I thought all of the XP drivers had to be blessed and certified by Microsoft? So, whose fault is it really?
I think it's your fault, mbbac.
How rediculous. It informs you when a driver hasn't been signed by Microsoft and warns you of the potential consequences, but it doesn't stop you from installing it.
No, it's exactly the same thing. Apple outsources its hardware production but brands it as Apple hardware. Microsoft outsources its hardware production but allows 3rd party companies (such as Dell) to brand it as their own. (Apple insists on using some non-commodity hardware as a non-standards-compliant way of clinging to market share)
The economies of scale are the same for both Apple and Microsoft.
If Microsoft didn't get Dell to agree to ship a copy of Windows with every PC, then Dell's customers would on average pay more for a copy of Windows and the total cost of owning a Dell would be greater. The "per unit" charge for MacOS is just not shown to the customer. This doesn't mean it is free.
MacOS X lists for $129. Does this mean you can buy a Mac for list - $129 without the OS?
You won't buy Windows, but you would buy MacOS on your iBook?
If you just want a good laptop, buy a Dell. They are relatively rugged, and there are lots of interchangable parts that work across models, etc.
If you receive a copy of Windows that you don't want, use it as a coaster or donate it to the Wine project or something. You'll be worse-off buying some no-name laptop just to avoid the included copy of Windows.
But locking down the boot process won't help you if you can run the recovery console from CD after the Windows OS has booted.
The recovery console must be run by booting the CD. Therefore, the simplest way to prevent this kind of access is to password protect the BIOS and turn of the capability of booting from CD.
Regulation of supply and demand is a surefire way to hinder markets and create reduced efficiency and reduced competition. After all, if you prohibit company A from selling more than 100 widgets just so that company B can sell 25, have you really created competition? No, you've stolen from one and given to another.
The only kind of regulation that can be helpful is regulation over the way information is provided to markets. For example, requiring that companies disclose the quality of their service guarantee to consumers. This kind of regulation helps consumers make rational decisions, which helps markets operate efficiently.
Strong economies of scale, monopolies, and other characteristics of some companies are the biggest INCENTIVE to MARKET ENTRY for companies who are not yet in that market.
So... your argument is that VOIP should be regulated because other communications are. Can you think of any independent reason why regulating VOIP would benefit anyone other than the government?
I was just in SF for a week and I couldn't believe my eyes. In the morning during my morning run through the streets of downtown San Francisco I watched countless shopkeepers power washing the sidewalk in front of their businesses. Why? To remove the grime, feces and filth left there by the city's massive population of homeless people.
Is it really humane to let the homeless live like that? Shouldn't there be public restrooms for them to use? Why do the shopkeepers have to put up with it?
Anyway, why not put some of those tax dollars toward solving that problem!
Microsoft has a pretty well-written C# language reference that provides a solid understanding of the language concepts as well as many of the language goals. It's readable too. Find it here.
I had a vaio laptop a few years ago (pentium iii 450 version) and there were a few things about it that made me decide to avoid vaio products in the future:
1. Proprietary drivers: Since I already owned a copy of Win2k from my last machine, I ordered the Vaio with 98 and planned to upgrade. No such luck. Sony wouldn't give me access to the drivers. I finally found someone who had the drivers but there was some kind of BIOS lock-out preventing me from installing them. It would have been worthwhile to pay the stupid $150 extra for the win2k machine in the first place.
2. Proprietary Drivers: Sony finally did release the drivers w/o the bios lockout, but it was about a year after I first got the laptop.
3. SLOW! The thing was designed to look nice rather than to perform. It had one of the slowest laptop hard drives I've ever experienced.
VAIO systems appear to be designed to look nice (which they do). They're not really performance machines, and Sony has some funny policies regarding releasing drivers, etc. Buyer beware.
You misunderstand what the technology does. It attempts to do whatever it can on the client to conserve server resources and to provide a faster response for the person browsing the page. Some older (downlevel) browsers don't support this, so in those cases server-side postbacks are still used. The same with the css1,css2 implementation. It won't send your browser more than it can handle.
This allows developers to quickly create a cutting-edge site that conserves server resources. It's no different than how people wrote code in asp, except now someone has already done it so devlopers don't constantly have to reinvent the wheel.
Sure this opera thing may have been a mistake, and it may have even been a stupid mistake. But if you try to convince me that it's another conspiracy, then you're off your rocker.
IMHO, Opera is a company that is wisely collecting the "I hate Microsoft Tax" every time some rebel buys a copy.
rather than writing only downlevel code, Microsoft's asp.net components detect the browser version and treat different browsers differently.
Why is this useful?
It can eliminate tons of server work and bandwidth by keeping some stuff on the client (if the client can support the required scripting, css, etc.). For downlevel browsers, a server postback may be required, but why do it for the latest Mozilla or IE?
There must have (at one point) been a non standards-compliant css implementation in Opera, and that must be what Microsoft wrote its code to support.
Sure it would be nice if everyone wrote web pages to standard. But then anyone doing e-commerce would write to the level of the standard supported by all browsers. This would drastically limit the kind of code that could be written, not to mention the headaches it would cause to keep up with what was supported by who, etc.
Microsoft's asp.net software, by automatically supporting downlevel browsers, makes it easy to write the code once and have it display/behave properly on all browsers. In this case, it appears that the requirements for Opera support have changed, so it would appear that an update to the asp.net downlevel tools would be in order.
They would have just launched another shuttle to go and get the astronauts. If they couldn't ready a shuttle in time, then another nation would have stepped in to help.
I won't take the time to include the links, but the term "GNU/Linux" strictly speaking means only the Kernel. Some interpret it to mean the Kernel plus any GPL software. In any case, I used the term "GNU/Linux Kernel" because I wanted to include the "GNU/" while still referring specifically to the kernel.
I've used Windows Update on dozens of computers over the years and I've NEVER had a single problem. One time a machine had a similar STOP error to the one you describe, but it was due to the fact that the driver I was updating to was not compatible with the (older) firmware version of the SCSI controller. *I had to find another machine to download the firmware updates and install them, after which it booted fine.*
The windows update site has links to important information that one should read before installing the updates. In my case, the information about the firmware incompatibility was printed plain as day in the brief readme that was linked directly from the windows update site. Windows Update is convenient, but it doesn't eliminate the need to RTFM.
You're right... Some trojans do exploit holes in old versions of software. IE is not alone here. The same could be done with some versions of Netscape, GNU/Linux Kernel, IIS, Apache, etc.
Microsoft has helped the situation by creating the automatic update service. It is a small app that runs every day (roughly the equivalent of code run by a cron job, but handled as a windows service) and checks to see if any security patches have been released. Depending on how you set it up, it can notify you, notify you + download the updates, or do all of the above AND install the updates.
Two things will make the kinds of exploits being discussed impossible:
1) Completely bug/exploit free code. or 2) Widespread use of tools such as Automatic updates.
Redhat and Mandrake both have a service that emails you the latest bugfix/security information. This, combined with MandrakeUpdate and RedHat's equivalent tool, can help a sysadmin keep up with the latest patches with minimal effort. It also lowers the bar for the amount of expertise required to properly keep a system secure.
No, if you leave your security preferences at their default level, things like this will not install. That is clearly FUD. Even if you have your security preferences a notch lower, it will still prompt you to confirm installation.
People get into the habbit of clicking "OK" whenever something pops up. Next thing they know, they have Gator and all sorts of junk installed.
You might want to attempt an intelligent response. Stealing music is stealing. It isn't stealing if the independent label permits it, but that's not what is being discussed here. What is being discussed is the stealing of music that is not being given away by its creators.
People work to create property. Ownership of that property entitles its creator to decide whether it is sold or given away. People who work in the Recording Industry do so because they have bills to pay and they have skills that have value (for example, expertise in sound engineering, a great voice, the ability to write good lyrics, or a factory to press 100,000 CDs). Those people wake up in the morning and go to work because they expect to receive payment for their work. It's only fair, isn't it? When you steal music you take money out of the pockets of everyone whose talent and effort allowed that music to exist and be mass-produced (and mass-marketed). Without the contributions of those people the artist would have had to keep his/her day job, the sound-engineer would be a hobbyist with a nice stereo, and we'd still be using analog audio tapes.
Making money is why a lot of people decide not to sleep in every day and watch Springer. In other words, making money is why people engage in most productive activity. Stealing the end-product of that productive activity removes the incentive and removes the reward. It's no different than if someone stole the car you worked to earn the money for.
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I think it's your fault, mbbac.
How rediculous. It informs you when a driver hasn't been signed by Microsoft and warns you of the potential consequences, but it doesn't stop you from installing it.
No, it's exactly the same thing. Apple outsources its hardware production but brands it as Apple hardware. Microsoft outsources its hardware production but allows 3rd party companies (such as Dell) to brand it as their own. (Apple insists on using some non-commodity hardware as a non-standards-compliant way of clinging to market share)
The economies of scale are the same for both Apple and Microsoft.
If Microsoft didn't get Dell to agree to ship a copy of Windows with every PC, then Dell's customers would on average pay more for a copy of Windows and the total cost of owning a Dell would be greater. The "per unit" charge for MacOS is just not shown to the customer. This doesn't mean it is free.
MacOS X lists for $129. Does this mean you can buy a Mac for list - $129 without the OS?
If you just want a good laptop, buy a Dell. They are relatively rugged, and there are lots of interchangable parts that work across models, etc.
If you receive a copy of Windows that you don't want, use it as a coaster or donate it to the Wine project or something. You'll be worse-off buying some no-name laptop just to avoid the included copy of Windows.
The recovery console must be run by booting the CD. Therefore, the simplest way to prevent this kind of access is to password protect the BIOS and turn of the capability of booting from CD.
yes. yes.
Regulation of supply and demand is a surefire way to hinder markets and create reduced efficiency and reduced competition. After all, if you prohibit company A from selling more than 100 widgets just so that company B can sell 25, have you really created competition? No, you've stolen from one and given to another.
The only kind of regulation that can be helpful is regulation over the way information is provided to markets. For example, requiring that companies disclose the quality of their service guarantee to consumers. This kind of regulation helps consumers make rational decisions, which helps markets operate efficiently.
Strong economies of scale, monopolies, and other characteristics of some companies are the biggest INCENTIVE to MARKET ENTRY for companies who are not yet in that market.
So... your argument is that VOIP should be regulated because other communications are. Can you think of any independent reason why regulating VOIP would benefit anyone other than the government?
FYI: You can use GRUB with Windows too!
FYI: You can use GRUB with Windows too.
FYI: You can use GRUB with Windows too.
Strange, b/c New York doesn't have the same smells, and doesn't seem to have nearly the same number of homeless.
is that an allusion to the dukes of hazzard?
This is offtopic but...
I was just in SF for a week and I couldn't believe my eyes. In the morning during my morning run through the streets of downtown San Francisco I watched countless shopkeepers power washing the sidewalk in front of their businesses. Why? To remove the grime, feces and filth left there by the city's massive population of homeless people.
Is it really humane to let the homeless live like that? Shouldn't there be public restrooms for them to use? Why do the shopkeepers have to put up with it?
Anyway, why not put some of those tax dollars toward solving that problem!
Microsoft has a pretty well-written C# language reference that provides a solid understanding of the language concepts as well as many of the language goals. It's readable too. Find it here.
I had a vaio laptop a few years ago (pentium iii 450 version) and there were a few things about it that made me decide to avoid vaio products in the future:
1. Proprietary drivers: Since I already owned a copy of Win2k from my last machine, I ordered the Vaio with 98 and planned to upgrade. No such luck. Sony wouldn't give me access to the drivers. I finally found someone who had the drivers but there was some kind of BIOS lock-out preventing me from installing them. It would have been worthwhile to pay the stupid $150 extra for the win2k machine in the first place.
2. Proprietary Drivers: Sony finally did release the drivers w/o the bios lockout, but it was about a year after I first got the laptop.
3. SLOW! The thing was designed to look nice rather than to perform. It had one of the slowest laptop hard drives I've ever experienced.
VAIO systems appear to be designed to look nice (which they do). They're not really performance machines, and Sony has some funny policies regarding releasing drivers, etc. Buyer beware.
The technology in asp.net doesn't deviate from standards, it simply only uses the standards that your browser has a clue about.
There are full O'Reilly books on how much Netscape's implementation of the W3C standards sucks.
I'll respond to the troll.
You misunderstand what the technology does. It attempts to do whatever it can on the client to conserve server resources and to provide a faster response for the person browsing the page. Some older (downlevel) browsers don't support this, so in those cases server-side postbacks are still used. The same with the css1,css2 implementation. It won't send your browser more than it can handle.
This allows developers to quickly create a cutting-edge site that conserves server resources. It's no different than how people wrote code in asp, except now someone has already done it so devlopers don't constantly have to reinvent the wheel.
Sure this opera thing may have been a mistake, and it may have even been a stupid mistake. But if you try to convince me that it's another conspiracy, then you're off your rocker.
IMHO, Opera is a company that is wisely collecting the "I hate Microsoft Tax" every time some rebel buys a copy.
rather than writing only downlevel code, Microsoft's asp.net components detect the browser version and treat different browsers differently.
Why is this useful?
It can eliminate tons of server work and bandwidth by keeping some stuff on the client (if the client can support the required scripting, css, etc.). For downlevel browsers, a server postback may be required, but why do it for the latest Mozilla or IE?
There must have (at one point) been a non standards-compliant css implementation in Opera, and that must be what Microsoft wrote its code to support.
Sure it would be nice if everyone wrote web pages to standard. But then anyone doing e-commerce would write to the level of the standard supported by all browsers. This would drastically limit the kind of code that could be written, not to mention the headaches it would cause to keep up with what was supported by who, etc.
Microsoft's asp.net software, by automatically supporting downlevel browsers, makes it easy to write the code once and have it display/behave properly on all browsers. In this case, it appears that the requirements for Opera support have changed, so it would appear that an update to the asp.net downlevel tools would be in order.
They would have just launched another shuttle to go and get the astronauts. If they couldn't ready a shuttle in time, then another nation would have stepped in to help.
I won't take the time to include the links, but the term "GNU/Linux" strictly speaking means only the Kernel. Some interpret it to mean the Kernel plus any GPL software. In any case, I used the term "GNU/Linux Kernel" because I wanted to include the "GNU/" while still referring specifically to the kernel.
I've used Windows Update on dozens of computers over the years and I've NEVER had a single problem. One time a machine had a similar STOP error to the one you describe, but it was due to the fact that the driver I was updating to was not compatible with the (older) firmware version of the SCSI controller. *I had to find another machine to download the firmware updates and install them, after which it booted fine.*
The windows update site has links to important information that one should read before installing the updates. In my case, the information about the firmware incompatibility was printed plain as day in the brief readme that was linked directly from the windows update site. Windows Update is convenient, but it doesn't eliminate the need to RTFM.
You're right... Some trojans do exploit holes in old versions of software. IE is not alone here. The same could be done with some versions of Netscape, GNU/Linux Kernel, IIS, Apache, etc.
Microsoft has helped the situation by creating the automatic update service. It is a small app that runs every day (roughly the equivalent of code run by a cron job, but handled as a windows service) and checks to see if any security patches have been released. Depending on how you set it up, it can notify you, notify you + download the updates, or do all of the above AND install the updates.
Two things will make the kinds of exploits being discussed impossible:
1) Completely bug/exploit free code.
or
2) Widespread use of tools such as Automatic updates.
Redhat and Mandrake both have a service that emails you the latest bugfix/security information. This, combined with MandrakeUpdate and RedHat's equivalent tool, can help a sysadmin keep up with the latest patches with minimal effort. It also lowers the bar for the amount of expertise required to properly keep a system secure.
It's not much different than if someone downloads a file to the desktop and decides to double-click on it.
Ultimately, the user should read any warning message that pops up, whether it's from IE, your anti-virus software, or from your OS.
No, if you leave your security preferences at their default level, things like this will not install. That is clearly FUD. Even if you have your security preferences a notch lower, it will still prompt you to confirm installation.
People get into the habbit of clicking "OK" whenever something pops up. Next thing they know, they have Gator and all sorts of junk installed.
People work to create property. Ownership of that property entitles its creator to decide whether it is sold or given away. People who work in the Recording Industry do so because they have bills to pay and they have skills that have value (for example, expertise in sound engineering, a great voice, the ability to write good lyrics, or a factory to press 100,000 CDs). Those people wake up in the morning and go to work because they expect to receive payment for their work. It's only fair, isn't it? When you steal music you take money out of the pockets of everyone whose talent and effort allowed that music to exist and be mass-produced (and mass-marketed). Without the contributions of those people the artist would have had to keep his/her day job, the sound-engineer would be a hobbyist with a nice stereo, and we'd still be using analog audio tapes.
Making money is why a lot of people decide not to sleep in every day and watch Springer. In other words, making money is why people engage in most productive activity. Stealing the end-product of that productive activity removes the incentive and removes the reward. It's no different than if someone stole the car you worked to earn the money for.