Interesting point, but I think ad-hoc may actually work better then a client / AP network in a high-bandwidth situation due to bandwidth overhead in a repeater-type wireless system (access point). When you are connected Ad-hoc, your data goes directly to the other computer and vice-versa. When you have an AP in the middle, your data goes to the AP, and then the AP sends it to the recipient- if you are both connected to the same AP you have a doubling of data in the same band space. Multiply that by 2 or 3 devices and you see where the problem is. Additionally most networkable games are designed to use as little bandwidth as possible so they work well with a variety of internet connections.
These are the three things that WiFi still can't compete in against a wired network.
Even the most secure wireless is still much more susceptible to attack then a wired network. Even with the most modern access control and protection methods (which are neither cheap nor convenient) the sheer massive avenue of attack WiFi presents creates a problem for many large corporations. Ask JPMorgan Chase how much WiFi connectivity they have. Or pretty much any US Government building.
Even if you do as the article suggests and call in an expensive contractor to map out the best locations for access points, you have to find out if it's even feasible to run network and power to that location. Even with the best-possible placement you are going to have dead zones, and the size and location of dead zones will vary depending on the devices used. My Toshiba laptop got service in places a virtually identical Macbook did not- let alone the poor wireless reception most mobile phones and devices provide. So you have to deal with irate users, and try to find places to install additional access points to cover the dropped zones.
When I worked for a small non-profit K-12 school, during teacher inservice days I always had to install 2 additional access points in the gym so that the teachers could all connect on their laptops, as the single AP currently serving the gym was not sufficient. Even then, transferring any large file from the server or online either brought the network to a standstill or required tethering each machine to an ethernet cord to do the transfer. Most high-tech oriented conferences, the wireless is all but useless if it's available publicly, due to the hundreds of devices all connecting within a limited frequency space and bandwidth. There is just not enough bandwidth in a small space available to deal with more then a handful of data-rich connections. Spread across multiple spheres of AP reception the problem is reduced, but not eliminated! My bedroom is WiFi-connected only due to wiring constraints and connecting from my laptop to my server via VNC or to copy files is very... very... slow. And really, try having a LAN party over wireless- I can run hundreds or thousands of network cables through a small room and connect everything I need for nearly any project or task inexpensively, and know that the network will be robust. Working with WiFi in anything other then a solo arrangement is a lesson in frustration.
TL;DR - Until security protocol and access control methods are more robust and available; until tools to design, implement, and test wireless networks are more plentiful and robust; and until bandwidth availability is not on par with but exceeds that of standard CAT5- wireless is but an adjunct, a convenient add-on to the main structure of a wired network in a business.... err, not that I'm impassioned about it, or anything.
Oh yes, I fully agree- often times my favorite parts of Discworld novels are the not-funny parts- like the climax of The Fifth Elephant which brought me to tears, reading it yesterday in my dark, electricity-deprived apartment.
Pratchett's humor (or is it humour?) comes from the same essentially British, psuedo-Pythonesqe dry wit and wry observations on life. I think that IF another book in the HHGttG multiverse were to be written, Pratchett would be the best option- BUT! It would be a Terry Pratchett book, written as he wants to write it. Only Douglas Adams can write Douglas Adams, but without the aid of a good crysal ball operator and lacking a touch-typing Ouiji board operator, I doubt we'll see any new Douglas Adams-written books.
A few times in Don't Panic Neil Gaiman talks about the dark, somewhat dispairing feeling to much of Adams' works, something the author himself spoke of as well, saying that his situation in life and how he felt about it was reflected in his work, especially the early Hitchhikers works (Radio Series 1 & 2, Book 1). This essential darkness throws the humour into sharp relief while making the characters sense of desperation and hopelessness even more obvious to the reader. Terry Pratchett's works in contrast lack much of that disparity; even in the darker sections of his later novels ( Night Watch in particular, as well as portions of The Fifth Elephant and even going back to Lords and Ladies ) there is a sense of hope, that everyone will survive and we'll all gather around for tea after.
Possibly even a sharper juxtaposition is the difference of "fate" in Pratchett's and Adams' books. The Hitchiker series as well as the Dirk Gently pair of novels indicate by word and action that the characters are free-willed, and the characters seem to understand that there is no "greater purpose"- it's all random, exemplified of course by Arthur Dent's erstwhile daughter Random Dent. Pratchett's books on the other hand always seem to have a "greater Plan", or "fate"- sometimes literally, as the gods playing games in Interesting Times, or as the genetically-predisposed-to-be-king Captain Carrot.
Note: I'm stopping here because you've stopped reading anyhow, and this is deep in the comments so no one else will see it. Also, I'm hungry, and going to lunch.
hurt just thinking about it. Humans, I'll never understand them, you don't even need a brain the size of a planet to know this won't work.
I just finished reading the 2003-updated edition of Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I have to say that I don't believe anyone can really emulate Adams' particular style of writing. And unless they've found a treasure trove of almost-finished manuscripts (unlikely) the best that we have from Adams' writing before his death is mostly compiled in The Salmon Of Doubt, and there was just the merest inklings of a beginning of a truely Adamsian epic tale in there...
Besides, we all know the only person who could write HHGttG properly is Terry Pratchett, and he is ONLY allowed to write Discworld books until he's unable to write or they cure Alzheimer's Disease. And someone sure as hell had better cure it.
I am an IT Consultant who's main clients are small private schools, mostly dealing with K-5 students. I and my partner have been looking for edutainment games for over six months with no- and I mean NO- luck whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of "educational" websites with games, but letting the kids online means traversing a minefield of questions and problems- what kind of advertizing does a certain website do? Does it ask the kids for personally identifiable information? What kind of things does it want them to install- how much spyware, adware, viruses? Who owns the site, and what is the educational content on it? How do I know a safe site one day won't be bought by a hard core porn provider the next day?
Basically, with web-based games there is zero control over what the kids do and see. But as far as locally-installed games, there is nada available that is made for anything newer then Win95 / OS9, which doesn't cut it.
The state of education-segment software in general is horrible anymore. Unfortunately, quite regularly I have teachers who buy software without asking us (the Tech Dept) first, and then bring it in to be installed on their Macbooks. They then proceed to throw a hissy fit when I tell them that their "new" software was written for an utterly obsolete OS, and will in no way work on their OSX computer- despite it saying "WORKS WITH OSX" right on the box! This happens with many different pieces of education-segment software, from test builders to games.
At this point it looks like what we're going to have to do is set up a very restrictive firewall on the Kindergarten / first / second grade computers that *only* allows them to a few edutainment-games sites, owned by major corperations and large non-profit organizations (PBS, Sesame Street, and the like). It's a poor solution, and doesn't work on any of the older grades' computers since they need regular 'net access too. But it's all we can do.
Well, there are a lot of reasons to switch to Vista, but nothing that's critically pressing if you are running a patched and maintained copy of WinXP.
It's different, if I get no benefit I don't want to learn something new.
Well, you might actually like the new UI... and there are some features that are worth having. The way it handles folders and navigation, I prefer over XP for sure. You may not find any features you like... but you probably will find at least a few. Besides, "learning something new" would also be a facet of moving to Apple or *nix.
It takes up more resources, if I'm going to upgrade my machine I want my applications to reap the benefit, not the OS.
The way that Vista handles ram seems a little decieving. My nominal ram-load sits at about 1100mb, but if i'm running 5 IE windows, thunderbird, trillian, mirc, webcam streaming software, and several other always-open pieces of software, my ram-load is... well, about 1100mb. Windows looks like it's "reserving" ram for programs. Dunno. The additional resources are there to be used. Again, at least Apple gives you NO control over how much is running in the UI- you can't turn off the pretties, etc.
It's slower than XP (boot-up, shut down, ect.).
How does this... matter? Linux takes FOREVER to boot... so does Apple, after you've loaded it with software and files. If you have a desktop, it'll be on or sleeping until you need it, so bootup time doesn't matter. If you have a laptop, sleep mode / hibernate works the same way.
I'm not knocking your opinions or thoughts on the matter... but new doesn't automatically equal "bad", and while i'm definietly against bloatware... well, hardware is cheap now, and Vista isn't too off-par from a full-fledged *nix or Apple install in terms of hardware requirements.
We can all complain but so long as Vista is being FORCED on the market there will be no options.
How the hell is Vista beng forced on the market? There are more operating systems that are being OEM'd then there were ever before.
*Microsoft Vista (all versions) *Apple OSX * unix/linux (OEM available in Wal-Mart, for chrissake!) *other open source solutions
Would you have Microsoft and OEM manufacturers offer Windows XP pre-installed for the forseeable future? How does that help consumers? Obviously hardware manufacturers, Microsoft, and third-party software vendors are not going to continue coding software and drivers to work best in XP, and although I'm sure that Microsoft will not end support for XP for a long time, it will shortly become harder and harder for a Windows XP user to get the help they might need. Continuing to sell XP also means continuing to sell an operating system with more security vunerabiliies- something you should deplore. If you went in to look at a PC, then the salesman was right in talking to you about a PC- not a Mac. If you were looking for a 'computer' that might be different, but if you went to the PC department, asked him about operating systems and other specs, you obviously were giving him signs that what you wanted was a Windows box.
Of course, Best Buy is trés horriblé, so I could be wrong. my 2c on the matter.
I started using Vista Home Premium when I bought my new Toshiba laptop, about 5 months ago. At first I was going to just install XP on the system, as I was quite apprehensive about Vista's compatibility issues with much of the software I need to use day to day. But, as an IT contractor, I knew I would have to start supporting Vista sooner or later, so I took the plunge.
I also expected that the first thing I would do is turn off all of Vista's "pretty" including Aero, and make it look as much as 9x/2k as possible. That's what I'd done with XP (Blue...ugh!) and I figured Microsoft's latest UI-gloss would be the same. Based on what the media had told me, I thought the DRM would be horribly intrusive, the security ever-present and annoying, but useless.
Ehm... whoops! I was a bit surprised. Vista runs quite well on this new but definitely not top-end laptop. It's a bit slow to fall into sleep mode or wake up, but not bad considering the 2GB of ram it has to deal with every time I close the lid. Bootup isn't too slow, and although shutdown is a bit laggy, I shut the system down rarely so that's not much of an issue.
As for DRM... what DRM? I have MP3 files, DivX, MPEG-video, watch DVDs and listen to (and rip) CDs quite often, and have not had it bother me yet. I don't use the frankly horrific Windows Media Player or it's associated store, nor do I use iTunes. Using either of those will of course result in DRM and associated DRM-related issues, but that's YOUR problem, not mine. My CD-quality ripped MP3 files have no DRM, thank you very much.
The security screen that darkens the window when you are installing, uninstalling, updating, changing, or even just copying files into the Program Files directory is a bit overused, but the implementation is great- as far as I can tell, it does a system "stop" and holds everything until you make a decision, possibly stopping malware from auto-installing as easily as in the past. I wish I could select when I want it to happen more specifically then "on" or "off" but maybe in a future patch that'll happen. "Run as Administrator" is a bit vexing in that you can't log in as "Administrator" (AKA root) but you can make shortcuts automatically run specific programs as administrator (Netstumbler requires this as it needs low-level access to the wireless NIC).
The wireless and network connection screens take a little getting used to, as they are new since XP, but the ease-of-use and controllability are still present, and I do prefer it a great deal over Apple's over-simplified system.
Oh, and Aero? Shiney! I actually rather enjoy the transparencies, and most of the transitions are quite unobtrusive. The new start menu is nice in some ways, although I wish it responded faster to opening folders, which is perhaps more an issue with the laptops slow drive speed. Making the task bar 2 level tall works very well, and the start icon expands slightly to fill it's area better.
My major annoyances have mostly to do with the aformentioned wireless connectivity, and with IE7. For some reason, when I load media-rich websites sometimes that window will crash. This doesn't happen on any of the other Vista or XP systems I run IE7 on, so it may be a driver issue. The wireless has problems connecting to open APs sometimes, and for some vague reason doesn't like the occaisonal brand of AP (SonicWall seems to be the worst). I think both of these issues will be fixed shortly, and neither are hugely problematic for me.
Overall, I rather like Vista, for all of it's shortcomings. I wish I had it installed on a powerful-enough system to play games on, though. DirectX 10, anyone? I AM looking forward to Windows 7 though, if Microsoft pulls off most of what it wants to do for that OS, it should be quite the system.
I wonder how many of these 'domain tasters' are just registering domains to use in spam and phishing scams. Considering how often the URL changes on the spam I get (that is obviously from the same originator) I would imagine that's what they're doing. If that's the case, I expect the elimination of domain tasting to at least change the way spam is set up, perhaps making some of it easier to detect.
In any case, domain tasting is a very antiquated system almost designed to be abused, and should have been dropped long ago.
No one reads them, so lets take the safety tags off of everything and let God(s) sort 'em out?
It's a truism that no one reads the warnings... but is it true? Despite me hearing time and time again that no one reads the warnings anyhow, I still see them quite often, on what most people consider very good and user-savvy software- like Spybot S&D, Firefox, and many others. Sure, a lot of popups can make the most concious user start to blindly click through, but I would rather they overdo it a bit instead of not telling you anything. "Oh, Hai, I blocked ur software" is NOT the log file entry I want to find when troubleshooting software that won't work.
It does seem to do something of the sort... my laptop has a 200gb 4200rpm drive, which normally means massive lag when loading software, but there doesn't really seem to be that much of a delay. Add to that the fact that the ram overhead doesn't seem to increase when you load software, and it does seem that Vista is pre-caching software. Don't know if that's good or bad, but it does make commonly used apps nice and quick to launch and run.
Compared to say... Valve. and Half-Life 2.
Wait, you say that Valve and HL2 are both bloated beyond belief and would run slowly on a supercomputer? I am shocked, shocked and surprised sir!
Basically from Vista's release announcement I've been saying that it hasn't had enough time in dev, it was released too early, and that Microsoft didn't get around to doing any of the things that they said they would do with Vista- basically, that Vista is to XP what Millennium Edition was to 98SE- a backslide. I tried to get one Vista laptop to connect to our campus wifi with no luck, and basically had a hell of a time navigating the few Vista systems that came around.
When it came time for me to get a new laptop, I desperately wanted to get one with XP, an operating system that has mostly had the major issues worked out of it, and that I knew well inside and out. But my business partner made the good point that, as IT Consultants, we were going to have to support it, so we should know it, whither or not we really like it. And (of course) the best way to get to know an OS is to live with it.
So I've been running Vista for about a week so far, with heavy use both plugged in and on battery, and I have to say this (in bold in italics so you get the idea of how surprising this was to me... ) I'm pretty impressed with Vista. YES, I know i has problems, some of which are VERY aggrivating. It shows as using a lot of ram, and it does tend to bother one overly much while installing software and doing other system tasks. BUT- for the avarage user, these warnings will help to make it harder for malware vendors to install their junk software, for even if the spyware/adware uses an IE exploit to enter the system, if they are trying to hide behind the vague shell of being valid software their install will cause a warning to pop up for the user. While this doesn't stop a user for still allowing it, it DOES make them aware of the problem- an improvement. to be sure.
I also have noted that yes, Vista DOES look a lot like Windows XP professional in drag. The menus are confusing... but only for someone used to 98/2k/XP. Oh, and you can make Vista behave and look quite a bit like XP, as well. Personally I've left the pretty stuff on- it's not too bad looking, and hell, if Apple can get away with a pretty UI, why not Microsoft?
Vista has it's share of problems, but overall I'd say that it will be an improvement over XP- once some of the worst issues are taken care of.
Personally, I've not had any software compatibility issues yet, and have installed old versions of Winamp, CDex, and even Total Annhiliation on the system with nary an issue.
I'm NOT saying that it's perfect, nor that it's ready for a large-scale enterprise roll-out. Realistically speaking, XP is a better platform anyhow- hell, most corporate networks could still be using terminals for much of their work! But it's a step in the right direction for Microsoft.
Please note that not only did I post this from my work OSx machine, I'm also in charge of maintaining 200+ desktops with OSs ranging from Win98SE to OS9 and a couple variants of linux. So i'm not a total OS/UI noob;)
of a certaincouple of movies that deal with a similar-ish thing.
We also know how insane even scientists and researchers get during a several-month physical isolation from the rest of the world.
I'm hoping that Red Mars was required reading before they designed this kind of an experiment... I would assume that a similar level of precise requirements are being put into place here, as were found in that book.
Geek power unite! We've already been shown how to colonize space... just read the extensive manuals published by Issac Asimov, James Blish, and Robert A. Henlien!
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Interesting point, but I think ad-hoc may actually work better then a client / AP network in a high-bandwidth situation due to bandwidth overhead in a repeater-type wireless system (access point). When you are connected Ad-hoc, your data goes directly to the other computer and vice-versa. When you have an AP in the middle, your data goes to the AP, and then the AP sends it to the recipient- if you are both connected to the same AP you have a doubling of data in the same band space. Multiply that by 2 or 3 devices and you see where the problem is. Additionally most networkable games are designed to use as little bandwidth as possible so they work well with a variety of internet connections.
These are the three things that WiFi still can't compete in against a wired network.
Even the most secure wireless is still much more susceptible to attack then a wired network. Even with the most modern access control and protection methods (which are neither cheap nor convenient) the sheer massive avenue of attack WiFi presents creates a problem for many large corporations. Ask JPMorgan Chase how much WiFi connectivity they have. Or pretty much any US Government building.
Even if you do as the article suggests and call in an expensive contractor to map out the best locations for access points, you have to find out if it's even feasible to run network and power to that location. Even with the best-possible placement you are going to have dead zones, and the size and location of dead zones will vary depending on the devices used. My Toshiba laptop got service in places a virtually identical Macbook did not- let alone the poor wireless reception most mobile phones and devices provide. So you have to deal with irate users, and try to find places to install additional access points to cover the dropped zones.
When I worked for a small non-profit K-12 school, during teacher inservice days I always had to install 2 additional access points in the gym so that the teachers could all connect on their laptops, as the single AP currently serving the gym was not sufficient. Even then, transferring any large file from the server or online either brought the network to a standstill or required tethering each machine to an ethernet cord to do the transfer. Most high-tech oriented conferences, the wireless is all but useless if it's available publicly, due to the hundreds of devices all connecting within a limited frequency space and bandwidth. There is just not enough bandwidth in a small space available to deal with more then a handful of data-rich connections. Spread across multiple spheres of AP reception the problem is reduced, but not eliminated! My bedroom is WiFi-connected only due to wiring constraints and connecting from my laptop to my server via VNC or to copy files is very... very... slow. And really, try having a LAN party over wireless- I can run hundreds or thousands of network cables through a small room and connect everything I need for nearly any project or task inexpensively, and know that the network will be robust. Working with WiFi in anything other then a solo arrangement is a lesson in frustration.
TL;DR - Until security protocol and access control methods are more robust and available; until tools to design, implement, and test wireless networks are more plentiful and robust; and until bandwidth availability is not on par with but exceeds that of standard CAT5- wireless is but an adjunct, a convenient add-on to the main structure of a wired network in a business. ... err, not that I'm impassioned about it, or anything.
Nah, ohio, where we had 1.5 million out of power starting sunday evening... for the same reason you did, probably ;)
Oh yes, I fully agree- often times my favorite parts of Discworld novels are the not-funny parts- like the climax of The Fifth Elephant which brought me to tears, reading it yesterday in my dark, electricity-deprived apartment.
Pratchett's humor (or is it humour?) comes from the same essentially British, psuedo-Pythonesqe dry wit and wry observations on life. I think that IF another book in the HHGttG multiverse were to be written, Pratchett would be the best option- BUT! It would be a Terry Pratchett book, written as he wants to write it. Only Douglas Adams can write Douglas Adams, but without the aid of a good crysal ball operator and lacking a touch-typing Ouiji board operator, I doubt we'll see any new Douglas Adams-written books.
A few times in Don't Panic Neil Gaiman talks about the dark, somewhat dispairing feeling to much of Adams' works, something the author himself spoke of as well, saying that his situation in life and how he felt about it was reflected in his work, especially the early Hitchhikers works (Radio Series 1 & 2, Book 1). This essential darkness throws the humour into sharp relief while making the characters sense of desperation and hopelessness even more obvious to the reader. Terry Pratchett's works in contrast lack much of that disparity; even in the darker sections of his later novels ( Night Watch in particular, as well as portions of The Fifth Elephant and even going back to Lords and Ladies ) there is a sense of hope, that everyone will survive and we'll all gather around for tea after.
Possibly even a sharper juxtaposition is the difference of "fate" in Pratchett's and Adams' books. The Hitchiker series as well as the Dirk Gently pair of novels indicate by word and action that the characters are free-willed, and the characters seem to understand that there is no "greater purpose"- it's all random, exemplified of course by Arthur Dent's erstwhile daughter Random Dent. Pratchett's books on the other hand always seem to have a "greater Plan", or "fate"- sometimes literally, as the gods playing games in Interesting Times, or as the genetically-predisposed-to-be-king Captain Carrot.
Note: I'm stopping here because you've stopped reading anyhow, and this is deep in the comments so no one else will see it. Also, I'm hungry, and going to lunch.
hurt just thinking about it. Humans, I'll never understand them, you don't even need a brain the size of a planet to know this won't work.
I just finished reading the 2003-updated edition of Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I have to say that I don't believe anyone can really emulate Adams' particular style of writing. And unless they've found a treasure trove of almost-finished manuscripts (unlikely) the best that we have from Adams' writing before his death is mostly compiled in The Salmon Of Doubt, and there was just the merest inklings of a beginning of a truely Adamsian epic tale in there...
Besides, we all know the only person who could write HHGttG properly is Terry Pratchett, and he is ONLY allowed to write Discworld books until he's unable to write or they cure Alzheimer's Disease. And someone sure as hell had better cure it.
Hey, thanks for the info! I'll check it out.
-Bilby
I am an IT Consultant who's main clients are small private schools, mostly dealing with K-5 students. I and my partner have been looking for edutainment games for over six months with no- and I mean NO- luck whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of "educational" websites with games, but letting the kids online means traversing a minefield of questions and problems- what kind of advertizing does a certain website do? Does it ask the kids for personally identifiable information? What kind of things does it want them to install- how much spyware, adware, viruses? Who owns the site, and what is the educational content on it? How do I know a safe site one day won't be bought by a hard core porn provider the next day?
Basically, with web-based games there is zero control over what the kids do and see. But as far as locally-installed games, there is nada available that is made for anything newer then Win95 / OS9, which doesn't cut it.
The state of education-segment software in general is horrible anymore. Unfortunately, quite regularly I have teachers who buy software without asking us (the Tech Dept) first, and then bring it in to be installed on their Macbooks. They then proceed to throw a hissy fit when I tell them that their "new" software was written for an utterly obsolete OS, and will in no way work on their OSX computer- despite it saying "WORKS WITH OSX" right on the box! This happens with many different pieces of education-segment software, from test builders to games.
At this point it looks like what we're going to have to do is set up a very restrictive firewall on the Kindergarten / first / second grade computers that *only* allows them to a few edutainment-games sites, owned by major corperations and large non-profit organizations (PBS, Sesame Street, and the like). It's a poor solution, and doesn't work on any of the older grades' computers since they need regular 'net access too. But it's all we can do.
Well, there are a lot of reasons to switch to Vista, but nothing that's critically pressing if you are running a patched and maintained copy of WinXP.
It's different, if I get no benefit I don't want to learn something new.
Well, you might actually like the new UI... and there are some features that are worth having. The way it handles folders and navigation, I prefer over XP for sure. You may not find any features you like... but you probably will find at least a few. Besides, "learning something new" would also be a facet of moving to Apple or *nix.
It takes up more resources, if I'm going to upgrade my machine I want my applications to reap the benefit, not the OS.
The way that Vista handles ram seems a little decieving. My nominal ram-load sits at about 1100mb, but if i'm running 5 IE windows, thunderbird, trillian, mirc, webcam streaming software, and several other always-open pieces of software, my ram-load is... well, about 1100mb. Windows looks like it's "reserving" ram for programs. Dunno. The additional resources are there to be used. Again, at least Apple gives you NO control over how much is running in the UI- you can't turn off the pretties, etc.
It's slower than XP (boot-up, shut down, ect.).
How does this... matter? Linux takes FOREVER to boot... so does Apple, after you've loaded it with software and files. If you have a desktop, it'll be on or sleeping until you need it, so bootup time doesn't matter. If you have a laptop, sleep mode / hibernate works the same way.
I'm not knocking your opinions or thoughts on the matter... but new doesn't automatically equal "bad", and while i'm definietly against bloatware... well, hardware is cheap now, and Vista isn't too off-par from a full-fledged *nix or Apple install in terms of hardware requirements.
We can all complain but so long as Vista is being FORCED on the market there will be no options.
How the hell is Vista beng forced on the market? There are more operating systems that are being OEM'd then there were ever before.
*Microsoft Vista (all versions)
*Apple OSX
* unix/linux (OEM available in Wal-Mart, for chrissake!)
*other open source solutions
Would you have Microsoft and OEM manufacturers offer Windows XP pre-installed for the forseeable future? How does that help consumers? Obviously hardware manufacturers, Microsoft, and third-party software vendors are not going to continue coding software and drivers to work best in XP, and although I'm sure that Microsoft will not end support for XP for a long time, it will shortly become harder and harder for a Windows XP user to get the help they might need. Continuing to sell XP also means continuing to sell an operating system with more security vunerabiliies- something you should deplore. If you went in to look at a PC, then the salesman was right in talking to you about a PC- not a Mac. If you were looking for a 'computer' that might be different, but if you went to the PC department, asked him about operating systems and other specs, you obviously were giving him signs that what you wanted was a Windows box.
Of course, Best Buy is trés horriblé, so I could be wrong. my 2c on the matter.
I started using Vista Home Premium when I bought my new Toshiba laptop, about 5 months ago. At first I was going to just install XP on the system, as I was quite apprehensive about Vista's compatibility issues with much of the software I need to use day to day. But, as an IT contractor, I knew I would have to start supporting Vista sooner or later, so I took the plunge.
I also expected that the first thing I would do is turn off all of Vista's "pretty" including Aero, and make it look as much as 9x/2k as possible. That's what I'd done with XP (Blue...ugh!) and I figured Microsoft's latest UI-gloss would be the same. Based on what the media had told me, I thought the DRM would be horribly intrusive, the security ever-present and annoying, but useless.
Ehm... whoops! I was a bit surprised. Vista runs quite well on this new but definitely not top-end laptop. It's a bit slow to fall into sleep mode or wake up, but not bad considering the 2GB of ram it has to deal with every time I close the lid. Bootup isn't too slow, and although shutdown is a bit laggy, I shut the system down rarely so that's not much of an issue.
As for DRM... what DRM? I have MP3 files, DivX, MPEG-video, watch DVDs and listen to (and rip) CDs quite often, and have not had it bother me yet. I don't use the frankly horrific Windows Media Player or it's associated store, nor do I use iTunes. Using either of those will of course result in DRM and associated DRM-related issues, but that's YOUR problem, not mine. My CD-quality ripped MP3 files have no DRM, thank you very much.
The security screen that darkens the window when you are installing, uninstalling, updating, changing, or even just copying files into the Program Files directory is a bit overused, but the implementation is great- as far as I can tell, it does a system "stop" and holds everything until you make a decision, possibly stopping malware from auto-installing as easily as in the past. I wish I could select when I want it to happen more specifically then "on" or "off" but maybe in a future patch that'll happen. "Run as Administrator" is a bit vexing in that you can't log in as "Administrator" (AKA root) but you can make shortcuts automatically run specific programs as administrator (Netstumbler requires this as it needs low-level access to the wireless NIC).
The wireless and network connection screens take a little getting used to, as they are new since XP, but the ease-of-use and controllability are still present, and I do prefer it a great deal over Apple's over-simplified system.
Oh, and Aero? Shiney! I actually rather enjoy the transparencies, and most of the transitions are quite unobtrusive. The new start menu is nice in some ways, although I wish it responded faster to opening folders, which is perhaps more an issue with the laptops slow drive speed. Making the task bar 2 level tall works very well, and the start icon expands slightly to fill it's area better.
My major annoyances have mostly to do with the aformentioned wireless connectivity, and with IE7. For some reason, when I load media-rich websites sometimes that window will crash. This doesn't happen on any of the other Vista or XP systems I run IE7 on, so it may be a driver issue. The wireless has problems connecting to open APs sometimes, and for some vague reason doesn't like the occaisonal brand of AP (SonicWall seems to be the worst). I think both of these issues will be fixed shortly, and neither are hugely problematic for me.
Overall, I rather like Vista, for all of it's shortcomings. I wish I had it installed on a powerful-enough system to play games on, though. DirectX 10, anyone? I AM looking forward to Windows 7 though, if Microsoft pulls off most of what it wants to do for that OS, it should be quite the system.
I wonder how many of these 'domain tasters' are just registering domains to use in spam and phishing scams. Considering how often the URL changes on the spam I get (that is obviously from the same originator) I would imagine that's what they're doing. If that's the case, I expect the elimination of domain tasting to at least change the way spam is set up, perhaps making some of it easier to detect.
In any case, domain tasting is a very antiquated system almost designed to be abused, and should have been dropped long ago.
In Judea, was it OY!mail? /i keed, i keed // Judea People's Front forever! ///eeee-tay, eeee-tay! conjugate the verb!
No one reads them, so lets take the safety tags off of everything and let God(s) sort 'em out?
It's a truism that no one reads the warnings... but is it true? Despite me hearing time and time again that no one reads the warnings anyhow, I still see them quite often, on what most people consider very good and user-savvy software- like Spybot S&D, Firefox, and many others. Sure, a lot of popups can make the most concious user start to blindly click through, but I would rather they overdo it a bit instead of not telling you anything. "Oh, Hai, I blocked ur software" is NOT the log file entry I want to find when troubleshooting software that won't work.
but that's just me...
It does seem to do something of the sort... my laptop has a 200gb 4200rpm drive, which normally means massive lag when loading software, but there doesn't really seem to be that much of a delay. Add to that the fact that the ram overhead doesn't seem to increase when you load software, and it does seem that Vista is pre-caching software. Don't know if that's good or bad, but it does make commonly used apps nice and quick to launch and run.
Compared to say... Valve. and Half-Life 2.
Wait, you say that Valve and HL2 are both bloated beyond belief and would run slowly on a supercomputer? I am shocked, shocked and surprised sir!
Basically from Vista's release announcement I've been saying that it hasn't had enough time in dev, it was released too early, and that Microsoft didn't get around to doing any of the things that they said they would do with Vista- basically, that Vista is to XP what Millennium Edition was to 98SE- a backslide. I tried to get one Vista laptop to connect to our campus wifi with no luck, and basically had a hell of a time navigating the few Vista systems that came around.
;)
When it came time for me to get a new laptop, I desperately wanted to get one with XP, an operating system that has mostly had the major issues worked out of it, and that I knew well inside and out. But my business partner made the good point that, as IT Consultants, we were going to have to support it, so we should know it, whither or not we really like it. And (of course) the best way to get to know an OS is to live with it.
So I've been running Vista for about a week so far, with heavy use both plugged in and on battery, and I have to say this (in bold in italics so you get the idea of how surprising this was to me... ) I'm pretty impressed with Vista. YES, I know i has problems, some of which are VERY aggrivating. It shows as using a lot of ram, and it does tend to bother one overly much while installing software and doing other system tasks. BUT- for the avarage user, these warnings will help to make it harder for malware vendors to install their junk software, for even if the spyware/adware uses an IE exploit to enter the system, if they are trying to hide behind the vague shell of being valid software their install will cause a warning to pop up for the user. While this doesn't stop a user for still allowing it, it DOES make them aware of the problem- an improvement. to be sure.
I also have noted that yes, Vista DOES look a lot like Windows XP professional in drag. The menus are confusing... but only for someone used to 98/2k/XP. Oh, and you can make Vista behave and look quite a bit like XP, as well. Personally I've left the pretty stuff on- it's not too bad looking, and hell, if Apple can get away with a pretty UI, why not Microsoft?
Vista has it's share of problems, but overall I'd say that it will be an improvement over XP- once some of the worst issues are taken care of.
Personally, I've not had any software compatibility issues yet, and have installed old versions of Winamp, CDex, and even Total Annhiliation on the system with nary an issue.
I'm NOT saying that it's perfect, nor that it's ready for a large-scale enterprise roll-out. Realistically speaking, XP is a better platform anyhow- hell, most corporate networks could still be using terminals for much of their work! But it's a step in the right direction for Microsoft.
Please note that not only did I post this from my work OSx machine, I'm also in charge of maintaining 200+ desktops with OSs ranging from Win98SE to OS9 and a couple variants of linux. So i'm not a total OS/UI noob
Everything I know about World War II crypto I learned from Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.
of a certain couple of movies that deal with a similar-ish thing.
We also know how insane even scientists and researchers get during a several-month physical isolation from the rest of the world.
I'm hoping that Red Mars was required reading before they designed this kind of an experiment... I would assume that a similar level of precise requirements are being put into place here, as were found in that book.
Geek power unite! We've already been shown how to colonize space... just read the extensive manuals published by Issac Asimov, James Blish, and Robert A. Henlien!