Making the IT folk out to be bogeymen is great business for security pros. I'm sure there are some idiots out there, but most IT people are normal honest people like anybody in any other profession. I don't buy that we are so far off the curve, 81% is bullcrap and makes me question everything about that company and it's motivations and methods for the survey.
I used to work tech support years ago. People could create accounts thru an automated process. One thing they had to create was a verification phrase (not their passcode!!) which would be used if they call us at tech support. Without it, I saw nothing of their info.
Best Verification Phrase ever encountered :
"umm do I have to say it?"
"Yes ma'am, I have to enter that phrase into the system before I can access your account."
My bank - in Canada - has a selection of pictures , one of them I chose to be the identifying pic on my account. If I don't see that when I log in to my online banking, then I'm not to trust the website. This is because there were some legislative changes involving security of personal information recently. Places like banks are now required to have two layers of authentication and identification.
Peace, Order and Good Govt. - That's how our Charter of Rights reads.
Not Life, Liberty and Pursuit of happiness as the United States has in their Constitution.
This leads to critical differences in how our countries work. One thing that gets reinforced consistently in Canada is our right to PRIVACY. Perhaps that's the good govt bit, or the peace and order. I don't know, but what I do know is that our laws are much harsher for privacy breaches.
The Canadian Govt is required to follow those laws and where the laws aren't clear to err on the side of Privacy.
The OP obviously doesn't get the idea of the Govt serving the people, as opposed to allowing a free for all trampling of peoples rights and interests. I would suspect that the OP isn't Canadian himself
- I do note however that he's willing to make snarky useless commentary on an important issue about identity - without revealing his own.
I love his attention to detail, (those little *stars*) just wonderful.
Shame he clearly doesn't know what website he's on.
The tone is extremely uncivilized. It's just not something that an even moderately serious site should post. If this continues, it *will* reduce the respect people have for this site, no matter how right the reviewer is.
"Reduce respect for Slashdot" - omfg that's sweet.
Wasn't a lot of content above, and I suspect in this community we all have gems of emails from the past - one a friend showed me yesterday went something like this:
Cutsie nickname for Tech Support guy,
I'm not sure who the 'lusers' are, but that language may not be right for a mail list that has x senior person and y manager on it. Just a thought to help you along.
Toodles
Cutsie nickname for coworker
Wow, you are awful gumpy for a person who isn't trolling.
Just wandering into a room and loudly proclaiming that everybody is talking about something unimportant isn't trolling. I mean, certainly it's harder than just staying out of the room and keeping your mouth shut. But I'm sure it's not trolling, just look at the definition you've provided. Seriously, everybody engaged in this conversation really needs to understand that you don't care, and weren't trolling.
And to think it only took 3, or is it 4 posts for you to demonstrate this. But not in a trolling way, of course.
Who cares what response you get, because it's certainly undeserved, eh?
yeah Mediawiki software has known issues with editing large files - more to do with the web browsers then with any failing on Mediawiki's part.
Beyond that installing Mediawiki as a solution to this problems seems like a lot more overhead and extra work than is needed. Mediawiki is a collection of scripts and a SQL database. Unless you really want *those* particular Scripts and Database, it's probably easier to do what has already been suggested and just use a simple SVN solution or database.
well I called you a liar, so maybe you can insinuate I'm a douche bag.
However now I think you're just a sucker.
Here next time you move to Quebec talk to these folks about access to insurance and what is legally required, not just imposed by a particular company to screw with you.
Liar.
If anything Quebec is just catching up on GPS laws. For a period of time it was illegal to have a GPS display in your car because it was too similar to a dashboard TV (against the law). 28$ ticket!!!
There is no Government / Insurance company conspiracy to track the populace of French Canada. No mandatory GPS from "le FrÃre Grand" Tell your lies somewhere else.
That bit in the summary about a 'huge' moon like ours and it being a once in a universe event is garbage/FUD added to the real story about an asteroid/small body 's collision with Mars.
People used to believe the world was flat but we don't need to throw that crap into every story about mapping or GPS.
IF you RTFA then you'll find no mention of some freaking 'Huge' moon being necessary to life. I suspect whoever wrote the Slashdot summary read too much Issac Asimov from the 60's, and wanted to seem 'SMRT'.
Check it out here
Well the newsworthyness is lower for the Canadians who have been dealing with hyper-aggressive Americans since 2001. There were a number of obvious abuses of power that clued Canada in quick.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26684res20060906.html
and most of those were just against other Americans by their own government.
If they treat their own citizens like that, why would we expect them to respect the rights of another nations citizens. Particularly over things like privacy which has been long protected to a higher standard in Canada than the US.
The inability for random people to call themselves software engineers in Canada is because the Real Engineers objected to the proliferation of people with MCSE's and the the like doing a discredit to the standards of the profession, both in terms of training and work results.
So go to university for 4 or so years and you'll get the respect you crave. And the nifty IRON ring, much sexier then token ring any day.
I hate to ruin the cool stat that you posted of the US never losing WTO cases before Bush, but, well, by some counts the US has lost more then 40 cases before the WTO out of almost 90.
I didn't realize that number was so high, but as a Canadian I could think of a couple of cases that didn't go so well for you guys (not that you haven't taken it to us as well).
Relax, you're looking at just a little bit of debate/negotiation tactics. There are a few things going on here:
1. It's not a good idea to make available images of currency - especially high resolution images - which this campaign is doing with their pictures of the penny. The Mint/Bank of Canada have a number of tools to control what images are distributed and copyright/trademark infringement is just the first tool. This is just the penny after all, not Toonies or not 50$ bills.
2. Everybody wants a piece of the GST, it's an ugly issue. The municipalities didn't properly cover their asterisks when they launched this campaign, despite have communication with the mint before the launch. It's no surprise that the gov swings the hammer left too them. Hitting the campaign in the pocketbook, while dirty, is still part of the game.
3. The Canadian Mint is actually a business. They make currency for other countries, and until recently had an edge of the world in the technology used to mint coins. Now they are losing business to upgraded mints in Europe and elsewhere, but that doesn't make them any less concerned with profits and intellectual property.
I suspect this case is politically motivated, but I don't mind the mint cracking down on the use of Canadian Currency IP. Money/Currency is too important to allow random muddying of it's image and IP. There's a reason you don't photocopy money, or scan it, or draw Mr. Spock on 5$ bills - it's not some random meme but an Instrument of Trade. Even the littlest penny.
I think people are getting tired of defending Vista. There's a lot of emotion tied into the great OS debate. I'm personally very happy with my Vista box, I will admit to cursing and b*tching for a few weeks, but now I've hunted down and killed everything that was annoying me. My laptop is still secure and safe(I hope), and runs faster then it did out of the box.
To be honest it doesn't matter what happens with Vista and XP, I think big things are going to happen in the OS world soon(within 10years). The GUI desktop is a 20-30 year old idea and is now really beaten to death. Eye candy isn't the solution. New interfaces, speech, gestural, intuitive, multiple access locations and methods, follow-me computing, this is where the user experience is going and the OS's will follow.
I said: Free unlimited energy, it's out there too, in the form of solar energy
You said: Free unlimited energy. The principles of physics regarding conservation of energy, among other things, dictate that there is no such thing. Besides, I'm not sure what planet you are on, but Earth is floating around in this same universe that you believe is filled with "free energy" yet we still pay.
Now, now, you know that I put a comma after "unlimited energy," not a period as it appeared in your quote. I'm not trying to break the conservation of energy laws, the rest of that sentence points out that I'm referring to the potential of solar power generation in space. Using Light from the Sun that we don't have to pay the Sun God for. Yes the equipment costs money to produce and use, but the end result is that the energy that could be produced would outweigh the costs of the equipment, resulting in 'free energy' . Unlimited in the sense that as long as we orbit the sun it's going to be putting out energy that can be utilized. It's the kind of project that could use funding, and could have used it 20 years ago. - look here for info on where this tech sits today.
To people interested in Space the ISS is a shadow of what should be going on in orbit, a very expensive shadow. I love the space station, it's really cool, but seriously it's got mold issues, people have been trapped up there because the shuttle program can not provide reliable service, and the ISS required enormous maintenance efforts - principally EVA in nature. More investment in the ISS doesn't necessarily mean matching benefits from the investment. A lot of criticism of the US space program has been it's focus on big ticket items that yield little or no return and consume all of the shrinking NASA budgets, like the ISS.
The people are not the Gov't, sorry buddy, but that's just not the case. The gov't is selected by the people (from the people, for the people) - and even then only a small percentage, the rest are actually embedded in the bureaucracy which has it's own inertia beyond that of the people's will.
For the people to be the Gov't and by extension NASA would actually require a system where everybody had access to information and a share of the decisions that were made. Even if you ignore that and say that the current system is enough to make the People the Gov't - well the gov't has still consistently lied, deprioritized, and mismanaged monies and power given to it by the people.
I'm talking about promises to invest in space research that result in massive clawbacks of NASA programs, I'm talking about more then the past 7 years but a more the 30 year history of this following the Apollo program.
Nothing there? Well, there's a lot more up there then here, as much as the Earth is the centre of our universe, it's a very small centre. Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, metals, all out there in comets, asteroids, moons and even planets, and these are the basic products of our industry. Free unlimited energy, it's out there too, in the form of solar energy that could be used to power our world. Life? Crazy, but I really hope we aren't the only ones around and there really is only one way to find out. Room, yeah they call it space for a reason, it's got lots of room, which we can use for manufacturing and science that is impractical or not safe to conduct on Earth. This is from the ground looking up, imagine the possibilities that could be envisioned if we actually were up there.
No the point of the Article isn't that space is useless, it's instead that other people are going to be using space while the US stays on the sidelines, and in my mind I blame the Team Management, not the Fans.
FTA: "So I think we'll be reinstructed in that lesson in the coming years and I hope that Americans will take that instruction positively and react to it by investing in those things that are the leading edge of what's possible."
I do not believe the American public is responsible for the current state of the US space program.
Billion dollar Boondoggles, gross incompetence, mismanagement, lack of Gov't funding, and political posturing.
These are the things that have brought the US space program to ground. The public (I believe) has never lost faith, or given up the dream, however their Gov't did. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin shouldn't be saying that "China is going to beat the US, and the public is going to have to learn and invest better".
He should instead be saying: "I'm sorry that we failed you. I'm sorry that we haven't done a better job with the budgets and responsibilities that we were given." He should be praising companies like Google, or the X-Prize foundation for picking up the ball that the US gov't and NASA dropped.
Yup, my Vista is in it's classic mode equivalent, other then some minor diffs in the start menu and radical diffs in the control panel , both computers look the same, 1 w/xp 1w/vista, both with classic appearance. Nothing runs, or pops up or bugs me on my computer unless I want it to do so. And don't get me started on menus that hide things from you, that stuff does not go on around my computer. Ugh, when they started dumbing the OS down by covering up useful controls with layers and layers of user friendly sappiness I agree was kinda a jump the shark moment on OS interface design.
There is a project out there building a free NT system, kinda built on the basic foundation of NT from a design point of view, goal is to have driver compatibility. That would be nice if it was further along, it's still in a very pre beta state - missing lots of stuff still.
I believe Vista has the edge on XP, but an edge that won't really show up for another few years. This is stuff that could probably be updated into XP but patching on top of patching is a complex way to manage an OS. (And if windows patched/updated as clean as linux patches and updates I wouldn't say that, you can run a linux box for years replacing every file eventually.)
I'll also say I only got Vista because it came with the laptop new, I have specifically recommended to my friends not to upgrade their computers to Vista unless they buy some major manufactured system that comes pre-installed, otherwise keep the XP and just add more RAM (my number one upgrade suggestion). It's not past SP1 yet, and to get it running nicely on my machine took a chunk of time and configuration that most people aren't into. But it does run nicely, so there's hope for anyone who is stuck with it instead of XP.
To provide context: the only MS software running on my laptop is Vista. The rest is the usuals of FF, OO, TB, etc.
I had people over this past weekend and they used my laptop for quite while, gaming, watching videos on the TV, music, surfing. No warnings, crashes, slowdowns or other issues. Later when talking about it, they asked if I'd used Vista yet?, and why I didn't get it for the laptop, was I worried about all the problems people were having with it? One of them even had a horror story about half his office switching and the nightmare that followed. I actually had to show them system properties to convince them it was Vista on my laptop.
I've never been into the windows eye candy, but it's always nice to have a machine around where things just work, plug in something and it works, bam, install xyz program and it works, sweet, and sadly for that kind of behaviour I've come to rely on MS products. And I know many things don't work perfectly for windows, and with Macs there are a number of beautifully integrated products, but I'm cheap.
The reason I got Vista - I got tired of updating my *cough* XP , I was starting to worry that I'd have trouble applying security patches, etc as my windows update doesn't function *cough* , Finding and deploying patches was getting more annoying to manage. So when I went for a new laptop the cost was low enough after rebates that I didn't feel the pain of paying for the Vista licence that came with it.
Fact is after a gigzillion patches I wonder how different XP is from Vista, and if those differences actually mean greater stability for one over the other. There are a few things, like DirectX10, that are also gonna be Vista only. This happens every few years with the MS OS, and yes each one is worse then the last - at least out of the box - but again with enough tweaking you usually can get your MS OS to be pretty stable and functional. That's more then turning off EYE Candy (which really isn't the only change they make in the OS from version to version) , it also includes finding and killing innumerable services that aren't necessary/used, and even sometimes choosing the right software to run, some programs make your windows experience worse. As counter as that is to my 'stuff just works' statement - stuff works, pretty much everytime, just somethings work better then others. Clever windows users pay attention to that, and others don't care because it still works and they're blinded by the Eye candy.
Slashdot Mirror
"According to identity management firm Cyber-Ark's annual 'Trust, Security & Passwords'"
Making the IT folk out to be bogeymen is great business for security pros. I'm sure there are some idiots out there, but most IT people are normal honest people like anybody in any other profession. I don't buy that we are so far off the curve, 81% is bullcrap and makes me question everything about that company and it's motivations and methods for the survey.
Best Verification Phrase ever encountered : "umm do I have to say it?"
"Yes ma'am, I have to enter that phrase into the system before I can access your account."
"Stick it in my A**"
My bank - in Canada - has a selection of pictures , one of them I chose to be the identifying pic on my account. If I don't see that when I log in to my online banking, then I'm not to trust the website. This is because there were some legislative changes involving security of personal information recently. Places like banks are now required to have two layers of authentication and identification.
Not Life, Liberty and Pursuit of happiness as the United States has in their Constitution.
This leads to critical differences in how our countries work. One thing that gets reinforced consistently in Canada is our right to PRIVACY. Perhaps that's the good govt bit, or the peace and order. I don't know, but what I do know is that our laws are much harsher for privacy breaches.
The Canadian Govt is required to follow those laws and where the laws aren't clear to err on the side of Privacy.
The OP obviously doesn't get the idea of the Govt serving the people, as opposed to allowing a free for all trampling of peoples rights and interests. I would suspect that the OP isn't Canadian himself
- I do note however that he's willing to make snarky useless commentary on an important issue about identity - without revealing his own.
I love his attention to detail, (those little *stars*) just wonderful.
Shame he clearly doesn't know what website he's on.
The tone is extremely uncivilized. It's just not something that an even moderately serious site should post. If this continues, it *will* reduce the respect people have for this site, no matter how right the reviewer is.
"Reduce respect for Slashdot" - omfg that's sweet.
Cutsie nickname for Tech Support guy,
I'm not sure who the 'lusers' are, but that language may not be right for a mail list that has x senior person and y manager on it. Just a thought to help you along.
Toodles
Cutsie nickname for coworker
Wow, you are awful gumpy for a person who isn't trolling.
Just wandering into a room and loudly proclaiming that everybody is talking about something unimportant isn't trolling. I mean, certainly it's harder than just staying out of the room and keeping your mouth shut. But I'm sure it's not trolling, just look at the definition you've provided. Seriously, everybody engaged in this conversation really needs to understand that you don't care, and weren't trolling.
And to think it only took 3, or is it 4 posts for you to demonstrate this. But not in a trolling way, of course.
Who cares what response you get, because it's certainly undeserved, eh?
yeah Mediawiki software has known issues with editing large files - more to do with the web browsers then with any failing on Mediawiki's part. Beyond that installing Mediawiki as a solution to this problems seems like a lot more overhead and extra work than is needed. Mediawiki is a collection of scripts and a SQL database. Unless you really want *those* particular Scripts and Database, it's probably easier to do what has already been suggested and just use a simple SVN solution or database.
However now I think you're just a sucker.
Here next time you move to Quebec talk to these folks about access to insurance and what is legally required, not just imposed by a particular company to screw with you.
http://www.ibc.ca/en/Car_Insurance/Buying_Renewing_Car_Insurance/Control_Cost.asp
Not legally required, sorry.
There is no Government / Insurance company conspiracy to track the populace of French Canada. No mandatory GPS from "le FrÃre Grand" Tell your lies somewhere else.
That bit in the summary about a 'huge' moon like ours and it being a once in a universe event is garbage/FUD added to the real story about an asteroid/small body 's collision with Mars.
People used to believe the world was flat but we don't need to throw that crap into every story about mapping or GPS.
IF you RTFA then you'll find no mention of some freaking 'Huge' moon being necessary to life. I suspect whoever wrote the Slashdot summary read too much Issac Asimov from the 60's, and wanted to seem 'SMRT'.
Check it out here
Well the newsworthyness is lower for the Canadians who have been dealing with hyper-aggressive Americans since 2001. There were a number of obvious abuses of power that clued Canada in quick.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26684res20060906.html
and most of those were just against other Americans by their own government.
If they treat their own citizens like that, why would we expect them to respect the rights of another nations citizens. Particularly over things like privacy which has been long protected to a higher standard in Canada than the US.
agreed
The inability for random people to call themselves software engineers in Canada is because the Real Engineers objected to the proliferation of people with MCSE's and the the like doing a discredit to the standards of the profession, both in terms of training and work results.
So go to university for 4 or so years and you'll get the respect you crave. And the nifty IRON ring, much sexier then token ring any day.
I hate to ruin the cool stat that you posted of the US never losing WTO cases before Bush, but, well, by some counts the US has lost more then 40 cases before the WTO out of almost 90.
Here is some more information on this http://benmuse.typepad.com/ben_muse/2007/09/how-is-the-us-d.html
or the source (warning PDF) from the US gov't rather then a random blog:
http://www.ustr.gov/assets/Trade_Agreements/Monitoring_Enforcement/Dispute_Settlement/WTO/asset_upload_file811_5696.pdf.
I didn't realize that number was so high, but as a Canadian I could think of a couple of cases that didn't go so well for you guys (not that you haven't taken it to us as well).
It's an old troll, just updated for Vista, gods people.
This thing is almost ten years old.
1. It's not a good idea to make available images of currency - especially high resolution images - which this campaign is doing with their pictures of the penny. The Mint/Bank of Canada have a number of tools to control what images are distributed and copyright/trademark infringement is just the first tool. This is just the penny after all, not Toonies or not 50$ bills.
2. Everybody wants a piece of the GST, it's an ugly issue. The municipalities didn't properly cover their asterisks when they launched this campaign, despite have communication with the mint before the launch. It's no surprise that the gov swings the hammer left too them. Hitting the campaign in the pocketbook, while dirty, is still part of the game.
3. The Canadian Mint is actually a business. They make currency for other countries, and until recently had an edge of the world in the technology used to mint coins. Now they are losing business to upgraded mints in Europe and elsewhere, but that doesn't make them any less concerned with profits and intellectual property.
I suspect this case is politically motivated, but I don't mind the mint cracking down on the use of Canadian Currency IP. Money/Currency is too important to allow random muddying of it's image and IP. There's a reason you don't photocopy money, or scan it, or draw Mr. Spock on 5$ bills - it's not some random meme but an Instrument of Trade. Even the littlest penny.
Actually I would, if anything, reverse the criticism because unlike on a Linux box, it is hard to get at the internals of a Windows system.
So oddly enough I think I agree with with your sarcastic sentiment.
To be honest it doesn't matter what happens with Vista and XP, I think big things are going to happen in the OS world soon(within 10years). The GUI desktop is a 20-30 year old idea and is now really beaten to death. Eye candy isn't the solution. New interfaces, speech, gestural, intuitive, multiple access locations and methods, follow-me computing, this is where the user experience is going and the OS's will follow.
You said: Free unlimited energy. The principles of physics regarding conservation of energy, among other things, dictate that there is no such thing. Besides, I'm not sure what planet you are on, but Earth is floating around in this same universe that you believe is filled with "free energy" yet we still pay.
Now, now, you know that I put a comma after "unlimited energy," not a period as it appeared in your quote. I'm not trying to break the conservation of energy laws, the rest of that sentence points out that I'm referring to the potential of solar power generation in space. Using Light from the Sun that we don't have to pay the Sun God for. Yes the equipment costs money to produce and use, but the end result is that the energy that could be produced would outweigh the costs of the equipment, resulting in 'free energy' . Unlimited in the sense that as long as we orbit the sun it's going to be putting out energy that can be utilized. It's the kind of project that could use funding, and could have used it 20 years ago. - look here for info on where this tech sits today.
To people interested in Space the ISS is a shadow of what should be going on in orbit, a very expensive shadow. I love the space station, it's really cool, but seriously it's got mold issues, people have been trapped up there because the shuttle program can not provide reliable service, and the ISS required enormous maintenance efforts - principally EVA in nature. More investment in the ISS doesn't necessarily mean matching benefits from the investment. A lot of criticism of the US space program has been it's focus on big ticket items that yield little or no return and consume all of the shrinking NASA budgets, like the ISS.
For the people to be the Gov't and by extension NASA would actually require a system where everybody had access to information and a share of the decisions that were made. Even if you ignore that and say that the current system is enough to make the People the Gov't - well the gov't has still consistently lied, deprioritized, and mismanaged monies and power given to it by the people.
I'm talking about promises to invest in space research that result in massive clawbacks of NASA programs, I'm talking about more then the past 7 years but a more the 30 year history of this following the Apollo program.
Nothing there? Well, there's a lot more up there then here, as much as the Earth is the centre of our universe, it's a very small centre. Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, metals, all out there in comets, asteroids, moons and even planets, and these are the basic products of our industry. Free unlimited energy, it's out there too, in the form of solar energy that could be used to power our world. Life? Crazy, but I really hope we aren't the only ones around and there really is only one way to find out. Room, yeah they call it space for a reason, it's got lots of room, which we can use for manufacturing and science that is impractical or not safe to conduct on Earth. This is from the ground looking up, imagine the possibilities that could be envisioned if we actually were up there.
No the point of the Article isn't that space is useless, it's instead that other people are going to be using space while the US stays on the sidelines, and in my mind I blame the Team Management, not the Fans.
I do not believe the American public is responsible for the current state of the US space program.
Billion dollar Boondoggles, gross incompetence, mismanagement, lack of Gov't funding, and political posturing.
These are the things that have brought the US space program to ground. The public (I believe) has never lost faith, or given up the dream, however their Gov't did. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin shouldn't be saying that "China is going to beat the US, and the public is going to have to learn and invest better".
He should instead be saying: "I'm sorry that we failed you. I'm sorry that we haven't done a better job with the budgets and responsibilities that we were given." He should be praising companies like Google, or the X-Prize foundation for picking up the ball that the US gov't and NASA dropped.
There is a project out there building a free NT system, kinda built on the basic foundation of NT from a design point of view, goal is to have driver compatibility. That would be nice if it was further along, it's still in a very pre beta state - missing lots of stuff still.
I believe Vista has the edge on XP, but an edge that won't really show up for another few years. This is stuff that could probably be updated into XP but patching on top of patching is a complex way to manage an OS. (And if windows patched/updated as clean as linux patches and updates I wouldn't say that, you can run a linux box for years replacing every file eventually.)
I'll also say I only got Vista because it came with the laptop new, I have specifically recommended to my friends not to upgrade their computers to Vista unless they buy some major manufactured system that comes pre-installed, otherwise keep the XP and just add more RAM (my number one upgrade suggestion). It's not past SP1 yet, and to get it running nicely on my machine took a chunk of time and configuration that most people aren't into. But it does run nicely, so there's hope for anyone who is stuck with it instead of XP.
I had people over this past weekend and they used my laptop for quite while, gaming, watching videos on the TV, music, surfing. No warnings, crashes, slowdowns or other issues. Later when talking about it, they asked if I'd used Vista yet?, and why I didn't get it for the laptop, was I worried about all the problems people were having with it?
One of them even had a horror story about half his office switching and the nightmare that followed.
I actually had to show them system properties to convince them it was Vista on my laptop.
The reason I got Vista - I got tired of updating my *cough* XP , I was starting to worry that I'd have trouble applying security patches, etc as my windows update doesn't function *cough* , Finding and deploying patches was getting more annoying to manage. So when I went for a new laptop the cost was low enough after rebates that I didn't feel the pain of paying for the Vista licence that came with it.
Fact is after a gigzillion patches I wonder how different XP is from Vista, and if those differences actually mean greater stability for one over the other. There are a few things, like DirectX10, that are also gonna be Vista only. This happens every few years with the MS OS, and yes each one is worse then the last - at least out of the box - but again with enough tweaking you usually can get your MS OS to be pretty stable and functional. That's more then turning off EYE Candy (which really isn't the only change they make in the OS from version to version) , it also includes finding and killing innumerable services that aren't necessary/used, and even sometimes choosing the right software to run, some programs make your windows experience worse. As counter as that is to my 'stuff just works' statement - stuff works, pretty much everytime, just somethings work better then others. Clever windows users pay attention to that, and others don't care because it still works and they're blinded by the Eye candy.