Indeed. I have evaluation copies (now expired) of WinXP Pro and Office XP sat on a shelf nearby, and a while ago I binned a beta release of VS.NET (expired when the retail version was released).
Quite a few of their new products are avilable as time-limited trial editions; I definitely remember seeing Windows Server 2003 available in this way.
That said, you're not allowed to redistribute them, so even if there was a beta/trial version of Mac Office 2004, you shouldn't be downloading it from Limewire (even ignoring the blatant risks you take doing such a thing).
That's true, but the majority of home systems are essentially single-user, especially at the moment with home users still really only just getting acustomed to truly multi-user systems. On such machines, whether you can only destroy your files or the entire disk, makes little difference. All the important files (your own) are gone either way, while the system files are all on the install media (or 'rescue partition' or whatever).
Incidentally, I think MS made accounts members of the Administrators group by default in XP as part of a transitionary stage. Writers of consumer-oriented software generally don't seem to have any experience of writing for use by limited accounts - witness the fact that almost all want to save stuff to system areas of the disk and registry. By the time Longhorn arrives, that situation should have changed to the extent where MS can make new accounts default to being ordinary users.
And yes, I realize the most recent incarnations of these MS products are much more bloated
That's not bloat, that's natural progress. Once you have written some software, the only things that remain are:
* improve the UI/usability * improve stability * add features
People have demonstrated over the last decade or two that of those three things, they're only willing to pay for the third. Therefore, in order to continue selling a product, you have to produce new versions with new features. New features means new code, which inevitably leads to "bloat".
Also most Custom Software doesn't bother with any sort of licensing
That's because it's the very definition of a work for hire - the programmer is hired specifically to create that work on behalf of their employer. At the end of it, I think everyone would expect to own what they had paid to be created.
When you download a file in Mozilla (as of 1.6 at least), the download manager opens automatically. Once the download has finished, you can just double-click the file to execute it.
Alternatively, Mozilla still has an IE-like "single file download dialogue" - either configure it to not use the download manager, or double-click on a file while it's downloading (I think). That has the "Open" button on it.
Of course, this thread is actually about.xpi files, which do not require explicit downloading. You just get a "do you want to install this?" dialogue - as I did when browsing a site a month or so ago (sorry, I forget which). Of course I clicked "no", but experience shows that a lot of people will click yes. Hell, my manager at work (who was a Senior Programmer with about 17 years experience before he was promoted recently) has been known to not really read the dialogue and just click "yes" absent-mindedly, as he was concentrating on something else at the time, and he's no clueless luser. Fortunately that wasn't anything too nasty, but it just goes to show that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
These things are coming for Mozilla-based browsers and hence to Linux. It's only a matter of time.
Well, feeling brave I just pointed IE at that site and browsed around it a little and - nothing. No popups, no "please install this" dialogues, no browser hijacking, nada.
I keep my machine up to date with respect to patches, so it looks like whatever security flaws allowed it to act as you say have been fixed.
Just to add my anecdotal evidence to yours - while I've not played the full game, I've played the demo of UT2k4 a lot recently, mostly onslaught. It runs absolutely fine at full detail levels at 1024x768 and 32bpp, on my P4 2.4GHz machine with 1/2gig of RAM and a GeForce 3 Ti 200.
By "fine" I mean "I don't have fps stats for you, but it's perfectly playable as far as I'm concerned".
How was that even legal? Surely, as you were a minor at the time, your parents could legally demand to be present during the search?
I mean no disrespect to your parents, but in a similar situation, you'd separate me from my daughter over my dead body (well, all-but, but you get the idea).
I'm glad you had better luck. Our machines weren't exactly "celeron secretary specials", but they were depressingly close to being them, considering that we're programmers. They were definitely lower-end machines, though, and that's reflected in the quality (or lack of) of the machines that we received.
We did try to get our machines seen to under the service contract we had (not with Compaq themselves), but had no luck; that's probably colouring my opinion too...
That said, my opinion stands - I can only go by my experiences, and my experiences with Compaq machines have not been favourable. On the other hand, I believe we have a number of servers from them, and that the sysadmins are perfectly happy with them.
I'm no DBA (I'm a programmer), but I *believe* that Oracle can do just that if you configure it to - write directly to a raw disk partition. I can't imagine that it's the only db to do so, either.
While this is all true, it's nice once in a while to have a computer under warranty, with the components rigorously tested and certified to work well together
You won't be wanting a Compaq then. My last PC at work was a Compaq, and the whole batch were shite. The onboard audio was noisy, the GeForce was stuck permanently in PCI mode and the CD and floppy drives were suspect.
Personally, I'd never buy another Compaq, but then excepting my first PC and the one I bought my gf, I've built all mine anyway.
MS should completely put to an end the entire idea of OEM versions. The OS is designed for you to have the original media, you should have the original media.
They can't do that. If you believe that once you've bought the software, it's yours to use as you see fit, including to sell on as you see fit, then MS cannot prevent PC manufacturers from providing their customer with the OS however they see fit.
MS themselves sell OEM versions of all their software - they are the full product (other than that they "know" they are OEM versions), and come on a CD. My OEM XP Pro CD is sat about three feet from me as I type.
It's not MS's fault that the PC manufacturers choose to sell on stuff they've bought in this fashion. They could try to force them not to, but that would (imho) be akin to the producers of things I buy telling me how I may resell them - in other words, unacceptable.
Then next thing you know the FBI is knocking on your door asking to look at your computer.
Only if someone he turns in (turns in someone who turns in someone who turns in...) someone you know who's found to be one of those smaller fish, *and* he names you.
Well, I'm no history student, but I seem to recall that at the time that Hitler took his own life, the Russians were busy taking Berlin - Germany had already lost the war in all but name.
There are (or have been) plenty of Christian terrorists in Northern and Southern Ireland for many years
Yes, there have, and while the IRA seems to be serious about decommissioning its arms, there are still plenty of other groups that aren't following that lead. That pretty-much illustrates my point, though - for twenty years or so, my Government virtually waged war on the IRA, to little effect. Sure, people were arrested or killed (eg in Gibralter in the late 80s(?)), but it didn't really stop them. What it took, in the end, was sitting round a table and talking to them, and getting both sides to agree to compromise.
Now, I'm not saying that compromise is always possible, but sheer force alone cannot eradicate terrorism. You kill one, and his brothers and friends may well take up the cause in his name.
There's something that's always puzzled me a little about this site - attached to every single article about some new piece of PC tech - a faster processor, better graphics card, etc - there are a number of comments bemoaning the advance. All of them saying that people don't need the power/speed they have already, that they personally are just fine with 4 year old hardware, or, in this case, that better graphics don't make for better games. Hell, the same is true for mobile phones - I've lost count of the number of comments bemoaning advances in them, too.
It's funny, but I thought this was supposed to be a site for geeks; aren't geeks supposed to *like* newer, better toys?
To get back on topic - no, better graphics are not sufficient for a better game. However, if the gameplay is there, then they can certainly make the experience more enjoyable. Would Quake have been as much fun if it was rendered in wireframes?
Better graphics help add to the sense of realisim, making the game a more immersive experience. The whole point of the majority of games is entertainment and (to an extent) escapism. Additionally, what a lot of people like the grand-parent poster seem to forget is that most of the big-name game engines are licensed for use in a number of games. Let people like id spend their time and money coming up with the most graphically intensive, realistic engine they can. Think Doom 3'll suck because the gameplay will be crap? Fine, then wait for someone to license the engine and create a better game with it. In the meantime, please shut up and remember that there are those of us who like things to be pretty, as well as useful/well made/fun/(good at $primaryPurpose)
Good graphics on their own won't make a good game, but they will help make a good game great.
Well, if all he did was write it, and someone else let it loose on the net, then perhaps he shouldn't be under arrest.
On the other hand, I'm having a hard time imagining what benign uses this thing could be put to. With DVD/e-book decrypters/rippers you can claim fair use, with port scanners you can claim that you're testing security of your own network, but with a worm? It's designed solely to infiltrate a host and spread - I can't think of any benign uses, let alone significant ones...
If you knowingly create something that can only be used for ill, then I think that you should be held responsible for its use.
Isn't that the entire point of open source, though? That it saves companies/people time and money, because someone else does all/most of the hard work for them, while "we" get the fixes/improvements they make to it? As long as the licence is complied with, who cares? You can't say "Oh, but it's MS, and I don't like them!", that's not how it works - Free is Free for *all*, not some.
So some guy at MS likes FireFox and thinks it should use more Longhorn-specific tech. So what? I prefer Mozilla, and think that development should concentrate on that, instead. My opinion means about as much, when you get right down to it, unless this guy somehow manages to persuade MS to devote a dev team to it.
There's an MS power toy that you can download that provides multi-desktop functionality; I don't have a linnk to hand, but it's somewhere on microsoft.com.
applets on the taskbar
That's true, although in a sense the clock is an applet; I agree that you can't add your own, though, and I'm not sure if it's possible to write a true applet to go in there. You can certainly put an icon in there to offer some kind of status readout (or similar) and a shortcut menu to further functionality, though.
I'll take your word about the L&F of Keramik; I've not used the latest version of KDE yet, but certainly the last version I did use (3.0.x, iirc) looked pretty damn similar to me. Of course, that might have been due in part to my configuration choices...:-)
Well, default KDE has a taskbar, with a menu and a system notification/applet area. If that's not all-but identical to the Windows Taskbar/Start Menu/Systray setup, I don't know what is.
they're thrasing to catch up. And the sad thing is, they probably will sooner than you think...
Why is that sad? Surely, it's good for everyone if Windows is as secure as possible - not only those who use it, but the internet as a whole. More secure Windows means fewer worms and viruses eating bandwidth, DDoSing sites, etc.
Well, I can speak only for myself, but personally I'm not ant-Linux or pro-MS, I'm anti-bullshit, whatever the source.
Slashdotters often complain about (anti-Linux) FUD in one breath, while spreading anti-MS FUD with the next. (At least, that's certainly the impression I've had over the past few years of reading the site). Well, to my mind, you can't have it both ways. If you're going to complain about their FUD, stop spreading your own.
The fact that your post got modded up to +5 is the absolute proof of that.
No, it's proof only that 3 or 4 people agreed with him that the quoted phrase only detracted from the article. (Or rather, that 3 or 4 more people modded him up than down). There's nothing remotely anti-Linux or even pro-MS in that comment.
If it's just the IDE you're missing (and I wasn't aware that the Mono people were writing one), then you might want to take a look at icsharpcode.net. One of the projects (#Develop) is a free-as-in-both IDE for.NET.
In addition to that, Borland have a personal edition of C# Builder available, which is free as in beer, but not licensed for commercial use.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I have evaluation copies (now expired) of WinXP Pro and Office XP sat on a shelf nearby, and a while ago I binned a beta release of VS.NET (expired when the retail version was released).
Quite a few of their new products are avilable as time-limited trial editions; I definitely remember seeing Windows Server 2003 available in this way.
That said, you're not allowed to redistribute them, so even if there was a beta/trial version of Mac Office 2004, you shouldn't be downloading it from Limewire (even ignoring the blatant risks you take doing such a thing).
That's true, but the majority of home systems are essentially single-user, especially at the moment with home users still really only just getting acustomed to truly multi-user systems. On such machines, whether you can only destroy your files or the entire disk, makes little difference. All the important files (your own) are gone either way, while the system files are all on the install media (or 'rescue partition' or whatever).
Incidentally, I think MS made accounts members of the Administrators group by default in XP as part of a transitionary stage. Writers of consumer-oriented software generally don't seem to have any experience of writing for use by limited accounts - witness the fact that almost all want to save stuff to system areas of the disk and registry. By the time Longhorn arrives, that situation should have changed to the extent where MS can make new accounts default to being ordinary users.
And yes, I realize the most recent incarnations of these MS products are much more bloated
That's not bloat, that's natural progress. Once you have written some software, the only things that remain are:
* improve the UI/usability
* improve stability
* add features
People have demonstrated over the last decade or two that of those three things, they're only willing to pay for the third. Therefore, in order to continue selling a product, you have to produce new versions with new features. New features means new code, which inevitably leads to "bloat".
Also most Custom Software doesn't bother with any sort of licensing
That's because it's the very definition of a work for hire - the programmer is hired specifically to create that work on behalf of their employer. At the end of it, I think everyone would expect to own what they had paid to be created.
When you download a file in Mozilla (as of 1.6 at least), the download manager opens automatically. Once the download has finished, you can just double-click the file to execute it.
.xpi files, which do not require explicit downloading. You just get a "do you want to install this?" dialogue - as I did when browsing a site a month or so ago (sorry, I forget which). Of course I clicked "no", but experience shows that a lot of people will click yes. Hell, my manager at work (who was a Senior Programmer with about 17 years experience before he was promoted recently) has been known to not really read the dialogue and just click "yes" absent-mindedly, as he was concentrating on something else at the time, and he's no clueless luser. Fortunately that wasn't anything too nasty, but it just goes to show that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
Alternatively, Mozilla still has an IE-like "single file download dialogue" - either configure it to not use the download manager, or double-click on a file while it's downloading (I think). That has the "Open" button on it.
Of course, this thread is actually about
These things are coming for Mozilla-based browsers and hence to Linux. It's only a matter of time.
Well, feeling brave I just pointed IE at that site and browsed around it a little and - nothing. No popups, no "please install this" dialogues, no browser hijacking, nada.
I keep my machine up to date with respect to patches, so it looks like whatever security flaws allowed it to act as you say have been fixed.
Just to add my anecdotal evidence to yours - while I've not played the full game, I've played the demo of UT2k4 a lot recently, mostly onslaught. It runs absolutely fine at full detail levels at 1024x768 and 32bpp, on my P4 2.4GHz machine with 1/2gig of RAM and a GeForce 3 Ti 200.
By "fine" I mean "I don't have fps stats for you, but it's perfectly playable as far as I'm concerned".
I was taken away from my parents, and searched.
How was that even legal? Surely, as you were a minor at the time, your parents could legally demand to be present during the search?
I mean no disrespect to your parents, but in a similar situation, you'd separate me from my daughter over my dead body (well, all-but, but you get the idea).
I'm glad you had better luck. Our machines weren't exactly "celeron secretary specials", but they were depressingly close to being them, considering that we're programmers. They were definitely lower-end machines, though, and that's reflected in the quality (or lack of) of the machines that we received.
We did try to get our machines seen to under the service contract we had (not with Compaq themselves), but had no luck; that's probably colouring my opinion too...
That said, my opinion stands - I can only go by my experiences, and my experiences with Compaq machines have not been favourable. On the other hand, I believe we have a number of servers from them, and that the sysadmins are perfectly happy with them.
I'm no DBA (I'm a programmer), but I *believe* that Oracle can do just that if you configure it to - write directly to a raw disk partition. I can't imagine that it's the only db to do so, either.
While this is all true, it's nice once in a while to have a computer under warranty, with the components rigorously tested and certified to work well together
You won't be wanting a Compaq then. My last PC at work was a Compaq, and the whole batch were shite. The onboard audio was noisy, the GeForce was stuck permanently in PCI mode and the CD and floppy drives were suspect.
Personally, I'd never buy another Compaq, but then excepting my first PC and the one I bought my gf, I've built all mine anyway.
MS should completely put to an end the entire idea of OEM versions. The OS is designed for you to have the original media, you should have the original media.
They can't do that. If you believe that once you've bought the software, it's yours to use as you see fit, including to sell on as you see fit, then MS cannot prevent PC manufacturers from providing their customer with the OS however they see fit.
MS themselves sell OEM versions of all their software - they are the full product (other than that they "know" they are OEM versions), and come on a CD. My OEM XP Pro CD is sat about three feet from me as I type.
It's not MS's fault that the PC manufacturers choose to sell on stuff they've bought in this fashion. They could try to force them not to, but that would (imho) be akin to the producers of things I buy telling me how I may resell them - in other words, unacceptable.
Then next thing you know the FBI is knocking on your door asking to look at your computer.
Only if someone he turns in (turns in someone who turns in someone who turns in...) someone you know who's found to be one of those smaller fish, *and* he names you.
Well, I'm no history student, but I seem to recall that at the time that Hitler took his own life, the Russians were busy taking Berlin - Germany had already lost the war in all but name.
There are (or have been) plenty of Christian terrorists in Northern and Southern Ireland for many years
Yes, there have, and while the IRA seems to be serious about decommissioning its arms, there are still plenty of other groups that aren't following that lead. That pretty-much illustrates my point, though - for twenty years or so, my Government virtually waged war on the IRA, to little effect. Sure, people were arrested or killed (eg in Gibralter in the late 80s(?)), but it didn't really stop them. What it took, in the end, was sitting round a table and talking to them, and getting both sides to agree to compromise.
Now, I'm not saying that compromise is always possible, but sheer force alone cannot eradicate terrorism. You kill one, and his brothers and friends may well take up the cause in his name.
You think someone else won't step forward to fill the void when he's gone?
That's the trouble with killing terrorists as a method of defeating terrorism - kill one, and three more spring up to replace them.
Hear, hear.
There's something that's always puzzled me a little about this site - attached to every single article about some new piece of PC tech - a faster processor, better graphics card, etc - there are a number of comments bemoaning the advance. All of them saying that people don't need the power/speed they have already, that they personally are just fine with 4 year old hardware, or, in this case, that better graphics don't make for better games. Hell, the same is true for mobile phones - I've lost count of the number of comments bemoaning advances in them, too.
It's funny, but I thought this was supposed to be a site for geeks; aren't geeks supposed to *like* newer, better toys?
To get back on topic - no, better graphics are not sufficient for a better game. However, if the gameplay is there, then they can certainly make the experience more enjoyable. Would Quake have been as much fun if it was rendered in wireframes?
Better graphics help add to the sense of realisim, making the game a more immersive experience. The whole point of the majority of games is entertainment and (to an extent) escapism. Additionally, what a lot of people like the grand-parent poster seem to forget is that most of the big-name game engines are licensed for use in a number of games. Let people like id spend their time and money coming up with the most graphically intensive, realistic engine they can. Think Doom 3'll suck because the gameplay will be crap? Fine, then wait for someone to license the engine and create a better game with it. In the meantime, please shut up and remember that there are those of us who like things to be pretty, as well as useful/well made/fun/(good at $primaryPurpose)
Good graphics on their own won't make a good game, but they will help make a good game great.
Well, if all he did was write it, and someone else let it loose on the net, then perhaps he shouldn't be under arrest.
On the other hand, I'm having a hard time imagining what benign uses this thing could be put to. With DVD/e-book decrypters/rippers you can claim fair use, with port scanners you can claim that you're testing security of your own network, but with a worm? It's designed solely to infiltrate a host and spread - I can't think of any benign uses, let alone significant ones...
If you knowingly create something that can only be used for ill, then I think that you should be held responsible for its use.
Avalon, and XAML are going to be patented tech of MS so their use would be prohibited.
That's where the "no-fee licence" bit that the OP was talking about comes in...
Isn't that the entire point of open source, though? That it saves companies/people time and money, because someone else does all/most of the hard work for them, while "we" get the fixes/improvements they make to it? As long as the licence is complied with, who cares? You can't say "Oh, but it's MS, and I don't like them!", that's not how it works - Free is Free for *all*, not some.
So some guy at MS likes FireFox and thinks it should use more Longhorn-specific tech. So what? I prefer Mozilla, and think that development should concentrate on that, instead. My opinion means about as much, when you get right down to it, unless this guy somehow manages to persuade MS to devote a dev team to it.
Windows dosen't have virtual desktops
:-)
There's an MS power toy that you can download that provides multi-desktop functionality; I don't have a linnk to hand, but it's somewhere on microsoft.com.
applets on the taskbar
That's true, although in a sense the clock is an applet; I agree that you can't add your own, though, and I'm not sure if it's possible to write a true applet to go in there. You can certainly put an icon in there to offer some kind of status readout (or similar) and a shortcut menu to further functionality, though.
I'll take your word about the L&F of Keramik; I've not used the latest version of KDE yet, but certainly the last version I did use (3.0.x, iirc) looked pretty damn similar to me. Of course, that might have been due in part to my configuration choices...
Well, default KDE has a taskbar, with a menu and a system notification/applet area. If that's not all-but identical to the Windows Taskbar/Start Menu/Systray setup, I don't know what is.
they're thrasing to catch up. And the sad thing is, they probably will sooner than you think...
Why is that sad? Surely, it's good for everyone if Windows is as secure as possible - not only those who use it, but the internet as a whole. More secure Windows means fewer worms and viruses eating bandwidth, DDoSing sites, etc.
Well, I can speak only for myself, but personally I'm not ant-Linux or pro-MS, I'm anti-bullshit, whatever the source.
Slashdotters often complain about (anti-Linux) FUD in one breath, while spreading anti-MS FUD with the next. (At least, that's certainly the impression I've had over the past few years of reading the site). Well, to my mind, you can't have it both ways. If you're going to complain about their FUD, stop spreading your own.
The fact that your post got modded up to +5 is the absolute proof of that.
No, it's proof only that 3 or 4 people agreed with him that the quoted phrase only detracted from the article. (Or rather, that 3 or 4 more people modded him up than down). There's nothing remotely anti-Linux or even pro-MS in that comment.
Well, with a valid return address you can get in touch with them and ask them to stop, and/or hit them under CAN-SPAM, right?
If it's just the IDE you're missing (and I wasn't aware that the Mono people were writing one), then you might want to take a look at icsharpcode.net. One of the projects (#Develop) is a free-as-in-both IDE for .NET.
In addition to that, Borland have a personal edition of C# Builder available, which is free as in beer, but not licensed for commercial use.