Are you talking about 754 based chipsets for the athlons? In the beginning Nvidia said they wouldn't even support Nforce 3 (754 chipset) in Vista.
Yes, and it does workm though the nVidia RAID controller built into nForce 3 doesn't work under Vista. But that wouldn't be an issue for the majority of nForce 3 users. In fact, I did an upgrade install on an 754-based XP machine.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this?
on
The End is Nigh for XP
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· Score: 2, Informative
Is it just me or does this move from Microsoft seem rather desperate?
Was Microsofts older versions of Windows phased out this fast too?
I guess the people at Microsoft have a really hard time accepting that many people (and companies!) have gotten comfortable with XP and does not want to get something different. Maybe Microsoft have been taking to long to come with a "new OS" this time?
Vista went gold and was available in November of 2006. By the end of 2007 it will have been out over a year. I can't recall a time when Microsoft continued to produce the previous version of their operating system for over a year after the new version was released.
But more to the point, Vista has been in development for years. There were betas and technical previews available for almost a year before it was released. If there are companies out there who, by the end of 2007, still do not have compatible software or device drivers then it is simply because of laziness. Either that, or they have no intention of supporting Vista. Either way, the problem is with the third parties, not Microsoft.
I've had Vista up and running on one of my boxes since November, and I just recently bought a new laptop that came with Vista pre-loaded. Honestly, I haven't seen that many compatibility issues. Most applications that I had problems with have been fixed by either a patch or a new release already. There's a few pieces of legacy hardware that don't have driver support yet, but in those cases the manufacturers have stated that they aren't going to release Vista drivers for the hardware. I suppose they prefer that I buy new hardware to replace it, which I probably will...from someone else. But that's more about the manufacturer's greed/laziness than anything else.
As far as the performance issues go, I haven't the slightest idea what they're talking about. Vista runs just fine on all of the systems that I have tried it on. Those systems run the gamut from 2.0 GHz Athlon 64 and Turion 64 systems up to the latest Core 2 Duo systems, with memory ranging from 1 to 3 GB and video cards ranging from integrated ATI and Intel chipsets through nVidia 7000 series add-in boards. Is it slower than XP? Well, in some things it is. I've lost a few FPS on my 3D games. Overall though I can't see a performance difference, and in some areas I think that Vista actually feels faster. The only cases where I have truly seen a performance issue with Vista is on machines that barely meet the minimum specs, i.e., only have 512 MB of RAM. There's nothing new about that, and since most PCs these days (especially with Vista pre-loaded) come with 1GB or more of RAM, that shouldn't be an issue.
I think this will definitely be a good thing for those who wish more people would use Linux on the desktop and possible also laptop market. People like Mark Shuttleworth and his fanboys can start cheering already.
This may be the case, but I doubt it. Most new machines are going to be capable of running Vista just fine. Most new machines will be shipped with Vista pre-loaded. While certain flavors of Linux would be ideal for people looking to upgrade from XP on their older hardware, we're talking about a very small subset of users. Most people buy a PC and run whatever comes installed on it until they get a new PC. The days of widespread consumer adoption of OS upgrades pretty much died after Windows 95. PCs are just too cheap these days. Buying a copy of Vista will cost you almost half of what a new PC would that comes with Vista preloaded.
I bet a lot of people do similar things to deal with hotlinking. I once had an image hosted on my server that I discovered was being hotlinked for use in someone's signature file for a web-based forum. I just changed it so instead of getting the "cool picture" that he liked so much, instead he got a black box with white text that says "I love anally raping small children." You wouldn't believe how quickly the hotlinking stopped.
Well, which is it? Is the Mac a separate platform or it just another PC? You can't have it both ways. Apple is either a pretty large, profitable and growing PC maker - with a small share of the overall market - or it's a separate platform entirely.
So for the sake of argument, let me restate in more precise language for the people who are looking to twist words and nitpick.
For the purposes of this post, PC means a personal computer. That is a computer that is small, typically single user, not a server or mainframe, but definitely not so small as a PocketPC or PDA. So basically a laptop or desktop computer.
PC (Wintel) is a particular PC (personal computer) platform, i.e., one that primarily runs some version of Microsoft Windows.
Mac is another particular PC (personal computer) platform, i.e., one that primarily runs some version of MacOS or OSX.
And now for the statement that you didn't understand, edited to reflect the terminology of this post:
"Apple is still doing so well, despite them having such a small slice of the PC (personal computer) market pie."
While there was some good information in there, I was disappointed that it was such a heavily biased pair of articles. The fact that they're called out Microsoft for the way that they massage statistics to make them look good is good, but then they do something similar themselves when comparing Mac vs PC sales. In the first article they claim that it's wrong to compare the total number of Mac sales to the total number of PC sales, saying instead that Mac sales should be measured against the sales of HP, Gateway, Dell, etc individually. But that only makes sense if you are comparing one company to another, rather than comparing platforms. If you are comparing platforms, then Mac versus PC makes a lot more sense than Apple versus Dell, but it also makes Apple look less good.
It's not like they don't get the importance of the platform, as you'll notice in the second article where they're comparing installed base instead of market share. When you're talking about the viability of a platform being measured by its installed base, it doesn't matter if the installed base of PCs is 100% HP, 50% HP and 50% Dell, of 1% held by 100 different manufacturers. For the purposes of installed base a PC is a PC.
Not that I'm anti-Apple. I think that these articles actually pointed out some good info about why Apple is still doing so well, despite them having such a small slice of the PC market pie. I was previously unaware that they revenue level was so close to matching Microsoft's, or how less than 50% of their revenue comes from PC sales. Or that Macs tend to have a useful life twice as long as a PC's. All of that was very interesting, but there was a lot of bias to be waded through to get to the facts.
The best part though was that they alluded to the iPhone as being a "Windows Mobile killer." Don't get me wrong, the iPhone may be neat, but without the ability to wirelessly retrieve email from corporate systems they're going to have a hard time competing. I know a lot of people with phones running Windows mobile, and for every single one of them the ability to get their work email delivered to it was the driving factor in the purchase. And to be honest, at the higher price points ($300+) it's going to be corporate types who drive the sales.
As with any of our other Federal customers, it's our job to help DOT maximize the value of its Enterprise Agreement through the adoption of our technology.
Means:
What do we care? They have an Enterprise agreement, which means they're paying us the same annual fee whether they decide to take advantage of their upgrade rights or not. Eventually they'll get onboard and move to Vista and Office 2007, and after that they'll move to whatever we ship next.
You'd have to be high to ask such a question. Of course it is. Ever look on Monster.com, Dice.com, or any of a dozen other high profile job sites? Ever look through the employment section of the local paper? Is this really how lazy people are that they have to post to "Ask Slashdot" for the answers to the simplest questions? And how stupid must the site admins be to actually post this garbage?
Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
One of the problems with evolution is that people still refer to it as a "theory" rather than a fact. While in scientific circles that distinction may not mean much, but to the general public a "theory" is about as valid as a guess, and many people believe that all "theories" deserve equal weight. That's how the "intelligent design" folks started getting their feet in the door to begin with. Now they want to sticker textbooks with disclaimers that say that evolution is just a theory and hasn't been proven.
Evolution is real. This is not a belief, this is a fact. It has been observed in microscopic organisms, and in other creatures with short reproduction lifecycles (fruit flies, mice, etc). The fossil evidence for it is fairly convincing, but the fossil evidence is a drop in the bucket compared to the mountains of molecular evidence (animal DNA and mitochondrial DNA) of evolution. Read something like Dawkin's "The Anscestor's Tale" and you'll see what I mean.
People need to stop talking about the "theory" of evolution and start talking about it as a fact. It should be taught in schools as a fact, just like they teach other scientific facts. And religious zealots who can't cope with scientific facts should be prevented from injecting pseudo-scientific gobbledygook into school curriculums. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, ya know. Joe Citizen who was elected to the school board should have no place in determining what constitutes science or what should be taught in science classes, because the odds are good that they have no understanding themselves of the topics in play.
The OP that you quoted made absolutely no reference to VMware - just to VMs in general.
True. But we were discussing whether it was technically possible to detect if you were running inside a virtual machine. There's no reason why we wouldn't discuss the most popular virtualization technology currently in use, aka, VMWare.
As the other guy said, you made a poor choice in picking VMware to demonstrate that virtualization is always detectable because it does not even try to hide - other virtualization systems DO make the effort to hide -- see the Blue Pill anti-DRM virtualization system for one example.
Really? That's not what he said at all. He said "VMWare doesn't make any attempt at hiding the fact that you're running in a virtual machine. Where did you get the idea that it did?" Quite a bit of difference there. But the truth is, VMWare isn't the only virtualization tool that is detectable from within the VM. Try reading the article that I referenced earlier from the ISC/SANS Institute: here.
And yes, you can point out some niche anti-DRM tool that lets you do limited virtualization, but good luck running the operating systems for your entire production environment on them...oh wait, you can't. Which pretty much makes them irrelevant in this conversation.
The sad thing is, if you try to tell a Microsoft shop that they should run a Linux HOST under the VM platform they'll say they have no experience with Linux and then go for MS Windows as the host. And telling them that they don't interface with the host OS much at all only gets blank stares as they reach for the Windows install CD.
You might be a bit right on that. But I've personally always thought of ESX (or at least since I first heard of it) as an application rather than an OS. I know that it's not, strictly speaking, but it is different enough from a standard Linux install to make Windows people feel like they're using an application, while still keeping enough of the Linux-based nature that Linux admins can really get into it. But it would definitely be incorrect to actually think of it as Linux. I learned that the hard way when I needed drivers for a disk array that were available for Linux but not for ESX.
VMWare doesn't make any attempt at hiding the fact that you're running in a virtual machine. Where did you get the idea that it did?
I didn't. The post that I responded to asked:
"Can they actually prevent any version of Windows from running in a VM if that version of Windows cannot detect it?"
I responded that it's certainly possible to detect that a machine is virtualized, and cited two examples. It sucks when you actually have to read and comprehend at the same time, eh?
There's a couple things here that stand out to me. One, the subject of money. A fresh out of school.NET developer here in central Ohio can pull down $45k/year easily. So if you've jumped jobs twice already, each time for a 30-40% pay raise (I'll call it 33 because the math is easier) you would have gone from $45k/year to $60k/year to $80k/year in less than 18 months. And now you're contemplating a position that bumps you to over $105k/year? Two years out of school? Something seems way out of whack with that.
Now assuming that your starting salary was a lot lower (say $35k/year), then those bumps are taking you to $46k, $62k, and potentially $82k respectively (which would be a lot more in line with what is normal around here for an experienced.NET dev). So I'm guessing that your biggest problem is that you way undersold yourself at the beginning and have been playing catch up. It happens sometimes.
If that's the case, then you're probably pretty close to what the market rate is by now and the job hopping (or at least the financial incentives for it) should be winding down now. Hopefully this next position is one you can stay at for at least several years. If all of that is true, then I would recommend going for it. It's not uncommon for people right out of school to do a little searching before they settle down into something that they really like, and most potential employers will understand that.
But be advised, you have already started a pattern that will throw up serious red flags with hiring managers. While it's not uncommon to change jobs every few years these days (especially in IT, where it's almost the norm), four jobs in less than two years could be a warning sign. It can be interpreted as either you are restless and unhappy, or you aren't very competent, or simply that you're ambitious. But with an average stint of less than six months, it also indicates that you probably haven't taken many (if any) projects through to completion. And employees like that tend to cost companies lots of money. Anyone who hires you will likely be watching you for signs of unrest, so you may have to work harder to prove that you're going to stick around this time.
And you are going to stick around this time, right? I mean, I personally wouldn't make that next jump unless I was pretty confident that it was a job that I would enjoy doing for several years, because subsequent jumps are probably going to get considerably more difficult for you to make. You could potentially find yourself in a job that pays better but that you actually don't like at all, and your only out may end up being a lower paying or even less satisfying job because you've hurt your marketability.
You know, I toyed with the idea of modding your post down as overrated, but then I thought that it made more sense to explain why rather than just do it. To put it simply, not everybody can switch to GNU/Linux for their datacenters. In a lot of vertical markets the only products available (or at least the best products available) run on Windows. Even if there may be a reasonable GNU/Linux alternative available there can be a significant barrier to entry in the form of long-term contracts, or an entrenched user base numbering in the thousands. Let's be realistic here, for many companies (especially larger companies, the type that are most likely to use virtualization) it's not simply a matter of swapping out Vista and Office for Ubuntu and OpenOffice, and then tying it together with OpenLDAP on the back end.
In my case I work for a software company that develops enterprise application software that is used by most banks, insurance companies, and large manufacturers. We actually started as a Unix-only application, but eventually we had to start developing for Windows simply because that's what the market place demanded. Now we develop and support on both platforms. Our in-house datacenter is heavily virtualized, and our servers are split roughly 50% Windows and 50% Linux/UNIX. Phasing out Windows in our case would not only be incredibly stupid, it would literally kill the company.
Don't get me wrong, OSS is great. We use it a lot, and it has it's place. But it is not some sort of magic bullet, and it definitely is not the answer to every IT-related question.
Can they actually prevent any version of Windows from running in a VM if that version of Windows cannot detect it?
If it cannot detect the VM then technically, no. But they can legally, then when it comes time to do a license audit they will discover how the licensed software is being used, and you can get dinged.
But I wouldn't put too much faith into them being unable to detect whether they're running in a VM. We were trying to install SP2 to SQL Server 2005 last week on a machine that was runnig on VMWare ESX, and the install failed repeatedly. When we checked the logs there were entries that specifically stated that the SP couldn't be installed in a virtualized environment. So it's certainly detectable. There were some recent articles at the ISC about malware that could detect if it was running in a virtual environment, and there are a number of reliable ways of doing so.
"From the article: "When quizzed on Microsoft's plans, Mr. Ballmer replied, "Our view is that virtualization is something that should be built into the operating system.""
VM == Virtually Microsoft's?
The problem with Ballmer's comment (not yours) is that the Operating System is what we want to virtualize. While VMWare ESX is probably almost as much of an operating system as Windows is, it's definitely a lot more stripped down and tightly focused on doing only one thing (providing virtualization) and doing it well. If you have a general purpose OS that also supports VMs, and you run VMs inside that OS, then you're asking for problems. Not just from a performance standpoint, but security as well. This kind of thinking is one of the reasons why their Virtual Server product is so far behind VMWare's ESX.
I can only hope this sort of thing promotes the appeal of using OpenGL, so more games are more likely to become cross-compatible. Projects like WineHQ can mimic the behavior of Win32 API, and things would run more smoothly if instead of translating DX, to just have OpenGL games to begin with. Does DX really provide or perform more/better than OpenGL that commercial games continue to use DX??
It won't. Mainly because Vista doesn't have support for OpenGL.
In the mean time, you guys are getting the product of a rapid hackfast, intended to get something out the door to meet our marketing promises.
So that makes it pretty clear that you work for nVidia, based on what they have released so far and called a "Vista driver". Funny how ATI managed to get their drivers WHQL certified and released in time for Vista. It's not like you haven't had 5 years to work on it.
It's essentially the kernel of Windows 2003 Server
Actually, it's not. Windows 2003 was derived from Windows XP. Windows XP x64 Edition was derived from the Windows 2003 kernel. But Vista is a whole new ball of wax. One of the major changes that they made was regarding how device drivers interacted with the kernel. In previous versions of Windows they ran with the kernel, which means that a buggy device driver could cause a BSOD. So they moved the device drivers out to an abstracted layer. I'm not sure if they're actually running in the user mode, or if it's somewhere in between. But device drivers no longer have the ability to crash the kernel.
So, here's a question... do convictions of sex-related crimes by minors give them sex offender status once they become adults?
Cause if this 17 year old & 16 year old have to register as sex offenders for the next five years, I would imagine that worse than almost any potential psychological trauma from having your ex-(boy/girl)friend show their friends some nude pictures of you...
That depends on the laws of the state. In some states getting labelled as a sex offender puts you on the list for a period of 5-10 years. In other states you're on the list for the rest of your life. In some states the sex-offender status would likely be cleared (sealed actually) when the minor turned 18, just like any other crimes. In other states the laws have been changed to allow the sex offender status to follow you after you turn 18, in the interest of "protecting the children" from sexual predators who begin their predations as a teenager. Of course, most people make a distinction between a 16 year old molesting toddlers and a 16 year old who had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend, even if the law doesn't.
Speculation, but speculation that's exceedingly likely to be correct. Look up the case of Glenarlow Wilson, a child in neighboring Georgia who will be registered as a child molester for the rest of his life, after serving a mandatory 10-year prison sentence -- because, at the age of 17, he had consensual oral sex with a 16-year-old girl. Georgia law at the time drew no distinction whatsoever about the age of the "molester"; any oral sex involving a minor, even if the partner was also a minor, was felony child molestation and left no room for judicial discretion in sentencing.
I am familiar with this case, having recently done some research on it. It's truly a travesty of justice, and not just because he was convicted of felony child molestation for having consensual oral sex with a classmate. The worst part was that if they had had vaginal intercourse (which many people consider to be at least one step beyond oral sex) it would have been a misdemeanor and probably wouldn't have been prosecuted at all.
It truly boggles the mind. The whole point of having judges was supposed to have been so that someone who was familiar with the intent of the law could adjust the punishment to fit the circumstances of the crime. But we've gotten to the point where people complain about activist judges who interpret too much or give too much leeway, and now we're stuck with mandatory sentences for all sorts of behavior. Add into the mix a legislature that is almost totally PR driven and a "we must protect the children" mentality, and you end up with a lot of badly written laws that don't leave any wiggle room for judges to apply common sense. What a sad state of affairs.
But I thought you just said that the experts went from completing all of the tasks, to completing 'most' of the tasks in a longer period. So why are you surprised that they want to stick with the old way of doing things? The new UI is worse for them rather than being better, so why would they switch?
I'm surprised because people have a tendency to want the newest stuff available, and that even though there was a learning curve it was obvious from the experiment that the new version of Office was actually easier to use. It's like going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, or from Windows 95 to Windows XP. Each time the user interface changed and it took some time to become proficient in it. But people still wanted the new version over the old.
This is just simply false. The tests that you have to pass are mutually agreed upon by both sides, and you both agree beforehand what would indicate passing or not passing. You obviously can't have the situation you state above, where Randi gets to be the sole judge. But you also just as obviously can't have it the other way where the person being tested gets to decide. You could have a third party decide, but who chooses the third party? No, I think the way he has it set up where you both have to come to an agreement beforehand is the only fair way to do it. If you can think of a more fair way, I'd love to hear it.
Well, for starters it's not about what is fair and what is not fair. I'm not complaining that I think that Randi has cooked up an unfair system for winning his "contest", or because I can come up with a more fair way of doing it. All I'm saying is that it's wrong to look at Randi's little "contest" as a contest, when it is clearly a promotional stunt disguised as a "contest" that is designed to be unwinnable (regardless of whether the paranormal exists).
Sure, they lay out all sorts of rules and conditions and so on, and use terms like "mutually agreed upon criteria," but to claim that "mutually agreed upon" is the same as being equal or fair is ridiculous. I mean, a marriage is also a "mutually agreed upon" arrangement, but either one of the two parties can sabotage it for the other party any time they wish (if so inclined). Likewise, either party in the "million dollar challenge" can simply propose criteria upon which they will not budge (reasonable or not) and prevent the attempt from even occurring (which apparently has been the rule rather than the exception). Between the two possible parties (Randi and the contestant) it is still Randi that will have to be convinced in order for the contestant to win. The contestant might agree with Randi that meeting Randi's criteria will constitute proof, but the criteria that Randi considers proof will still be of his own devising. After all, it's Randi's money and contest, therefore the contestant will have to meet his criteria. Considering what Randi has to lose from being proven wrong (or even simply setting some bad criteria that allows a non-paranormal event to slip through and "win") it's pretty clear that he has a vested interest in making sure that the criteria are either unmeetable or so onerous as to be disagreeable.
Again, it's not a contest. It is a promotional stunt. Now back to the actual purpose of the thread, someone asked why the Princeton lab wouldn't have entered the challenge if they actually had proof of the paranormal. My answer was that regardless of how much proof they may or may not have (and I haven't seen any of it), it wouldn't be worth it to risk their reputations or academic positions by participating in a PR stunt that is thinly disguised as a contest that can't be won. They're guaranteed to lose so there's no upside in even trying.
Yeah I've got a few months to burn to adjust to an interface change. Gotta love those training costs.
Yes, take the quote out of context and bitch about it. No wonder that you posted AC. Do you really think that it will take you months to become productive with Office 2007, especially after the cited example of "office users" versus "office newbies"? If it does then you're obviously a little underpowered in the mental department. I didn't say that it took me a few months to learn the new interface. I was merely pointing out that I had been using for several months, and that I found it actually faster and easier to use than Office 2003.
One of the big things about Office was that the famed 80/20 rule applies. 80% of users only use about 20% of the functionality available, and the other 20% use the remaining 80%. Microsoft actually found that a high percentage of the feature requests received after Office 2003 were actually for features that were already in the product. So rather than blame the users for not knowing enough about Office, they decided to rework Office applications so that more of the functionality was exposed via context sensitivity. For example, in Word 2007 if you highlight a block of text you will see a text formatting toolbar materialize at the cursor. Now the tools that you are most likely to use are right in front of you. Not only do features like this reduce the amount of navigation and clicking necessary to complete many functions, but it has the added advantage of exposing functionality in a context-sensitive fashion that many users didn't even know was there.
So yeah, if you're an Office 2003 power user it may take you a couple weeks of semi-regular use (like it did me) to gain that almost instinctive level of familiarity with the features that you use. But the usability improvements for the most commonly used functions (many of which were navigation intensive before) can offset that loss in productivity fairly quickly. Why else were the Office 2003 "veterans" able to almost immediately accomplish the same amount of work?
Of course, I don't expect you to actually reply to this. I'm pretty sure that you just wanted to make some snarky remark and try to come off sounding smart about things. But since you brought it up I thought I would give the subject a fair shake.
1.4. How many people have passed the preliminary test?
None. Most applicants never agree to a proper test protocol, so most are never tested.
1.5. How many people have passed the formal test?
No one has ever taken the formal test, as one must first pass the preliminary test.
2.1. What do you mean by "mutually agreed upon"?
"Mutually agreed upon" means that neither side can force the other side into doing or saying something that they don't want to, and that if no agreement can be reached, the application process is terminated, with no blame or fault attributed to either side.
It's easy to point fingers after a Challenge claim comes to an impasse and say that the other side was being unreasonable. This phrase is used to insure that finger-pointing has no merit.
Randi claims that most applicants never agree to a "proper test protocol", and are never tested. But he also points out that both sides have to agree what that "proper test protocol" is. So either side can basically tank the process by being disagreeable. With a million dollars on the line (not to mention his reputation), you have to believe that Randi has a serious incentive to make sure that nobody passes the test. Apparently the easiest way to do so is to ensure that nobody (or only a very few people) actually gets to take the test.
Again, I'm not arguing that paranormal powers exist. I'm just pointing out that JREF's "Million Dollar Challenge" is little more than a publicity stunt, set up in such a way that they advertise a million dollars being available without ever having to pay out on it (or indeed, even attempt the challenge).
I think that there was a software company is Russia that recently offered a similar challenge. Apparently someone was disputing their claims of being unhackable or uncrackable or something, and the company offerred a large sum of money to anyone who could break their software. The only catch was that you had to fly to Russia on your own dime, and use systems that they configured, and meet all sorts of other restrictive criteria that were specifically constructed to ensure that you could not succeed. The contest wasn't designed to prove anything, it was merely a way for the company to get some free publicity and advertise to perspective customers that "even when offerred x amount of money for demonstrating flaws in our software, nobody has yet been able to do so".
Now if the criteria were set and judged by a neutral third party, then I might have a little more faith in the challenge. But I doubt that would ever happen because JREF would then face the chance (however minute) of actually losing the money and the bragging rights.
Thanks for pointing that out, though I think putting a cap on the number of weeks I'd pay out is reasonable. If someone gives me two months notice, I'm not going to give them the equivalent of two months of vacation. How much longer you let the person work (or whether you just let them go that day) and how much longer you pay them depend on the nature/needs of the business and the job itself. "The rest of the week" seems short to me, but it could still be reasonable.
I agree, it's reasonable to put a cap on how much you're willing to pay out for someone who is no longer working for you. That's why I think that it's reasonable (in most cases) to let someone work out their notice period. Cutting the period short without a good reason not only puts the person in a bind, but generates ill-will towards your company, and possibly among your remaining employees. Of course, if you're just managing a Taco Bell or something then it probably doesn't matter much. But if your business is a collection of professionals, then you could be shooting yourself in the foot by not letting a good worker finish out their notice period.
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Are you talking about 754 based chipsets for the athlons? In the beginning Nvidia said they wouldn't even support Nforce 3 (754 chipset) in Vista.
Yes, and it does workm though the nVidia RAID controller built into nForce 3 doesn't work under Vista. But that wouldn't be an issue for the majority of nForce 3 users. In fact, I did an upgrade install on an 754-based XP machine.
Is it just me or does this move from Microsoft seem rather desperate? Was Microsofts older versions of Windows phased out this fast too? I guess the people at Microsoft have a really hard time accepting that many people (and companies!) have gotten comfortable with XP and does not want to get something different. Maybe Microsoft have been taking to long to come with a "new OS" this time?
Vista went gold and was available in November of 2006. By the end of 2007 it will have been out over a year. I can't recall a time when Microsoft continued to produce the previous version of their operating system for over a year after the new version was released.
But more to the point, Vista has been in development for years. There were betas and technical previews available for almost a year before it was released. If there are companies out there who, by the end of 2007, still do not have compatible software or device drivers then it is simply because of laziness. Either that, or they have no intention of supporting Vista. Either way, the problem is with the third parties, not Microsoft.
I've had Vista up and running on one of my boxes since November, and I just recently bought a new laptop that came with Vista pre-loaded. Honestly, I haven't seen that many compatibility issues. Most applications that I had problems with have been fixed by either a patch or a new release already. There's a few pieces of legacy hardware that don't have driver support yet, but in those cases the manufacturers have stated that they aren't going to release Vista drivers for the hardware. I suppose they prefer that I buy new hardware to replace it, which I probably will...from someone else. But that's more about the manufacturer's greed/laziness than anything else.
As far as the performance issues go, I haven't the slightest idea what they're talking about. Vista runs just fine on all of the systems that I have tried it on. Those systems run the gamut from 2.0 GHz Athlon 64 and Turion 64 systems up to the latest Core 2 Duo systems, with memory ranging from 1 to 3 GB and video cards ranging from integrated ATI and Intel chipsets through nVidia 7000 series add-in boards. Is it slower than XP? Well, in some things it is. I've lost a few FPS on my 3D games. Overall though I can't see a performance difference, and in some areas I think that Vista actually feels faster. The only cases where I have truly seen a performance issue with Vista is on machines that barely meet the minimum specs, i.e., only have 512 MB of RAM. There's nothing new about that, and since most PCs these days (especially with Vista pre-loaded) come with 1GB or more of RAM, that shouldn't be an issue.
I think this will definitely be a good thing for those who wish more people would use Linux on the desktop and possible also laptop market. People like Mark Shuttleworth and his fanboys can start cheering already.
This may be the case, but I doubt it. Most new machines are going to be capable of running Vista just fine. Most new machines will be shipped with Vista pre-loaded. While certain flavors of Linux would be ideal for people looking to upgrade from XP on their older hardware, we're talking about a very small subset of users. Most people buy a PC and run whatever comes installed on it until they get a new PC. The days of widespread consumer adoption of OS upgrades pretty much died after Windows 95. PCs are just too cheap these days. Buying a copy of Vista will cost you almost half of what a new PC would that comes with Vista preloaded.
I bet a lot of people do similar things to deal with hotlinking. I once had an image hosted on my server that I discovered was being hotlinked for use in someone's signature file for a web-based forum. I just changed it so instead of getting the "cool picture" that he liked so much, instead he got a black box with white text that says "I love anally raping small children." You wouldn't believe how quickly the hotlinking stopped.
Well, which is it? Is the Mac a separate platform or it just another PC? You can't have it both ways. Apple is either a pretty large, profitable and growing PC maker - with a small share of the overall market - or it's a separate platform entirely.
So for the sake of argument, let me restate in more precise language for the people who are looking to twist words and nitpick.
For the purposes of this post, PC means a personal computer. That is a computer that is small, typically single user, not a server or mainframe, but definitely not so small as a PocketPC or PDA. So basically a laptop or desktop computer.
PC (Wintel) is a particular PC (personal computer) platform, i.e., one that primarily runs some version of Microsoft Windows.
Mac is another particular PC (personal computer) platform, i.e., one that primarily runs some version of MacOS or OSX.
And now for the statement that you didn't understand, edited to reflect the terminology of this post:
"Apple is still doing so well, despite them having such a small slice of the PC (personal computer) market pie."
Thanks for being such a pedant.
While there was some good information in there, I was disappointed that it was such a heavily biased pair of articles. The fact that they're called out Microsoft for the way that they massage statistics to make them look good is good, but then they do something similar themselves when comparing Mac vs PC sales. In the first article they claim that it's wrong to compare the total number of Mac sales to the total number of PC sales, saying instead that Mac sales should be measured against the sales of HP, Gateway, Dell, etc individually. But that only makes sense if you are comparing one company to another, rather than comparing platforms. If you are comparing platforms, then Mac versus PC makes a lot more sense than Apple versus Dell, but it also makes Apple look less good.
It's not like they don't get the importance of the platform, as you'll notice in the second article where they're comparing installed base instead of market share. When you're talking about the viability of a platform being measured by its installed base, it doesn't matter if the installed base of PCs is 100% HP, 50% HP and 50% Dell, of 1% held by 100 different manufacturers. For the purposes of installed base a PC is a PC.
Not that I'm anti-Apple. I think that these articles actually pointed out some good info about why Apple is still doing so well, despite them having such a small slice of the PC market pie. I was previously unaware that they revenue level was so close to matching Microsoft's, or how less than 50% of their revenue comes from PC sales. Or that Macs tend to have a useful life twice as long as a PC's. All of that was very interesting, but there was a lot of bias to be waded through to get to the facts.
The best part though was that they alluded to the iPhone as being a "Windows Mobile killer." Don't get me wrong, the iPhone may be neat, but without the ability to wirelessly retrieve email from corporate systems they're going to have a hard time competing. I know a lot of people with phones running Windows mobile, and for every single one of them the ability to get their work email delivered to it was the driving factor in the purchase. And to be honest, at the higher price points ($300+) it's going to be corporate types who drive the sales.
Actually, the statement:
As with any of our other Federal customers, it's our job to help DOT maximize the value of its Enterprise Agreement through the adoption of our technology.
Means:
What do we care? They have an Enterprise agreement, which means they're paying us the same annual fee whether they decide to take advantage of their upgrade rights or not. Eventually they'll get onboard and move to Vista and Office 2007, and after that they'll move to whatever we ship next.
You'd have to be high to ask such a question. Of course it is. Ever look on Monster.com, Dice.com, or any of a dozen other high profile job sites? Ever look through the employment section of the local paper? Is this really how lazy people are that they have to post to "Ask Slashdot" for the answers to the simplest questions? And how stupid must the site admins be to actually post this garbage?
Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
One of the problems with evolution is that people still refer to it as a "theory" rather than a fact. While in scientific circles that distinction may not mean much, but to the general public a "theory" is about as valid as a guess, and many people believe that all "theories" deserve equal weight. That's how the "intelligent design" folks started getting their feet in the door to begin with. Now they want to sticker textbooks with disclaimers that say that evolution is just a theory and hasn't been proven.
Evolution is real. This is not a belief, this is a fact. It has been observed in microscopic organisms, and in other creatures with short reproduction lifecycles (fruit flies, mice, etc). The fossil evidence for it is fairly convincing, but the fossil evidence is a drop in the bucket compared to the mountains of molecular evidence (animal DNA and mitochondrial DNA) of evolution. Read something like Dawkin's "The Anscestor's Tale" and you'll see what I mean.
People need to stop talking about the "theory" of evolution and start talking about it as a fact. It should be taught in schools as a fact, just like they teach other scientific facts. And religious zealots who can't cope with scientific facts should be prevented from injecting pseudo-scientific gobbledygook into school curriculums. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, ya know. Joe Citizen who was elected to the school board should have no place in determining what constitutes science or what should be taught in science classes, because the odds are good that they have no understanding themselves of the topics in play.
The OP that you quoted made absolutely no reference to VMware - just to VMs in general.
True. But we were discussing whether it was technically possible to detect if you were running inside a virtual machine. There's no reason why we wouldn't discuss the most popular virtualization technology currently in use, aka, VMWare.
As the other guy said, you made a poor choice in picking VMware to demonstrate that virtualization is always detectable because it does not even try to hide - other virtualization systems DO make the effort to hide -- see the Blue Pill anti-DRM virtualization system for one example.
Really? That's not what he said at all. He said "VMWare doesn't make any attempt at hiding the fact that you're running in a virtual machine. Where did you get the idea that it did?" Quite a bit of difference there. But the truth is, VMWare isn't the only virtualization tool that is detectable from within the VM. Try reading the article that I referenced earlier from the ISC/SANS Institute: here.
And yes, you can point out some niche anti-DRM tool that lets you do limited virtualization, but good luck running the operating systems for your entire production environment on them...oh wait, you can't. Which pretty much makes them irrelevant in this conversation.
The sad thing is, if you try to tell a Microsoft shop that they should run a Linux HOST under the VM platform they'll say they have no experience with Linux and then go for MS Windows as the host. And telling them that they don't interface with the host OS much at all only gets blank stares as they reach for the Windows install CD.
You might be a bit right on that. But I've personally always thought of ESX (or at least since I first heard of it) as an application rather than an OS. I know that it's not, strictly speaking, but it is different enough from a standard Linux install to make Windows people feel like they're using an application, while still keeping enough of the Linux-based nature that Linux admins can really get into it. But it would definitely be incorrect to actually think of it as Linux. I learned that the hard way when I needed drivers for a disk array that were available for Linux but not for ESX.
VMWare doesn't make any attempt at hiding the fact that you're running in a virtual machine. Where did you get the idea that it did?
I didn't. The post that I responded to asked:
"Can they actually prevent any version of Windows from running in a VM if that version of Windows cannot detect it?"
I responded that it's certainly possible to detect that a machine is virtualized, and cited two examples. It sucks when you actually have to read and comprehend at the same time, eh?
There's a couple things here that stand out to me. One, the subject of money. A fresh out of school .NET developer here in central Ohio can pull down $45k/year easily. So if you've jumped jobs twice already, each time for a 30-40% pay raise (I'll call it 33 because the math is easier) you would have gone from $45k/year to $60k/year to $80k/year in less than 18 months. And now you're contemplating a position that bumps you to over $105k/year? Two years out of school? Something seems way out of whack with that.
.NET dev). So I'm guessing that your biggest problem is that you way undersold yourself at the beginning and have been playing catch up. It happens sometimes.
Now assuming that your starting salary was a lot lower (say $35k/year), then those bumps are taking you to $46k, $62k, and potentially $82k respectively (which would be a lot more in line with what is normal around here for an experienced
If that's the case, then you're probably pretty close to what the market rate is by now and the job hopping (or at least the financial incentives for it) should be winding down now. Hopefully this next position is one you can stay at for at least several years. If all of that is true, then I would recommend going for it. It's not uncommon for people right out of school to do a little searching before they settle down into something that they really like, and most potential employers will understand that.
But be advised, you have already started a pattern that will throw up serious red flags with hiring managers. While it's not uncommon to change jobs every few years these days (especially in IT, where it's almost the norm), four jobs in less than two years could be a warning sign. It can be interpreted as either you are restless and unhappy, or you aren't very competent, or simply that you're ambitious. But with an average stint of less than six months, it also indicates that you probably haven't taken many (if any) projects through to completion. And employees like that tend to cost companies lots of money. Anyone who hires you will likely be watching you for signs of unrest, so you may have to work harder to prove that you're going to stick around this time.
And you are going to stick around this time, right? I mean, I personally wouldn't make that next jump unless I was pretty confident that it was a job that I would enjoy doing for several years, because subsequent jumps are probably going to get considerably more difficult for you to make. You could potentially find yourself in a job that pays better but that you actually don't like at all, and your only out may end up being a lower paying or even less satisfying job because you've hurt your marketability.
(chorus) Switch to GNU/Linux.
You know, I toyed with the idea of modding your post down as overrated, but then I thought that it made more sense to explain why rather than just do it. To put it simply, not everybody can switch to GNU/Linux for their datacenters. In a lot of vertical markets the only products available (or at least the best products available) run on Windows. Even if there may be a reasonable GNU/Linux alternative available there can be a significant barrier to entry in the form of long-term contracts, or an entrenched user base numbering in the thousands. Let's be realistic here, for many companies (especially larger companies, the type that are most likely to use virtualization) it's not simply a matter of swapping out Vista and Office for Ubuntu and OpenOffice, and then tying it together with OpenLDAP on the back end.
In my case I work for a software company that develops enterprise application software that is used by most banks, insurance companies, and large manufacturers. We actually started as a Unix-only application, but eventually we had to start developing for Windows simply because that's what the market place demanded. Now we develop and support on both platforms. Our in-house datacenter is heavily virtualized, and our servers are split roughly 50% Windows and 50% Linux/UNIX. Phasing out Windows in our case would not only be incredibly stupid, it would literally kill the company.
Don't get me wrong, OSS is great. We use it a lot, and it has it's place. But it is not some sort of magic bullet, and it definitely is not the answer to every IT-related question.
Can they actually prevent any version of Windows from running in a VM if that version of Windows cannot detect it?
If it cannot detect the VM then technically, no. But they can legally, then when it comes time to do a license audit they will discover how the licensed software is being used, and you can get dinged.
But I wouldn't put too much faith into them being unable to detect whether they're running in a VM. We were trying to install SP2 to SQL Server 2005 last week on a machine that was runnig on VMWare ESX, and the install failed repeatedly. When we checked the logs there were entries that specifically stated that the SP couldn't be installed in a virtualized environment. So it's certainly detectable. There were some recent articles at the ISC about malware that could detect if it was running in a virtual environment, and there are a number of reliable ways of doing so.
"From the article: "When quizzed on Microsoft's plans, Mr. Ballmer replied, "Our view is that virtualization is something that should be built into the operating system."" VM == Virtually Microsoft's?
The problem with Ballmer's comment (not yours) is that the Operating System is what we want to virtualize. While VMWare ESX is probably almost as much of an operating system as Windows is, it's definitely a lot more stripped down and tightly focused on doing only one thing (providing virtualization) and doing it well. If you have a general purpose OS that also supports VMs, and you run VMs inside that OS, then you're asking for problems. Not just from a performance standpoint, but security as well. This kind of thinking is one of the reasons why their Virtual Server product is so far behind VMWare's ESX.
I can only hope this sort of thing promotes the appeal of using OpenGL, so more games are more likely to become cross-compatible. Projects like WineHQ can mimic the behavior of Win32 API, and things would run more smoothly if instead of translating DX, to just have OpenGL games to begin with. Does DX really provide or perform more/better than OpenGL that commercial games continue to use DX??
It won't. Mainly because Vista doesn't have support for OpenGL.
In the mean time, you guys are getting the product of a rapid hackfast, intended to get something out the door to meet our marketing promises.
So that makes it pretty clear that you work for nVidia, based on what they have released so far and called a "Vista driver". Funny how ATI managed to get their drivers WHQL certified and released in time for Vista. It's not like you haven't had 5 years to work on it.
It's essentially the kernel of Windows 2003 Server
Actually, it's not. Windows 2003 was derived from Windows XP. Windows XP x64 Edition was derived from the Windows 2003 kernel. But Vista is a whole new ball of wax. One of the major changes that they made was regarding how device drivers interacted with the kernel. In previous versions of Windows they ran with the kernel, which means that a buggy device driver could cause a BSOD. So they moved the device drivers out to an abstracted layer. I'm not sure if they're actually running in the user mode, or if it's somewhere in between. But device drivers no longer have the ability to crash the kernel.
So, here's a question... do convictions of sex-related crimes by minors give them sex offender status once they become adults?
Cause if this 17 year old & 16 year old have to register as sex offenders for the next five years, I would imagine that worse than almost any potential psychological trauma from having your ex-(boy/girl)friend show their friends some nude pictures of you...
That depends on the laws of the state. In some states getting labelled as a sex offender puts you on the list for a period of 5-10 years. In other states you're on the list for the rest of your life. In some states the sex-offender status would likely be cleared (sealed actually) when the minor turned 18, just like any other crimes. In other states the laws have been changed to allow the sex offender status to follow you after you turn 18, in the interest of "protecting the children" from sexual predators who begin their predations as a teenager. Of course, most people make a distinction between a 16 year old molesting toddlers and a 16 year old who had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend, even if the law doesn't.
Speculation, but speculation that's exceedingly likely to be correct. Look up the case of Glenarlow Wilson, a child in neighboring Georgia who will be registered as a child molester for the rest of his life, after serving a mandatory 10-year prison sentence -- because, at the age of 17, he had consensual oral sex with a 16-year-old girl. Georgia law at the time drew no distinction whatsoever about the age of the "molester"; any oral sex involving a minor, even if the partner was also a minor, was felony child molestation and left no room for judicial discretion in sentencing.
I am familiar with this case, having recently done some research on it. It's truly a travesty of justice, and not just because he was convicted of felony child molestation for having consensual oral sex with a classmate. The worst part was that if they had had vaginal intercourse (which many people consider to be at least one step beyond oral sex) it would have been a misdemeanor and probably wouldn't have been prosecuted at all.
It truly boggles the mind. The whole point of having judges was supposed to have been so that someone who was familiar with the intent of the law could adjust the punishment to fit the circumstances of the crime. But we've gotten to the point where people complain about activist judges who interpret too much or give too much leeway, and now we're stuck with mandatory sentences for all sorts of behavior. Add into the mix a legislature that is almost totally PR driven and a "we must protect the children" mentality, and you end up with a lot of badly written laws that don't leave any wiggle room for judges to apply common sense. What a sad state of affairs.
But I thought you just said that the experts went from completing all of the tasks, to completing 'most' of the tasks in a longer period. So why are you surprised that they want to stick with the old way of doing things? The new UI is worse for them rather than being better, so why would they switch?
I'm surprised because people have a tendency to want the newest stuff available, and that even though there was a learning curve it was obvious from the experiment that the new version of Office was actually easier to use. It's like going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, or from Windows 95 to Windows XP. Each time the user interface changed and it took some time to become proficient in it. But people still wanted the new version over the old.
This is just simply false. The tests that you have to pass are mutually agreed upon by both sides, and you both agree beforehand what would indicate passing or not passing. You obviously can't have the situation you state above, where Randi gets to be the sole judge. But you also just as obviously can't have it the other way where the person being tested gets to decide. You could have a third party decide, but who chooses the third party? No, I think the way he has it set up where you both have to come to an agreement beforehand is the only fair way to do it. If you can think of a more fair way, I'd love to hear it.
Well, for starters it's not about what is fair and what is not fair. I'm not complaining that I think that Randi has cooked up an unfair system for winning his "contest", or because I can come up with a more fair way of doing it. All I'm saying is that it's wrong to look at Randi's little "contest" as a contest, when it is clearly a promotional stunt disguised as a "contest" that is designed to be unwinnable (regardless of whether the paranormal exists).
Sure, they lay out all sorts of rules and conditions and so on, and use terms like "mutually agreed upon criteria," but to claim that "mutually agreed upon" is the same as being equal or fair is ridiculous. I mean, a marriage is also a "mutually agreed upon" arrangement, but either one of the two parties can sabotage it for the other party any time they wish (if so inclined). Likewise, either party in the "million dollar challenge" can simply propose criteria upon which they will not budge (reasonable or not) and prevent the attempt from even occurring (which apparently has been the rule rather than the exception). Between the two possible parties (Randi and the contestant) it is still Randi that will have to be convinced in order for the contestant to win. The contestant might agree with Randi that meeting Randi's criteria will constitute proof, but the criteria that Randi considers proof will still be of his own devising. After all, it's Randi's money and contest, therefore the contestant will have to meet his criteria. Considering what Randi has to lose from being proven wrong (or even simply setting some bad criteria that allows a non-paranormal event to slip through and "win") it's pretty clear that he has a vested interest in making sure that the criteria are either unmeetable or so onerous as to be disagreeable.
Again, it's not a contest. It is a promotional stunt. Now back to the actual purpose of the thread, someone asked why the Princeton lab wouldn't have entered the challenge if they actually had proof of the paranormal. My answer was that regardless of how much proof they may or may not have (and I haven't seen any of it), it wouldn't be worth it to risk their reputations or academic positions by participating in a PR stunt that is thinly disguised as a contest that can't be won. They're guaranteed to lose so there's no upside in even trying.
Yeah I've got a few months to burn to adjust to an interface change. Gotta love those training costs.
Yes, take the quote out of context and bitch about it. No wonder that you posted AC. Do you really think that it will take you months to become productive with Office 2007, especially after the cited example of "office users" versus "office newbies"? If it does then you're obviously a little underpowered in the mental department. I didn't say that it took me a few months to learn the new interface. I was merely pointing out that I had been using for several months, and that I found it actually faster and easier to use than Office 2003.
One of the big things about Office was that the famed 80/20 rule applies. 80% of users only use about 20% of the functionality available, and the other 20% use the remaining 80%. Microsoft actually found that a high percentage of the feature requests received after Office 2003 were actually for features that were already in the product. So rather than blame the users for not knowing enough about Office, they decided to rework Office applications so that more of the functionality was exposed via context sensitivity. For example, in Word 2007 if you highlight a block of text you will see a text formatting toolbar materialize at the cursor. Now the tools that you are most likely to use are right in front of you. Not only do features like this reduce the amount of navigation and clicking necessary to complete many functions, but it has the added advantage of exposing functionality in a context-sensitive fashion that many users didn't even know was there.
So yeah, if you're an Office 2003 power user it may take you a couple weeks of semi-regular use (like it did me) to gain that almost instinctive level of familiarity with the features that you use. But the usability improvements for the most commonly used functions (many of which were navigation intensive before) can offset that loss in productivity fairly quickly. Why else were the Office 2003 "veterans" able to almost immediately accomplish the same amount of work?
Of course, I don't expect you to actually reply to this. I'm pretty sure that you just wanted to make some snarky remark and try to come off sounding smart about things. But since you brought it up I thought I would give the subject a fair shake.
Come back when you've read the FAQ.
I have. From the FAQ:
1.4. How many people have passed the preliminary test?
None. Most applicants never agree to a proper test protocol, so most are never tested.
1.5. How many people have passed the formal test?
No one has ever taken the formal test, as one must first pass the preliminary test.
2.1. What do you mean by "mutually agreed upon"?
"Mutually agreed upon" means that neither side can force the other side into doing or saying something that they don't want to, and that if no agreement can be reached, the application process is terminated, with no blame or fault attributed to either side.
It's easy to point fingers after a Challenge claim comes to an impasse and say that the other side was being unreasonable. This phrase is used to insure that finger-pointing has no merit.
Randi claims that most applicants never agree to a "proper test protocol", and are never tested. But he also points out that both sides have to agree what that "proper test protocol" is. So either side can basically tank the process by being disagreeable. With a million dollars on the line (not to mention his reputation), you have to believe that Randi has a serious incentive to make sure that nobody passes the test. Apparently the easiest way to do so is to ensure that nobody (or only a very few people) actually gets to take the test.
Again, I'm not arguing that paranormal powers exist. I'm just pointing out that JREF's "Million Dollar Challenge" is little more than a publicity stunt, set up in such a way that they advertise a million dollars being available without ever having to pay out on it (or indeed, even attempt the challenge).
I think that there was a software company is Russia that recently offered a similar challenge. Apparently someone was disputing their claims of being unhackable or uncrackable or something, and the company offerred a large sum of money to anyone who could break their software. The only catch was that you had to fly to Russia on your own dime, and use systems that they configured, and meet all sorts of other restrictive criteria that were specifically constructed to ensure that you could not succeed. The contest wasn't designed to prove anything, it was merely a way for the company to get some free publicity and advertise to perspective customers that "even when offerred x amount of money for demonstrating flaws in our software, nobody has yet been able to do so".
Now if the criteria were set and judged by a neutral third party, then I might have a little more faith in the challenge. But I doubt that would ever happen because JREF would then face the chance (however minute) of actually losing the money and the bragging rights.
Thanks for pointing that out, though I think putting a cap on the number of weeks I'd pay out is reasonable. If someone gives me two months notice, I'm not going to give them the equivalent of two months of vacation. How much longer you let the person work (or whether you just let them go that day) and how much longer you pay them depend on the nature/needs of the business and the job itself. "The rest of the week" seems short to me, but it could still be reasonable.
I agree, it's reasonable to put a cap on how much you're willing to pay out for someone who is no longer working for you. That's why I think that it's reasonable (in most cases) to let someone work out their notice period. Cutting the period short without a good reason not only puts the person in a bind, but generates ill-will towards your company, and possibly among your remaining employees. Of course, if you're just managing a Taco Bell or something then it probably doesn't matter much. But if your business is a collection of professionals, then you could be shooting yourself in the foot by not letting a good worker finish out their notice period.