Bloated? I don't think one should describe what Adobe has done to Acrobat Reader simply as "Bloat". I suggest redefining the term as a verb with a tip of the hat to the new masters, as in "you silly hack, you've adobed your software!"
After getting fed up with Reader in the wake of the Feb. 19th PDF remote exploit notice (http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa09-01.html/) I decided to install FoxIt (I know, proprietary, not open source goodness)... But anyway, when I went to uninstall Adobe Reader, Windows claimed it to be taking up 221MB on my hard drive. 221 Megabytes! For a document reader!?
After installing FoxIt, Windows claims that it takes up only 7.15MB, which I corroborated by checking the size of the install directory. For the life of me, I can't figure out what exactly it is that Adobe Reader does that FoxIt doesn't. They're functionality identical so far as I can tell. So what in god's name is Adobe doing with that extra 200 megabytes of disk space?
Come on. They're screwed if they do, and screwed if they don't. The reason upgrades seem to have marginal value these days is because Microsoft has to worry about supporting a mountain of old software and hardware that suppose the OS works a certain way. Since they can't ignore all the users that will cry because their dot matrix printers and parallel port scanners from the 80s don't work anymore, virtual machines offer an elegant way to provide compatibility for old stuff while allowing MS to cut out legacy technologies that make the main OS slow and cumbersome.
Not necessarily. There are social engineering attacks that involve USB storage devices without requiring the attacker to have physical access. Use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
College long ago stopped having any notion of teaching kids to think and research independently
Have you even been to college? Seriously, I think you need to get back on the anti-depressants and head to the therapist to figure out why you are so attracted to paranoid conspiracy theories.
Yeah, I think you're in sync with the majority of Slashdotters.
I also think that you and those like you represent a loud minority of the user base who believe that somehow Mozilla owes it to you to maintain support for $archaic_OS_of_choice, regardless of market realities.
If you'd ever been involved in Enterprise software development, you'd realize that to stay competitive, Firefox must move forward. They must do so with this thing called "limited resources". That means that they can't support everything everyone wants all the time, but rather they must pick and choose their battles wisely. Supporting 10 year old vendor-unsupported Operating Systems and unsupported OS revision levels is not a wise use of limited resources, as the majority of the market has moved on.
If they indeed decide to drop Win2k and WinXPSP3 support going forward, kudos should go to the Mozilla team for not falling for the open source "design by committee and keep all users happy no matter how marginal their needs while we completely miss the big picture market opportunity" philosophy to guide Firefox development.
You're not following. I'm not saying that Firefox loads straight from the BIOS without an OS (hey, there's an idea!) I'm saying the OS, whether Linux or Windows provides a mostly equivalent foundation that I don't spend much time caring about. Both connect to the same wireless access point with a couple of clicks, don't they?
And FYI, I also use a Vista desktop, a Puppy Linux embedded server and a media center running MythTV. I can't be bothered to fiddle with the OS on my netbook cause it just works as is. I bought it because of the size, good keyboard and battery life. If it came with Ubuntu, I'd have installed Ffx on that instead.
I got one of them fancy Samsung NC10 netbooks (Atom 1.6GHz, gig RAM, XP pre-installed).
My OS of choice?
Mozilla Firefox.
At least that's where I spend 99% of my time on it.
Aside from the fact that MS probably counts shipped units to come up with its "96%" claim, does it really matter whether Linux geeks or Microsoft (or both) claim me as a user? The underlying OS identity is about as relevant to me as the manufacturer of the 2.5" hard drive the unit comes with. I stuck with XP since it was the path of least resistance.
At nearly 10 hours of battery life while lightly browsing, it'll even get you through a multi-hour delay in the terminal. The biggest win for me is that it's small enough to spread out on your tray table without the screen getting stuck on the seat back in front of you. Oh and it's fast enough to play 480p video (720p is a stretch) and has enough battery to play two full movies in flight./shameless advertisement
Besides the fact that you tested a trunk build when you should have tested this one: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/3.1b3-candidates/build1/win32/en-US/, you do realize that these javascript benchmarks are far from useful for determining real-world web browsing experience? Furthermore, the V8 benchmark in particular is so tailored to show Chrome's performance advantage that it can not be considered useful for anything other than showing Chrome is excellent at performing a handful of cherry-picked functions. Better yet, go play with google maps or some other heavy ajax app and then tell us that FFx 3.1 is not up to snuff. I have and I'm telling you that Ffx 3.1 is fast.
Remember when Steve Jobs said that Macs were switching to Intel? Everyone thought, hey that's the stupidest thing we've ever heard, everyone knows that AMD has had the CPU performance crown for many years and Intel's lost their way by trying to push the P4 architecture. What Jobs was shown secretly that was not known to the general public was that Intel was way ahead of schedule on its next generation architecture (Core2) and process (.45nm) and there was no way AMD would be able to compete for at least a couple of generations.
Now, sure Intel is not known for their graphics prowess, but it's not like they are http://www.notebookjournal.de/praxis/exclusive--intel-centrino-2-performance-test-79/3 *that* far behind Nvidia and ATI anymore. Percentage-wise, Intel's performance improvement going from the X3x00 to the X4x00 generation was much higher than either of what ATI or Nvidia have been achieving lately -- mobile or otherwise.
Don't be too surprised if they aren't a couple years away from taking on the elite GPU competition head on.
I'm not saying MS doesn't have incentive to break the protocols, but they do have to maintain some sort of compatibility between versions of Exchange. That's because corporations typically update Outlook software across the organization in a continuous fashion and asynchronously from Exchange server upgrades. IT departments would raise bloody hell if MS didn't provide a mostly seamless transition.
I was curious to see what they'd done since the last beta, so I installed it this morning. I had to reboot not once, but twice (once to uninstall IE8 beta2 and again I'm guessing so that it could hook into some OS files that were in use.)
After restarting the second time, it popped up some shenanigans about some add-ons not being enabled and some being out-of-date and not working. Huh? There's apparently two dozen different plugins and "helpers" installed, including 3 java widgits, a slew of Adobe stuff, and a whole lotta live.com and other MS cruft. Hmmm... Gotta admit, I have no idea what half this stuff does and I'm in Computer Security. Can you imagine the average user figuring out which one of these is the rogue add-on responsible for stealing their credit cards and redirecting their search queries to a click fraud site? Firefox's extension system is a breath of fresh air compared to this.
IE8 beta2 scored a pitiful 21/100 on acid3, RC1 now scores 20/100. Apparently acid3 is not yet a development target for MS. Seeing as their answer to web developers wanting more freedom to be creative is to "do it in Silverlight", it doesn't surprise that MS is dragging their feet here. I honestly wonder if half the stuff acid3 tests for will ever see the light of day in a top 500 website. I suspect FFx + Chrome + Safari + Opera and others will need to achieve greater than 50% market share before MS gets serious about SVG and company.
I find it amusing that IE8 gives users control over rendering like "older browsers" for incompatible websites (read: websites that were designed to work under the standards-ignorant IE6).
On the plus side: - as for most modern browsers, it seems to render most of the top websites reasonably well. - it has some privacy thingamajig which allows you to manually disallow sites one by one from storing cookies on your system (or at least that's how I interpretted the vague MS description)
Yeah, but I eventually had to close it when I realized how insanely annoying the web is without AdBlock Plus.
Basically, by releasing Vista SP2 and branding it "Windows 7", MS will succeed where Vista didn't. Here's why:
Vista issues leading to failure:
1. Significant changes to driver framework forced 3rd parties to re-write drivers for Vista --> as a result Vista shipped with a large amount of unsupported and undersupported hardware (hardware that was already working fine in XP). 2. By SP2, XP had become a very stable OS with a predictable user experience. Average computer users were for the first time in history getting used to stability in their computing experience. Due to architecture changes, Vista introduced numerous issues with existing software products that hearkened users back to the Win95-WinME era. Once you tease folks with something better, you can't take it away and offer something less stable. This is something that Microsoft seems to have misunderstood: Even if WinVista was actually more stable than WinXP RTM, people were going to compare it to WinXP SP2, and that's a tall order to achieve with such a large amount of core changes to any software product. 3. Changes to the UI (including Office 2007). By and large, smart people whose computer use is incidental to their work (e.g. doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, etc.) know their respective fields first and foremost and memorize a list of steps to get basic things done rather than learn *how* their computers work. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the Slashdot crowd, but that's how I've observed the vast majority of non-computer-savvy people work. In summary: if you change their computing experience in such a way that it takes them more than 30 seconds to find where that 'darn printer icon' has gone, and you've just created a negative first impression. Vista and office 2007 (which while not tied to Vista, is largely associated with it by the non-techy masses) has re-arranged a whole slew of things. Whether or not it's more intuitive for a new computer user is irrelevant when the vast majority of users are expected to be upgrading from XP. 4. UAC was misconceived and poorly implemented. Microsoft assumes my 60 year old mother knows whether she should permit a program to access some administrative function in the OS? Hah... 5. Higher memory requirements for an XP-like experience. Basically you need 1gig for ok performance, 2gig for max and 2gigs RAM cost a hefty $200 back in 2006. 6. A little known fact is that the latest code from Windows Update on top of Vista SP1 on a modern machine is a rock-solid experience (I use it every day on multiple computers). The problem is that negative reactions among early adopters regarding the abiove issues snowballed via word-of-mouth like what happens to a bad movie after opening weekend. By 2007 even those who don't have a clue about computers, had heard enough to "know" to stay away from Vista. Microsoft themselves discovered this and countered Vista's negative public image with a set of ads that appeared to convince skeptical new users.
Why Win7 will for the most part, avoid WinVista pitfalls:
1. Driver architecture borrowed from Vista. HW manufacturers need to do very little this time around (quick QA sanity test for most existing hardware). This will lead to much more positive initial user experience and in turn less negative early reviews. 2. Since significant Vista code is under the covers with a smattering of performance tweaks, I predict stability will be near Vista SP1(/SP2?) levels even as early as Win7 RTM. 3. Bulk of UI remains unchanged since Vista/Office2007, with the exception of the taskbar. Taskbar is going to be a bone of contention among some, but overall will not significantly hinder the release. Users will have had 3 years to get used to the Vista UI by the time Win7 ships. It's not going to make believers out of everyone, but I suspect that the majority will stop clinging to XP. 4. UAC is improved immensely. I still have a problem with asking regular folks to answer a question about their computer's security they don't fully understand, but at least it's expected to be significantly less intrusive. 5. 4gigs RAM is $20 after rebate at NewEgg, nuff said. I wouldn't be surprised if mem footprint actually goes down a touch as well.
It's not that simple. You forgot about embedded systems. For example, a few years ago as an employee of a security software company, I had a conversation with the head of IT at one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S. The conversation went something like this (I'm paraphrasing):
Him: We have a had a heck of a time dealing with systems ping-ponging the Blaster worm at each other. Rebooting them fixes the problem temporarily, but eventually they just get reinfected.
Me: Sounds pretty straight forward, we can help you remove malware from infected systems.
Him: Well, a lot of our "Windows systems" are actually portable medical devices like kidney dialysis, heart monitors and life support machines running embedded Windows NT. They are built by the manufacturer with a particular software load and certified by the Department of Health. I can't change so much as a registry key on them or they will no longer be certified for use in a hospital.
Me: So let me get this straight, you're saying that you have life support systems that are infected with worms and you can't disinfect them because the procedure would make the life support system less safe than it is with active malware on it?
Him: Beyond rebooting and using external firewalls to block worm packets, my hands are tied so long as the system continues to perform its primary function.
Me: Have you considered just disconnecting them from the network?
Him: No can do. We need to monitor status and administer remotely.
Now, I'm not saying that this situation is still true today or even that it was representative of the state of the healthcare industry at the time, but I find it highly believable that a virus/malware/worm outbreak somewhere *has* had an impact on someone's life.
Well, you know you're probably right to an extent. But the flip side to the arrogance shown developers is that Apple has managed to centralize, simplify and ensure a certain quality of apps for users. Apple has the upper hand right now because they've attracted a lot of eyeballs by addressing problems that no other cell phone company seemed able to address. Time will tell whether their arrogance will hinder them.
As a dedicated Blackberry Bold user myself (who regularly plays around with his girlfriend's iPhone 3G) I am left with a distinct 'last-generation' feeling when it comes to finding, installing and using apps designed for the blackberry. Of the ones that I manage to install (typically OTA via sms-sent URLs), many are designed for last-generation low-rez BBs or are converted java-midp apps that don't map navigation keys the same way RIM does... Or they're very buggy, or cause the OS to crash. Don't get me wrong, it's a plenty usable email device and good mobile phone, but it's missing a certain attention to detail when it comes to end-to-end user experience that Apple seems to have achieved with the iPhone and App Store.
Obviously, not all wealthy people are as I portrayed but the point remains. Regardless of what the vehicle looks like, many wealthy and wanna-be (which is not me) wealthy will buy objects for the sole purpose of flaunting a status symbol.
No, your original point was that wealthy people are egotists with small penises. My point was that wealth actually has very little to do with ego or penis size. You can backtrack all you want now, but that's what your post was about.
You also seem to be confused about wealth in the US too. Far too many "wealthy" people live at their income level or beyond, saving nothing for retirement. I do not consider these people wealthy.
Nor do I. Not sure what I wrote makes you think I'm confused.
critical examination of facts does not make one an egotists
Are we involved in the same conversation? If you go back and re-read my original response, you'll discover I made no such assertion.
Perhaps you should examine your self as to why a critical examination of these people have you in such a defencive posture.
Critical examination? What part of what you wrote would you consider a critical examination? Do you even know what critical examination means? Don't project, the ad hominem attacks don't strengthen your argument.
I know several "wealthy" people who don't flaunt their wealth -- people like you just don't notice them. I also know that this country (US) is in a serious economic downturn partly because poeple who were not "wealthy" went out and bought fancy cars and houses on credit terms they couldn't afford.
So, who are the bigger egotists, the wealthy or the wealthy-wannabes?
Other than for historical comparisons, what's the point of tracking the top "500" when nearly half the list turns over between June and November?
The 500th computer on the 11/2008 list hits an Rmax of 12.6 TFlops. That computer would have been #270 in June, so all computers below 270 in June were essentially wiped off the list in 6 months (not accounting for the ones that upgraded of course).
Super fast = reboot at shutdown, then boot OS and go into S3/standby before login; S3 requires constant trickle of power to maintain RAM state. Regular fast = reboot at shutdown, then boot OS and go into S4/hibernate before login; S4 writes memory contents to disk, so no power required. Takes longer to "boot" back up as it has to read each bit back into RAM.
Neither scenario would generally permit swapping out hardware that needs to be enumerated by the BIOS, such as RAM, video cards and SATA disks. USB devices would generally be ok to swap.
The vast majority of investors should ignore the minute by minute blows of the market. At this time scale the market is literally a big roulette wheel. Virtually all day traders and every amateur who thinks they can reliably extract disproportionate gains out of the market long-term (i.e. more than they would by say, holding an appropriate mix of diversified indexes) are fooling themselves into making predictions on what essentially amounts to sheer randomness. Think I'm crazy? Do yourself a favor and read A Random Walk Down Wall Street and save yourself the decade it took me to figure out how the market works. You're welcome.
it's constantly feed on by people like OLPCNews, an organization run by Intel employees who are working on another project. Whatever credibility you'd like to think you have was completely lost when you claimed as truth unsubstantiated rumors that have been proven to be false: http://www.olpcnews.com/commentary/olpc_news/olpc_news_conspiracy_theories.html
Just to make it absolutely clear: Yes, Wayan is kind of a dick and he's been somewhat inexplicably negative towards the OLPC project from the beginning, but he's not and has never been an employee of Intel, nor has anyone else at OLPCNews.
Incidentally, as a long-time follower of the OLPC project, a G1G1 donor and as someone who has spent a great deal of time using and developing for Sugar, I find laughable your assertions that Intel or Microsoft have had any substantial responsibility for OLPCs problems to date.
Traditionally, the ego race is precisely the means by which your elitist ilk entice us regular folk (i.e. politicians, janitors and steroid-abusing baseball players) to consider giving any of our hard earned tax dollars to this so called "science" you speak of.
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Bloated? I don't think one should describe what Adobe has done to Acrobat Reader simply as "Bloat". I suggest redefining the term as a verb with a tip of the hat to the new masters, as in "you silly hack, you've adobed your software!"
After getting fed up with Reader in the wake of the Feb. 19th PDF remote exploit notice (http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa09-01.html/) I decided to install FoxIt (I know, proprietary, not open source goodness)... But anyway, when I went to uninstall Adobe Reader, Windows claimed it to be taking up 221MB on my hard drive. 221 Megabytes! For a document reader!?
After installing FoxIt, Windows claims that it takes up only 7.15MB, which I corroborated by checking the size of the install directory. For the life of me, I can't figure out what exactly it is that Adobe Reader does that FoxIt doesn't. They're functionality identical so far as I can tell. So what in god's name is Adobe doing with that extra 200 megabytes of disk space?
Come on. They're screwed if they do, and screwed if they don't. The reason upgrades seem to have marginal value these days is because Microsoft has to worry about supporting a mountain of old software and hardware that suppose the OS works a certain way. Since they can't ignore all the users that will cry because their dot matrix printers and parallel port scanners from the 80s don't work anymore, virtual machines offer an elegant way to provide compatibility for old stuff while allowing MS to cut out legacy technologies that make the main OS slow and cumbersome.
Not necessarily. There are social engineering attacks that involve USB storage devices without requiring the attacker to have physical access. Use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
College long ago stopped having any notion of teaching kids to think and research independently
Have you even been to college? Seriously, I think you need to get back on the anti-depressants and head to the therapist to figure out why you are so attracted to paranoid conspiracy theories.
Really mods? Wow. Just wow.
"WinXPSP3" above should have been WinXP (less than) SP3. Forgot that the "less than sign" was a reserved tag character. Always preview!
Yeah, I think you're in sync with the majority of Slashdotters.
I also think that you and those like you represent a loud minority of the user base who believe that somehow Mozilla owes it to you to maintain support for $archaic_OS_of_choice, regardless of market realities.
If you'd ever been involved in Enterprise software development, you'd realize that to stay competitive, Firefox must move forward. They must do so with this thing called "limited resources". That means that they can't support everything everyone wants all the time, but rather they must pick and choose their battles wisely. Supporting 10 year old vendor-unsupported Operating Systems and unsupported OS revision levels is not a wise use of limited resources, as the majority of the market has moved on.
If they indeed decide to drop Win2k and WinXPSP3 support going forward, kudos should go to the Mozilla team for not falling for the open source "design by committee and keep all users happy no matter how marginal their needs while we completely miss the big picture market opportunity" philosophy to guide Firefox development.
You're not following. I'm not saying that Firefox loads straight from the BIOS without an OS (hey, there's an idea!) I'm saying the OS, whether Linux or Windows provides a mostly equivalent foundation that I don't spend much time caring about. Both connect to the same wireless access point with a couple of clicks, don't they?
And FYI, I also use a Vista desktop, a Puppy Linux embedded server and a media center running MythTV. I can't be bothered to fiddle with the OS on my netbook cause it just works as is. I bought it because of the size, good keyboard and battery life. If it came with Ubuntu, I'd have installed Ffx on that instead.
I got one of them fancy Samsung NC10 netbooks (Atom 1.6GHz, gig RAM, XP pre-installed).
My OS of choice?
Mozilla Firefox.
At least that's where I spend 99% of my time on it.
Aside from the fact that MS probably counts shipped units to come up with its "96%" claim, does it really matter whether Linux geeks or Microsoft (or both) claim me as a user? The underlying OS identity is about as relevant to me as the manufacturer of the 2.5" hard drive the unit comes with. I stuck with XP since it was the path of least resistance.
Discuss...
You should try one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NC10-11PBK-10-2-Inch-Netbook-Processor/dp/B001RIYOL0/ref=tag_stp_st_edpp_url
At nearly 10 hours of battery life while lightly browsing, it'll even get you through a multi-hour delay in the terminal. The biggest win for me is that it's small enough to spread out on your tray table without the screen getting stuck on the seat back in front of you. Oh and it's fast enough to play 480p video (720p is a stretch) and has enough battery to play two full movies in flight. /shameless advertisement
Besides the fact that you tested a trunk build when you should have tested this one: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/3.1b3-candidates/build1/win32/en-US/, you do realize that these javascript benchmarks are far from useful for determining real-world web browsing experience? Furthermore, the V8 benchmark in particular is so tailored to show Chrome's performance advantage that it can not be considered useful for anything other than showing Chrome is excellent at performing a handful of cherry-picked functions. Better yet, go play with google maps or some other heavy ajax app and then tell us that FFx 3.1 is not up to snuff. I have and I'm telling you that Ffx 3.1 is fast.
Remember when Steve Jobs said that Macs were switching to Intel? Everyone thought, hey that's the stupidest thing we've ever heard, everyone knows that AMD has had the CPU performance crown for many years and Intel's lost their way by trying to push the P4 architecture. What Jobs was shown secretly that was not known to the general public was that Intel was way ahead of schedule on its next generation architecture (Core2) and process (.45nm) and there was no way AMD would be able to compete for at least a couple of generations.
Now, sure Intel is not known for their graphics prowess, but it's not like they are http://www.notebookjournal.de/praxis/exclusive--intel-centrino-2-performance-test-79/3 *that* far behind Nvidia and ATI anymore. Percentage-wise, Intel's performance improvement going from the X3x00 to the X4x00 generation was much higher than either of what ATI or Nvidia have been achieving lately -- mobile or otherwise.
Don't be too surprised if they aren't a couple years away from taking on the elite GPU competition head on.
I'm not saying MS doesn't have incentive to break the protocols, but they do have to maintain some sort of compatibility between versions of Exchange. That's because corporations typically update Outlook software across the organization in a continuous fashion and asynchronously from Exchange server upgrades. IT departments would raise bloody hell if MS didn't provide a mostly seamless transition.
I was curious to see what they'd done since the last beta, so I installed it this morning. I had to reboot not once, but twice (once to uninstall IE8 beta2 and again I'm guessing so that it could hook into some OS files that were in use.)
After restarting the second time, it popped up some shenanigans about some add-ons not being enabled and some being out-of-date and not working. Huh? There's apparently two dozen different plugins and "helpers" installed, including 3 java widgits, a slew of Adobe stuff, and a whole lotta live.com and other MS cruft. Hmmm... Gotta admit, I have no idea what half this stuff does and I'm in Computer Security. Can you imagine the average user figuring out which one of these is the rogue add-on responsible for stealing their credit cards and redirecting their search queries to a click fraud site? Firefox's extension system is a breath of fresh air compared to this.
IE8 beta2 scored a pitiful 21/100 on acid3, RC1 now scores 20/100. Apparently acid3 is not yet a development target for MS. Seeing as their answer to web developers wanting more freedom to be creative is to "do it in Silverlight", it doesn't surprise that MS is dragging their feet here. I honestly wonder if half the stuff acid3 tests for will ever see the light of day in a top 500 website. I suspect FFx + Chrome + Safari + Opera and others will need to achieve greater than 50% market share before MS gets serious about SVG and company.
I find it amusing that IE8 gives users control over rendering like "older browsers" for incompatible websites (read: websites that were designed to work under the standards-ignorant IE6).
On the plus side:
- as for most modern browsers, it seems to render most of the top websites reasonably well.
- it has some privacy thingamajig which allows you to manually disallow sites one by one from storing cookies on your system (or at least that's how I interpretted the vague MS description)
Yeah, but I eventually had to close it when I realized how insanely annoying the web is without AdBlock Plus.
Basically, by releasing Vista SP2 and branding it "Windows 7", MS will succeed where Vista didn't. Here's why:
Vista issues leading to failure:
1. Significant changes to driver framework forced 3rd parties to re-write drivers for Vista --> as a result Vista shipped with a large amount of unsupported and undersupported hardware (hardware that was already working fine in XP).
2. By SP2, XP had become a very stable OS with a predictable user experience. Average computer users were for the first time in history getting used to stability in their computing experience. Due to architecture changes, Vista introduced numerous issues with existing software products that hearkened users back to the Win95-WinME era. Once you tease folks with something better, you can't take it away and offer something less stable. This is something that Microsoft seems to have misunderstood: Even if WinVista was actually more stable than WinXP RTM, people were going to compare it to WinXP SP2, and that's a tall order to achieve with such a large amount of core changes to any software product.
3. Changes to the UI (including Office 2007). By and large, smart people whose computer use is incidental to their work (e.g. doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, etc.) know their respective fields first and foremost and memorize a list of steps to get basic things done rather than learn *how* their computers work. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the Slashdot crowd, but that's how I've observed the vast majority of non-computer-savvy people work. In summary: if you change their computing experience in such a way that it takes them more than 30 seconds to find where that 'darn printer icon' has gone, and you've just created a negative first impression. Vista and office 2007 (which while not tied to Vista, is largely associated with it by the non-techy masses) has re-arranged a whole slew of things. Whether or not it's more intuitive for a new computer user is irrelevant when the vast majority of users are expected to be upgrading from XP.
4. UAC was misconceived and poorly implemented. Microsoft assumes my 60 year old mother knows whether she should permit a program to access some administrative function in the OS? Hah...
5. Higher memory requirements for an XP-like experience. Basically you need 1gig for ok performance, 2gig for max and 2gigs RAM cost a hefty $200 back in 2006.
6. A little known fact is that the latest code from Windows Update on top of Vista SP1 on a modern machine is a rock-solid experience (I use it every day on multiple computers). The problem is that negative reactions among early adopters regarding the abiove issues snowballed via word-of-mouth like what happens to a bad movie after opening weekend. By 2007 even those who don't have a clue about computers, had heard enough to "know" to stay away from Vista. Microsoft themselves discovered this and countered Vista's negative public image with a set of ads that appeared to convince skeptical new users.
Why Win7 will for the most part, avoid WinVista pitfalls:
1. Driver architecture borrowed from Vista. HW manufacturers need to do very little this time around (quick QA sanity test for most existing hardware). This will lead to much more positive initial user experience and in turn less negative early reviews.
2. Since significant Vista code is under the covers with a smattering of performance tweaks, I predict stability will be near Vista SP1(/SP2?) levels even as early as Win7 RTM.
3. Bulk of UI remains unchanged since Vista/Office2007, with the exception of the taskbar. Taskbar is going to be a bone of contention among some, but overall will not significantly hinder the release. Users will have had 3 years to get used to the Vista UI by the time Win7 ships. It's not going to make believers out of everyone, but I suspect that the majority will stop clinging to XP.
4. UAC is improved immensely. I still have a problem with asking regular folks to answer a question about their computer's security they don't fully understand, but at least it's expected to be significantly less intrusive.
5. 4gigs RAM is $20 after rebate at NewEgg, nuff said. I wouldn't be surprised if mem footprint actually goes down a touch as well.
It's not that simple. You forgot about embedded systems. For example, a few years ago as an employee of a security software company, I had a conversation with the head of IT at one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S. The conversation went something like this (I'm paraphrasing):
Him: We have a had a heck of a time dealing with systems ping-ponging the Blaster worm at each other. Rebooting them fixes the problem temporarily, but eventually they just get reinfected.
Me: Sounds pretty straight forward, we can help you remove malware from infected systems.
Him: Well, a lot of our "Windows systems" are actually portable medical devices like kidney dialysis, heart monitors and life support machines running embedded Windows NT. They are built by the manufacturer with a particular software load and certified by the Department of Health. I can't change so much as a registry key on them or they will no longer be certified for use in a hospital.
Me: So let me get this straight, you're saying that you have life support systems that are infected with worms and you can't disinfect them because the procedure would make the life support system less safe than it is with active malware on it?
Him: Beyond rebooting and using external firewalls to block worm packets, my hands are tied so long as the system continues to perform its primary function.
Me: Have you considered just disconnecting them from the network?
Him: No can do. We need to monitor status and administer remotely.
Now, I'm not saying that this situation is still true today or even that it was representative of the state of the healthcare industry at the time, but I find it highly believable that a virus/malware/worm outbreak somewhere *has* had an impact on someone's life.
Well, you know you're probably right to an extent. But the flip side to the arrogance shown developers is that Apple has managed to centralize, simplify and ensure a certain quality of apps for users. Apple has the upper hand right now because they've attracted a lot of eyeballs by addressing problems that no other cell phone company seemed able to address. Time will tell whether their arrogance will hinder them.
As a dedicated Blackberry Bold user myself (who regularly plays around with his girlfriend's iPhone 3G) I am left with a distinct 'last-generation' feeling when it comes to finding, installing and using apps designed for the blackberry. Of the ones that I manage to install (typically OTA via sms-sent URLs), many are designed for last-generation low-rez BBs or are converted java-midp apps that don't map navigation keys the same way RIM does... Or they're very buggy, or cause the OS to crash. Don't get me wrong, it's a plenty usable email device and good mobile phone, but it's missing a certain attention to detail when it comes to end-to-end user experience that Apple seems to have achieved with the iPhone and App Store.
Obviously, not all wealthy people are as I portrayed but the point remains. Regardless of what the vehicle looks like, many wealthy and wanna-be (which is not me) wealthy will buy objects for the sole purpose of flaunting a status symbol.
No, your original point was that wealthy people are egotists with small penises. My point was that wealth actually has very little to do with ego or penis size. You can backtrack all you want now, but that's what your post was about.
You also seem to be confused about wealth in the US too. Far too many "wealthy" people live at their income level or beyond, saving nothing for retirement. I do not consider these people wealthy.
Nor do I. Not sure what I wrote makes you think I'm confused.
critical examination of facts does not make one an egotists
Are we involved in the same conversation? If you go back and re-read my original response, you'll discover I made no such assertion.
Perhaps you should examine your self as to why a critical examination of these people have you in such a defencive posture.
Critical examination? What part of what you wrote would you consider a critical examination? Do you even know what critical examination means? Don't project, the ad hominem attacks don't strengthen your argument.
I know several "wealthy" people who don't flaunt their wealth -- people like you just don't notice them. I also know that this country (US) is in a serious economic downturn partly because poeple who were not "wealthy" went out and bought fancy cars and houses on credit terms they couldn't afford.
So, who are the bigger egotists, the wealthy or the wealthy-wannabes?
Other than for historical comparisons, what's the point of tracking the top "500" when nearly half the list turns over between June and November?
The 500th computer on the 11/2008 list hits an Rmax of 12.6 TFlops. That computer would have been #270 in June, so all computers below 270 in June were essentially wiped off the list in 6 months (not accounting for the ones that upgraded of course).
http://mobile.yahoo.com/onesearch/voice
Anyone care?
Yeah, didn't think so.
Super fast = reboot at shutdown, then boot OS and go into S3/standby before login; S3 requires constant trickle of power to maintain RAM state.
Regular fast = reboot at shutdown, then boot OS and go into S4/hibernate before login; S4 writes memory contents to disk, so no power required. Takes longer to "boot" back up as it has to read each bit back into RAM.
Neither scenario would generally permit swapping out hardware that needs to be enumerated by the BIOS, such as RAM, video cards and SATA disks. USB devices would generally be ok to swap.
Here you go: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.1648v1.pdf
The vast majority of investors should ignore the minute by minute blows of the market. At this time scale the market is literally a big roulette wheel. Virtually all day traders and every amateur who thinks they can reliably extract disproportionate gains out of the market long-term (i.e. more than they would by say, holding an appropriate mix of diversified indexes) are fooling themselves into making predictions on what essentially amounts to sheer randomness. Think I'm crazy? Do yourself a favor and read A Random Walk Down Wall Street and save yourself the decade it took me to figure out how the market works. You're welcome.
Just to make it absolutely clear: Yes, Wayan is kind of a dick and he's been somewhat inexplicably negative towards the OLPC project from the beginning, but he's not and has never been an employee of Intel, nor has anyone else at OLPCNews.
Incidentally, as a long-time follower of the OLPC project, a G1G1 donor and as someone who has spent a great deal of time using and developing for Sugar, I find laughable your assertions that Intel or Microsoft have had any substantial responsibility for OLPCs problems to date.
Traditionally, the ego race is precisely the means by which your elitist ilk entice us regular folk (i.e. politicians, janitors and steroid-abusing baseball players) to consider giving any of our hard earned tax dollars to this so called "science" you speak of.