When I first tried XP I really appeciated the new UI features. Finally MS makes Windows skinable. The new sounds kicked ass. Windows became a little less ugly. Unfortunately for XP, the UI enhancements are the only major enhancements over Windows 2K.
Sure there's other things in XP that make it better than 2K. It's a little less crash prone. There's more game support. There's more bundled apps (and you thought bundling IE was bad). But nothing but the UI really sicks out, or is significantly better than 2K.
Comparing it to 9X/ME, on the other hand, is a little different. You get all the advantages of switching to 2K, along with most of the disadvantages. Games support is a little better, but I suspect most serious gamers won't upgrade. There's application compatability problems, especially where there's a competing application built into XP. I would have to say despite the UI enhancements, the system is still much more complex than 9X/ME, so ease of use becomes an issue. Sure having a stable computer is great, but I suspect that most current users of 9X/ME would be disappointed because of the afore mentioned issues.
My conclusion is that if you're running 2K in a non-business environment it may be worth kicking out an extra C note if some of the features appeal to you. But for all those people running 9X/ME, I really don't see a draw to it, just as there wasn't really a draw for them to switch to NT/2K. And I suspect that most businesses that do upgrade will do so because it is forced down their throats, not because it is a "better OS."
As for me, I reverted back to 98SE after trying out XP. Still, my experience with XP wasn't all bad. After all, I did get a chance to grab all those new UI sound files. ^^
Given that this technology is not restricted to "unfriendly" countries, this could be a major incentive to deploy cell networks. Also, Iraq is not the only country that America (being the major user of stealth planes) is likely to go to war against. China (either directly or through Taiwan) is a possibility. Cellphones are hitting Chinese cities like wildfire. As such, this technology could become an effective tool for them.
Technology-wise, China is not a joke. Likewise, Iraq isn't left in the stone-ages either. Don't assume that because a country has little to no consumer technology, that their military must be "primitive" as well. Keep in mind that the UN is still monitoring Iraq to make sure that they do not develop nuclear or biological weapons, which they have the brain-power to do so.
Cheating in single player games is a possibility. Debugging programs is another (although that could easily be done with changing rendering settings). There are other possibilities too. Unfortunately this is a moot point because it's obvious that this feature is not going to be tolerated in today's world of online gaming with so many people using it to cheat.
I really have to disagree with you on this. A patent for one click shopping and one button starters are drastically different financially. Even something as "simple" as a one button car starter would take a great deal of work to implement mechanically. It would involve electronics schematics and CAD/CAM drafts of physical components. Add that to the cost of the physical components themselves and it would be a medium to large investment. For mechanical solutions, development is costly. And once you manufatured it, anybody can look at your solution and come up with competing solution for a fraction of the cost. Patents were intended to stop this action. It rewards the company for the R&D work spent on implementing their idea.
For software, on the other hand, you spend a few minutes or hours writing your code, and you're done. No costly prototypes, development time is only a small portion of an employee's time. And for most closed-source software, to copy a solution would require the majority of this work. Even if you open-sourced your software, society wouldn't gain that large of a benefit from your work, because there wasn't that much of an investment placed in implementing it anyways. I would have to guess that Amazon spent much more getting the patent for their one click shopping than they spent developing it.
Now of course, the idea of making one click shopping wasn't really rewarded. But patents don't do that. Same thing with the one button starter. You can't patent your idea, only your implementation.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).
Unfortuately, the widespread release and use of this product will just reinforce our society's dependance on disposible applications. That's why I hope this and similar technologies will fail until a more ecological friendly idea comes along.
Try adding some X-mas tree lights to the mix. They really add a nice effect in a room, especially if you use solid color lights. Just pin them up near the ceiling.
This is simply unrealistic. You are arguing that simply having backups makes data insecure, regardless of where the backups are stored. Granted the key is only secure as the weakest link (or backup), but multiple copies are needed in this case. Its evident you've been watching movies a bit too much. Redundancy is needed in the world, no matter how secure/protected you think one site is.
This even isn't worth arguing since this key isn't just a use once signature. Any new cyrpto packages approved by Microsoft has to be signed, meaning that somebody (or some group) has this key and is using it on a semi-regular basis. With Microsoft I doubt this person walks into the basement with retna scanners, multiple ID checks, and armed guards. Instead they login to the corporate NT domain server to access it.
It sounds like Helmut was working on a standard unrelated to IPIX. I believe its for panoramic images using VRML. That's what makes this whole ordeal so sickening - IPIX thinks they have the patent on the panoramic process.
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When I first tried XP I really appeciated the new UI features. Finally MS makes Windows skinable. The new sounds kicked ass. Windows became a little less ugly. Unfortunately for XP, the UI enhancements are the only major enhancements over Windows 2K.
Sure there's other things in XP that make it better than 2K. It's a little less crash prone. There's more game support. There's more bundled apps (and you thought bundling IE was bad). But nothing but the UI really sicks out, or is significantly better than 2K.
Comparing it to 9X/ME, on the other hand, is a little different. You get all the advantages of switching to 2K, along with most of the disadvantages. Games support is a little better, but I suspect most serious gamers won't upgrade. There's application compatability problems, especially where there's a competing application built into XP. I would have to say despite the UI enhancements, the system is still much more complex than 9X/ME, so ease of use becomes an issue. Sure having a stable computer is great, but I suspect that most current users of 9X/ME would be disappointed because of the afore mentioned issues.
My conclusion is that if you're running 2K in a non-business environment it may be worth kicking out an extra C note if some of the features appeal to you. But for all those people running 9X/ME, I really don't see a draw to it, just as there wasn't really a draw for them to switch to NT/2K. And I suspect that most businesses that do upgrade will do so because it is forced down their throats, not because it is a "better OS."
As for me, I reverted back to 98SE after trying out XP. Still, my experience with XP wasn't all bad. After all, I did get a chance to grab all those new UI sound files. ^^
Technology-wise, China is not a joke. Likewise, Iraq isn't left in the stone-ages either. Don't assume that because a country has little to no consumer technology, that their military must be "primitive" as well. Keep in mind that the UN is still monitoring Iraq to make sure that they do not develop nuclear or biological weapons, which they have the brain-power to do so.
Cheating in single player games is a possibility. Debugging programs is another (although that could easily be done with changing rendering settings). There are other possibilities too. Unfortunately this is a moot point because it's obvious that this feature is not going to be tolerated in today's world of online gaming with so many people using it to cheat.
I really have to disagree with you on this. A patent for one click shopping and one button starters are drastically different financially. Even something as "simple" as a one button car starter would take a great deal of work to implement mechanically. It would involve electronics schematics and CAD/CAM drafts of physical components. Add that to the cost of the physical components themselves and it would be a medium to large investment. For mechanical solutions, development is costly. And once you manufatured it, anybody can look at your solution and come up with competing solution for a fraction of the cost. Patents were intended to stop this action. It rewards the company for the R&D work spent on implementing their idea.
For software, on the other hand, you spend a few minutes or hours writing your code, and you're done. No costly prototypes, development time is only a small portion of an employee's time. And for most closed-source software, to copy a solution would require the majority of this work. Even if you open-sourced your software, society wouldn't gain that large of a benefit from your work, because there wasn't that much of an investment placed in implementing it anyways. I would have to guess that Amazon spent much more getting the patent for their one click shopping than they spent developing it.
Now of course, the idea of making one click shopping wasn't really rewarded. But patents don't do that. Same thing with the one button starter. You can't patent your idea, only your implementation.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, we (Americans and most of the developed world) live in a society that views disposible products as convenient and useful and does not really care about the ecological costs involved. AOL CDs are a good example of this (convenient and useful from AOL's perspective of course).
Unfortuately, the widespread release and use of this product will just reinforce our society's dependance on disposible applications. That's why I hope this and similar technologies will fail until a more ecological friendly idea comes along.
Try adding some X-mas tree lights to the mix. They really add a nice effect in a room, especially if you use solid color lights. Just pin them up near the ceiling.
This is simply unrealistic. You are arguing that simply having backups makes data insecure, regardless of where the backups are stored. Granted the key is only secure as the weakest link (or backup), but multiple copies are needed in this case. Its evident you've been watching movies a bit too much. Redundancy is needed in the world, no matter how secure/protected you think one site is.
This even isn't worth arguing since this key isn't just a use once signature. Any new cyrpto packages approved by Microsoft has to be signed, meaning that somebody (or some group) has this key and is using it on a semi-regular basis. With Microsoft I doubt this person walks into the basement with retna scanners, multiple ID checks, and armed guards. Instead they login to the corporate NT domain server to access it.
It sounds like Helmut was working on a standard unrelated to IPIX. I believe its for panoramic images using VRML. That's what makes this whole ordeal so sickening - IPIX thinks they have the patent on the panoramic process.