Currently they are extending subscriptions by two years. Enough to prevent any successful bid by IT personnel to get higherups to approve a switch. Now whether they will cover the actual cost of lost productivity, not just of IT staff but by the company as a whole.
CD-RWs didn't take off because people were using Packet writing on them which was deathly unreliable. I generally used CD-RWs as multi-session. When the session overhead got too bad, copy to hard drive, erase and put the original content back on. Currently I use RWs for things like testing, boot discs, and things like Ubuntu which obsolete every 6 months. I wouldn't trust the data as much as a DVD-R or CD-R, but knock on wood I haven't had reliability problems with RWs.
The "unsupported" method of integrating using nLite or similar would certainly be a lot more reliable and worth any perceived "risk" as compared to trying to get a functioning floppy.
You could also just build an image and sysprep with drivers for all hardware you have and deploy to all the machines. A lot quicker than going machine to machine manually loading drivers.
There's workarounds for XP/SATA, it's other things that are keeping floppies around, like legacy CNC machines that have no other method of transporting data.
Good riddance I say. While there may be other "cool" old technologies to be nostalgic about, my life would be complete if I never have to use a floppy every again. I rather use cassette tape storage. I have never seen such an unreliable technology in my life. I shutter to think of all the important lost documents whose sole copy was on a floppy. And so slow. The computer practically comes to a stop reading the floppy.
The last time I used a floppy was to kickstart a Windows 98 install on an old laptop that can't boot from CD. It took 6 tries to get a functioning floppy. Next time I'll pull the drive and put it in an IDE/USB adapter. When I fire up old 8088 machines, I rather transfer data back and forth with a LPT crossover cable. Much faster and more reliable.
For industries with legacy equipment that requires floppies, I'm surprised there aren't devices that plug into the floppy bus, and allow you to plug in a USB flash (or SD card) and mount a disk image. It would be more reliable and less painful than sourcing floppies and USB floppy drives. Then on the PCs you can mount the image file directly.
Ubuntu has a history of not releasing backports for Firefox and Open Office, arguably two of the most used applications, to LTS versions.
Firefox 2Firefox 3.5Open Office 3
Antivirus definitions are updated daily. Several times daily. That'd be an impossible task for IT depts (though hopefully some testing is done by AV writers.
Clamwin doesn't have real-time protection, which you need for idiot users in a corporate environment, and I've never seen anything report on the effectiveness compared to other suites.
Will the new integrated GPU have performance even on par with a Wii's GPU, or is it the same GMA (i.e. "Graphics My Ass") that's been built into Intel boards for years?
So if I buy a subsidized piece of hardware, then leave it on the shelf never using it, never buying content, that's theft? It's theft if I break it on the car ride home?
The company may be betting on you buying content to make up for selling at a loss, but if you paid the asking price, no theft took place.
That's like saying I stole a razor from Gillette because I didn't buy refills. Or I stole the Lexmark printer that came with my computer because I will never buy a new cartridge for it.
Joe sixpack also didn't pay attention when his system that shipped without discs begged and pleaded with him for the past 5 years to burn off recovery DVDs.
I hate OEM preinstalled bloatware, I hate that they don't ship discs, but no, you're not screwed if you only have a recovery partiton. You're only screwed if you didn't make the discs it asked you to.
If you're having the problem described in this article then you can wipe your hard drive and re-install Windows.
But why compound the stupidity. Make the stupid stop!
Install Ubuntu and you will never have to worry about a virus ever again. Over the last decade, I've spent exactly 0 seconds wasting my time worrying about viruses, worms, malware, or any other ilk dreamed up by some kid in his second class of 'introduction to vb on windows'. STOP THE INSANITY!!!
So since you don't have to worry about any nasties on Ubuntu, that means I can just click on that BoA link I got in my email and enter my details right?
Slashdot Mirror
In XP no tweaking involved: c:\windows\ie8\iexplore.exe
c:\windows\ie7\explore.exe (if IE7 is installed)
IE7 rendering engine, IE6 window chrome.
Problem is AV software hooks in at file system / disk driver level.
Currently they are extending subscriptions by two years. Enough to prevent any successful bid by IT personnel to get higherups to approve a switch. Now whether they will cover the actual cost of lost productivity, not just of IT staff but by the company as a whole.
CD-RWs didn't take off because people were using Packet writing on them which was deathly unreliable. I generally used CD-RWs as multi-session. When the session overhead got too bad, copy to hard drive, erase and put the original content back on. Currently I use RWs for things like testing, boot discs, and things like Ubuntu which obsolete every 6 months. I wouldn't trust the data as much as a DVD-R or CD-R, but knock on wood I haven't had reliability problems with RWs.
Tick tick tick tick whir whir (30% done) tick tick tick tick tick tick whir whir (56% done) Tick tick tick tick whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir (99%) whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir whir-whir Not ready reading drive A:. Abort, Retry, Ignore
Die floppies so I can piss on your grave.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article09-122
nLite: http://www.nliteos.com/
No RS-232 interface? I've used many scopes with and without floppy drives that did have RS-232.
The "unsupported" method of integrating using nLite or similar would certainly be a lot more reliable and worth any perceived "risk" as compared to trying to get a functioning floppy.
You could also just build an image and sysprep with drivers for all hardware you have and deploy to all the machines. A lot quicker than going machine to machine manually loading drivers.
There's workarounds for XP/SATA, it's other things that are keeping floppies around, like legacy CNC machines that have no other method of transporting data.
DVDs play fine on my P3 with an i815 graphics. Also play fine on an old ATI 8MB card.
Good riddance I say. While there may be other "cool" old technologies to be nostalgic about, my life would be complete if I never have to use a floppy every again. I rather use cassette tape storage. I have never seen such an unreliable technology in my life. I shutter to think of all the important lost documents whose sole copy was on a floppy. And so slow. The computer practically comes to a stop reading the floppy.
The last time I used a floppy was to kickstart a Windows 98 install on an old laptop that can't boot from CD. It took 6 tries to get a functioning floppy. Next time I'll pull the drive and put it in an IDE/USB adapter. When I fire up old 8088 machines, I rather transfer data back and forth with a LPT crossover cable. Much faster and more reliable.
For industries with legacy equipment that requires floppies, I'm surprised there aren't devices that plug into the floppy bus, and allow you to plug in a USB flash (or SD card) and mount a disk image. It would be more reliable and less painful than sourcing floppies and USB floppy drives. Then on the PCs you can mount the image file directly.
> system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches > a point where the system is no longer usable
At last Linux is feature-complete with MS Windows and ready for the desktop!
But as usual, lagging behind. It's feature complete against 1995 versions of Windows. Versions from the past 10 years (excluding ME), not so much.
Software should not be released until it is ready.
I believe GNU HURD is following that timetable.
(AC because moderated already)
I would use my mod points if I didn't already reply in this thread.
Agreed. Let it slip.
Slips happen in real life. Vendors fuck up. Planes get grounded. The paperwork takes longer than you thought. You're just plain out of Iridium.
Prototype phones get left at bars.
Ubuntu has a history of not releasing backports for Firefox and Open Office, arguably two of the most used applications, to LTS versions. Firefox 2 Firefox 3.5 Open Office 3
Antivirus definitions are updated daily. Several times daily. That'd be an impossible task for IT depts (though hopefully some testing is done by AV writers.
Clamwin doesn't have real-time protection, which you need for idiot users in a corporate environment, and I've never seen anything report on the effectiveness compared to other suites.
I was killed the night it was lost, not after the story broke.
I just upgraded a Northwood 2.8 to a Core 2 Duo 3.0. I used the same graphics card (8800 GT) in the new machine.
Night and day difference.
Power bill dropped that much?
Will the new integrated GPU have performance even on par with a Wii's GPU, or is it the same GMA (i.e. "Graphics My Ass") that's been built into Intel boards for years?
I always thought it was Garbage Media Adapter.
So if I buy a subsidized piece of hardware, then leave it on the shelf never using it, never buying content, that's theft? It's theft if I break it on the car ride home?
The company may be betting on you buying content to make up for selling at a loss, but if you paid the asking price, no theft took place.
That's like saying I stole a razor from Gillette because I didn't buy refills. Or I stole the Lexmark printer that came with my computer because I will never buy a new cartridge for it.
Joe sixpack also didn't pay attention when his system that shipped without discs begged and pleaded with him for the past 5 years to burn off recovery DVDs.
I hate OEM preinstalled bloatware, I hate that they don't ship discs, but no, you're not screwed if you only have a recovery partiton. You're only screwed if you didn't make the discs it asked you to.
Support for XP SP2 only ends July 13, 2010
Extended support for XP (mode it's in now, essentially just security fixes) for SP3 ends April 8 2014.
Windows 2000 Extended support ends July 13 2010. Christ Almighty they still patch IE 5.01 for Windows2000
MSE is targeted for home users. Microsoft wants corporate users to use "Forefront"
If you're having the problem described in this article then you can wipe your hard drive and re-install Windows. But why compound the stupidity. Make the stupid stop! Install Ubuntu and you will never have to worry about a virus ever again. Over the last decade, I've spent exactly 0 seconds wasting my time worrying about viruses, worms, malware, or any other ilk dreamed up by some kid in his second class of 'introduction to vb on windows'. STOP THE INSANITY!!!
So since you don't have to worry about any nasties on Ubuntu, that means I can just click on that BoA link I got in my email and enter my details right?
Safe computing has to be practiced on any OS!