My intention was not to joke instead of engaging your response. I simply don't believe that any MS product will actually speed up over time. In my experience, their products have a tendency to accumulate entropy as you run the system and slow down over time.
Perhaps some things in Vista are designed to learn from the user and make adjustments accordingly to certain system parameters. I'll accept that but I still don't believe anything will speed up over time because the effects of this will, IMO, be more than cancelled out by the effects of all the garbage that tends to find its way into peoples' Windows-based machines.
Microsoft is not inclined to fix a critical arbitrary code execution vulnerability with a data technology that is at the heart of a large number of essential business and hobby applications.
Correct. It's more important to code up stupid gadgets that serve no purpose other than to slow down your computer.
Very observant of you and, yes, we know that a switch to the Mac platform requires buying all new computers. However, there is a difference. We believe that buying new computers and spending tons of money on training costs to "upgrade" to Windows Vista will provide no benefit. However, we believe that by upgrading our Celeron-class machines to iMacs, we will have some training costs (although much less than for Windows Vista) and we will have many benefits.
iMacs take up much less room than the computers we currently have, and provide more screen real estate.
iMacs look freakin' cool, especially the new aluminum and glass ones, which resemble Apple's other "pro" equipment in their appearance. While this benefit is a small one, it will make our offices look much better and more technologically advanced in a way.
Macs are fun to use.
Macs are easier to use than PCs.
With Mac OS X we will have Spotlight for instant searching.
The Macs will allow us to provide UNIX-based software that we've wanted to provide for our employees for some time.
Using programs like Aperture and iWork will allow our staff to increase their productivity way beyond what they're currently capable of.
If you read my journal, you'll see that my latest post is an expansion of my sig. You see, Microsoft's motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" If that were still the case today, I think it would be a multiple choice question, and the choices would be:
Mac OS X (Server or traditional version)
Linux (pick your favorite distro)
*BSD (pick your favorite distro)
Other UNIX system.
The ironic thing is that all of these alternative OSes are UNIX-based or UNIX-like.
Back to my sig and journal, I haven't used Windows on my own computers for a number of years now, but I do administer a number of XP machines for my employer. This is soon to change as we are seriously considering a move to the Mac platform for all of this company's computers, and for the two must-have Windows-only applications that we use on only two of our machines, we will install VMware and run XP in a virtual machine. We have been testing this configuration for a number of months now and it is rock solid. Not only that, but these two apps are major engineering applications with four and five digit price tags, and although the versions we use are 7 years old, they do the job we need them to do and no upgrade is necessary, so it will be unnecessary for us to switch to Vista any time soon.
We did evaluate Vista when it first came out. The evaluation was a short one because we immediately recognized that MS made a big blunder with Vista. To begin with, the installer took forever to load, and then gleefully told us, in shiny letters on a colorful background, how Windows Vista saves you time, as if to say that if the Installer works this slowly, wait 'till you see the operating system! Once the system was up and running, it became quite apparent that it was a joke. We realized that if we were to embrace Vista, it would mean replacing all of our computers, training most of the employees who use them due to the interface's heavy changes, and have many issues with speed, compatibility, and integration. In short, the cost would be horrendous, and at the end of the day, we couldn't find any justification for this expense, even if we tried.
That is the bottom line. Tremendous cost; no benefit. This is Microsoft's blunder. They simply can't keep forcing upgrades because XP does everything that most businesses need from an operating system, and the course MS should have taken is one of incremental improvements. Had they spent the last five years fixing bugs, cleaning up code, optimizing the bottlenecks of the system, tightening up security, and providing new features slowly and incrementally, they would probably have Windows XP with instant search and a database file system working by now. The only additional misfeature that Vista provides is its incredibly ugly, slow, and resource hogging interface, and we want no part of that. In fact, we run all our XP machines without the Luna interface because we think that's ugly as well.
Ok. This is seriously the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Have we become so liberalized, so politically correct, that we can't show a cookie monster with a pipe or a dude who lives in a garbage can? So let me get this straight. It's not ok to show that stuff, but it is ok to show those teletubbies where one of them is gay? Dude, kids who are three will understand that the dude who lives in a trash can is a joke. But the same three year old kids don't need to be learning about sexuality and stuff. These subjects don't need to be brought up at all. In other words, if we continue down this slippery slope, pretty soon we won't be able to show or say anything. Except talk about sexuality. That seems to be ok.
heh heh. This so-called "swarm intelligence" will do nothing to teach us how to make efficient web servers. The hive and the swarm of bees operate efficiently but not because they have some sort of innate intelligence that allows them to do so. They operate in this manner because they are programmed to do so. The actions of each bee are based on something akin to a computer program. This program is designed in such a manner that when many units are executing it in parallel, with each unit operating on its own timer, so that statistically all parts of the program are being executed simultaneously across the bees in the swarm, the result is the efficient overall operation that we witness. However the point is that the individual program is designed so that the overall program will execute efficiently, regardless of where any particular instance of the individual program might be in its program code. Who did this programming? God. And the crazy thing is that beehives are only one tiny part of it. The overall program encompasses the entire universe. So ha ha ha... cuz you can study those bees all day long and it won't make you a better web programmer.
I am of the opinion that they really dropped the ball with this Vista thing and even if they fix a lot of the problems in this service pack, it won't really help their position by much. I mean, look, XP did just about everything that businesses needed an operating system to do. If MS had spent the last several years improving XP, ironing out the bugs, perhaps rewriting a few modules that really needed to be re-engineered, fixing security flaws, optimizing the system, getting rid of some bloat or otherwise reducing the footprint of the OS, and just basically making small incremental improvements, and releasing them often, then I really think that XP would be a real winner by now. Just think, if every six months, say, they had released a new service pack for XP, then XP would be at service pack 10 by now. They could have made small transitions, allowing all the other companies in the industry time to catch up, to fix whatever issues might prevent a certain application or another one from running, etc.
But instead, let's take a look at what they did.
They hyped up how amazing the next version would be for an incredibly long amount of time. A database file system; integrated search; an amazing new interface; there were all kinds of innovations that were supposed to get released with Vista. But then reality set in and it was realized that even for a behemoth the likes of MS, it isn't just a simple task of banging out k-locs of code to achieve the kind of incredible product that they were shooting for, and to do it from scratch. If they had simply continued with the XP codebase, adding instant search as a service pack, adding the database file system as another service pack... or better yet, instead of service packs, if they could have modeled these things as modules of some sort that could be installed optionally in a system, then they could release them independently of other features, and an OS release would be unaffected by delays in those other modules. The result of the way they worked was delays, delays, delays, and I really feel that at some point, they took what they had, packaged it up as best they could, called it the final product, and shipped it, just to say that they had something. This is a shame, since all along, they had XP, which, if you clean it up using some utilities you can download for free, and if you uninstall a lot of the bloat, switch to the classic interface, turn off all the animations (or in system preferences, tell it to optimize for best performance, rather than best appearance), well, if you do all those things and make sure that Windows NEVER accesses the Internet except through a firewall (a Linksys box suffices for most purposes), and if you make sure the system doesn't pick up spam, spyware, adware, popups, and all kinds of other crap that attacks Windows (which is achievable by keeping a backup of your system with exactly the configuration you want, and keeping the OS on one partition and your data on another, so that you can simply plop the backup right into the OS partition when something goes haywire), well, if you do all those things, then XP was actually a very good OS. I know, I hate to say it. But yes, it did everything an OS is supposed to do: It booted the computer; it provided facilities to run other programs; and it allowed those programs to use the shared resources of the computer. It also provided many services on top of that that could serve to enhance the computer's usefulness. Now you can argue that it's bloated, that it's slow, that it's prone to security problems, that many many things are wrong with it, and you're right as far as I'm concerned. But the fact is that once an IT department figures out how to get control of this beast, it will do pretty much whatever you want. So I went off on a tangent but the point was that MS already had in XP a perfectly good platform for adding features and even, yes, gaining more control of other markets, which is what they always like to do. They sort of dumped this out the window and went for the next big thing.
Heh heh... backdoors, shmackdoors. Private/public key pairs are used only on the faith that it is mathematically impossible to figure out one given the other. Supposedly, if some wise mathematician someday figures out a theorem that allows you to do that, all the public/private key pair encryption systems in use today become WORTHLESS. Luckily that hasn't happened yet. Or has it? Well I happen to know just that... a secret math theorem that makes it possible to generate a private key given a public one. It goes like this: Let A equal Alice's private key, and let B equal Bob's public key. Divide A by B and let Q equal the quotient and let R equal the remainder. My top secret theorem, which is known to NOBODY except ME, is that all I have to do to obtain Alice's private key is multiply B by Q and add R. Heh heh heh... It never fails. We are 1337z h4x0rz d00dz, bwaaaaahaaahaaahaahaahaahaahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
No. This is not enough. I think they should do more.
They should:
Take fingerprints, handprints, and footprints.
Take retinal scans.
Take two samples of DNA:
A drop of blood.
A hair follicle. If the person is bald or otherwise doesn't have suitable hair follicles, they will have to pay a fee.
Take a voice print.
Take photographs of the face from eighteen different angles.
In addition to all of this, all travelers should have to submit notarized copies of their birth certificate as well as copies of every page of their passport in order for officials to know everywhere they have traveled. Also, they would have to submit a special letter from the government of their country of citizenship that states that the person does not have any criminal records in that country. Also, they would be subject to an interview using a lie detector machine. All of this information would be kept indefinitely and shared with foreign governments. Also it would be sold for pennies to telemarketing companies and spammers so that they could target you for the products that you are most likely to buy.
No, they aren't going to do all that, but that's what I think they should do.
You know, in reading this article, I have just been enlightened. I realize that all this time, I was confused because I didn't understand the purpose of Windows Vista. You see, I thought it was Microsoft's way of making a really, really funny joke. I mean, what else could Vista possibly be? Let's examine Vista and see why this is so:
Every other button you push, the entire screen goes black and it asks you, "Did you really push that button?"
The system is so excruciatingly slow that even on the newest hardware, it is much, much slower than XP on much older hardware.
Boatloads of drivers and applications that worked fine under XP do not function under Vista. The result is that things like printers that were supported just fine under XP do not work under Vista. The result is that you have to throw away your perfectly good printer or whatever, and get a new one, as if having just bought a brand new computer and dropping a ton of money on Vista Ultimate isn't enough of an expense.
The Vista installer takes F*O*R*E*V*E*R to load, and then gleefully tells you that Windows Vista "saves you time," as if to demonstrate that if the installer is this slow, wait 'till you experience the operating system!
The colors chosen for the Vista desktop and windows are such an eyesore that even their own mother couldn't possibly like them. I'd like to know what the graphic designers were smoking, because I want some.
There are not one or two but six different versions of Vista. Do they suddenly think they're in the Linux business because it seems they want to scream out, "We're just like Linux; we have too many distros to choose from too!" (Well, I think someone mentioned that RMS wanted Vista to be called GNU/Vista or something like that.)
Even if you're an expert XP user, you have to completely relearn how to use a computer when you downgrade to Vista, because everything is so significantly different that you'll have a field day just figuring out how to move a file from one place to another.
So, I mean, what else but a really funny joke could this be? A product?
But having read this story, I now understand that there are actually people who worked on this Vista thing who believed that they were making a serious software product. The only thing I can think to say is that this is a tremendous shame. I mean, Windows XP can do pretty much anything that a business might need. All they had to do was spend the last five years or so perfecting XP, ironing out all the bugs, cleaning it up as much as they could, optimizing it for better performance, tightening up security, etc. That would have given them a very solid product with which to compete. Instead, they wasted all this effort, time, and money making a product so embarrassingly slow and bloated, even on the newest hardware, that many businesses are avoiding it like the plague. I'm sorry but I really think that Vista is an enormous flop, even if Microsoft is successful in selling millions of copies. The point is that Vista is actually a very good advertisement for Apple Macs with Mac OS X, and for Linux and the *BSDs.
Their motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" I don't know about you, but as my sig and journal both say, Microsoft released Vista, so I went to an Apple retail store and bought a Mac.
Ok. No email about the world's finest software company is complete without a remark that calls for chairs to be thrown... but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
duh how the hell does this reduce heating problems and shit? it seems to me if you build the darn thing where the sun don't shine as an earlier poster said, then it would get hotter not colder cuz the cottonpickin earth all around would serve as an insulator and cause the datacenter to fry itself and shit.
as usual/. makes it look like its a story about something it totally ain't about. incas leaping canyons. ok. i thought we're talking people leaping canyons in the same way that trinity and the agent leap from one tall building to another and in doing so fly across a rather wide street. i thought, maybe the matrix is real after all and i need to figure out how to get the hell out of here. then i open up the story and realize that/. is fscking with me once again.
Email sucks. The best way to communicate is by writing on your personal stationery with a quill pen, then folding it and sealing it by dripping candle wax and marking that with your personal insignia ring. This is then mailed to the recipient, preferably via a service that takes a few weeks, at least, to deliver the letter.
Obligatory comment: Google is a better company than Microsoft.
Finally, I beat all the first posters and I got first post!!! Hurray! Time to get all my friends over here and show him how I have risen to the pinnacle of achievement in my life by getting first post on/.!!!!!
duh, they fixed it. This story is old news. In an update released last night (or at least that's when I go it), the cottonpickin' firewall tab says, "Allow only essential services," instead of "Disallow all" or however it was worded before. It would be cool, however, if there were an additional "disallow ALL incoming and outgoing connections," meaning that it would accomplish the same thing as unplugging your ethernet cable and turning off Airport. I can't imagine why in the world such a thing would actually be useful, though. If you need a totally disconnected system, install VMware, drop in a Linux virtual machine, and tell VMware to make it have no connection to the outside world.
If you need to email trade secrets, banking information, or any other sensitive information, the way to do this is by learning to use PGP or your encryption standard of choice on your own, and then generate and store your own private keys, and send the emails through any service of your choice, already encrypted.
For added security, send the public key to the other party by postal mail so none of the keys ever see email; only the encrypted content. Furthermore, encrypt the sensitive content between streams of random length from/dev/random, so that anyone trying to crack the encryption will see a bunch of hogwash even if they attempt brute force methods.
Why do I get the feeling that Lord Sauron of Washington State is like that bully kid in grade school who actually believes that he's inferior to everyone else, and therefore acts like a bully to make up for it? He has to steal everyone else's lunch money, not because he needs it but just because he's jealous that they have lunch money.
In this example, Lord Sauron sees that Apple is successful with the iPod, so he needs to steal that away from them. Now he needs to be king of all media. Next thing you know, he'll notice that there's money to be made in refrigerators and he'll start making those, and every week or so the thing will shut down for no reason and all your food will spoil, and he'll convince the world that this is how a refrigerator is supposed to be.
I think, luckily, that so far consumers have not fallen for this fast one and so that stupid player (which is inferior to Apple's beautiful iPod) has been somewhat of a flop.
Apple is a better company than Microsoft.
Obligatory remark: Google is a better company than Microsoft.
Lord Sauron knows this, but doesn't know what to do about it. So he throws tantrums and chairs.
Duh, why weren't they using their heads from the beginning? They should have come up with a free-for-taxes solution. The system is installed all over a city, everyone in radio range uses the wifi for free, and the city immediately begins paying the company on a regular basis out of some new municipal tax that it would collect. (This could be an additional fee tacked on to the various municipal cell phone fees, or some other thing). Everyone would have to pay, even if they never use it, in the name of having free wifi all over the city. Earthlink would make zillions even if nobody ever used the darn thing. This might sound far-fetched, but remember that politicians don't give a hoot when it comes to your money, and also it's akin to the Walt Disney Company convincing the cable companies to increase everyone's monthly rates by $5 and start including the Disney Channel in the basic package. That way, everyone (even people who didn't order it) started receiving the Disney Channel "for free," and paying for it. It was sneaky, and if Earthlink had been wearing their thinking caps, they would have come up with a similar one for city-wide wifi.
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My intention was not to joke instead of engaging your response. I simply don't believe that any MS product will actually speed up over time. In my experience, their products have a tendency to accumulate entropy as you run the system and slow down over time.
Perhaps some things in Vista are designed to learn from the user and make adjustments accordingly to certain system parameters. I'll accept that but I still don't believe anything will speed up over time because the effects of this will, IMO, be more than cancelled out by the effects of all the garbage that tends to find its way into peoples' Windows-based machines.
Microsoft is not inclined to fix a critical arbitrary code execution vulnerability with a data technology that is at the heart of a large number of essential business and hobby applications.
Correct. It's more important to code up stupid gadgets that serve no purpose other than to slow down your computer.
Donate!
Perhaps I misunderstand you. Is your post supposed to be modded +5 Funny? This is a serious question.
If you read my journal, you'll see that my latest post is an expansion of my sig. You see, Microsoft's motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" If that were still the case today, I think it would be a multiple choice question, and the choices would be:
The ironic thing is that all of these alternative OSes are UNIX-based or UNIX-like.
Back to my sig and journal, I haven't used Windows on my own computers for a number of years now, but I do administer a number of XP machines for my employer. This is soon to change as we are seriously considering a move to the Mac platform for all of this company's computers, and for the two must-have Windows-only applications that we use on only two of our machines, we will install VMware and run XP in a virtual machine. We have been testing this configuration for a number of months now and it is rock solid. Not only that, but these two apps are major engineering applications with four and five digit price tags, and although the versions we use are 7 years old, they do the job we need them to do and no upgrade is necessary, so it will be unnecessary for us to switch to Vista any time soon.
We did evaluate Vista when it first came out. The evaluation was a short one because we immediately recognized that MS made a big blunder with Vista. To begin with, the installer took forever to load, and then gleefully told us, in shiny letters on a colorful background, how Windows Vista saves you time, as if to say that if the Installer works this slowly, wait 'till you see the operating system! Once the system was up and running, it became quite apparent that it was a joke. We realized that if we were to embrace Vista, it would mean replacing all of our computers, training most of the employees who use them due to the interface's heavy changes, and have many issues with speed, compatibility, and integration. In short, the cost would be horrendous, and at the end of the day, we couldn't find any justification for this expense, even if we tried.
That is the bottom line. Tremendous cost; no benefit. This is Microsoft's blunder. They simply can't keep forcing upgrades because XP does everything that most businesses need from an operating system, and the course MS should have taken is one of incremental improvements. Had they spent the last five years fixing bugs, cleaning up code, optimizing the bottlenecks of the system, tightening up security, and providing new features slowly and incrementally, they would probably have Windows XP with instant search and a database file system working by now. The only additional misfeature that Vista provides is its incredibly ugly, slow, and resource hogging interface, and we want no part of that. In fact, we run all our XP machines without the Luna interface because we think that's ugly as well.
Ok. This is seriously the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Have we become so liberalized, so politically correct, that we can't show a cookie monster with a pipe or a dude who lives in a garbage can? So let me get this straight. It's not ok to show that stuff, but it is ok to show those teletubbies where one of them is gay? Dude, kids who are three will understand that the dude who lives in a trash can is a joke. But the same three year old kids don't need to be learning about sexuality and stuff. These subjects don't need to be brought up at all. In other words, if we continue down this slippery slope, pretty soon we won't be able to show or say anything. Except talk about sexuality. That seems to be ok.
Seems everything is backwards.
anime is so stupid. why would anyone waste time torrenting this?
heh heh. This so-called "swarm intelligence" will do nothing to teach us how to make efficient web servers. The hive and the swarm of bees operate efficiently but not because they have some sort of innate intelligence that allows them to do so. They operate in this manner because they are programmed to do so. The actions of each bee are based on something akin to a computer program. This program is designed in such a manner that when many units are executing it in parallel, with each unit operating on its own timer, so that statistically all parts of the program are being executed simultaneously across the bees in the swarm, the result is the efficient overall operation that we witness. However the point is that the individual program is designed so that the overall program will execute efficiently, regardless of where any particular instance of the individual program might be in its program code. Who did this programming? God. And the crazy thing is that beehives are only one tiny part of it. The overall program encompasses the entire universe. So ha ha ha... cuz you can study those bees all day long and it won't make you a better web programmer.
there's no foul play involved. someone prolly tripped over the ethernet cables in the data center and pulled the plugs out of the server by mistake.
I am of the opinion that they really dropped the ball with this Vista thing and even if they fix a lot of the problems in this service pack, it won't really help their position by much. I mean, look, XP did just about everything that businesses needed an operating system to do. If MS had spent the last several years improving XP, ironing out the bugs, perhaps rewriting a few modules that really needed to be re-engineered, fixing security flaws, optimizing the system, getting rid of some bloat or otherwise reducing the footprint of the OS, and just basically making small incremental improvements, and releasing them often, then I really think that XP would be a real winner by now. Just think, if every six months, say, they had released a new service pack for XP, then XP would be at service pack 10 by now. They could have made small transitions, allowing all the other companies in the industry time to catch up, to fix whatever issues might prevent a certain application or another one from running, etc.
But instead, let's take a look at what they did.
They hyped up how amazing the next version would be for an incredibly long amount of time. A database file system; integrated search; an amazing new interface; there were all kinds of innovations that were supposed to get released with Vista. But then reality set in and it was realized that even for a behemoth the likes of MS, it isn't just a simple task of banging out k-locs of code to achieve the kind of incredible product that they were shooting for, and to do it from scratch. If they had simply continued with the XP codebase, adding instant search as a service pack, adding the database file system as another service pack... or better yet, instead of service packs, if they could have modeled these things as modules of some sort that could be installed optionally in a system, then they could release them independently of other features, and an OS release would be unaffected by delays in those other modules. The result of the way they worked was delays, delays, delays, and I really feel that at some point, they took what they had, packaged it up as best they could, called it the final product, and shipped it, just to say that they had something. This is a shame, since all along, they had XP, which, if you clean it up using some utilities you can download for free, and if you uninstall a lot of the bloat, switch to the classic interface, turn off all the animations (or in system preferences, tell it to optimize for best performance, rather than best appearance), well, if you do all those things and make sure that Windows NEVER accesses the Internet except through a firewall (a Linksys box suffices for most purposes), and if you make sure the system doesn't pick up spam, spyware, adware, popups, and all kinds of other crap that attacks Windows (which is achievable by keeping a backup of your system with exactly the configuration you want, and keeping the OS on one partition and your data on another, so that you can simply plop the backup right into the OS partition when something goes haywire), well, if you do all those things, then XP was actually a very good OS. I know, I hate to say it. But yes, it did everything an OS is supposed to do: It booted the computer; it provided facilities to run other programs; and it allowed those programs to use the shared resources of the computer. It also provided many services on top of that that could serve to enhance the computer's usefulness. Now you can argue that it's bloated, that it's slow, that it's prone to security problems, that many many things are wrong with it, and you're right as far as I'm concerned. But the fact is that once an IT department figures out how to get control of this beast, it will do pretty much whatever you want. So I went off on a tangent but the point was that MS already had in XP a perfectly good platform for adding features and even, yes, gaining more control of other markets, which is what they always like to do. They sort of dumped this out the window and went for the next big thing.
Heh heh... backdoors, shmackdoors. Private/public key pairs are used only on the faith that it is mathematically impossible to figure out one given the other. Supposedly, if some wise mathematician someday figures out a theorem that allows you to do that, all the public/private key pair encryption systems in use today become WORTHLESS. Luckily that hasn't happened yet. Or has it? Well I happen to know just that... a secret math theorem that makes it possible to generate a private key given a public one. It goes like this: Let A equal Alice's private key, and let B equal Bob's public key. Divide A by B and let Q equal the quotient and let R equal the remainder. My top secret theorem, which is known to NOBODY except ME, is that all I have to do to obtain Alice's private key is multiply B by Q and add R. Heh heh heh... It never fails. We are 1337z h4x0rz d00dz, bwaaaaahaaahaaahaahaahaahaahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
No. This is not enough. I think they should do more.
They should:
In addition to all of this, all travelers should have to submit notarized copies of their birth certificate as well as copies of every page of their passport in order for officials to know everywhere they have traveled. Also, they would have to submit a special letter from the government of their country of citizenship that states that the person does not have any criminal records in that country. Also, they would be subject to an interview using a lie detector machine. All of this information would be kept indefinitely and shared with foreign governments. Also it would be sold for pennies to telemarketing companies and spammers so that they could target you for the products that you are most likely to buy.
No, they aren't going to do all that, but that's what I think they should do.
You know, in reading this article, I have just been enlightened. I realize that all this time, I was confused because I didn't understand the purpose of Windows Vista. You see, I thought it was Microsoft's way of making a really, really funny joke. I mean, what else could Vista possibly be? Let's examine Vista and see why this is so:
- Every other button you push, the entire screen goes black and it asks you, "Did you really push that button?"
- The system is so excruciatingly slow that even on the newest hardware, it is much, much slower than XP on much older hardware.
- Boatloads of drivers and applications that worked fine under XP do not function under Vista. The result is that things like printers that were supported just fine under XP do not work under Vista. The result is that you have to throw away your perfectly good printer or whatever, and get a new one, as if having just bought a brand new computer and dropping a ton of money on Vista Ultimate isn't enough of an expense.
- The Vista installer takes F*O*R*E*V*E*R to load, and then gleefully tells you that Windows Vista "saves you time," as if to demonstrate that if the installer is this slow, wait 'till you experience the operating system!
- The colors chosen for the Vista desktop and windows are such an eyesore that even their own mother couldn't possibly like them. I'd like to know what the graphic designers were smoking, because I want some.
- There are not one or two but six different versions of Vista. Do they suddenly think they're in the Linux business because it seems they want to scream out, "We're just like Linux; we have too many distros to choose from too!" (Well, I think someone mentioned that RMS wanted Vista to be called GNU/Vista or something like that.)
- Even if you're an expert XP user, you have to completely relearn how to use a computer when you downgrade to Vista, because everything is so significantly different that you'll have a field day just figuring out how to move a file from one place to another.
So, I mean, what else but a really funny joke could this be? A product?But having read this story, I now understand that there are actually people who worked on this Vista thing who believed that they were making a serious software product. The only thing I can think to say is that this is a tremendous shame. I mean, Windows XP can do pretty much anything that a business might need. All they had to do was spend the last five years or so perfecting XP, ironing out all the bugs, cleaning it up as much as they could, optimizing it for better performance, tightening up security, etc. That would have given them a very solid product with which to compete. Instead, they wasted all this effort, time, and money making a product so embarrassingly slow and bloated, even on the newest hardware, that many businesses are avoiding it like the plague. I'm sorry but I really think that Vista is an enormous flop, even if Microsoft is successful in selling millions of copies. The point is that Vista is actually a very good advertisement for Apple Macs with Mac OS X, and for Linux and the *BSDs.
Their motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" I don't know about you, but as my sig and journal both say, Microsoft released Vista, so I went to an Apple retail store and bought a Mac.
Ok. No email about the world's finest software company is complete without a remark that calls for chairs to be thrown... but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
duh how the hell does this reduce heating problems and shit? it seems to me if you build the darn thing where the sun don't shine as an earlier poster said, then it would get hotter not colder cuz the cottonpickin earth all around would serve as an insulator and cause the datacenter to fry itself and shit.
as usual /. makes it look like its a story about something it totally ain't about. incas leaping canyons. ok. i thought we're talking people leaping canyons in the same way that trinity and the agent leap from one tall building to another and in doing so fly across a rather wide street. i thought, maybe the matrix is real after all and i need to figure out how to get the hell out of here. then i open up the story and realize that /. is fscking with me once again.
Dude, I don't get it with these bloggers dude. All they ever do is blog. Who would possibly want to do that? That's a bunch of hogwash.
Email sucks. The best way to communicate is by writing on your personal stationery with a quill pen, then folding it and sealing it by dripping candle wax and marking that with your personal insignia ring. This is then mailed to the recipient, preferably via a service that takes a few weeks, at least, to deliver the letter.
Obligatory comment: Google is a better company than Microsoft.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a flying chair!
Seventeen hours a day? What the hell is wrong with that kid? Nobody should have to endure being away from the computer for the remaining seven hours.
I got first post!! I got first post!!
Finally, I beat all the first posters and I got first post!!! Hurray! Time to get all my friends over here and show him how I have risen to the pinnacle of achievement in my life by getting first post on /.!!!!!
duh, what will it be used for? pr0n.
duh, they fixed it. This story is old news. In an update released last night (or at least that's when I go it), the cottonpickin' firewall tab says, "Allow only essential services," instead of "Disallow all" or however it was worded before. It would be cool, however, if there were an additional "disallow ALL incoming and outgoing connections," meaning that it would accomplish the same thing as unplugging your ethernet cable and turning off Airport. I can't imagine why in the world such a thing would actually be useful, though. If you need a totally disconnected system, install VMware, drop in a Linux virtual machine, and tell VMware to make it have no connection to the outside world.
If you need to email trade secrets, banking information, or any other sensitive information, the way to do this is by learning to use PGP or your encryption standard of choice on your own, and then generate and store your own private keys, and send the emails through any service of your choice, already encrypted.
For added security, send the public key to the other party by postal mail so none of the keys ever see email; only the encrypted content. Furthermore, encrypt the sensitive content between streams of random length from /dev/random, so that anyone trying to crack the encryption will see a bunch of hogwash even if they attempt brute force methods.
Why do I get the feeling that Lord Sauron of Washington State is like that bully kid in grade school who actually believes that he's inferior to everyone else, and therefore acts like a bully to make up for it? He has to steal everyone else's lunch money, not because he needs it but just because he's jealous that they have lunch money.
In this example, Lord Sauron sees that Apple is successful with the iPod, so he needs to steal that away from them. Now he needs to be king of all media. Next thing you know, he'll notice that there's money to be made in refrigerators and he'll start making those, and every week or so the thing will shut down for no reason and all your food will spoil, and he'll convince the world that this is how a refrigerator is supposed to be.
I think, luckily, that so far consumers have not fallen for this fast one and so that stupid player (which is inferior to Apple's beautiful iPod) has been somewhat of a flop.
Apple is a better company than Microsoft.
Obligatory remark: Google is a better company than Microsoft.
Lord Sauron knows this, but doesn't know what to do about it. So he throws tantrums and chairs.
Duh, why weren't they using their heads from the beginning? They should have come up with a free-for-taxes solution. The system is installed all over a city, everyone in radio range uses the wifi for free, and the city immediately begins paying the company on a regular basis out of some new municipal tax that it would collect. (This could be an additional fee tacked on to the various municipal cell phone fees, or some other thing). Everyone would have to pay, even if they never use it, in the name of having free wifi all over the city. Earthlink would make zillions even if nobody ever used the darn thing. This might sound far-fetched, but remember that politicians don't give a hoot when it comes to your money, and also it's akin to the Walt Disney Company convincing the cable companies to increase everyone's monthly rates by $5 and start including the Disney Channel in the basic package. That way, everyone (even people who didn't order it) started receiving the Disney Channel "for free," and paying for it. It was sneaky, and if Earthlink had been wearing their thinking caps, they would have come up with a similar one for city-wide wifi.