My experience with it is that it's easily removed. If I remember correctly, you uninstall the Viewpoint Manager and it removes the Media player and the toolbar. There was a particular order to it to remove it in one shot.
I'm still trying to find out what "Media" this thing actually plays. It's pretty much one of those "Yet another useless search toolbar for IE" programs that does nothing but make someone else money and annoy you to death. Why it's not labeled Spyware just baffles me, then again I'm still wondering why the MyWay MySearch Bar is still not detected my most spyware vendors.
My experience with it on Student PC's will make be vote spyware and at the absolute very least, Adware.
Anything that pops up graphical thumbnail suggestions for other competing products when I'm looking at a particular product looks like adware to me. Phoning Home sounds like Spyware to me.
I want to add to this, even though no one will probably see it.
searched for something at live.com's search for the heck of it and the blue pull down button associated with the search bar turned yellow. in the drop down box, it had windows live search with a yellow star icon. it also had another drop down box that said "add new provider" which allowed you to add it to your list of search engines and set it as your default if you wanted to. Apparently, there is a way to get IE7 to do this (I think it has something to do with opensearch but I'm not sure without looking at the live search source code) and I don't see why Google couldn't take this strategy when you search in Google as well.
It just amazes me that IE7 is absolutely light years ahead of IE6 when it comes to giving you a choice in what search provider to use and Google now starts crying foul.
Since IE4, MSN search has been the default search engine in IE. It was released in 1997 and included in every OS since Windows 98. Explain how this has hurt Google at any point during it's entire history let alone today. Heck. Show me where this button has given MSN search a majority share in search engine hits.
Just noticed something. I Installed IE7 on another machine and went to Google. In the Upper right Corner, there's a box saying "Make Google your Default Search Engine! Click Here!" The link pointing to a program that will set it for you. Heck. Google didn't even have to make a program to change it since IE7 supports OpenSearch, Which works great since I went to This page and installed Google (and set it as my default when I installed it by checkmarking the default box) and wikipedia from there. It's actually easier to change search engines in IE7 than it ever was in IE4-6.
Google has so much brand recognition at this point that if anyone does use the IE7 search regularly, they'll probably switch to Google as their main provider since Google points it out and IE7 makes the switch stupid easy. The only way this would ever change is that Google royally screws up, or MSN search creates a search engine that is undeniably better than Google.
I've been playing with IE7 recently, and I've noticed two things.
On my stripped down VM. the Search defaults to MSN. It doesn't have any other search engines available unless you add them to the list. which is easy to do.
I have the Beta Google Toolbar installed on my Main PC. after IE7 installed, the Search defaults to Google and doesn't list MSN search unless you go to the Add website in IE7. You don't have to reinstall the toolbar either. it just carries the settings over from IE6.
This is nothing new. IE has had integrated searching since IE4. It's been set on MSN for years. It's never bothered Google before so why all of a sudden is it bothering them?
I don't understand this name. I swear there stealing this idea from the director of "Snakes on a Plane".
In a matter of minutes, Nintendo turned the revolution into a laughing stock. Look on the net. ytmnd alone has 4 pages of wii jokes and that was within 6 hours. Maybe their thinking it's free publicity or something.
There was no reason for Nintendo to change this name. Revolution was a good name. someone here suggested Gamecube Revolution and thats ok. even Super Gamecube would have been better than Wii.
I swear that Nintendo is trying to make the Revolution fail.
Yes there are recovery options. 2000 and XP both had them as well, but they all rely on one thing and that is that you Saved the recovery key.
Most users are not going to protect this thing like they should, and they will lose it, delete it, throw it out, get fired and destroy the key on purpose, ETC. When that happens their data is gone in a recovery event. The only way you can be sure that you have a recovery option is by setting a mandatory policy in the domain server (IF you have one). In fact that's exactly the same thing you had to do in a 2000/XP environment.
Bitlocker is a step in the right direction when it comes to disk encryption, but it's nothing new at MS. Basically, all they did was make a better interface for their current encryption support and added more functionality to it so more people will feel more comfortable using it, but there are a lot of ways systems can fail, and I definitely would feel more comfortable recovering unencrypted drive data rather then encrypted drive data, and most IT departments will agree with me there. This school year, we had over 50-100 laptop drive failures, with only a few drives being totally unrecoverable. Until I see it's recovery in action, and can say that recovery is about equal to an unencrypted drive when you have the recovery key, I'm going to be skeptical of this system.
Yes. I agree that this should be documented and standarized. It would make recovery a lot easier, but you and I know MS is not going to do that.
Frankly, I don't see this being a big problem for Linux because MS encryption never goes to far in any company. NTFS encryption has been around since 2000 and I've yet to see a company swear by this system. This is going to be used by people who are paranoid about what's on their drives over recovering that said data and thats basicially it, and frankly this group will sleep easier knowing nothing else (including other windows versions) can access the drive.
Also, keep in mind that BitLocker is not on by default, and Linux should have no problem reading FAT32 and Unencrypted NTFS partitions. If you want to read the drive in linux, don't encrypt it.
No, becase IT dept's across the country would basicially riot if they did such a thing.
Most IT dept's do NOT want to deal with this thing. Encryption is nothing new for MS. They've had it since Windows 2000 but almost no one uses it. Why? because there is absoletly no easy way to do any kind of disaster recovery on an encrypted NTFS drive unless you have a Domain policy which supplies an encryption key from the server, and even then it's a pain to recover unless you added execption policies (think backdoor) for domain admins.
The only businesses interested in encryption at the OS level are banks and governments (think CIA, NSA, ETC) and their most likely going to be rolling their own solution when it's all said and done. These guys are definetly not the demographic Microsoft wants to piss off by any means since these are their bread winners, and encrypting the drive becuase Bill felt like encrypting them would not ring well with these people at all.
That is the entire point of Bitlocker; Encrypt the drive so only the encrypting OS can decrypt it. Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
Even if you move the bitlocked disk to another Vista machine, that machine wouldn't be able to read the disk without the decryption key, which I severly hoped you backed up.
We're dreading this feature in Vista becuase if its anything like XP encryption and it's easy to turn on, there's going to be a lot of unhappy students when we tell them "Your hard drive crashed and all of your files are unecoverable becuase you encryped the drive"
last month, I cancelled my WOW account before the new patch hit and went back to City of Villains/Heroes, and I'm glad I did. Sounds like the same old stuff over there.
WOW was just a grind fest to me. in COH/V it's kill anything that looks like you can kill it. You don't have to worry about 10 things to grind once you kill something. COH/V doesn't have the WOW storyline depth, but it's just more fun to me.
I agree. The SAGE engine frankly sucks for C&C Gameplay. If I want to play Warcraft, I'll get Warcraft. I don't want to play a C&C game that basically clones warcraft.
Blizzard RTS have a totally different feel than Westwood CTS's for those not in the know. For example, Lets say that Blizzard and Westwood added a Duck to their games. In the Westwood game, it would be a Duck and it would Quack. In the Blizzard game, it would be white breasted green tailed mallard which has a quack and a peck command, and if you built the biomek duck processing factory, you could add interchangeable beaks that would either give the pecking power more oomph, or give the duck a "Sonic Quack" that would stun the enemy for 3 seconds. C&C generals felt like Blizzard made it simply because every unit had this extra touch that wasted more of your time instead of just simply being a unit and kill or be killed.
EA simply doesn't know what they bought from Westwood. They bought it for the name and the IP when they should have bought it for that as well as the Game Devs, which were some of the best in the industry at the time.
As the owner and fan of Every C&C game ever made, (including Sole Survivor, Which Westwood buried in a landfill somewhere) I can tell you that if C&C 3 plays like generals, then don't bother. I'd rather remember what it was like rather than knowing that EA is raping the series.
Look at Apple. Itunes is going strong, Quicktime is being taken along for the ride, and Hollywood is fixated on using Quicktime and Itunes to increase sales. Microsoft would have to practically give away songs for free to compete against apple anymore, and they would probably still have to fight hard for what apple is taking over.
Also, Don't forget Macromedia Flash is now starting to take a big amount of streaming traffic away from MS and all other streaming clients out there. It's Cross Platform, automatically installs if they don't have it even though they most likely do, is totally transparent to the user, customizable for your own website look, and is free to use. Google is using it and so is YouTube. As long as Adobe doesn't screw up Flash it's going to basically have a good share of the streaming market within the next couple years or so.
Real is dead because they decided to turn their simple player into a craptastic Advertising medium to the point that their biggest supporters started to abandon them. All they can do now is cry while pointing the finger at MS because they KNOW MS is a revenue stream for them. All they have to do is Whine "ANTITRUST!!!" and Bam! 1 Billion Dollars!
Wasn't that one of the big arguments for Napster? That artists could recoup music sales losses by concert revenues?
That and they get more revenues from concerts anyway because the big bad RIAA card carrying recording studio and manager was lining their pockets with CD money and the artists get roughly a penny on a dollar for CD sales.
I'm not defending Madonna here. ($250 is a ripoff to see ANY music artist, let alone Madonna.) but wasn't rising costs of concerts expected by the Pirate community? After all it's what they were preaching.
If you like what SpikeTV was three years ago, then Yes.
They just got Bonzai, Which bombed big time on Spike. they're Showing Star Trek now. At the rate their going, I'll give it a few more weeks and they'll be showing Starsky and Hutch and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge reruns.
I dont Get what their thinking about there. First it was Videogames, then it was Videogames and Computers when they Got TechTV, now apparently, it's the second network for men.
Astroturfing aside, there is truth to both statements.
Where I live, (Sharon PA) I can get a 360 IF it's a core system. If you want a premium system they're still hard to come by.
As for the grandparent. I see fake grass with the smell of plumber. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars, Xbox is beating the Cube by over 3 million.
Sony PlayStation 2: 100 Million Nintendo GameCube: 20.61 Million Microsoft Xbox: 23 Million
And that using more up to date Nintendo sales figures.
The only thing going for the revolution is price and emulation (That and the controller that sounds more like a Power Glove every time I hear about it.). If any of the other competitors start doing this (And they can. The 360 and PS3 will have more than enough power to emulate just about anything previous generation, and prices will drop eventually) Nintendo is done home console wise. in Fact. Nintendo is so happy with DS and GBA sales that the revolution is just icing for the cake. Even if they sell 0 revolutions, DS and GBA sales will easily make up for it.
Most likely, it's going to end up PS3, 360, REV Unless Sony royally screws up, Ms can't fix the overheat problems, or the revolution puts out tons of killer app games at a dirt cheap price level.
I'm not too sure what Oracle would do here, but look at it from Oracle's Standpoint. They Don't like IBM (more Specifically IBM's DB2). Novell's sitting on patents that could theoretically swing the SCO Linux debacle both ways. Linux is one of IBM's big assets, and IBM is moving a lot of their platforms from AIX to Linux. If they buy Novell, they may just swing on the SCO side just to get at IBM to slow them down and spend money in the process.
And it doesn't stop there. kicking Linux also gives MySQL a pot shot since most of their installs are Linux installs. Also a lot of their other competitors run on Linux software. If Oracle wanted to do the evil thing, they could side with SCO and set Linux back for a while and give their competitors headaches.
On the other hand, Siding with IBM gives MS a kick in the groin. So it really comes down to who Ellison hates more in the end. Right now, I'm pretty sure it's Microsoft.
All MS said was not to ship a PC without an operating system on it. They didn't say it had to be Windows.
Basically, if a PC company started selling computers prebundled with Fedora, Ubuntu or Linspire, MS wouldn't (and couldn't) say or do anything about it and if they did, well here comes the judge...
If that's true, it's very interesting that Microsoft saw that as a solution to legacy support problems for everyone else but are ignoring it as a solution to their own.
Exactly. I'm still figuring out why they bought Connectix out but don't seem to be pushing it as forward as they should be.
Their NextGen OS needs this, but for some reason MS just doesn't see emulation as a viable legacy option outside of Virtual Machines. If they could somehow make emulation more transparent to the end user to the point that it would automatically execute when an legacy app was run on this Next NT they need to make, then it could be the holy grail of compatibility gates has been preaching for years; absolute compatibility without a big speed or security compromise to the next gen OS.
I have MS VPC at home. and it's great. You can run just about everything on it. (I still have problems with Windows 3.1 and Linux audio support, but it works well) Right now I use it to sandbox questionable apps away from my main OS, but MS could be using this for so much more it's not even funny.
The biggest problem with VPC is it's inability to use installed hardware natively, particularly the video card. It emulates a 2D card that simply cannot do gaming well, and it's audio support just blows. If it had an option to have native HW support it would be just about perfect.
I see that Vista Corp versions will have VPC built in, but it should go beyond just corporate version and should be on some of the home platforms (like ultimate) as well.
I think I've been saying this for over 4 years now.
What Microsoft needs now more than ever is a NEW NT. The Original NT project (the one XP is based off of) was in 1988 a very modern, and expandable OS. It was fast, reliable and built from the ground up to be better than the previous incarnations of Win DOS. Now in 2006, it's time to start fresh.
The first thing they need to do is look at the current versions of windows and chuck it out the window. The Next Gen OS shouldn't use any legacy windows unless it's just simply the best way of doing that particular job and can be recoded to be native to the Next Gen OS. With computers having multiple cores, virtualization on the CPU die, and huge amounts of memory, there's no reason why MS couldn't emulate anything legacy (either with CPU partitioning or a Connectix Emulation like solution) on this new Theoretical NT. Then, build this new NT using modern day practices.
From there, you release the product with those other OS versions built into the emulation kernel of the Next Gen OS. That way, when this new NT detects a legacy application, it will run in a protected virtual subset of the previous generation's OS instead of running native. Yes, there will be a performance hit, but most office apps won't be affected, and if coded correctly, the system would be able to translate hardware calls to make games run relatively fast for an emulated system. This Emulation situation will only get better as processors get faster and with more cores.
The time is now MS. It's time to put your engineers to the task of rebuilding Windows into the secure, reliable and robust OS it should be.
Microsoft isn't going to be for this either. Everyone keeps mentioning Google when tiered internet comes up, but Microsoft generates just as much traffic with it's MSN portal (since it's the default Home page from most IE Users) and Windows Update. Possibly more since Windows Update is sending patches all the time and the MSN portal isn't exactly bandwidth friendly like Google is.
AT&T will run to Microsoft for money just as fast as Google.
Context wise, I don't see how there going to add these to Auto Assault outside of loading screens.
The world is set in a futuristic, post apocalyptic "Mad Max" world. if youre going through a war torn zone and start seeing pristene unweathered billboards for Pepsi, it's going to look fishy.
I really don't understand why they don't do this in COH/V instead. It's like they built the world to show billboard advertising, and it's built in such a way that it would make the world seem more realistic. It's almost to the point where you're bummed it's an "In-Front Steakhouse" billboard instead of a real "Outback Steakhouse" billboard. As long as they followed billboard rules and didn't have Pepsi and Mt. Dew on every billboard you see in COH, it would really make Paragon city feel like a real big city on the east coast.
do nothing but reduce the reliability... How? Apple's would be coding this, not symantec or some third party.
and convenience... In some cases, there would be some convenience hit, but it would be minimal. Remember this is checking for things that could be used as possible virus entries, Such as deleting everything in a user's account or adding a startup entry. Security is about protection, not Convenience.
-The Sony® Digital Rights Rootkit - installing kernel extensions even if you decline to accept the license agreement. This software is both a rootkit and spyware. -OSX.Inqtana.A, which propagates via Bluetooth®. -OSX.Leap.A deletes, infects, or corrupts files and attempts to spread through iChat. -SH.Renepo.A / SH.Renepo.B, aka Opener, is a rootkit that can disable the Mac OS X firewall, steal personal information, destroy data, and replicate itself to other systems on your network. That SH.Renepo can replicate itself to other systems on your network by copying itself to any mounted drive, including shared volumes -MacOS.MW2004.Trojan, a nasty bit of malware that masquerades as a Microsoft® Word 2004 installer that erases the infected users Home folder and potentially more.
Sounds like pretty nasty stuff to me. Again. it's not about hash checking, it's about intercepting potential vulnerable points, whether good or malicious, and accepting or denying them. What I'm proposing is what most Active Firewalls do with ports and programs today. What is so different if you start asking the same question that an active firewall would ask when it comes to what the program is doing to your PC?
Apple doesn't need no PR guy to handle any security problems that may be exploited in OSX. What they could use is preventive maintenance.
Apple could easily integrate an Anti-Malware system in OSX and it would boost their security immensely and there's nothing Symantec or Mcafee could do or say about it (Unlike MS under an antitrust ruling. I'm surprised they are letting Windows Defender in Vista). All it would have to do is warn you of potentially harmful actions even if it's initiated by the system root (heck, they could just simply expand their root prompt behavior to prompt even when you're logged in as root). This method would not use a lot of resources, since it could be totally integrated into the OS, and would be totally transparent to the user in every way unless they were doing something that was triggering the warning.
Looking at my experience with this method of handling malware, when MS Antispyware came out we did a lot of testing on it to see how well it handled the blocking of spyware. What we found out was that it was so comprehensive, it would warn about viruses trying to infect the system as well, even through unpatched security exploits and backdoors. It wouldn't be able to stop them in all cases since it didn't have any definitions to handle viruses and you could in theory allow the malicious app to proceed, but you were alerted to the point that you knew something bad was going on.
Simply put, If Apple added a simple layer of protection to OSX, the security of the OS goes up drastically without sacrificing performance or security if at some point an exploit is found.
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My experience with it is that it's easily removed. If I remember correctly, you uninstall the Viewpoint Manager and it removes the Media player and the toolbar. There was a particular order to it to remove it in one shot.
I'm still trying to find out what "Media" this thing actually plays. It's pretty much one of those "Yet another useless search toolbar for IE" programs that does nothing but make someone else money and annoy you to death. Why it's not labeled Spyware just baffles me, then again I'm still wondering why the MyWay MySearch Bar is still not detected my most spyware vendors.
My experience with it on Student PC's will make be vote spyware and at the absolute very least, Adware.
Anything that pops up graphical thumbnail suggestions for other competing products when I'm looking at a particular product looks like adware to me. Phoning Home sounds like Spyware to me.
I want to add to this, even though no one will probably see it.
searched for something at live.com's search for the heck of it and the blue pull down button associated with the search bar turned yellow. in the drop down box, it had windows live search with a yellow star icon. it also had another drop down box that said "add new provider" which allowed you to add it to your list of search engines and set it as your default if you wanted to. Apparently, there is a way to get IE7 to do this (I think it has something to do with opensearch but I'm not sure without looking at the live search source code) and I don't see why Google couldn't take this strategy when you search in Google as well.
It just amazes me that IE7 is absolutely light years ahead of IE6 when it comes to giving you a choice in what search provider to use and Google now starts crying foul.
Since IE4, MSN search has been the default search engine in IE. It was released in 1997 and included in every OS since Windows 98. Explain how this has hurt Google at any point during it's entire history let alone today. Heck. Show me where this button has given MSN search a majority share in search engine hits.
Just noticed something. I Installed IE7 on another machine and went to Google. In the Upper right Corner, there's a box saying "Make Google your Default Search Engine! Click Here!" The link pointing to a program that will set it for you. Heck. Google didn't even have to make a program to change it since IE7 supports OpenSearch, Which works great since I went to This page and installed Google (and set it as my default when I installed it by checkmarking the default box) and wikipedia from there. It's actually easier to change search engines in IE7 than it ever was in IE4-6.
Google has so much brand recognition at this point that if anyone does use the IE7 search regularly, they'll probably switch to Google as their main provider since Google points it out and IE7 makes the switch stupid easy. The only way this would ever change is that Google royally screws up, or MSN search creates a search engine that is undeniably better than Google.
well. At least it removes the Middleman for the Gold farmers.
That is, if you can even farm in this game...
I've been playing with IE7 recently, and I've noticed two things.
On my stripped down VM. the Search defaults to MSN. It doesn't have any other search engines available unless you add them to the list. which is easy to do.
I have the Beta Google Toolbar installed on my Main PC. after IE7 installed, the Search defaults to Google and doesn't list MSN search unless you go to the Add website in IE7. You don't have to reinstall the toolbar either. it just carries the settings over from IE6.
This is nothing new. IE has had integrated searching since IE4. It's been set on MSN for years. It's never bothered Google before so why all of a sudden is it bothering them?
I don't understand this name. I swear there stealing this idea from the director of "Snakes on a Plane".
In a matter of minutes, Nintendo turned the revolution into a laughing stock. Look on the net. ytmnd alone has 4 pages of wii jokes and that was within 6 hours. Maybe their thinking it's free publicity or something.
There was no reason for Nintendo to change this name. Revolution was a good name. someone here suggested Gamecube Revolution and thats ok. even Super Gamecube would have been better than Wii.
I swear that Nintendo is trying to make the Revolution fail.
Yes there are recovery options. 2000 and XP both had them as well, but they all rely on one thing and that is that you Saved the recovery key.
Most users are not going to protect this thing like they should, and they will lose it, delete it, throw it out, get fired and destroy the key on purpose, ETC. When that happens their data is gone in a recovery event. The only way you can be sure that you have a recovery option is by setting a mandatory policy in the domain server (IF you have one). In fact that's exactly the same thing you had to do in a 2000/XP environment.
Bitlocker is a step in the right direction when it comes to disk encryption, but it's nothing new at MS. Basically, all they did was make a better interface for their current encryption support and added more functionality to it so more people will feel more comfortable using it, but there are a lot of ways systems can fail, and I definitely would feel more comfortable recovering unencrypted drive data rather then encrypted drive data, and most IT departments will agree with me there. This school year, we had over 50-100 laptop drive failures, with only a few drives being totally unrecoverable. Until I see it's recovery in action, and can say that recovery is about equal to an unencrypted drive when you have the recovery key, I'm going to be skeptical of this system.
Yes. I agree that this should be documented and standarized. It would make recovery a lot easier, but you and I know MS is not going to do that.
Frankly, I don't see this being a big problem for Linux because MS encryption never goes to far in any company. NTFS encryption has been around since 2000 and I've yet to see a company swear by this system. This is going to be used by people who are paranoid about what's on their drives over recovering that said data and thats basicially it, and frankly this group will sleep easier knowing nothing else (including other windows versions) can access the drive.
Also, keep in mind that BitLocker is not on by default, and Linux should have no problem reading FAT32 and Unencrypted NTFS partitions. If you want to read the drive in linux, don't encrypt it.
No, becase IT dept's across the country would basicially riot if they did such a thing.
Most IT dept's do NOT want to deal with this thing. Encryption is nothing new for MS. They've had it since Windows 2000 but almost no one uses it. Why? because there is absoletly no easy way to do any kind of disaster recovery on an encrypted NTFS drive unless you have a Domain policy which supplies an encryption key from the server, and even then it's a pain to recover unless you added execption policies (think backdoor) for domain admins.
The only businesses interested in encryption at the OS level are banks and governments (think CIA, NSA, ETC) and their most likely going to be rolling their own solution when it's all said and done. These guys are definetly not the demographic Microsoft wants to piss off by any means since these are their bread winners, and encrypting the drive becuase Bill felt like encrypting them would not ring well with these people at all.
Seriously. we need a "Duh" Tag on this story.
That is the entire point of Bitlocker; Encrypt the drive so only the encrypting OS can decrypt it. Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
Even if you move the bitlocked disk to another Vista machine, that machine wouldn't be able to read the disk without the decryption key, which I severly hoped you backed up.
We're dreading this feature in Vista becuase if its anything like XP encryption and it's easy to turn on, there's going to be a lot of unhappy students when we tell them "Your hard drive crashed and all of your files are unecoverable becuase you encryped the drive"
last month, I cancelled my WOW account before the new patch hit and went back to City of Villains/Heroes, and I'm glad I did. Sounds like the same old stuff over there.
WOW was just a grind fest to me. in COH/V it's kill anything that looks like you can kill it. You don't have to worry about 10 things to grind once you kill something. COH/V doesn't have the WOW storyline depth, but it's just more fun to me.
I agree. The SAGE engine frankly sucks for C&C Gameplay. If I want to play Warcraft, I'll get Warcraft. I don't want to play a C&C game that basically clones warcraft.
Blizzard RTS have a totally different feel than Westwood CTS's for those not in the know. For example, Lets say that Blizzard and Westwood added a Duck to their games. In the Westwood game, it would be a Duck and it would Quack. In the Blizzard game, it would be white breasted green tailed mallard which has a quack and a peck command, and if you built the biomek duck processing factory, you could add interchangeable beaks that would either give the pecking power more oomph, or give the duck a "Sonic Quack" that would stun the enemy for 3 seconds. C&C generals felt like Blizzard made it simply because every unit had this extra touch that wasted more of your time instead of just simply being a unit and kill or be killed.
EA simply doesn't know what they bought from Westwood. They bought it for the name and the IP when they should have bought it for that as well as the Game Devs, which were some of the best in the industry at the time.
As the owner and fan of Every C&C game ever made, (including Sole Survivor, Which Westwood buried in a landfill somewhere) I can tell you that if C&C 3 plays like generals, then don't bother. I'd rather remember what it was like rather than knowing that EA is raping the series.
Look at Apple. Itunes is going strong, Quicktime is being taken along for the ride, and Hollywood is fixated on using Quicktime and Itunes to increase sales. Microsoft would have to practically give away songs for free to compete against apple anymore, and they would probably still have to fight hard for what apple is taking over.
Also, Don't forget Macromedia Flash is now starting to take a big amount of streaming traffic away from MS and all other streaming clients out there. It's Cross Platform, automatically installs if they don't have it even though they most likely do, is totally transparent to the user, customizable for your own website look, and is free to use. Google is using it and so is YouTube. As long as Adobe doesn't screw up Flash it's going to basically have a good share of the streaming market within the next couple years or so.
Real is dead because they decided to turn their simple player into a craptastic Advertising medium to the point that their biggest supporters started to abandon them. All they can do now is cry while pointing the finger at MS because they KNOW MS is a revenue stream for them. All they have to do is Whine "ANTITRUST!!!" and Bam! 1 Billion Dollars!
Wasn't that one of the big arguments for Napster? That artists could recoup music sales losses by concert revenues?
That and they get more revenues from concerts anyway because the big bad RIAA card carrying recording studio and manager was lining their pockets with CD money and the artists get roughly a penny on a dollar for CD sales.
I'm not defending Madonna here. ($250 is a ripoff to see ANY music artist, let alone Madonna.) but wasn't rising costs of concerts expected by the Pirate community? After all it's what they were preaching.
If you like what SpikeTV was three years ago, then Yes.
They just got Bonzai, Which bombed big time on Spike. they're Showing Star Trek now. At the rate their going, I'll give it a few more weeks and they'll be showing Starsky and Hutch and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge reruns.
I dont Get what their thinking about there. First it was Videogames, then it was Videogames and Computers when they Got TechTV, now apparently, it's the second network for men.
Astroturfing aside, there is truth to both statements.
Where I live, (Sharon PA) I can get a 360 IF it's a core system. If you want a premium system they're still hard to come by.
As for the grandparent. I see fake grass with the smell of plumber. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars, Xbox is beating the Cube by over 3 million.
Sony PlayStation 2: 100 Million
Nintendo GameCube: 20.61 Million
Microsoft Xbox: 23 Million
And that using more up to date Nintendo sales figures.
The only thing going for the revolution is price and emulation (That and the controller that sounds more like a Power Glove every time I hear about it.). If any of the other competitors start doing this (And they can. The 360 and PS3 will have more than enough power to emulate just about anything previous generation, and prices will drop eventually) Nintendo is done home console wise. in Fact. Nintendo is so happy with DS and GBA sales that the revolution is just icing for the cake. Even if they sell 0 revolutions, DS and GBA sales will easily make up for it.
Most likely, it's going to end up PS3, 360, REV Unless Sony royally screws up, Ms can't fix the overheat problems, or the revolution puts out tons of killer app games at a dirt cheap price level.
I imagine this, and it scares me.
I'm not too sure what Oracle would do here, but look at it from Oracle's Standpoint. They Don't like IBM (more Specifically IBM's DB2). Novell's sitting on patents that could theoretically swing the SCO Linux debacle both ways. Linux is one of IBM's big assets, and IBM is moving a lot of their platforms from AIX to Linux. If they buy Novell, they may just swing on the SCO side just to get at IBM to slow them down and spend money in the process.
And it doesn't stop there. kicking Linux also gives MySQL a pot shot since most of their installs are Linux installs. Also a lot of their other competitors run on Linux software. If Oracle wanted to do the evil thing, they could side with SCO and set Linux back for a while and give their competitors headaches.
On the other hand, Siding with IBM gives MS a kick in the groin. So it really comes down to who Ellison hates more in the end. Right now, I'm pretty sure it's Microsoft.
All MS said was not to ship a PC without an operating system on it. They didn't say it had to be Windows.
Basically, if a PC company started selling computers prebundled with Fedora, Ubuntu or Linspire, MS wouldn't (and couldn't) say or do anything about it and if they did, well here comes the judge...
If that's true, it's very interesting that Microsoft saw that as a solution to legacy support problems for everyone else but are ignoring it as a solution to their own.
Exactly. I'm still figuring out why they bought Connectix out but don't seem to be pushing it as forward as they should be.
Their NextGen OS needs this, but for some reason MS just doesn't see emulation as a viable legacy option outside of Virtual Machines. If they could somehow make emulation more transparent to the end user to the point that it would automatically execute when an legacy app was run on this Next NT they need to make, then it could be the holy grail of compatibility gates has been preaching for years; absolute compatibility without a big speed or security compromise to the next gen OS.
I have MS VPC at home. and it's great. You can run just about everything on it. (I still have problems with Windows 3.1 and Linux audio support, but it works well) Right now I use it to sandbox questionable apps away from my main OS, but MS could be using this for so much more it's not even funny.
The biggest problem with VPC is it's inability to use installed hardware natively, particularly the video card. It emulates a 2D card that simply cannot do gaming well, and it's audio support just blows. If it had an option to have native HW support it would be just about perfect.
I see that Vista Corp versions will have VPC built in, but it should go beyond just corporate version and should be on some of the home platforms (like ultimate) as well.
I think I've been saying this for over 4 years now.
What Microsoft needs now more than ever is a NEW NT. The Original NT project (the one XP is based off of) was in 1988 a very modern, and expandable OS. It was fast, reliable and built from the ground up to be better than the previous incarnations of Win DOS. Now in 2006, it's time to start fresh.
The first thing they need to do is look at the current versions of windows and chuck it out the window. The Next Gen OS shouldn't use any legacy windows unless it's just simply the best way of doing that particular job and can be recoded to be native to the Next Gen OS. With computers having multiple cores, virtualization on the CPU die, and huge amounts of memory, there's no reason why MS couldn't emulate anything legacy (either with CPU partitioning or a Connectix Emulation like solution) on this new Theoretical NT. Then, build this new NT using modern day practices.
From there, you release the product with those other OS versions built into the emulation kernel of the Next Gen OS. That way, when this new NT detects a legacy application, it will run in a protected virtual subset of the previous generation's OS instead of running native. Yes, there will be a performance hit, but most office apps won't be affected, and if coded correctly, the system would be able to translate hardware calls to make games run relatively fast for an emulated system. This Emulation situation will only get better as processors get faster and with more cores.
The time is now MS. It's time to put your engineers to the task of rebuilding Windows into the secure, reliable and robust OS it should be.
Microsoft isn't going to be for this either. Everyone keeps mentioning Google when tiered internet comes up, but Microsoft generates just as much traffic with it's MSN portal (since it's the default Home page from most IE Users) and Windows Update. Possibly more since Windows Update is sending patches all the time and the MSN portal isn't exactly bandwidth friendly like Google is.
AT&T will run to Microsoft for money just as fast as Google.
Context wise, I don't see how there going to add these to Auto Assault outside of loading screens.
The world is set in a futuristic, post apocalyptic "Mad Max" world. if youre going through a war torn zone and start seeing pristene unweathered billboards for Pepsi, it's going to look fishy.
I really don't understand why they don't do this in COH/V instead. It's like they built the world to show billboard advertising, and it's built in such a way that it would make the world seem more realistic. It's almost to the point where you're bummed it's an "In-Front Steakhouse" billboard instead of a real "Outback Steakhouse" billboard. As long as they followed billboard rules and didn't have Pepsi and Mt. Dew on every billboard you see in COH, it would really make Paragon city feel like a real big city on the east coast.
do nothing but reduce the reliability...
How? Apple's would be coding this, not symantec or some third party.
and convenience...
In some cases, there would be some convenience hit, but it would be minimal. Remember this is checking for things that could be used as possible virus entries, Such as deleting everything in a user's account or adding a startup entry. Security is about protection, not Convenience.
Until there's actual malware to look for...
Such as what's listed at http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/malspyware.html? Lets see:
-The Sony® Digital Rights Rootkit - installing kernel extensions even if you decline to accept the license agreement. This software is both a rootkit and spyware.
-OSX.Inqtana.A, which propagates via Bluetooth®.
-OSX.Leap.A deletes, infects, or corrupts files and attempts to spread through iChat.
-SH.Renepo.A / SH.Renepo.B, aka Opener, is a rootkit that can disable the Mac OS X firewall, steal personal information, destroy data, and replicate itself to other systems on your network. That SH.Renepo can replicate itself to other systems on your network by copying itself to any mounted drive, including shared volumes
-MacOS.MW2004.Trojan, a nasty bit of malware that masquerades as a Microsoft® Word 2004 installer that erases the infected users Home folder and potentially more.
Sounds like pretty nasty stuff to me. Again. it's not about hash checking, it's about intercepting potential vulnerable points, whether good or malicious, and accepting or denying them. What I'm proposing is what most Active Firewalls do with ports and programs today. What is so different if you start asking the same question that an active firewall would ask when it comes to what the program is doing to your PC?
Apple doesn't need no PR guy to handle any security problems that may be exploited in OSX. What they could use is preventive maintenance.
Apple could easily integrate an Anti-Malware system in OSX and it would boost their security immensely and there's nothing Symantec or Mcafee could do or say about it (Unlike MS under an antitrust ruling. I'm surprised they are letting Windows Defender in Vista). All it would have to do is warn you of potentially harmful actions even if it's initiated by the system root (heck, they could just simply expand their root prompt behavior to prompt even when you're logged in as root). This method would not use a lot of resources, since it could be totally integrated into the OS, and would be totally transparent to the user in every way unless they were doing something that was triggering the warning.
Looking at my experience with this method of handling malware, when MS Antispyware came out we did a lot of testing on it to see how well it handled the blocking of spyware. What we found out was that it was so comprehensive, it would warn about viruses trying to infect the system as well, even through unpatched security exploits and backdoors. It wouldn't be able to stop them in all cases since it didn't have any definitions to handle viruses and you could in theory allow the malicious app to proceed, but you were alerted to the point that you knew something bad was going on.
Simply put, If Apple added a simple layer of protection to OSX, the security of the OS goes up drastically without sacrificing performance or security if at some point an exploit is found.