My work laptop dual-boots XP and Ubuntu. Doing the same things (Firefox, SSH sessions, music playing) on the same hardware is noticeably slower on XP and the battery lasts about an hour less. I blame the antivirus. Windows without an antivirus runs at full speed, Windows with an antivirus is as crippled as would be expected by running a watchdog program filtering literally every byte written to or from the disk or network.
Build 7000 (beta) was notably faster and slimmer than Build 7100 (RC) when we tried it here - 7000 was highly responsive and usable in 512MB, 7100 thrashes and is slow in 1GB. We were horrified. So forget 7000's admirable speed - it appears the RC was compiled with -fsuck-like-a-dyson-on-steroids enabled.
Because the entire article is basically a press release for Windows 7. They compare it to something they know sucks, because they know it wouldn't look nearly as good compared to the thing (XP) people are actually running now.
This morning, our dear leader Steve Ballmer is unveiling our completely new search service, unrelated to anything we at Microsoft have ever done before: Bob Hope.
We spent lots of time listening to you, except when you told us how much MSN Search^W Live Search^W Kumo sucked ’cause you're just wrong about that, to learn which buzzwordy Web 2.0 thingies you use search for today. Finding a webpage that has anything to do with the search terms you entered is so passé, dahling.
So today we're introducing a new kind of search, that goes beyond traditional search engines that do tedious things like find stuff, to instead help you make faster, more informed decisions. (Windows 7 is peachy keen, by the way.) We think of Bob Hope as a Decision Engine. We've sued Stephen Wolfram into atomic dust using our patents on FAT and Mono, co-opted the Wolfram Alpha engine and swapped Mathematica for Visual Basic and Wolfram's brain for the exhumed corpse of Bob Hope.
So why did we pick Bob Hope as the new brand name? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product: optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world.
And just look at these results!
What do we want? Braaains. When do we want them? Braaains. What do I need to run Windows 7? Braaains. What's Bill Gates got that means you should buy everything you can from the company he founded? Braaains. What's the final proof of Steve Ballmer's equal genius to Steve Jobs? Vistaaa.
This is something new, something improved! You need to try it! It'll give so much more betterer results than that other search engine we can't name because Steve will wedge another chair up our butts! Please, come and try our new and improved service! FOR GOD'S SAKE TRY THE DAMN SERVICE. OR THE PUPPY GETS IT. We're Microsoft. We're serious as a heart attack on this one.
Losses have occurred through couriered unencrypted disks, misplaced memory sticks, lost laptops, briefcases left on trains and files falling down the side of the tea machine. "The real scandal is that a train was running for them to lose a case on," said a source whose name has been lost.
Treasury minister Jane Kennedy said the HM Revenue and Customs breaches did not necessarily result in data losses, or at least any that they have records of. HMRC said it takes data losses and security breaches "very seriously" and thoroughly investigates any breach that it does not lose track of.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has served enforcement notices on various departments for their data losses, but the departments in question could not find their office addresses to accept the notices. They noted, however, that Mr Thomas' call was very important to them, and that he had been placed in a queue.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reassured citizens that plans for an all-encompassing ID card linked to biometric passports and a universal medical record with the NHS would not change because of these losses. "We won't even be thinking about them."
The only reason for Windows is to run 20 years of old applications. They tried deprecating stuff with Vista and it didn't get them very far. They've even put xp inside Windows 7 to fight off Wine being better with many old apps than Vista/7.
Obviously we need an entropy generation program that feeds it the input from simulated mouse waggling. We can use/dev/urandom as the input! Of course, we have to take care to make it more randomer.
US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.
"I don't think you take anything off the table. We're particularly looking toward one group in Seattle."
The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or indeed to take complete control of the computer and use it for their own ends as part of a massive "botnet" to mount further attacks. The malware, "Windows," makes securing a computer running it almost impossible.
"Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action," emphasised Chilton, "and not in any way out of twenty-five years' bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery."
Chilton stressed that members of the US military must begin to think of their computers as the front lines. "Do you realize that in addition to adding Windows to computers, why, there are studies underway to Windowsize salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream! I can no longer sit back and allow Windows infiltration, Windows indoctrination, Windows subversion and the international enterprise licensing conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!"
The Obama administration is currently reviewing the United States' cyberspace defense policy. "We're considering all options thoroughly," said the President, closing his MacBook and looking lingeringly at the red button on his desk.
"Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action," emphasised Chilton, "and not in any way out of twenty-five years' bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery."
No CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER OS for OUR boys! They know the MILITARY MIGHT of VISTA is what the world needs! FREEDOM ISN'T FREE and VISTA IS FREEDOOM!
Join SAVE VISTA on Facebook! (Original blog post.) We want ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE to tell Microsoft to abandon their Windows 7 foolishness and go back to Vista! We have 89 so far. Only 99,911 to go!
Like Chrysler, like Hummer, like Edsel - "Vista" is a name that will be remembered as the greatest operating system in Microsoft's history.
The long-awaited sequel Ghostbusters III is in preproduction, said the dribbling ass of Dan Aykroyd's career.
"All the original cast have signed back up," said Aykroyd. "Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson and of course Bill Murray.... When I say signed up, I don't mean on paper, in any committed sense. But, you know. They've 'signed up,'" he said, making air quotes.
"Bill was a little reluctant. Something about 'rather drink crossed streams of my own piss.' But a few dumptrucks full of cash backed up to his house should see him fully committed. Hopefully."
Murray, who owns a controlling interest in the franchise, has thrown out Aykroyd's original script, insisting one by Charlie Kaufman be used instead, in which failed parapsychologists in their sixties chasing emotion-absorbing slime controlled by the Sumerian god of destruction through the existential caverns of their own minds as they attempt to reconstruct their lives and careers. And fail.
"This is the best and most original idea in Hollywood this year," said Aykroyd. "It'll leave Blues Brothers 2000 in the dust."
Some of it's worth it. Some of it, you're paying for service and components (e.g. on generic x86 servers). The crappy KVM switches and crappy dongles, all true.
There is indeed: it's called the Wall Street Journal. Whose editorials smoke crack, but whose news reporting is firmly reality-based. And people pay for that.
Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. "How can we hold governments' feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?"
Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.
Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.
"We have to educate people that free doesn't work, particularly for us," said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. "I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis -- HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! -- so we'll see if we can make that one fly too."
Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its "fair share" for so parasitically leading people to newspapers' websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. "We feel this is completely unfair," said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, "as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss." Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.
Slashdot Mirror
My work laptop dual-boots XP and Ubuntu. Doing the same things (Firefox, SSH sessions, music playing) on the same hardware is noticeably slower on XP and the battery lasts about an hour less. I blame the antivirus. Windows without an antivirus runs at full speed, Windows with an antivirus is as crippled as would be expected by running a watchdog program filtering literally every byte written to or from the disk or network.
Build 7000 (beta) was notably faster and slimmer than Build 7100 (RC) when we tried it here - 7000 was highly responsive and usable in 512MB, 7100 thrashes and is slow in 1GB. We were horrified. So forget 7000's admirable speed - it appears the RC was compiled with -fsuck-like-a-dyson-on-steroids enabled.
Because the entire article is basically a press release for Windows 7. They compare it to something they know sucks, because they know it wouldn't look nearly as good compared to the thing (XP) people are actually running now.
This morning, our dear leader Steve Ballmer is unveiling our completely new search service, unrelated to anything we at Microsoft have ever done before: Bob Hope.
We spent lots of time listening to you, except when you told us how much MSN Search^W Live Search^W Kumo sucked ’cause you're just wrong about that, to learn which buzzwordy Web 2.0 thingies you use search for today. Finding a webpage that has anything to do with the search terms you entered is so passé, dahling.
So today we're introducing a new kind of search, that goes beyond traditional search engines that do tedious things like find stuff, to instead help you make faster, more informed decisions. (Windows 7 is peachy keen, by the way.) We think of Bob Hope as a Decision Engine. We've sued Stephen Wolfram into atomic dust using our patents on FAT and Mono, co-opted the Wolfram Alpha engine and swapped Mathematica for Visual Basic and Wolfram's brain for the exhumed corpse of Bob Hope.
So why did we pick Bob Hope as the new brand name? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product: optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world.
And just look at these results!
What do we want?
Braaains.
When do we want them?
Braaains.
What do I need to run Windows 7?
Braaains.
What's Bill Gates got that means you should buy everything you can from the company he founded?
Braaains.
What's the final proof of Steve Ballmer's equal genius to Steve Jobs?
Vistaaa.
This is something new, something improved! You need to try it! It'll give so much more betterer results than that other search engine we can't name because Steve will wedge another chair up our butts! Please, come and try our new and improved service! FOR GOD'S SAKE TRY THE DAMN SERVICE. OR THE PUPPY GETS IT. We're Microsoft. We're serious as a heart attack on this one.
Annual reports from Whitehall departments show that the government has lost all data it ever held on anyone.
Losses have occurred through couriered unencrypted disks, misplaced memory sticks, lost laptops, briefcases left on trains and files falling down the side of the tea machine. "The real scandal is that a train was running for them to lose a case on," said a source whose name has been lost.
Treasury minister Jane Kennedy said the HM Revenue and Customs breaches did not necessarily result in data losses, or at least any that they have records of. HMRC said it takes data losses and security breaches "very seriously" and thoroughly investigates any breach that it does not lose track of.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has served enforcement notices on various departments for their data losses, but the departments in question could not find their office addresses to accept the notices. They noted, however, that Mr Thomas' call was very important to them, and that he had been placed in a queue.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reassured citizens that plans for an all-encompassing ID card linked to biometric passports and a universal medical record with the NHS would not change because of these losses. "We won't even be thinking about them."
The only reason for Windows is to run 20 years of old applications. They tried deprecating stuff with Vista and it didn't get them very far. They've even put xp inside Windows 7 to fight off Wine being better with many old apps than Vista/7.
In practice, step 2. involves sending the request off to the developers where it never gets actioned, ever.
John Wayne. You quite sure you wanna do that?
Obviously we need an entropy generation program that feeds it the input from simulated mouse waggling. We can use /dev/urandom as the input! Of course, we have to take care to make it more randomer.
XP, however, is a no-longer-moving target. Useful, that.
US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.
"I don't think you take anything off the table. We're particularly looking toward one group in Seattle."
The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or indeed to take complete control of the computer and use it for their own ends as part of a massive "botnet" to mount further attacks. The malware, "Windows," makes securing a computer running it almost impossible.
"Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action," emphasised Chilton, "and not in any way out of twenty-five years' bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery."
Chilton stressed that members of the US military must begin to think of their computers as the front lines. "Do you realize that in addition to adding Windows to computers, why, there are studies underway to Windowsize salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk ... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream! I can no longer sit back and allow Windows infiltration, Windows indoctrination, Windows subversion and the international enterprise licensing conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!"
The Obama administration is currently reviewing the United States' cyberspace defense policy. "We're considering all options thoroughly," said the President, closing his MacBook and looking lingeringly at the red button on his desk.
I'm sure the Army can retaliate appropriately.
"Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action," emphasised Chilton, "and not in any way out of twenty-five years' bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery."
No CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER OS for OUR boys! They know the MILITARY MIGHT of VISTA is what the world needs! FREEDOM ISN'T FREE and VISTA IS FREEDOOM!
Join SAVE VISTA on Facebook! (Original blog post.) We want ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE to tell Microsoft to abandon their Windows 7 foolishness and go back to Vista! We have 89 so far. Only 99,911 to go!
Like Chrysler, like Hummer, like Edsel - "Vista" is a name that will be remembered as the greatest operating system in Microsoft's history.
Just Say "No" To Seven -
SAVE VISTA!
The long-awaited sequel Ghostbusters III is in preproduction, said the dribbling ass of Dan Aykroyd's career.
"All the original cast have signed back up," said Aykroyd. "Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson and of course Bill Murray. ... When I say signed up, I don't mean on paper, in any committed sense. But, you know. They've 'signed up,'" he said, making air quotes.
"Bill was a little reluctant. Something about 'rather drink crossed streams of my own piss.' But a few dumptrucks full of cash backed up to his house should see him fully committed. Hopefully."
Murray, who owns a controlling interest in the franchise, has thrown out Aykroyd's original script, insisting one by Charlie Kaufman be used instead, in which failed parapsychologists in their sixties chasing emotion-absorbing slime controlled by the Sumerian god of destruction through the existential caverns of their own minds as they attempt to reconstruct their lives and careers. And fail.
"This is the best and most original idea in Hollywood this year," said Aykroyd. "It'll leave Blues Brothers 2000 in the dust."
Basically as it became increasingly clear how much the GFDL sucked in practice as a wiki licence.
RMS's opinion on the change.
RMS actually thinks it's a good idea :-)
RMS thinks it's a good idea.
Some of it's worth it. Some of it, you're paying for service and components (e.g. on generic x86 servers). The crappy KVM switches and crappy dongles, all true.
There is indeed: it's called the Wall Street Journal. Whose editorials smoke crack, but whose news reporting is firmly reality-based. And people pay for that.
The great thing is that the Metro is taking out the Sun. If you're pushing complete fluff , free is the right price point.
Not to mention the massive bill that must be on the way from the Wikimedia Foundation. That'll solve the fundraising problem this year.
Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. "How can we hold governments' feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?"
Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.
Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.
"We have to educate people that free doesn't work, particularly for us," said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. "I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis -- HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! -- so we'll see if we can make that one fly too."
Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its "fair share" for so parasitically leading people to newspapers' websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. "We feel this is completely unfair," said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, "as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss ." Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.
Or get a Firefox 3.5 beta.
Remember BT's catchphrase: "At least we're better than Virgin."