Of course, users should apply critical updates. Even in a perfect world, where drivers are only changed for critical stuff, the problem is: how are they going to know? You might say "Windows Update", but that only works for Windows drivers and you know as well as I do that most, if not all, drivers are third-party drivers.
My example for Logitec mice stands: I am pretty much the only one that buys a mouse, plugs it in and it works. Other people *think* they need to install *everything* that is on the included CD. It is not the responsibility of Microsoft to push third-party driver updates over Windows Update. It is not their responsibility nor their role.
The only other solution to the problem is: every single driver needs to check the "mothership" for updates every other time. Just like antivirus programs do, just like Windows Update works. I do not even want to imagine what kind of resources that would use, and even less what kind of havoc it might cause because a "bad driver" got released that borks about every second computer in the world. Oh, and I'm ignoring all privacy issue that such a system would bring with it.
even the slightly geeky user will only ever upgrade their graphics card on their laptop when they are forced too.
I know we are talking about exploits here and exploits should be fixed. I disagree, however, that you should upgrade your drivers continuously *without a good reason*.
First it requires you to keep track about all driver releases of your system (if you're a network admin, it might even be many more configurations) Upgrading some point releases will probably not do much.
Second is stability: if your system is stable with your current drivers and performs well, why would you upgrade? Upgrading drivers always jeopardizes your system. Windows might not like the driver or the combination of drivers you need. That's a good reason to standarize the drivers you put on your machines.
Third, you need to realise that a "driver update" might not even concern your hardware device. Many drivers these days are unified. Is a point-release going to affect you at all. For example, if you have an older GeForce MX2, will the latest NVidia driver include *any* changes for you? I doubt it. It might even introduce new bugs because said driver has been optimized for a newer card and breaks compatibility with your older card. The last argument of course, brings us back to point two.
Fourth: many third party drivers are bad as hell and the standard Windows drivers do a good enough job. For many devices, there is no need at all to install drivers in the first place. Do you really install the Logitec drivers for your standard 3-button/scrollwheel mouse? I most certainly do not.
Essentially, it all boils down to: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
C:\Documents and Settings\jawtheshark>ftp ftp.mozilla.org
Connected to ftp.mozilla.org.
220 (vsFTPd 2.0.1)
User (ftp.mozilla.org:(none)): anonymous
331 Please specify the password.
Password: anon@anon.com
230 Login successful.
ftp> cd "/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.4/win32/e n-US"
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
Firefox Setup 1.5.0.4.exe
Firefox Setup 1.5.0.4.exe.asc
226 Directory send OK.
ftp: 58 bytes received in 0,00Seconds 58000,00Kbytes/sec.
ftp> bin
200 Switching to Binary mode.
ftp> prompt
Interactive mode Off.
ftp> mget "Firefox Setup 1.5.0.4.exe"
200 Switching to Binary mode.
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for Firefox Setup 1.5.0.4.exe (5118288 bytes).
226 File send OK.
ftp: 5118288 bytes received in 44,25Seconds 115,67Kbytes/sec.
ftp> QUIT
C:\Documents and Settings\jawtheshark>
Granted, not as easy as heading over to www.mozilla.org, but certainly not a problem for you?
If you give everyone a degree, a degree is no longer worth anything.
Tell that to the government of my country. That is *exactly* what they do at high school level. They actually say it: "No kid should leave school without a degree." With the result that the degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. *sigh*
Yes, but does it matter? Bundling has worked and spoiled the marketplace. Take IM for example. A few years ago, it was ICQ, AIM. Other latecomers came, like Yahoo! and Google Talk but never seemed to have taken any marketshare. Another newcomer was MSN Messenger. One would think that ICQ/AIM would still be tops dogs. Not true, even not in Europe. For a while ICQ seemed to be most popular over here, but I worked at a school for a while and the only thing the students seemed to use was MSN, all with a hotmail.com address including Passport. I still both have an AIM and an ICQ account (I know they are technically the same), but strangely enough nobody ever seems to be online there anymore.
Media player? Same thing: none of these kids uses WinAmp, iTunes, Realplayer to play media. They all use our good old friend Windows Media Player. Myself I use "Media Player Classic", but that's just me. The thing is that the iPod will make it a tad bit more difficult. Alternatives do not seem to exist for them. Sure, I think the iPod will make it difficult to actually force WMP on people, but those that don't have an iPod will use and recognise WMP. If they brand it correctly (the hardware "replacing" the iPod), the brand recognition will work and they will sell devices.
I never have seen a WMP-less Windows installed anywhere. Even in Europe, we have lost...
Hold on! Hymn only functions on tunes you bought in iTunes 5. For iTunes 6 you are on your own. As for players that can do AAC without DRM: I don't know for players under Windows, but xmms does just fine. You just have to install the AAC plugin. I don't think it will play the DRMed version, but those that I unDRMed with Hymn back when iTunes 5 was current, work just fine. I haven't bought from iTunes since version 6 is out.
Well, since I'm my own administrator on that machine I can do what I want. I do run an an antivirus , but no spyware nor remote desktop tool (except the one built-in to WinXP). Even then, companies should use non-consumer anti-viruses and they (usually) are leaner than the bloated consumer-level-antiviruses.
It all boils down to sane administration, and any administrator worth his salary should be able to do that. Otherwhise, I'd simply call him incompetent.
You can always block it at firewall level. Oh, you mean software firewall? I don't use such things. My PC's are protected by OpenBSD and I run my own DNS server. If I want to blackhole microsoft.com, it won't be a problem.
Without much question, they know that people will end up buying whatever hardware they are directed by Microsoft to buy
It's not actually that what happens. Microsoft dictates what the OEMs will sell and that is what the consumers will buy. They do not directly dictate what to buy. Even tough if consumers even vaguely are aware of alternatives. My wife is in education, and during her studies numerous people told her to buy a Mac instead of buying a Windows machine. The thing is, my wife did not even know where to buy a Mac. (No Apple store in my country) All advertisements that come to you are for OEM machines, and thus she bought (a really overpowered) WinXP machine on the advice of the boyfriend she had back then. I still wonder why she shelled out so much money for a 2.6HT P-IV with 512Meg RAM and a huge graphics card, DVD-burner (when they still were rare) and a big-ass LCD screen. I guess her boyfriend wanted to play games or so. She only needed the damned thing to write *letters*! (And some basic surfing/(email)
Before she met me, the damn thing was slow as hell and bogged down by spyware and viruses. I reinstalled the damn thing, added another 1.5Gig RAM (actually, I put 2Gig of faster RAM in there - it was on sale and I couldn't resist). Never had a problem since then. The added RAM is useful for me, because I actually use that machine on occasion too;-) The 512Meg were enough for her.
Hell, even some of the late "pre-XP" Windows 2000 machines are fast enough that upgrading them probably isn't worth it.
I think you mean to say: *all* "pre-XP" Windows 2000 class machines are fast enough for typical business usage. Okay, granted, they sometimes need a tad bit more RAM, but that's not a big investement. Both my dad and me run Windows XP on *Windows 98* class machines. His came with ME and mine with 98. His laptop is a P-III 800MHz/256Meg RAM. It is a bit slow, but he doesn't seem to see any reason to upgrade. Mine is a P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM (I had 256Meg extra lying around) and it frankly is completely usable for all typical office applications. Heck, I can even do basic image manipulation. The RAM is *never* fully used when I do basic things. The thing even runs Eclipse 3.0 without a problem after the initial startup time. If you want to be safe, I'd say that any 1GHz machine with 256Megs or more would be enough, and that's about the typical machine sold in the Win2000 days.
Neither can I. In most businesses where I worked the audio card was disabled on purpose: no music for Mr Employee and rightly so. It opens the door to copyright problems withing the company. As for Aero... Well, I have the impression that most professionals switch WinXP to "Classic mode". Why? The interface is simpeler and cleaner, especially in locked-down environments. No professional that I met actually preferred the XP interface.
Even then, I know businesses that were on Win NT4 service pack 4b (network not connected to the internet) while Windows XP was already out with service pack two. Alas, I do not know if they switched by now or not. The IT people simply knew best how to configure it and lock it down. The system was simply "well known" and the bugs could be worked around. Apart from that most important business applications work just fine on Win NT4. Of course, newer Microsoft Office versions don't work with NT4. Still, they were on Office 97 and seemed completely happy with that, and no, this was no small business but a very big bank. As said, things may have changed by now. I haven't worked in a private company for a while
For businesses there are only two things that count: stability and the fact that employees get their work done efficiently
Actually, it just means you have competent admins. It says nothing about the OS. You can equally do this with Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS/2 and any other modern operating system.
(that's total deblocking, partial deblocking means that the alernative operators get direct access to the DSLAMs and the local loop is still the historical operator's turf).
Thanks for explaining this. I never understood why in my country I had to pay both my ISP and the national P&T company for my internet access. (The P&T company charging *more* than my ISP). In Belgium, France and Germany (our neighbours, you can guess now) this doesn't seem to be the case and people have cheap internet. I don't complain, by now I have 1Mbps/128kbps, for a "mere" ~33€. Back when I started it was over 60€ for 256kbps/64kbps, and don't get me started on ISDN before that./P>
No, of course not. Mostly you'll see them drive one of the following:
Audi A3: base price for a diesel ~21k€
Audi A4 (*): base price for a diesel ~25k€
BMW 3-series (*): base price for a diesel ~27k€
Citroen C3: base price for a diesel ~13k€
Citroen C5 (*): base price for a diesel ~23k€
Fiat Punto: base price for a diesel ~13k€
Ford Focus (*): base price for a diesel ~15k€
Ford Mondeo (*): base price for a diesel ~21k€
Mercedes A-Class: base price for a diesel ~20k€
Mini One D: base price for a diesel ~18k€
Opel Corsa: base price for a diesel ~12k€
Opel Zafira (*): base price for a diesel ~20k€
Peugeot 206: base price for a diesel ~11k€
Renault Clio: base price for a diesel ~13k€
Renault Espace (*): base price for a diesel ~28k€
Renault Mégane: base price for a diesel ~16k€
Renault Sénic (*): base price for a diesel ~18k€
Seat Ibiza: base price for a diesel ~12k€
Skoda Octavia (*): base price for a diesel ~19k€
Smart ForTwo: base price for a diesel ~10k€
Volvo S40 (*): base price for a diesel ~22k€
VW Golf: base price for a diesel ~15k€
VW Passat (*): base price for a diesel ~22k€
The cars marked with an asterisk are considered family cars. I'm sorry I left out asian carmakers, but I wasn't familiar enough with their models to know what kind of car they are. I took the prices out of a current car magazine I had lying around.
What I'd like to know is why I saw so many BMW 7-series, or Audi A8 (or even S8!) while I was in the States. You clearly must be richer than we are because we definately do not spend as much on cars as you do. Oh, and if I look in the same magazine I see that SUVs generally are *above* 30k€: Audi Q7 is over 46k€, BMW X3 over 36k€, BMW X5 over 45k€, Hummer H2 over 41k€, Hummer H3 over 70k€, Mercedes M-Class over 48k€, Porsche Cayenne over 48k€ and Volkswagen Touareg 46K€.
Dummy data. In all my years as a software engineer I have never worked with real or production data.
How do you generate representative "Dummy Data"? Everywhere where I worked, we tested on real production data, with the personally identifiable data scrabled. So if I saw a name there saying "Joe Sixpack", I could be certain that the data was not of a guy named "Joe Sixpack", neither was his social security number. Those things were bogus, the rest was not.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
Delete the iTunesHelper key
Reboot
iTunesHelper will not start at bootup, and will only be started once you run iTunes
For iPodService
Open "Control Panel"
Open "Administrative Tools"
Open "Services"
Locate "iPodService" and double-click on it
Select "Disable"
Alas, I do not know what effect disabling iPodService has. Back when I tried it, it wasn't a real service. I had no iPod either (I only have a Shuffle anyway). For me, I leave both processes running: they do absolutely nothing to my systems stability. They both eat up about 3.5MiBytes according to Windows Task Manager. That's peanuts when you have over 1Gig RAM or more (as nearly all my systems do...)
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, users should apply critical updates. Even in a perfect world, where drivers are only changed for critical stuff, the problem is: how are they going to know? You might say "Windows Update", but that only works for Windows drivers and you know as well as I do that most, if not all, drivers are third-party drivers.
My example for Logitec mice stands: I am pretty much the only one that buys a mouse, plugs it in and it works. Other people *think* they need to install *everything* that is on the included CD. It is not the responsibility of Microsoft to push third-party driver updates over Windows Update. It is not their responsibility nor their role.
The only other solution to the problem is: every single driver needs to check the "mothership" for updates every other time. Just like antivirus programs do, just like Windows Update works. I do not even want to imagine what kind of resources that would use, and even less what kind of havoc it might cause because a "bad driver" got released that borks about every second computer in the world. Oh, and I'm ignoring all privacy issue that such a system would bring with it.
even the slightly geeky user will only ever upgrade their graphics card on their laptop when they are forced too.
I know we are talking about exploits here and exploits should be fixed. I disagree, however, that you should upgrade your drivers continuously *without a good reason*.
First it requires you to keep track about all driver releases of your system (if you're a network admin, it might even be many more configurations) Upgrading some point releases will probably not do much.
Second is stability: if your system is stable with your current drivers and performs well, why would you upgrade? Upgrading drivers always jeopardizes your system. Windows might not like the driver or the combination of drivers you need. That's a good reason to standarize the drivers you put on your machines.
Third, you need to realise that a "driver update" might not even concern your hardware device. Many drivers these days are unified. Is a point-release going to affect you at all. For example, if you have an older GeForce MX2, will the latest NVidia driver include *any* changes for you? I doubt it. It might even introduce new bugs because said driver has been optimized for a newer card and breaks compatibility with your older card. The last argument of course, brings us back to point two.
Fourth: many third party drivers are bad as hell and the standard Windows drivers do a good enough job. For many devices, there is no need at all to install drivers in the first place. Do you really install the Logitec drivers for your standard 3-button/scrollwheel mouse? I most certainly do not.
Essentially, it all boils down to: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You did hear of FTP, didn't you?
Granted, not as easy as heading over to www.mozilla.org, but certainly not a problem for you?
If you give everyone a degree, a degree is no longer worth anything.
Tell that to the government of my country. That is *exactly* what they do at high school level. They actually say it: "No kid should leave school without a degree." With the result that the degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. *sigh*
I think you need something like this
I don't think that the GHz means 1024^3Hz. More probably it's a real Giga and it means 10^9.
Funny... but no... My country was neutral in WWII and got overrun & annexed by the Germans.
Yes, but does it matter? Bundling has worked and spoiled the marketplace. Take IM for example. A few years ago, it was ICQ, AIM. Other latecomers came, like Yahoo! and Google Talk but never seemed to have taken any marketshare. Another newcomer was MSN Messenger. One would think that ICQ/AIM would still be tops dogs. Not true, even not in Europe. For a while ICQ seemed to be most popular over here, but I worked at a school for a while and the only thing the students seemed to use was MSN, all with a hotmail.com address including Passport. I still both have an AIM and an ICQ account (I know they are technically the same), but strangely enough nobody ever seems to be online there anymore.
Media player? Same thing: none of these kids uses WinAmp, iTunes, Realplayer to play media. They all use our good old friend Windows Media Player. Myself I use "Media Player Classic", but that's just me. The thing is that the iPod will make it a tad bit more difficult. Alternatives do not seem to exist for them. Sure, I think the iPod will make it difficult to actually force WMP on people, but those that don't have an iPod will use and recognise WMP. If they brand it correctly (the hardware "replacing" the iPod), the brand recognition will work and they will sell devices.
I never have seen a WMP-less Windows installed anywhere. Even in Europe, we have lost...
Hold on! Hymn only functions on tunes you bought in iTunes 5. For iTunes 6 you are on your own. As for players that can do AAC without DRM: I don't know for players under Windows, but xmms does just fine. You just have to install the AAC plugin. I don't think it will play the DRMed version, but those that I unDRMed with Hymn back when iTunes 5 was current, work just fine. I haven't bought from iTunes since version 6 is out.
Well, since I'm my own administrator on that machine I can do what I want. I do run an an antivirus , but no spyware nor remote desktop tool (except the one built-in to WinXP). Even then, companies should use non-consumer anti-viruses and they (usually) are leaner than the bloated consumer-level-antiviruses.
It all boils down to sane administration, and any administrator worth his salary should be able to do that. Otherwhise, I'd simply call him incompetent.
You can always block it at firewall level. Oh, you mean software firewall? I don't use such things. My PC's are protected by OpenBSD and I run my own DNS server. If I want to blackhole microsoft.com, it won't be a problem.
Without much question, they know that people will end up buying whatever hardware they are directed by Microsoft to buy
It's not actually that what happens. Microsoft dictates what the OEMs will sell and that is what the consumers will buy. They do not directly dictate what to buy. Even tough if consumers even vaguely are aware of alternatives. My wife is in education, and during her studies numerous people told her to buy a Mac instead of buying a Windows machine. The thing is, my wife did not even know where to buy a Mac. (No Apple store in my country) All advertisements that come to you are for OEM machines, and thus she bought (a really overpowered) WinXP machine on the advice of the boyfriend she had back then. I still wonder why she shelled out so much money for a 2.6HT P-IV with 512Meg RAM and a huge graphics card, DVD-burner (when they still were rare) and a big-ass LCD screen. I guess her boyfriend wanted to play games or so. She only needed the damned thing to write *letters*! (And some basic surfing/(email)
Before she met me, the damn thing was slow as hell and bogged down by spyware and viruses. I reinstalled the damn thing, added another 1.5Gig RAM (actually, I put 2Gig of faster RAM in there - it was on sale and I couldn't resist). Never had a problem since then. The added RAM is useful for me, because I actually use that machine on occasion too ;-) The 512Meg were enough for her.
when you're not playing, what else is there for the GPU to do?
Put itself in a low-energy 2D mode and consume less power? That would be useful!
So those of us who don't buy from Dell and the like should be ok.
True, but how long until all graphics cards support PVP and it's impossible to find one without it?
Hell, even some of the late "pre-XP" Windows 2000 machines are fast enough that upgrading them probably isn't worth it.
I think you mean to say: *all* "pre-XP" Windows 2000 class machines are fast enough for typical business usage. Okay, granted, they sometimes need a tad bit more RAM, but that's not a big investement. Both my dad and me run Windows XP on *Windows 98* class machines. His came with ME and mine with 98. His laptop is a P-III 800MHz/256Meg RAM. It is a bit slow, but he doesn't seem to see any reason to upgrade. Mine is a P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM (I had 256Meg extra lying around) and it frankly is completely usable for all typical office applications. Heck, I can even do basic image manipulation. The RAM is *never* fully used when I do basic things. The thing even runs Eclipse 3.0 without a problem after the initial startup time. If you want to be safe, I'd say that any 1GHz machine with 256Megs or more would be enough, and that's about the typical machine sold in the Win2000 days.
Neither can I. In most businesses where I worked the audio card was disabled on purpose: no music for Mr Employee and rightly so. It opens the door to copyright problems withing the company. As for Aero... Well, I have the impression that most professionals switch WinXP to "Classic mode". Why? The interface is simpeler and cleaner, especially in locked-down environments. No professional that I met actually preferred the XP interface.
Even then, I know businesses that were on Win NT4 service pack 4b (network not connected to the internet) while Windows XP was already out with service pack two. Alas, I do not know if they switched by now or not. The IT people simply knew best how to configure it and lock it down. The system was simply "well known" and the bugs could be worked around. Apart from that most important business applications work just fine on Win NT4. Of course, newer Microsoft Office versions don't work with NT4. Still, they were on Office 97 and seemed completely happy with that, and no, this was no small business but a very big bank. As said, things may have changed by now. I haven't worked in a private company for a while
For businesses there are only two things that count: stability and the fact that employees get their work done efficiently
Actually, it just means you have competent admins. It says nothing about the OS. You can equally do this with Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS/2 and any other modern operating system.
(that's total deblocking, partial deblocking means that the alernative operators get direct access to the DSLAMs and the local loop is still the historical operator's turf).
Thanks for explaining this. I never understood why in my country I had to pay both my ISP and the national P&T company for my internet access. (The P&T company charging *more* than my ISP). In Belgium, France and Germany (our neighbours, you can guess now) this doesn't seem to be the case and people have cheap internet. I don't complain, by now I have 1Mbps/128kbps, for a "mere" ~33€. Back when I started it was over 60€ for 256kbps/64kbps, and don't get me started on ISDN before that. /P>
Ah, that is why lots of drops of coffee from my computer screen just magically jumped in my mouth! ;-)
He wrote that anecdote himself in "A Brief History of Time". So, this *really* is old news.
The cars marked with an asterisk are considered family cars. I'm sorry I left out asian carmakers, but I wasn't familiar enough with their models to know what kind of car they are. I took the prices out of a current car magazine I had lying around.
What I'd like to know is why I saw so many BMW 7-series, or Audi A8 (or even S8!) while I was in the States. You clearly must be richer than we are because we definately do not spend as much on cars as you do. Oh, and if I look in the same magazine I see that SUVs generally are *above* 30k€: Audi Q7 is over 46k€, BMW X3 over 36k€, BMW X5 over 45k€, Hummer H2 over 41k€, Hummer H3 over 70k€, Mercedes M-Class over 48k€, Porsche Cayenne over 48k€ and Volkswagen Touareg 46K€.
Dummy data. In all my years as a software engineer I have never worked with real or production data.
How do you generate representative "Dummy Data"? Everywhere where I worked, we tested on real production data, with the personally identifiable data scrabled. So if I saw a name there saying "Joe Sixpack", I could be certain that the data was not of a guy named "Joe Sixpack", neither was his social security number. Those things were bogus, the rest was not.
Ehm, you can:
Alas, I do not know what effect disabling iPodService has. Back when I tried it, it wasn't a real service. I had no iPod either (I only have a Shuffle anyway). For me, I leave both processes running: they do absolutely nothing to my systems stability. They both eat up about 3.5MiBytes according to Windows Task Manager. That's peanuts when you have over 1Gig RAM or more (as nearly all my systems do...)
What about the systems then that never crash due to drivers... Like for example all my systems. How do they get counted?
Idiot AC... If I really liked her, I think I would have had that song on my harddrive already, don't you think?