The average computer user doesn't need multi-core systems and DDR3 RAM
Yes they do, or at least they'll need multi-core if they want to be able to watch hi-def video properly.
What people do with their computers might not be too amazing if you put it in words, but the content is part of the reason why people would be able to make use of such hardware. Sure a person can get by with a single core, 512 MB machine, but they'll miss out on a lot of the fun stuff now and into the future.
CliffyB and Marc Rein threatening developers with broken chairs? Tim Sweeny tackling people and holding them down for gang beatings?
Shhhh! Once Steve Balmer get's word that another company's been threatening people with chairs, he'll read that guy's blog and think the bit about holding developers down for gang beatings is not such a bad idea...
Everyone here keeps saying anti-virus is worthless, not even worth pirating. And yet, whenever I visit a school to perform IT support, the Sophos logs don't lie. I'm always seeing computers where students have tried using infected USB drives with autorun trojans, and of course the anti-virus stops them. That at the very least shows its worth (not Sophos, anti-virus in general, I'm not shrilling a particular company now). So what's the alternative? Educate the users and hope they won't bring infected drives to school? They either won't listen or won't understand the concepts. It's easier just to block known attack vectors via anti-virus.
Having said that, one of the school's my employer supports was recently infected with Conficker, with half the desktop machines infected. It was wiped out in the end, but it wasn't fun. No, we won't install Linux because then we wouldn't be able to run Windows Movie Maker, IE or the various education apps that simply don't exist for any other platform. That and the that no-one cares about Linux, at least in Australian IT.
I was at WWDC last year, and I went to a bar with a couple of friends. One of them posted where we were, and twenty minutes later we had a party with about a hundred people in attendance. Rather more convenient than looking up a bunch of people and calling them.
The typical geek probably doesn't socialize enough to warrant such an opportunity to use something like Twitter, so that's part of the reason why Slashdotters don't understand its appeal.
Conclusion - we look at it as above, differently to you. You seem to accept whatever Microsoft tells you, we look at the actual product and make our own decision. So someone who actually looks at the product is fussy in your book.
What?
I DID look at the actual product. I was disappointed with Vista when it first came out, but as it was patched and more software/drivers supported it properly, it's come to the point where it's surpassed XP in my opinion. The GUI performance in Vista is actually faster than Linux no matter how hard I try, and that's important to me. There's nothing keeping me to XP and nothing beneficial to Linux.
I'm as suspicious about Microsoft as the next techie, but Vista is a pleasure to use (moreso that Linux for the most part) and is far easier to use, and I'm seeing the same with Windows 7. Microsoft didn't fuck up - Linux users think they did. There's a difference from what I've seen.;)
Actually threads like this reinforce my plan to not become a grumpy old fart as I get older. I don't want to lose my grasp on pop culture and an appreciation for what the normal person likes, 'cos the geek life is very unfulfilling and stale at times. I like using tools like Facebook and at least knowing what Twitter is even if I don't use them.
Vista didn't change too much, it completely killed what Windows even was in the first place. Vista has to be the most god-awful piece of shit software i have ever seen in my entire life. It was as pointless as that twat from Betanews who wrote his own calculator application in.NET!
Windows was always known for consistency between versions. They decided to give the entire computer world the middle finger with Vista. The GUI was atrocious, it was like some kid drew it up in Paint. It wastes space everywhere, menus are terrible, the whole new (internet/) Explorer look is just nasty. These are only a handful of the complaints with what is wrong with Vista.
And instead of giving the world what they talked about for so long with Win7, it literally is a service pack to Vista. It has some bugfixes, a slightly different kernel, more efficient resource management, etc.
Oh boy i can't wait for -1 troll! Rate all you want, it is all true, none of this is opinion. Hell, even Bill hated Vista.
So why is this the general opinion of Slashdot patrons, whereas the general public and in particular Neowin patrons have an inverse opinion? Since you say there's no opinion, only true, does that make the Slashdot crowd correct or incorrect?
FYI - I use Vista 64-bit. Best version of Windows I've played with yet, although I expect Windows 7 to surpass it. Linux? They can't even get the friggin Intel graphics chipsets running at the same capacity as Windows have had for ages, so the GUI is sluggish.
It pisses me off that I won't get the Vista Service Pack (Windows 7) for free.
Interesting.
If Microsoft does something incremental (eg. 2000 -> XP, or Vista -> 7), people complain that too little has changed, that it's basically just a "service pack" which Microsoft is charging money for.
If Microsoft does something too radical (eg. XP -> Vista), people complain that too much has changed, that they should have just touched up XP a bit, given it a visual makeover and a few core updates and that would have been enough.
Conclusion - Microsoft can't win. At least with the fussy pricks on Slashdot.
You know those porn sites on that there Interwebz? Well guess what... each and every single one needs someone to at the very least maintain and run the sites, if not to adjust/crop/re-size/airbrush the material.
I remember reading the first-hand experiences of a guy hired to maintain such a site. The end result was that he found himself totally desensitized to the material, even the really hardcore stuff, to the point that porn had absolutely no thrill. So be aware of this if you every find the opportunity to check out porn on a daily basis.:)
As an extension author, I can sympathize with the NoScript authors: Firefox users are really stingy. Unless an extension is inherently intertwined with a business opportunity and not just a convenient stand-alone feature, working on a Firefox extension is a losing proposition, at least financially.
I beg your pardon?
The reason I started using extensions like Adblock Plus is because ads were so bad they were preventing my entire COMPUTER from working. The straw that broke the camel's back in my case was when I was trying to view artwork on Deviantart. They had these really badly coded Flash animations which took up 100% CPU on my (then) single-core desktop machine. It was IMPOSSIBLE to do anything - the entire machine was jamming up to the point where it took more than a minute for the task manager to appear when launched. This is bullshit - ads shouldn't do this, they shouldn't be so obnoxious.
My current machine is a bit more modern and would handle such ads, but it's the principle of the thing, and I don't see things getting any better. The only ads I can deal with are text-based, light image, non-flash/non-JS ads. If people only used these ads and were sensible about using them, then I wouldn't have been pushed into seeking out relief.
So stop painting us as stingy folk. Some of us just want to access the Internet without frustration.
I'm yet another person who installed IE 8 via Windows Update and it did NOT forcibly set itself as the default browser.
Seriously Slashdot, do you even bother to vet your troll articles anymore? Do you realize how embarrassingly pathetic this one significant site in the tech world has become?
It's peer pressure. We experience it when we're young and told to resist it, that resisting peer pressure would make us stronger, yet as adults it's fostered onto us by the tech community and media because if you don't own one, you're considered not "with it" for some reason.
The allure of the shiney and the pressure to conform to the expected tech standard is pushed hard against all of us.
I once loved Microsoft and all they did when it was still an exciting time... I know... but I speak the truth.
Offtopic: The funny thing is, you say this as if people used to be excited with what Microsoft had done but are tired of them now, but I believe this level of excitement with MS is cyclic. Go to a place like Neowin.net to see this in action. You might be tired of MS now, but the next generation of geeks seem to be excited with their products like Windows Live/Mesh, Windows 7, Office, etc. Maybe the golden years for Microsoft are back?
Heck I can't explain why they're so excited, but they are. As a side note, it does mean that if you hate Microsoft for valid reasons you can't bring them up at a place like Neowin though, cos people will immedaitely consider you a basher for popularity sake and a Linux lover who can't run Photoshop (not like they would be running legit copies either, but that's another topic). The inverse is true for this place of course. God I hate all tech sites these days. What am I doing here anyway?:)
* It's best to avoid illegal acts. If you don't like a law, work to change it.
How? By writing a letter to your local politician? Protesting? These actions do jack shit with regards to changing laws these days.
Corporations are winning the war against our rights. What else are we suppose to do about unjust laws?
The only alternative is to defy the laws. If enough people do so, then either the laws will be repealed, or there will be too many people breaking the law it'll be untenable to prosecute everyone.
Disclaimer: I'm a coward who only breaks laws I can get away with (eg. downloading stuff I shouldn't on torrent sites). I do it because the risk is low, at least for now. If the police actually went full-bore with dealing with downloaders, I'd stop immediately. I'm just talking about the ideal way to fight an unjust law.
Besides, what do you think is happening to all the current hardcore gamers? They don't just disappear, you know.
Actually, they do. I know this because myself and most of my previously-hardcore gamer friends are not gamers anymore, and if I'm going to be gaming it's only casual games these days. Why? Mostly out of necessity; I got older, and found my priorities for my time had changed. You just can't sink the time required to be a hardcore gamer anymore, unless you're young and/or don't have anything else to do in your life.
Do I miss it? Kinda, but mostly only due to nostalgia. I value the time I spend with my girlfriend far more than games, so it's a fair trade.:)
Intel graphics chipsets suffer from video tearing in Linux. They aren't properly vsynced so watching videos, from Flash to any other format, they'll all show tearing and are basically unwatchable. I don't care too much about 3D performance (even though they do run faster for a particular game in Windows than Linux), but I'd just LOVE to watch videos on my laptop without the fucking tearing!
My laptop was purchased in Janurary last year, and has an X3100 (GM965) chipset. Every single version of Linux I've tried using it has had substandard video playback, and they've all had various issues. In windows, it works perfectly. This problem has existed for ages and yet no-one's bothered to fix it. At this point it's finally occurred to me that the myth of Open Source being superior by providing rapid fixes of bugs is all a lie.
Unfortunately, Windows is a wasteland when it comes to open-source software. The best solution, if you have the choice, is to switch to ubuntu.
What are you talking about? Windows has Pidgin, OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, InkScape, Audacity etc. In many cases (and in particular Firefox's case), GUI performance is better in Windows. Audacity works flawlessly and doesn't have the issue of dealing with various sound subsystems and locked devices that I'm STILL experiencing in Linux.
Why would I move to a system that has even less software to choose from? Open Source is alive and well in Windows, and if an open source tool is not suitable for you, eh, big deal, use a commercial app if you can get hold of it. You can't say the same for Linux commercial apps (what few of them there are).
One more thing I forgot to mention - I switched from Acrobat to PDFCreator a while back. It's very good, and anything I render using PDFCreator works just fine with Foxit Reader. Also has the side benefit of being open source and an example of an actually GOOD open source product. Unfortunately this doesn't discount the fact that other people might use Acrobat to render THEIR PDFs, and I don't want to cut myself off from being able to view them.
This isn't FUD, this is based on my own experiences:
I've found that the latest Foxit Reader is unable to show certain PDFs, in particular those created using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. I created some PDFs in Acrobat 9 and when loaded into Foxit Reader 3.0, showed up entirely blank. The only way to view them was to put Adobe Reader on instead. So I did.
I'm not sure why Foxit showed these PDFs entirely blank. Maybe Acrobat 9 has a new version of the PDF standard that's incompatable, I don't know. What I do know is it means that if I want to gurantee the viewing of PDF files, I pretty much require Adobe products, which isn't that bad if you're using Reader 9 (much faster than version 8).
Possibly a vendor lock-in mechanism, but I'm tired of fighting. It's easier just to go with Adobe and get on with work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes they do, or at least they'll need multi-core if they want to be able to watch hi-def video properly.
What people do with their computers might not be too amazing if you put it in words, but the content is part of the reason why people would be able to make use of such hardware. Sure a person can get by with a single core, 512 MB machine, but they'll miss out on a lot of the fun stuff now and into the future.
Shhhh! Once Steve Balmer get's word that another company's been threatening people with chairs, he'll read that guy's blog and think the bit about holding developers down for gang beatings is not such a bad idea...
If I revers the polarity of my laptop's power connectors, will that give my laptop warp capability? I gotta try that!
Everyone here keeps saying anti-virus is worthless, not even worth pirating. And yet, whenever I visit a school to perform IT support, the Sophos logs don't lie. I'm always seeing computers where students have tried using infected USB drives with autorun trojans, and of course the anti-virus stops them. That at the very least shows its worth (not Sophos, anti-virus in general, I'm not shrilling a particular company now). So what's the alternative? Educate the users and hope they won't bring infected drives to school? They either won't listen or won't understand the concepts. It's easier just to block known attack vectors via anti-virus.
Having said that, one of the school's my employer supports was recently infected with Conficker, with half the desktop machines infected. It was wiped out in the end, but it wasn't fun. No, we won't install Linux because then we wouldn't be able to run Windows Movie Maker, IE or the various education apps that simply don't exist for any other platform. That and the that no-one cares about Linux, at least in Australian IT.
The typical geek probably doesn't socialize enough to warrant such an opportunity to use something like Twitter, so that's part of the reason why Slashdotters don't understand its appeal.
Slightly trollish, but accurate.
What?
I DID look at the actual product. I was disappointed with Vista when it first came out, but as it was patched and more software/drivers supported it properly, it's come to the point where it's surpassed XP in my opinion. The GUI performance in Vista is actually faster than Linux no matter how hard I try, and that's important to me. There's nothing keeping me to XP and nothing beneficial to Linux.
I'm as suspicious about Microsoft as the next techie, but Vista is a pleasure to use (moreso that Linux for the most part) and is far easier to use, and I'm seeing the same with Windows 7. Microsoft didn't fuck up - Linux users think they did. There's a difference from what I've seen. ;)
Yes, yes you are. :)
Actually threads like this reinforce my plan to not become a grumpy old fart as I get older. I don't want to lose my grasp on pop culture and an appreciation for what the normal person likes, 'cos the geek life is very unfulfilling and stale at times. I like using tools like Facebook and at least knowing what Twitter is even if I don't use them.
Spoken like a true Slashdot geek who doesn't understand why popular technologies are popular.
I'm sure Stephen Fry and Trent Reznor would like a word with you.
So why is this the general opinion of Slashdot patrons, whereas the general public and in particular Neowin patrons have an inverse opinion? Since you say there's no opinion, only true, does that make the Slashdot crowd correct or incorrect?
FYI - I use Vista 64-bit. Best version of Windows I've played with yet, although I expect Windows 7 to surpass it. Linux? They can't even get the friggin Intel graphics chipsets running at the same capacity as Windows have had for ages, so the GUI is sluggish.
Interesting.
If Microsoft does something incremental (eg. 2000 -> XP, or Vista -> 7), people complain that too little has changed, that it's basically just a "service pack" which Microsoft is charging money for.
If Microsoft does something too radical (eg. XP -> Vista), people complain that too much has changed, that they should have just touched up XP a bit, given it a visual makeover and a few core updates and that would have been enough.
Conclusion - Microsoft can't win. At least with the fussy pricks on Slashdot.
You know those porn sites on that there Interwebz? Well guess what... each and every single one needs someone to at the very least maintain and run the sites, if not to adjust/crop/re-size/airbrush the material.
I remember reading the first-hand experiences of a guy hired to maintain such a site. The end result was that he found himself totally desensitized to the material, even the really hardcore stuff, to the point that porn had absolutely no thrill. So be aware of this if you every find the opportunity to check out porn on a daily basis. :)
I beg your pardon?
The reason I started using extensions like Adblock Plus is because ads were so bad they were preventing my entire COMPUTER from working. The straw that broke the camel's back in my case was when I was trying to view artwork on Deviantart. They had these really badly coded Flash animations which took up 100% CPU on my (then) single-core desktop machine. It was IMPOSSIBLE to do anything - the entire machine was jamming up to the point where it took more than a minute for the task manager to appear when launched. This is bullshit - ads shouldn't do this, they shouldn't be so obnoxious.
My current machine is a bit more modern and would handle such ads, but it's the principle of the thing, and I don't see things getting any better. The only ads I can deal with are text-based, light image, non-flash/non-JS ads. If people only used these ads and were sensible about using them, then I wouldn't have been pushed into seeking out relief.
So stop painting us as stingy folk. Some of us just want to access the Internet without frustration.
Actually now that I think of it, you're right. It does help, but only a bit. :)
I'm yet another person who installed IE 8 via Windows Update and it did NOT forcibly set itself as the default browser.
Seriously Slashdot, do you even bother to vet your troll articles anymore? Do you realize how embarrassingly pathetic this one significant site in the tech world has become?
It's peer pressure. We experience it when we're young and told to resist it, that resisting peer pressure would make us stronger, yet as adults it's fostered onto us by the tech community and media because if you don't own one, you're considered not "with it" for some reason.
The allure of the shiney and the pressure to conform to the expected tech standard is pushed hard against all of us.
Yeah, like Linux. Oops!
Mod me down if the truth hurts.
Offtopic: The funny thing is, you say this as if people used to be excited with what Microsoft had done but are tired of them now, but I believe this level of excitement with MS is cyclic. Go to a place like Neowin.net to see this in action. You might be tired of MS now, but the next generation of geeks seem to be excited with their products like Windows Live/Mesh, Windows 7, Office, etc. Maybe the golden years for Microsoft are back?
Heck I can't explain why they're so excited, but they are. As a side note, it does mean that if you hate Microsoft for valid reasons you can't bring them up at a place like Neowin though, cos people will immedaitely consider you a basher for popularity sake and a Linux lover who can't run Photoshop (not like they would be running legit copies either, but that's another topic). The inverse is true for this place of course. God I hate all tech sites these days. What am I doing here anyway? :)
How? By writing a letter to your local politician? Protesting? These actions do jack shit with regards to changing laws these days.
Corporations are winning the war against our rights. What else are we suppose to do about unjust laws?
The only alternative is to defy the laws. If enough people do so, then either the laws will be repealed, or there will be too many people breaking the law it'll be untenable to prosecute everyone.
Disclaimer: I'm a coward who only breaks laws I can get away with (eg. downloading stuff I shouldn't on torrent sites). I do it because the risk is low, at least for now. If the police actually went full-bore with dealing with downloaders, I'd stop immediately. I'm just talking about the ideal way to fight an unjust law.
Actually, they do. I know this because myself and most of my previously-hardcore gamer friends are not gamers anymore, and if I'm going to be gaming it's only casual games these days. Why? Mostly out of necessity; I got older, and found my priorities for my time had changed. You just can't sink the time required to be a hardcore gamer anymore, unless you're young and/or don't have anything else to do in your life.
Do I miss it? Kinda, but mostly only due to nostalgia. I value the time I spend with my girlfriend far more than games, so it's a fair trade. :)
Typical. A fanboy who jumps to conclusions.
Intel graphics chipsets suffer from video tearing in Linux. They aren't properly vsynced so watching videos, from Flash to any other format, they'll all show tearing and are basically unwatchable. I don't care too much about 3D performance (even though they do run faster for a particular game in Windows than Linux), but I'd just LOVE to watch videos on my laptop without the fucking tearing!
My laptop was purchased in Janurary last year, and has an X3100 (GM965) chipset. Every single version of Linux I've tried using it has had substandard video playback, and they've all had various issues. In windows, it works perfectly. This problem has existed for ages and yet no-one's bothered to fix it. At this point it's finally occurred to me that the myth of Open Source being superior by providing rapid fixes of bugs is all a lie.
Stop being so dramatic already. It's software, it's there to achieve a task - use the best tool available to you.
What are you talking about? Windows has Pidgin, OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, InkScape, Audacity etc. In many cases (and in particular Firefox's case), GUI performance is better in Windows. Audacity works flawlessly and doesn't have the issue of dealing with various sound subsystems and locked devices that I'm STILL experiencing in Linux.
Why would I move to a system that has even less software to choose from? Open Source is alive and well in Windows, and if an open source tool is not suitable for you, eh, big deal, use a commercial app if you can get hold of it. You can't say the same for Linux commercial apps (what few of them there are).
One more thing I forgot to mention - I switched from Acrobat to PDFCreator a while back. It's very good, and anything I render using PDFCreator works just fine with Foxit Reader. Also has the side benefit of being open source and an example of an actually GOOD open source product. Unfortunately this doesn't discount the fact that other people might use Acrobat to render THEIR PDFs, and I don't want to cut myself off from being able to view them.
This isn't FUD, this is based on my own experiences:
I've found that the latest Foxit Reader is unable to show certain PDFs, in particular those created using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. I created some PDFs in Acrobat 9 and when loaded into Foxit Reader 3.0, showed up entirely blank. The only way to view them was to put Adobe Reader on instead. So I did.
I'm not sure why Foxit showed these PDFs entirely blank. Maybe Acrobat 9 has a new version of the PDF standard that's incompatable, I don't know. What I do know is it means that if I want to gurantee the viewing of PDF files, I pretty much require Adobe products, which isn't that bad if you're using Reader 9 (much faster than version 8).
Possibly a vendor lock-in mechanism, but I'm tired of fighting. It's easier just to go with Adobe and get on with work.