows is the odd one out. Skills and - more importantly - methodologies learnt on Unix transfer to other platforms so, even if you don't know the exact details, you can work through things to figure out how to achieve the result. Windows is more difficult because it is different: in most places it follows the pattern but there are too many places where it doesn't and there is no pattern to these places, you just have to know where they are - these are the 'best practices' to which you refer.
You read TFA? And there was me thinking I was new around here...
On the flip side of articles like this hitting/. is that I get to read interesting things like the article you link to. I work for an internet start up and our PR firm gets us two or three mentions in online media every day (as measured by Google alerts for our company name). As I crunch the numbers to generate the reports that some of these stories originate from I can vouch for most of what's said in that article.
It may not give weight to the ranking but the snippet of text under the page title in the search results will be the contents of the meta description tag if it's present - I think this is what GP was referring to.
I have to sit through a monthly meeting with our SEO consultants reminding them why we aren't making out site look like the end product of that demo and that the technical reasons for not doing certain things haven't miraculously changed since last month.
They are much better these days. Five or six years ago they were a royal PITA with substandard quality hardware and drivers that varied between machines with the same model number.
My experience with workstations was that there was a high failure rate in the first 12 months but then the survivors would then have a normal life expectancy.
When/if they ever make the plugin work with Thunderbird 2.x I can give it a try. The lack of this plugin in 2.x is why I've rolled back to 1.5 - 2 didn't give me anything I needed and sync-on-arrival broke:-(
On Thunderbird, nothing works. No emails are available, no calendaring stuff, nothing. It seems that you have to always remember to manually synch before you go offline, otherwise nothing will work.
Not quite as good as *nix but the closest I managed to get - combined with X mouse from Power Toys on XP it was the most usable I managed to get Windows before I got a job that allows me to use Linux on my workstation.
Biggest problem: custom, expensive memory chips (MMC Mobile, which as far as I can tell are only used by Nokia, 2gb max, $50). It doesn't need a hard drive but if it's going to play music I need at least 8GB, movies as much as I can get. Could be a lot faster, too, but I would expect that to be fixed in later versions.
My N800 is fast enough for everything I use it for (web, email, PIM, music, ssh/VNC - often all open at the same time) and can take a pair of 4GB SD cards.
I learnt to use one of these in cadets to plot a heading corrected for wind drift - simply by drawing three lines it allowed you to get the result of some pretty complex trig whilst bouncing around in the back seat of a trainer trying to hold your breakfast down!
It sounds to me like the creators of the software you need to use have no clue how to write software for a multi-user environment.
It's shocking how many programs did this in the first place. Almost every game in existence writes saves to their folder in program files.
So Microsoft comes around and says, "you know, enough of this, we're going to make the OS stable by preventing unauthorized programs from writing files where it shouldn't" - and everything dies. Dies horribly.
Reminds me of setting up Citrix systems serving thin clients. There were a good number of business critical apps that needed the running user to have read/write to program directories and, in a couple of cases, system32 - not really what you want to be handing out. In fact one vendor's recommended Citrix "solution" was to give all users local administrator rights. In the end we used to tie them down as best we could and hope no one did something 'silly' with their permissions.
...Open Office will remain as it always has been which is basically a clone of Microsoft Office for Windows as it was in the 90's.
Which was back when I used to like Office. 95 was the last version of Office I got on well with and there's not been anything more added that I, as a casual user, really need. Well, apart from the ability to open documents created in the later versions that everybody else uses to do things they could have done in the late 90's...
As the owner of a new Ubuntu Inspiron 6400 from Dell UK it was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of hardware support out of the box. On the plus side the sound, modem, card reader and wireless all worked out of the box which made it worthwhile for me. On the down side the screen resolution was set to 1024x768 rather than the native 1200x800 and I had to install the intel driver and add the mode to the xorg.conf. All of which was a little disappointing even if I did know what to do. I've not had a problem with my touchpad - well, no more than is usual with touchpads at any rate.
In terms of software, it seemed to be vanilla Ubuntu which lasted all of five minutes before I got busy with Synaptic and a backup of my old laptop.
It's just a shame that the display resolution didn't work out of the box - I did log it with customer services and, hopefully, they'll get this right in future releases.
Blanket security policies that get in the way of business are what drives people to circumvent the security - generally in order to do their job. GP is not the type of person who lets this happen: If someone wants to do this they will find a way and, if they have already worked to circumvent a policy in order to do their job then they will use that route for this kind of thing.
I came across a good example of this kind of braindead security last year. We had to send data to a financial institution who would not accept inbound encrypted emails (apparently they are a security risk) but, at the same time, they were required to transmit all eamils containing financial information with encryption. Apparently their usual (and unofficial) solution to this is to use personal emails. In the end we sent the information as hard copy via snail mail until they finally granted an exception on their mail gateway.
No automated security policy will ever be 100% effective against a determined violator (block Gmail so they switch to Hotmail, block Hotmail they switch to Yahoo mail etc. etc.). However, if you put in overzealous security then circumventing it will become common knowledge within the organisation. In order to be effective, security policies should be defensive rather than offensive.
I find the N800/Bluetooth KB combo is a winner. Mine has taken over 90% of what I used to use my Laptop for (time wise, not functionality) whilst simultaneously doing a much better job of diary/notebook/media player than either of my Palms ever did. Having been a Psion S3/5 user this is the first thing I've come across that is anywhere near as good - if not better.
Note that my comment wasn't directed at you - why so defensive?;-)
Seriously though, it was directed at the people on here who give the appearance of genuinely holding the "don't trust a M$ OS until SP1" view. Fortunately I no longer have to support Microsoft systems (having cut my teeth on WFW3.11/NT3.51) and I have to say this attitude regarding SP1 being the first point at which a Microsoft OS magically becomes worth considering because of some long running historical precedent doesn't fit my recollection.
Staying clear of being an early adopter, on the other hand, is nothing new and certainly not Microsoft - or even computing - specific.
...there are quite a few IT shops out there who took the attitude of "Well we'll wait until SP1 and see" when it came to the question of moving the infrastructure to Vista.
This is my experience of the attitude of bad IT shops. The ones I respect take the form follows function approach - if there is a compelling functional reason to upgrade then that will be the driver, not some arbitrary line in the sand. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
A friend of mine had some antibacterial soap that claimed to kill bad bacteria and promote good bacteria. The brand no longer claims this so I guess we weren't the only ones who thought it was ridiculous.
I was a big fan of the Marble Mouse for many years and, having made the switch two years ago, there's not too much difference between it and the TrackMan. Although the scroll wheel is nice, the rotated wrist position and greater palm support does make it more comfortable which I would say is the TrackMan's biggest advantage and why I prefer it. I don't know what your beef with wireless mice is but I prefer the wireless as it keeps my desk tidier - I've found no greater advantage/disadvantage than that. If you can get one for $50 then I'd recommend it - I paid twice that in the UK and it's been worth every penny.
Used to swear by the Marble Mouse but I now prefer TrackMan as I find it more comfortable as it holds the wrist at a more natural angle and has a scroll wheel.
Combined with a short, laptop style, keyboard with a separate USB number pad ( http://www.yellowgrey.com/desk.jpg ) I have eliminated the pains I used to get in my right hand from using a mouse and right shoulder I used to get from reaching across the numpad for the trackball.
Slashdot Mirror
Having worked on and supported several different server operating systems over the years, Windows is the odd one out. Skills and - more importantly - methodologies learnt on Unix transfer to other platforms so, even if you don't know the exact details, you can work through things to figure out how to achieve the result. Windows is more difficult because it is different: in most places it follows the pattern but there are too many places where it doesn't and there is no pattern to these places, you just have to know where they are - these are the 'best practices' to which you refer.
You read TFA? And there was me thinking I was new around here...
On the flip side of articles like this hitting /. is that I get to read interesting things like the article you link to. I work for an internet start up and our PR firm gets us two or three mentions in online media every day (as measured by Google alerts for our company name). As I crunch the numbers to generate the reports that some of these stories originate from I can vouch for most of what's said in that article.
In places where 'cmd' wasn't available I invariably found that 'command' had been neglected and you can piggy back 'cmd' off that.
It may not give weight to the ranking but the snippet of text under the page title in the search results will be the contents of the meta description tag if it's present - I think this is what GP was referring to.
It's funny because it's true.
I have to sit through a monthly meeting with our SEO consultants reminding them why we aren't making out site look like the end product of that demo and that the technical reasons for not doing certain things haven't miraculously changed since last month.
I have but it worked out of the box so I haven't needed to contact support.
There's a search box on the top right, search for linux - worked for me: http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=linux&cat=prod
They are much better these days. Five or six years ago they were a royal PITA with substandard quality hardware and drivers that varied between machines with the same model number.
My experience with workstations was that there was a high failure rate in the first 12 months but then the survivors would then have a normal life expectancy.
Sync On Arrival works for me on my laptop.
The best one I found was virtual dimension: http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/
Not quite as good as *nix but the closest I managed to get - combined with X mouse from Power Toys on XP it was the most usable I managed to get Windows before I got a job that allows me to use Linux on my workstation.
Like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800
Erminig will sync GPE calendar with Google.
My N800 is fast enough for everything I use it for (web, email, PIM, music, ssh/VNC - often all open at the same time) and can take a pair of 4GB SD cards.
I learnt to use one of these in cadets to plot a heading corrected for wind drift - simply by drawing three lines it allowed you to get the result of some pretty complex trig whilst bouncing around in the back seat of a trainer trying to hold your breakfast down!
It sounds to me like the creators of the software you need to use have no clue how to write software for a multi-user environment.
It's shocking how many programs did this in the first place. Almost every game in existence writes saves to their folder in program files.
So Microsoft comes around and says, "you know, enough of this, we're going to make the OS stable by preventing unauthorized programs from writing files where it shouldn't" - and everything dies. Dies horribly.
Reminds me of setting up Citrix systems serving thin clients. There were a good number of business critical apps that needed the running user to have read/write to program directories and, in a couple of cases, system32 - not really what you want to be handing out. In fact one vendor's recommended Citrix "solution" was to give all users local administrator rights. In the end we used to tie them down as best we could and hope no one did something 'silly' with their permissions.
...Open Office will remain as it always has been which is basically a clone of Microsoft Office for Windows as it was in the 90's.Which was back when I used to like Office. 95 was the last version of Office I got on well with and there's not been anything more added that I, as a casual user, really need. Well, apart from the ability to open documents created in the later versions that everybody else uses to do things they could have done in the late 90's...
Now then. Where did you say those pesky, new fangled, textile machines were?..
As the owner of a new Ubuntu Inspiron 6400 from Dell UK it was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of hardware support out of the box. On the plus side the sound, modem, card reader and wireless all worked out of the box which made it worthwhile for me. On the down side the screen resolution was set to 1024x768 rather than the native 1200x800 and I had to install the intel driver and add the mode to the xorg.conf. All of which was a little disappointing even if I did know what to do. I've not had a problem with my touchpad - well, no more than is usual with touchpads at any rate.
In terms of software, it seemed to be vanilla Ubuntu which lasted all of five minutes before I got busy with Synaptic and a backup of my old laptop.
It's just a shame that the display resolution didn't work out of the box - I did log it with customer services and, hopefully, they'll get this right in future releases.
Blanket security policies that get in the way of business are what drives people to circumvent the security - generally in order to do their job. GP is not the type of person who lets this happen: If someone wants to do this they will find a way and, if they have already worked to circumvent a policy in order to do their job then they will use that route for this kind of thing.
I came across a good example of this kind of braindead security last year. We had to send data to a financial institution who would not accept inbound encrypted emails (apparently they are a security risk) but, at the same time, they were required to transmit all eamils containing financial information with encryption. Apparently their usual (and unofficial) solution to this is to use personal emails. In the end we sent the information as hard copy via snail mail until they finally granted an exception on their mail gateway.
No automated security policy will ever be 100% effective against a determined violator (block Gmail so they switch to Hotmail, block Hotmail they switch to Yahoo mail etc. etc.). However, if you put in overzealous security then circumventing it will become common knowledge within the organisation. In order to be effective, security policies should be defensive rather than offensive.
I find the N800/Bluetooth KB combo is a winner. Mine has taken over 90% of what I used to use my Laptop for (time wise, not functionality) whilst simultaneously doing a much better job of diary/notebook/media player than either of my Palms ever did. Having been a Psion S3/5 user this is the first thing I've come across that is anywhere near as good - if not better.
Note that my comment wasn't directed at you - why so defensive? ;-)
Seriously though, it was directed at the people on here who give the appearance of genuinely holding the "don't trust a M$ OS until SP1" view. Fortunately I no longer have to support Microsoft systems (having cut my teeth on WFW3.11/NT3.51) and I have to say this attitude regarding SP1 being the first point at which a Microsoft OS magically becomes worth considering because of some long running historical precedent doesn't fit my recollection.
Staying clear of being an early adopter, on the other hand, is nothing new and certainly not Microsoft - or even computing - specific.
...there are quite a few IT shops out there who took the attitude of "Well we'll wait until SP1 and see" when it came to the question of moving the infrastructure to Vista.This is my experience of the attitude of bad IT shops. The ones I respect take the form follows function approach - if there is a compelling functional reason to upgrade then that will be the driver, not some arbitrary line in the sand. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
A friend of mine had some antibacterial soap that claimed to kill bad bacteria and promote good bacteria. The brand no longer claims this so I guess we weren't the only ones who thought it was ridiculous.
I was a big fan of the Marble Mouse for many years and, having made the switch two years ago, there's not too much difference between it and the TrackMan. Although the scroll wheel is nice, the rotated wrist position and greater palm support does make it more comfortable which I would say is the TrackMan's biggest advantage and why I prefer it. I don't know what your beef with wireless mice is but I prefer the wireless as it keeps my desk tidier - I've found no greater advantage/disadvantage than that. If you can get one for $50 then I'd recommend it - I paid twice that in the UK and it's been worth every penny.
Not seen a mention for my weapon of choice yet:r ackballs/devices/189&cl=us,en
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/t
Used to swear by the Marble Mouse but I now prefer TrackMan as I find it more comfortable as it holds the wrist at a more natural angle and has a scroll wheel.
Combined with a short, laptop style, keyboard with a separate USB number pad ( http://www.yellowgrey.com/desk.jpg ) I have eliminated the pains I used to get in my right hand from using a mouse and right shoulder I used to get from reaching across the numpad for the trackball.