I'd be curious to see how they handle the back end, especially as some others pointed out it does make calls that seemingly require some hook into the OS. As for its usefulness, I doubt it will really take off beyond being a decent prototype. It relies on image matching so if you use and change a custom icon set all your scripts would be kinda worthless. Same goes if the programs you are "screenshot scripting" receive a major overhaul in the GUI department. Until it can address those issues, I doubt it will really take off.
As a preface to my comment, IANAL. If you look at how states collect sales taxes from online sales, they can only "force" online companies that have a physical presence in their state to charge sales tax to residents of that state -- if the online business is outside the state, the most the state can do is require anyone who makes an online purchase to be a good citizen and report it to the revenue service and pay taxes on it. I think Massachusetts will run into the same situation, they will be able to enforce the laws on businesses that have a "presence" in Massachusetts but any business that does not have a presence will probably be exempt or could make a very strong legal case to be made exempt since they are not physically located in any way, shape, or form in Massachusetts.
but clueless users will write the password on a post it note, and probably burn a plaintext CD copy to leave lying around.
Government agencies will be worse.
Proving the saying: "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."
It does need to keep some back compatibility, but it'd be much better to use a virtual machine than add all of the code to the Windows 7 OS. Just look at Vista -- it's still supporting 16bit computing and that just adds to the bloat - how many of use actually run 16bit apps anymore?
The 64 bit OSes are capable of running 32bit apps natively, if my memory is serving me right, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think part of MS's problem is that they've hung onto all of this legacy support which has resulted in their OS growing in bloat with every release. The result is a huge OS with dubious performance and tons of extra code not everyone needs that is just taking up space.
I'd really like to see Windows 7 employ more efficient resource management and not require 40+ MS processes be running out of the box as found in Vista. That and a much lighter RAM footprint.
Native 64bit wouldn't be bad as well, I'd like to take advantage of my multiple cores without having to spend extra money for a buggy collection of code that isn't even "standard mainstream." 64bit is everywhere and rapidly taking over the market -- it's time for MS to get on the boat and start shipping a 64 bit product standard, no extra upgrade necessary.
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I'd be curious to see how they handle the back end, especially as some others pointed out it does make calls that seemingly require some hook into the OS. As for its usefulness, I doubt it will really take off beyond being a decent prototype. It relies on image matching so if you use and change a custom icon set all your scripts would be kinda worthless. Same goes if the programs you are "screenshot scripting" receive a major overhaul in the GUI department. Until it can address those issues, I doubt it will really take off.
As a preface to my comment, IANAL. If you look at how states collect sales taxes from online sales, they can only "force" online companies that have a physical presence in their state to charge sales tax to residents of that state -- if the online business is outside the state, the most the state can do is require anyone who makes an online purchase to be a good citizen and report it to the revenue service and pay taxes on it. I think Massachusetts will run into the same situation, they will be able to enforce the laws on businesses that have a "presence" in Massachusetts but any business that does not have a presence will probably be exempt or could make a very strong legal case to be made exempt since they are not physically located in any way, shape, or form in Massachusetts.
but clueless users will write the password on a post it note, and probably burn a plaintext CD copy to leave lying around. Government agencies will be worse.
Proving the saying: "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."
It does need to keep some back compatibility, but it'd be much better to use a virtual machine than add all of the code to the Windows 7 OS. Just look at Vista -- it's still supporting 16bit computing and that just adds to the bloat - how many of use actually run 16bit apps anymore? The 64 bit OSes are capable of running 32bit apps natively, if my memory is serving me right, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think part of MS's problem is that they've hung onto all of this legacy support which has resulted in their OS growing in bloat with every release. The result is a huge OS with dubious performance and tons of extra code not everyone needs that is just taking up space.
I'd really like to see Windows 7 employ more efficient resource management and not require 40+ MS processes be running out of the box as found in Vista. That and a much lighter RAM footprint. Native 64bit wouldn't be bad as well, I'd like to take advantage of my multiple cores without having to spend extra money for a buggy collection of code that isn't even "standard mainstream." 64bit is everywhere and rapidly taking over the market -- it's time for MS to get on the boat and start shipping a 64 bit product standard, no extra upgrade necessary.