it doesn't even need to be broken, if linux were the dominant os im sure a large percentage of the userbase would run 'sudo./porndownload' if the website said to do so.
How would that be any different from the way it is now? They aren't cleaning YOUR computer, they are fixing up the mess your actions caused, which is what they currently do now anyway.
So no, it wouldn't lead to any increase, but i do agree that being taxed just because of the incompetence of other users is bullshit, just like the many other cases in which that occurs.
The "new security model" bought very little actual security. Most users still run as "Administrator".
Oh ok then, we'll ignore security simply because most users don't know enough to utilise the system properly, that is not the right attitude.
Running as 'Administrator' in the case of Vista and 7 is not an issue, it's UAC (MS' version of sudo) and the elevation of privileges required to perform administrative tasks, this is a good thing (similar to what we have on all unix-based OSes) but the underlying support for this broke a lot of compatibility. Now you don't HAVE to run with root-level privileges all the time whilst still maintaining the ability to make root-level changes when necessary, this is a great addition for security!
The driver model improvements pull much of teh driver code OUT of the kernel to execute in user-mode, again this is another good thing which will make systems more stable.
Obviously in the beginning there are going to be problems, from the end user perspective they don't see the benefits initially but when you look a little deeper you see that these changes have a lot of long-term benefit.
Most still automatically click "yes", and most still are happy to answer questionnaires that give away far too much information and still are willing to send passwords by email, and still use the same password for everything.
An OS isn't going to stop that, it can't prevent user stupidity, but it CAN allow mechanisms for people to make decisions, which is why UAC is such a good thing. If you find it 'annoying' then you aren't ready for computers, you would also find privilege system in unix-based environments 'annoying'. If you are having it popup a lot when using general non-malicious software then it is the fault of the developer utilising the system improperly, it is just that now Windows is enforcing that and you would find the same issue on unix-based operating systems. Suggesting that we should avoid this sort of system simply because 'most users won't use it and most users just click yes' is stupid. Go be a stupid, ignorant sheep that clicks 'yes' regardless of the question if you want, or turn off UAC if you don't like it, or continue using your XP license, but don't bash on the system just because you don't understand it. Yes security will be annoying, that's the nature of security.
That's not how it was sold, and not how it was designed.
Of course it was, it was designed with a new security and driver model! Like i said if you know about software you would know that this is going to break compatibility in many cases and the reason you would introduce these new models is for greater security and stability. That is EXACTLY how it was designed.
No, the break in compatibility to get stability was the switch from Win95 (which was DOS based) to Windows XP (which was NT based, and a lot of which was actually VMS pirated by David Cutler and his crew hired away from DEC).
Are you serious? You think there is only one point in the lifetime of the OS that breaks compatibility for the sake of stability? Well you're just wrong, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes Win95 was infinitely stable and that there would never be a need to migrate from it's security and driver models to something more better. Yes Win95 broke compatibility for a move to a more secure and powerful OS, and so did Vista. Vista introduced new driver and security models that broke compatibility in many cases - which is why at launch there were many devices that did not have Vista-compatible drivers. Windows 7 uses the same security and driver models, however by this time plenty of Vista drivers were available and almost all of them are compatible with 7. Do you think 7 would have been as popular if it was plagued by the same lack of hardware drivers and application compatibility? It would have suffered these if it weren't for Vista, by the time 7 came along all the drivers and patches for the new architecture were available.
whilst you're absolutely right, the problem is that crackers EXPECT to be hit hard with DRM, pirates EXPECT that it might not be a speedy and hassle-free ride to playing the latest games, however the people who DON'T expect that is the paying customers, the ones who actually contribute to your business, the ones who see that you get paid. These are the people you are screwing over, for pirates it's no different. Inevitably the question for your potential paying customers is 'if it's going to be a pain in the ass either way then why should i pay for it?'. Im certainly not condoning piracy but the primary reason i've gone almost exclusively to console gaming is so i don't have to deal with this DRM bullshit when i've paid money for a game!
No, what happened when Microsoft came out with Vista and _no one wanted it_?
You are of course referring to the same people who complain about instability, viruses and security. Vista was a stepping stone to 7 - a compatibility change that had to happen and was going to be resented - if you know anything about software you'll understand why vista was the way it was and why 7 followed so closely behind it. There had to be a break in compatibility to move to a more secure and more stable platform, unfortunately the point of this break (Vista) was obviously not going to be well-received, but of course it's successor would be, the OS that rolled out when developers and hardware manufacturers (rather their driver and utility developers) had some real-world experience with the new model.
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
Society does! And they vote with their wallets. You don't have to buy microsoft, there are plenty of other options but the reality is most people don't care! Just like with the browser issue, MS wasn't stopping anyone from running a different browser, other options either didn't offer compelling reasons to change or weren't marketed well enough so since there was no problem with the microsoft offering they just used it. I prefer Chrome to IE so i go and download that, i prefer Linux to Windows so - wherever possible - i use it instead, no one at MS is stopping me.
if they were actually preventing the use of an alternative then that would be a different story, but only because they are a monopoly, of course companies like Apple can do this without a problem.
Perhaps the reason for MS' occasional product downfalls is this consistent bullshit they are constantly having to deal with.
There are a lot of ways they benefit. One by having mechanisms built into Vista that patrol the user that weren't there in XP that were rejected by XP users when they released WGA.
How does that relate to the case in question?
The next is that they actually denied consumers the choice even though consumers asked for it and in the end the only way to get it was to pay for the OS twice (once for Vista and once for XP).
So? There is nothing that says they have to offer the choice to consumers.
Yes I believe you are absolutely right about the audio issue being related to PulseAudio.
I just didn't think the necessity to use command line tools just to get the installation to recognise my hard drive made that distro very un-user-friendly, at least with my (pretty standard) configuration. Most linux newbies, I imagine, would give up at that point.
No, because "photo realism" is not a goal that visual effects aspires to.
Of course photo-realism is the goal of a lot of realtime and offline rendering engines, if you are developing an engine for a game like Far Cry you want the visual effects to be as photo-realistic as possible such that there is a negligible difference between the look of a palm tree on fire in your interactive virtual simulation and a film shot of a real palm tree on fire. The difference is your game is interactive.
If you can take a photo of something, then it's almost always cheaper and better to do that, even though it usually requires many thousands of dollars on crew, make up, sets and lighting.
And this is useful in interactive entertainment like games how?
And even before CG we had techniques like matte paintings, a form of visual effects, of which the goal was to create a photo-realistic scene without actually having to physically shoot the footage on location.
On my personal experience I'd go with Ubuntu (GNOME) over a KUbuntu installation.
KDE4 still has dialogs that reference things that don't exist and segmentation of options (particularly the look and feel elements, which have a number of different dialogs to change those settings).
KUbuntu 9.10 had other issues too.
The installation didn't detect my standard SATA hard drive so i had to boot up the live CD and create and format the partition just so the installation could find the drive. (No problems in Ubuntu).
The multimonitor setup didn't work, even though both monitors were plugged in and displaying the same thing. After a few recommended tweaks i eventually got into that dialog and the 'identify' button displayed DVI0 and DVI1 overlayed on top of eachother on both monitors.
Digital audio output was flakey, it only worked in some programs and not in others (i.e. firefox)
I don't know how many of those are KDE-specific or are other distro issues but I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (GNOME) on the same system and experienced none of the above problems, it all worked perfectly.
What's worse is the people filming and taking photos of this shit. If when you say you love your partner more than a piece of electronics it seems like a beautiful gesture then there is something seriously wrong with you!
99.5% of the various issues that you are describing are the result of some manager going to the engineer and saying "we will launch tomorrow" or "this is too expensive use plaster instead of carbon fiber composite reinforced titanium honeycomb" or "you have to use my brother's company for the batteries" regardless of whether or not it is passing quality tests or operating within design parameters, or is too cold for the O-Rings to work.
Same thing with software, "we'll release tomorrow", "this engine/API is too expensive, use something cheaper", etc...
Come to think of it, what was really lacking in all the group projects I ever did in school was that none was large enough it wasn't easier to just do myself, whereas real-world projects you simply can't. That changes everything.
Specifically, overarching constructs that are expected to interact with other systems in the real world to accomplish certain tasks. Programmers by contrast are more concerned with accomplishing a specific task, with little interest in the overall system design. So an engineer would be the person planning out how to make something accomplish a specific task, while a programmer will then take the spec, maybe make a few comments, and get it working.
Which is why there is a distinction between a Programmer - essentially an implementer - and a Software Engineer - which designs the overall system architecture, taking into account how it will interact with external systems and the users. They are also not mutually exclusive.
Engineering is domain-specific. It's about knowing how to utilise the building blocks of that domain to produce (design/implement) a product/solution in that domain. Hence the reason there is no single 'engineer' but engineering is divided into domain-specific disciplines: Civil, Electrical, Software, etc... It's about knowing how to produce a product/solution from the building blocks of that domain. Otherwise what is your definition of 'engineer'?
Coding has nothing to do with language or syntax, but upon having an analytical mind. Breaking down a problem into it's bare elements, and knowing how to make those elements work together is everything. There's plenty of CompSci grads who can parrot off the functions and procedures available in NET or JAVA, but haven't got the first clue how to apply those to the problem at hand.
I agree with most of what you are saying, a degree doesn't guarantee a good coder just as being self-taught doesn't. The core of what i look for is experience, real success in the real world!
How do you get this at the outset though? Of course a CS grad with no experience will be preferable to a self-taught with no experience, even though it doesn't necessarily mean they will be better, so the way to enter the industry is to work on OSS projects, its a great way for someone to get that real-world experience needed to be considered for a professional role. The more real experience you get the less your education matters.
The other thing an education in C.S. does not give you is the social aspect of code development, i.e. working in a team.
That's a broad statement, it all depends on where you studied. If your course includes a lot of group work you are going to get a better feel for the social aspects. Then there are those that include industry projects, and even further to that are those that include industry placement experiences.
Not all CS degrees are the same.
because if you can discredit a person somehow associated with a group - even if this group is only a group based on a common interest and not an organisation - morons will accept that the behaviour of that one person is representative of the entire group, and douchebag politicians exploit this.
The next time a taxpayer threatens him he'll be saying taxpayers - as a group - are more of a threat to him than biker gangs, regardless of the fact that a % of biker gang members would also be taxpayers.
so the threat of a group of organisations with a history of bloody violence, drug trafficking, murder and other illegal activity is trumped because of a strongly-worded letter from a gamer? And that this one person's attitude and activities are somehow representative of the much wider population of gamers. Seriously the guy is a douche!
Slashdot Mirror
installs random DRM bullshit
Such as?
WGA bullshit
pretty sure that's optional unless you want additional software features.
and lots of other things that are not security patches.
Such as?
it doesn't even need to be broken, if linux were the dominant os im sure a large percentage of the userbase would run 'sudo ./porndownload' if the website said to do so.
How would that be any different from the way it is now? They aren't cleaning YOUR computer, they are fixing up the mess your actions caused, which is what they currently do now anyway.
So no, it wouldn't lead to any increase, but i do agree that being taxed just because of the incompetence of other users is bullshit, just like the many other cases in which that occurs.
The "new security model" bought very little actual security. Most users still run as "Administrator".
Oh ok then, we'll ignore security simply because most users don't know enough to utilise the system properly, that is not the right attitude.
Running as 'Administrator' in the case of Vista and 7 is not an issue, it's UAC (MS' version of sudo) and the elevation of privileges required to perform administrative tasks, this is a good thing (similar to what we have on all unix-based OSes) but the underlying support for this broke a lot of compatibility. Now you don't HAVE to run with root-level privileges all the time whilst still maintaining the ability to make root-level changes when necessary, this is a great addition for security!
The driver model improvements pull much of teh driver code OUT of the kernel to execute in user-mode, again this is another good thing which will make systems more stable.
Obviously in the beginning there are going to be problems, from the end user perspective they don't see the benefits initially but when you look a little deeper you see that these changes have a lot of long-term benefit.
Most still automatically click "yes", and most still are happy to answer questionnaires that give away far too much information and still are willing to send passwords by email, and still use the same password for everything.
An OS isn't going to stop that, it can't prevent user stupidity, but it CAN allow mechanisms for people to make decisions, which is why UAC is such a good thing. If you find it 'annoying' then you aren't ready for computers, you would also find privilege system in unix-based environments 'annoying'. If you are having it popup a lot when using general non-malicious software then it is the fault of the developer utilising the system improperly, it is just that now Windows is enforcing that and you would find the same issue on unix-based operating systems. Suggesting that we should avoid this sort of system simply because 'most users won't use it and most users just click yes' is stupid. Go be a stupid, ignorant sheep that clicks 'yes' regardless of the question if you want, or turn off UAC if you don't like it, or continue using your XP license, but don't bash on the system just because you don't understand it. Yes security will be annoying, that's the nature of security.
That's not how it was sold, and not how it was designed.
Of course it was, it was designed with a new security and driver model! Like i said if you know about software you would know that this is going to break compatibility in many cases and the reason you would introduce these new models is for greater security and stability. That is EXACTLY how it was designed.
No, the break in compatibility to get stability was the switch from Win95 (which was DOS based) to Windows XP (which was NT based, and a lot of which was actually VMS pirated by David Cutler and his crew hired away from DEC).
Are you serious? You think there is only one point in the lifetime of the OS that breaks compatibility for the sake of stability? Well you're just wrong, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes Win95 was infinitely stable and that there would never be a need to migrate from it's security and driver models to something more better. Yes Win95 broke compatibility for a move to a more secure and powerful OS, and so did Vista. Vista introduced new driver and security models that broke compatibility in many cases - which is why at launch there were many devices that did not have Vista-compatible drivers. Windows 7 uses the same security and driver models, however by this time plenty of Vista drivers were available and almost all of them are compatible with 7. Do you think 7 would have been as popular if it was plagued by the same lack of hardware drivers and application compatibility? It would have suffered these if it weren't for Vista, by the time 7 came along all the drivers and patches for the new architecture were available.
whilst you're absolutely right, the problem is that crackers EXPECT to be hit hard with DRM, pirates EXPECT that it might not be a speedy and hassle-free ride to playing the latest games, however the people who DON'T expect that is the paying customers, the ones who actually contribute to your business, the ones who see that you get paid. These are the people you are screwing over, for pirates it's no different. Inevitably the question for your potential paying customers is 'if it's going to be a pain in the ass either way then why should i pay for it?'. Im certainly not condoning piracy but the primary reason i've gone almost exclusively to console gaming is so i don't have to deal with this DRM bullshit when i've paid money for a game!
No, what happened when Microsoft came out with Vista and _no one wanted it_?
You are of course referring to the same people who complain about instability, viruses and security. Vista was a stepping stone to 7 - a compatibility change that had to happen and was going to be resented - if you know anything about software you'll understand why vista was the way it was and why 7 followed so closely behind it. There had to be a break in compatibility to move to a more secure and more stable platform, unfortunately the point of this break (Vista) was obviously not going to be well-received, but of course it's successor would be, the OS that rolled out when developers and hardware manufacturers (rather their driver and utility developers) had some real-world experience with the new model.
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
Society does! And they vote with their wallets. You don't have to buy microsoft, there are plenty of other options but the reality is most people don't care! Just like with the browser issue, MS wasn't stopping anyone from running a different browser, other options either didn't offer compelling reasons to change or weren't marketed well enough so since there was no problem with the microsoft offering they just used it. I prefer Chrome to IE so i go and download that, i prefer Linux to Windows so - wherever possible - i use it instead, no one at MS is stopping me.
if they were actually preventing the use of an alternative then that would be a different story, but only because they are a monopoly, of course companies like Apple can do this without a problem.
Perhaps the reason for MS' occasional product downfalls is this consistent bullshit they are constantly having to deal with.
There are a lot of ways they benefit. One by having mechanisms built into Vista that patrol the user that weren't there in XP that were rejected by XP users when they released WGA.
How does that relate to the case in question?
The next is that they actually denied consumers the choice even though consumers asked for it and in the end the only way to get it was to pay for the OS twice (once for Vista and once for XP).
So? There is nothing that says they have to offer the choice to consumers.
They hold every game I ever bought on there for ransom and there is nothing I can do about it.
They hold them all for ransom do they? pfft..stop being so melodramatic!
That said im not fan of the idea of this whole publisher-controlled content model, but hey for the most part it works fine and you'll never notice.
Yes I believe you are absolutely right about the audio issue being related to PulseAudio.
I just didn't think the necessity to use command line tools just to get the installation to recognise my hard drive made that distro very un-user-friendly, at least with my (pretty standard) configuration. Most linux newbies, I imagine, would give up at that point.
No, because "photo realism" is not a goal that visual effects aspires to.
Of course photo-realism is the goal of a lot of realtime and offline rendering engines, if you are developing an engine for a game like Far Cry you want the visual effects to be as photo-realistic as possible such that there is a negligible difference between the look of a palm tree on fire in your interactive virtual simulation and a film shot of a real palm tree on fire. The difference is your game is interactive.
If you can take a photo of something, then it's almost always cheaper and better to do that, even though it usually requires many thousands of dollars on crew, make up, sets and lighting.
And this is useful in interactive entertainment like games how?
And even before CG we had techniques like matte paintings, a form of visual effects, of which the goal was to create a photo-realistic scene without actually having to physically shoot the footage on location.
On my personal experience I'd go with Ubuntu (GNOME) over a KUbuntu installation. KDE4 still has dialogs that reference things that don't exist and segmentation of options (particularly the look and feel elements, which have a number of different dialogs to change those settings).
KUbuntu 9.10 had other issues too.
The installation didn't detect my standard SATA hard drive so i had to boot up the live CD and create and format the partition just so the installation could find the drive. (No problems in Ubuntu).
The multimonitor setup didn't work, even though both monitors were plugged in and displaying the same thing. After a few recommended tweaks i eventually got into that dialog and the 'identify' button displayed DVI0 and DVI1 overlayed on top of eachother on both monitors.
Digital audio output was flakey, it only worked in some programs and not in others (i.e. firefox)
I don't know how many of those are KDE-specific or are other distro issues but I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (GNOME) on the same system and experienced none of the above problems, it all worked perfectly.
What's worse is the people filming and taking photos of this shit. If when you say you love your partner more than a piece of electronics it seems like a beautiful gesture then there is something seriously wrong with you!
99.5% of the various issues that you are describing are the result of some manager going to the engineer and saying "we will launch tomorrow" or "this is too expensive use plaster instead of carbon fiber composite reinforced titanium honeycomb" or "you have to use my brother's company for the batteries" regardless of whether or not it is passing quality tests or operating within design parameters, or is too cold for the O-Rings to work.
Same thing with software, "we'll release tomorrow", "this engine/API is too expensive, use something cheaper", etc...
Come to think of it, what was really lacking in all the group projects I ever did in school was that none was large enough it wasn't easier to just do myself, whereas real-world projects you simply can't. That changes everything.
I certainly can't disagree with that.
Specifically, overarching constructs that are expected to interact with other systems in the real world to accomplish certain tasks. Programmers by contrast are more concerned with accomplishing a specific task, with little interest in the overall system design. So an engineer would be the person planning out how to make something accomplish a specific task, while a programmer will then take the spec, maybe make a few comments, and get it working.
Which is why there is a distinction between a Programmer - essentially an implementer - and a Software Engineer - which designs the overall system architecture, taking into account how it will interact with external systems and the users. They are also not mutually exclusive.
Engineering is domain-specific. It's about knowing how to utilise the building blocks of that domain to produce (design/implement) a product/solution in that domain. Hence the reason there is no single 'engineer' but engineering is divided into domain-specific disciplines: Civil, Electrical, Software, etc... It's about knowing how to produce a product/solution from the building blocks of that domain. Otherwise what is your definition of 'engineer'?
Coding has nothing to do with language or syntax, but upon having an analytical mind. Breaking down a problem into it's bare elements, and knowing how to make those elements work together is everything. There's plenty of CompSci grads who can parrot off the functions and procedures available in NET or JAVA, but haven't got the first clue how to apply those to the problem at hand.
I agree with most of what you are saying, a degree doesn't guarantee a good coder just as being self-taught doesn't. The core of what i look for is experience, real success in the real world!
How do you get this at the outset though? Of course a CS grad with no experience will be preferable to a self-taught with no experience, even though it doesn't necessarily mean they will be better, so the way to enter the industry is to work on OSS projects, its a great way for someone to get that real-world experience needed to be considered for a professional role. The more real experience you get the less your education matters.
The other thing an education in C.S. does not give you is the social aspect of code development, i.e. working in a team.
That's a broad statement, it all depends on where you studied. If your course includes a lot of group work you are going to get a better feel for the social aspects. Then there are those that include industry projects, and even further to that are those that include industry placement experiences. Not all CS degrees are the same.
because if you can discredit a person somehow associated with a group - even if this group is only a group based on a common interest and not an organisation - morons will accept that the behaviour of that one person is representative of the entire group, and douchebag politicians exploit this.
The next time a taxpayer threatens him he'll be saying taxpayers - as a group - are more of a threat to him than biker gangs, regardless of the fact that a % of biker gang members would also be taxpayers.
so the threat of a group of organisations with a history of bloody violence, drug trafficking, murder and other illegal activity is trumped because of a strongly-worded letter from a gamer? And that this one person's attitude and activities are somehow representative of the much wider population of gamers. Seriously the guy is a douche!
Except you're not buying the device. You're buying the ability to interact with their software ecosystem.
No, you aren't...that's just so wrong.
But the highest resolution is the only one that gets anything close to decent quality, you wouldn't use anything less than 640x480, even back then.