So - again - how exactly are they planning to prevent arbitrary application from mimicing this behaviour ?
They aren't. That's not the risk - an application "faking" the UAC dialog does absolutely nothing (you don't type your password into the UAC dialog, you just click a button).
It will not need to bother with "Secure Desktop", but rather just make a copy of a screen, dim it, show in a topmost window covering entire screen and then superimposing fake, but otherwise OK looking UAC dialog.
Which does absolutely nothing. If the UAC dialog asked for your password, we might be on to something - but it doesn't.
The real reason for the "secure desktop" is to prevent attacks (e.g. using API to click continue, sending signals to the window, etc.) that would allow an app to bypass the UAC dialog.
and reading about the insecurity of RFID I decided against it
My god, I am so tired of people labeling every RF-based system "RFID". The Prius uses an active (there is a battery in the transmitter), code-hopping system, just like many newer garage door openers.
Theives aren't going to hang around for 20+ minutes to steal your car. There are plenty of other vehicles that are both more valuable and considerably easier to steal.
Quick, in 30 seconds or less, what is Vista is going to have that's interesting?
OK, here's one - transactional NTFS. Transactional NTFS allows you to make filesystem changes in the same way that you would update a database. Applications will be able to update/create/modify files in a transaction, so that if the operation fails, the files are left in a consistent state (not just the filesystem, as is the case with a journaling FS).
Not good enough? How about this:
- New network stack with IPv6 in the core - New GUI / window manager in user-space (better stability / new eyecandy) - Priority based I/O handling (virus scanner won't slow down your system because it's hitting the disk) - User Account Control (not running as Administrator by default anymore) - New user-space audio subsystem (better stability, program-level volume control, AC3 decoding, etc.) - New speech recognition / synthesis engines - New SMB protocol (better performance) - Full disk encryption (BitLocker) - Built in search - Built in antispyware - Faster installation - New bootloader - Deadlock detection
Not exactly. Flash 7 (and below) video used Sorenson's Spark codec, while Flash 8 supports a new codec dervied from On2's VP6 codec. Spark was a steaming pile of garbage, but VP6 is a modern codec that matches VC-1/WMV or XVID in efficency.
Flash 8 video is in fact a modified version of On2 technology's VP6 encoder. You may know about On2 because their previous-generation VP3 encoder was "donated" to the open-source community and became what we now know as Ogg Theora.
VP6 is roghly on par with Windows Media 9, H.264, or XVID - definitely a step above MPEG2 or other older codecs.
This is exactly why NVIDIA and ATI keep their drivers closed-source.
If you look at S3's product, you see a device that has great hardware specs (looks great on paper) but fails to deliver because of buggy/incomplete drivers. S3 isn't alone in this - XGI faces similar problems.
The truth is that a lot of the performance of modern GPUs comes not from the hardware but from the drivers which supply it with data. NVIDIA and ATI keep their drivers closed-source because they don't want a company like S3 to benefit from their software - NV and ATI love the fact that everyone else has buggy, slow, incomplete 3D drivers, and that's the way they want to keep it.
If Apple has access to the API as Cringley has stated in his past two articles, Apple in theory could enable OSX to launch WinXP apps inside a process similar to how it ran "Classic Mode" for OS9 apps.
In theory, yes. In practice, the Win32 API is very, very big. If you want any kind of application compatibility, you need to implement:
- OLE / COM / DCOM - MFC - DirectX (DirectShow, DirectPlay, Direct3D, etc.) - The.NET CLR - Internet Explorer (many apps depend on it) - 100s of standard controls (e.g. ListView, etc) - The Registry - User Profiles
The Wine project knows just how difficult this is. There's nothing magic about having API documentation - it's still a huge amount of reimplementation and compatibility work to create a product that is probably less compatible than Windows Vista will be (which runs most Windows 95 apps fine).
Over the past three years, IIS 6 has had a grand total of 2 vulnerabilities - neither one being particularly severe. If you can point out more, I'd like to hear it.
Microsoft has a lot of problems with security, but IIS 6 isn't one of them. IIS 6 has proven to be a very secure webserver.
Intel has always had a process technology advantage over AMD. That never stopped AMD from shipping competitive products. Also, note that AMD's fab situation has gotten a lot better in the last year - with Fab 36 (and soon Chartered), AMD has the capacity to take on Intel in the market - something that they just couldn't do in the early Athlon days.
AMD has always been conservative in launching new processes, and it has benifited them in the past. Intel's 90nm process turned out to be the nail in the Prescott coffin, but AMD's 90nm launch resulted in CPUs that clocked much higher, used less power, and cost less money.
nothing on the horizion for 2 more years K8L, for one. Dual-core Turions. 65nm in 1Q 2007. Quad-core in 2007.
two years worth of products that handily defeat anything from AMD
Ah, another Intel Conroe fanboy. While I'd agree that Conroe is looking quite good, note that Athlon 64 is not sitting still. Even a simple die shrink may allow AMD to put out 3.4-3.6GHz parts, which would be quite competitive with what we're currently seeing from Conroe.
I would certainly hope that Conroe has a performance advantage over AMD64, though. No desktop or server part that Intel has put out in the last two years has been competitive from a performance standpoint with Athlon 64. The dual-core Xeon parts are a joke (and everyone in the industry knows it), the Pentium D gobbles down power and can't match Athlon 64's performance at half the wattage, and even Intel's low-end Celeron D is killed by the cheaper Sempron.
It's only rarely about performance anymore. Most PCs sold do absolutely nothing 95% of the time. It's about power usage, availability, the strength of the chipsets and the price of the chipset and CPU.
AMD chipsets are cheaper than Intel chipsets. Semprons are cheaper than Celeron Ds. Unless that changes, AMD is going to continue to destroy Intel's marketshare in the low-end and mid-range PC business. Only Dell is keeping Intel alive in the low-end market now.
Take a look in any retail store. You see more AMD than Intel. That has never been the case before - AMD has never had this kind of shelf space. They've never had this much fab capacity. They've never had this much acceptance in the corporate world.
. The NiMH are another story, they are a heavier metal and need more electroncis to properly charge and discharge them, probably the worst of the three.
Actually, this is not the case at all. NiMH is one of the most environmentally friendly battery technologies - unlike NiCd and Lead-Acid batteries, NiMH batteries don't contain hazardous metals (Cadmium or Lead), but like Lead-Acid and NiCD batteries, they are extensively recycled. Ni isn't eactly cheap, so it makes sense economically to recycle NiMH batteries - Toyota, for example, pays a $500 "bounty" for recycling the Prius battery.
NiMH is also less volatile than Li-Ion. Li-Ion batteries can present a disposal problem because of their high reactivity - if shorted, crushed, or punctured, there is a chance of explosion.
Non-bolded text should stay non-bolded in applications unless you specifically configure something that way. That's another convention.
ClearType certainly does not bold non-bolded text. The fact that some people seem to think that antialised rendering is "bold" indicates their ignorance.
Honestly, if you are using an LCD monitor, it's stupid not to have ClearType turned on. The fact that it is off by default always stunned me.
Unix shell scripts are also incredibly good at manipulating text files, using awk, grep, sed, cut, etc. I tried to do such a task with PowerShell and found it wanting.
There's your problem right there. String parsing is neither easy nor robust. When you have executables that each output data in their own format, how do you find a simple, robust way to work with that output? That's what PowerShell is all about - you don't have to parse text files because data isn't presented as plaintext.
It sounds like you want to be able to connect a VoIP service to the PSTN. What you need is an Asterisk box and an FXO. The X100P "clone" FXOs are around $10-15, and with a little bit of setup you can use SIP to connect to your Asterisk PBX and make outgoing calls using your traditional phone lines.
There are also services that let you connect Asterisk to the PSTN through their own gateways - generally rates are around $0.02-$0.05 per minute.
I have the best of both worlds - I can use the landline for local calls (POTS service is included in my housing fees for college), but long-distance calls are automatically routed to my low-cost VoIP provider. I also have custom extensions for friends & family (who connect using a SIP softphone), and I set up the voicemail system. We even have a cool recording that plays when you dial "0".
Switch to more honest advertising practices, please.
There's nothing dishonest about using a perfectly valid prefix in the way that it should be used. If your operating system reports GiB as GB, than that's an OS issue. The IEC and NIST have both standardized on GB meaning 10^9 bytes.
Assuming that there is consistancy is a big mistake. DVDs, for example, use the correct 10^9 GB, as do most newer flash drives.
GB means 2^30 bytes, and that's just the way it is.
Not when measuring hard disk capacity, optical disc capacity (DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD; CDs are measured in MiB), or the capacity of newer flash cards / mass-storage devices.
What precisely is true innovation? So what if Vista is simply a version of XP with a redone graphics subsystem, new sound subsystem, new network stack, significant security improvements, major UI changes, kernel improvements, and new versions of Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, Windows Meida Player, and the rest of the built-in Windows apps? What were you expecting?
Your example, XP Media Center, is probably the easiest to set up and easiest to use PC-based DVR solution out there. Ever try getting an old Samsung DirecTV reciever to work with Myth? Ever have the joy of going through Tribune's registration for guide listings? Normal users aren't going to edit config files to get their cable box to work.
FYI, I understand that there's a possibilty that your post is meant as satire, but if it is, it's not particularly good satire. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that you are being serious.
In short, if there isn't a direct payoff to me, then fuck it.
That sort of attiude is why we have corporations who cut R&D to increase the short term balance, why consumer debt is at an all-time high, and why the Feds keep spending us deeper and deeper into debt.
It's not just irresponsible to have a "me and now" attidue, it's also downright stupid. If everyone wants to help themselves by screwing everyone else over, then we end up with a society which simply doesn't work.
Just like you can't argue the Savior's sacrifice with an atheist, you can't use extinction to argue with us; we just don't care.
Funny, because we find it interesting that you still choose to believe without hard evidence - and that's not something that I'm ashamed to admit.
That and a 20% consumer tax
There are good arguments for a VAT, but the simple fact is that sales tax generally disproportinately affects the poor. Wealthy individuals spend a much smaller percentage of their income, which means that, percentage wise, they actually pay less tax under a purely VAT system than those who have less income.
Of course, if you're arguing for a VAT in addition to the current tax system, that's an entirely different matter. Adding money to the federal budget won't really stop our financial problems - it is runaway spending - particularly on the military (17.2%), Medicare/Medicaid (23.6%), and interest on the debt (8.10%) - that is driving our government further into debt.
Being smart about environmentalism means that you can still eat your tuna (without killing dolphins), you can still have your deck (from a well-managed forest), you can still eat steak (without antibiotic abuse), and drive your car/SUV (hybrid, EV, hydrogen, or biofuel powered).
Technology has the ability to solve many of our environmental problems without changing our quality of life - we just have to care enough to use it. Unfortunately, it appears that you don't.
When you get down to it, the fundamental problem that Wikipedia admins seem to have is that their creation has become too successful. Remember that the predecessors to the Internet (NSFNet, ARPANET, and others) were often limited to research and educational purposes - not the widespread commercial use we see today.
Wikipedia is not Britanica. It needs to stop pretending that it's a traditional encyclopedia. The whole concept of deleting articles because they aren't "notable" enough is bunk. If a Wyoming town with 17 pepole is "notable" enoguh to warrant an article, certainly an article on an internet fad is. Far too often, the Wikipedia admins hide behind the convenient excuse of "notability" when they are eliminating an article that is too offensive or controversial.
Wikipedia's status as an "encyclopedia" ceased long ago. Wikipedia is more like a mini version of the Internet itself, a version where pages can be edited by anyone and vandalism and immaturity is removed by helpful moderators. That's the role of the admins - keep vandalism off, keep the articles on-topic, and make sure that articles keep a more-or-less neutral point of view. If an article doesn't meet the standards of quality, it should be revised, not deleted. Nor should it be the role of the moderators to decide whose opinion carries more weight. The header on the request for deletion page says it all - your opinion, however valid, may not carry much weight at all, unless the moderator decides that it should. For a project that has built itself on transparency and objectivity, this is a massive failure. What if the state legislature decided whose votes were most important when voting on a referrendum? The current deletion method is like a city council who asks for votes on an important decision, then goes ahead and does whatever they want.
"Now someone will probably make a point about a 4096 bit key to make the effort take years, but consider this: how long ago would a 64 bit key been considered sufficient?"
Public-key cyphers, such as RSA, need a significantly longer key length to provide security. While I'm sure you know this, your post attempts to equivocate key lengths for public and private key systems in order to enhance your point.
Notably, even 64-bit ciphers can offer a significant margin of safety - it took distributed.net nearly 5 years with a vast network of systems to crack 64-bit RC5; while the NSA and related agencies certainly have significant computing resources at their disposal, tjere is a point at which attacking more than a few messages becomes infeasable.
While I certainly agree with the premise that curent ciphers/key lengths will be broken at some point in the future, it's not necessarily as soon as you imply. 56-bit DES, considered by some to be weak in 1977 when it was standardized, was not cracked until 1997. If Rijndael provides the same margin of security, your secrets should be safe until 2018.
I've come across Windows machines that would noticably drop frames, let the video fall out of sync with the audio, and pixelate due to some background process suddenly grabbing part of the CPU where similarly speced linux machines never had the same problems. Not to mention that Windows XP SP2 doesn't ship with DVD playback support, you have to buy it from a third party.
Don't you just love anecdotal reports? I've come accross Linux machines where the audio randomly clicks or pops, where overlay support doesn't work on the display, or where the DVD drive doesn't work at all.
If you have the master key, it's not called "Trusted Computing" anymore.
The definition of "Trusted Computing" is that the Powers That Be have the ability to make your computer secure against you.
I suggest that you actually learn how "Trusted Computing" works. Claiming that it is a bold plot to force you to accept DRM is like claiming that cryptography is evil because it can be used by terrorists.
The TPM has a whole range of interesting applications; DRM just happens to be one of them.
Using ARD to do tasks like install packages over the network is much easier then in Active Directory or any Linux counterpart. That is to say its more intuitive.
Having deployed multiple different software packages throughout an AD network, I don't really know what you're talking about. It doesn't get a whole lot easier than "add the package to the MMC snapin and it installs on the next login".
There's also SMS if you have more extensive needs.
The good news is that you'll have no problems finding software for Windows. The bad news is that much of it is crap.
Recommendations: - Cygwin (Bash, SSH, GCC, and other GNU/Linux tools) - WinSCP (SCP client) - PuTTY (excellent SSH client with tons of options) - EmEditor (free version is a great replacement for Notepad) - vi (if you like vi) - CCleaner (cleans up temp files, browser cache, etc. for tons of programs) - Spybot S&D (effective antispyware) - Mozilla Firefox or Opera (if you don't like IE; I keep all three for testing) - Mozilla Thunderbird (you are using IMAP, aren't you?) - Microsoft Office - PDFCreator (make PDFs by printing) - iTunes (if you have an iPod) - K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (every codec you'll need plus Media Player Classic, Quicktime and Real alternatives, and a lot more) - Daemon Tools (CD/DVD drive emulator with copy protection circumvention) - Ethereal (for network troubleshooting) - Nero (CD/DVD burning) - RMClock (lets you control PowerNow/Cool 'n Quiet/SpeedStep) - EVEREST Home Edition (excellent system information tool) - AVG Anti-Virus (Free Edition) - Adobe Reader 7.0 - Windows Desktop Search (corporate edition - without the MSN crap)
You might also want to install some Windows games - there are plenty to choose from.
IMAP4 with IDLE support can be used to implement push-email, and you can set up filters on the server-side. Many providers, including fastmail.fm, provide a web-based interface to do it.
If only there were a decent email client with IMAP IDLE support.
Slashdot Mirror
So - again - how exactly are they planning to prevent arbitrary application from mimicing this behaviour ?
They aren't. That's not the risk - an application "faking" the UAC dialog does absolutely nothing (you don't type your password into the UAC dialog, you just click a button).
It will not need to bother with "Secure Desktop", but rather just make a copy of a screen, dim it, show in a topmost window covering entire screen and then superimposing fake, but otherwise OK looking UAC dialog.
Which does absolutely nothing. If the UAC dialog asked for your password, we might be on to something - but it doesn't.
The real reason for the "secure desktop" is to prevent attacks (e.g. using API to click continue, sending signals to the window, etc.) that would allow an app to bypass the UAC dialog.
and reading about the insecurity of RFID I decided against it
My god, I am so tired of people labeling every RF-based system "RFID". The Prius uses an active (there is a battery in the transmitter), code-hopping system, just like many newer garage door openers.
Theives aren't going to hang around for 20+ minutes to steal your car. There are plenty of other vehicles that are both more valuable and considerably easier to steal.
I am so sick and tired of this argument.
Go and actually read what's new in Vista. Then come back and say that Tiger "already has all the features that are supposed to be in Vista".
Last time I checked, Tiger didn't have a transactional filesystem.
Quick, in 30 seconds or less, what is Vista is going to have that's interesting?
OK, here's one - transactional NTFS. Transactional NTFS allows you to make filesystem changes in the same way that you would update a database. Applications will be able to update/create/modify files in a transaction, so that if the operation fails, the files are left in a consistent state (not just the filesystem, as is the case with a journaling FS).
Not good enough? How about this:
- New network stack with IPv6 in the core
- New GUI / window manager in user-space (better stability / new eyecandy)
- Priority based I/O handling (virus scanner won't slow down your system because it's hitting the disk)
- User Account Control (not running as Administrator by default anymore)
- New user-space audio subsystem (better stability, program-level volume control, AC3 decoding, etc.)
- New speech recognition / synthesis engines
- New SMB protocol (better performance)
- Full disk encryption (BitLocker)
- Built in search
- Built in antispyware
- Faster installation
- New bootloader
- Deadlock detection
I recommend you look at Wikipedia's Features new to Windows Vista page. You may be surprised.
It's Macromedia's/Adobe's own codec.
Not exactly. Flash 7 (and below) video used Sorenson's Spark codec, while Flash 8 supports a new codec dervied from On2's VP6 codec. Spark was a steaming pile of garbage, but VP6 is a modern codec that matches VC-1/WMV or XVID in efficency.
Flash 8 video is in fact a modified version of On2 technology's VP6 encoder. You may know about On2 because their previous-generation VP3 encoder was "donated" to the open-source community and became what we now know as Ogg Theora.
VP6 is roghly on par with Windows Media 9, H.264, or XVID - definitely a step above MPEG2 or other older codecs.
This is exactly why NVIDIA and ATI keep their drivers closed-source.
If you look at S3's product, you see a device that has great hardware specs (looks great on paper) but fails to deliver because of buggy/incomplete drivers. S3 isn't alone in this - XGI faces similar problems.
The truth is that a lot of the performance of modern GPUs comes not from the hardware but from the drivers which supply it with data. NVIDIA and ATI keep their drivers closed-source because they don't want a company like S3 to benefit from their software - NV and ATI love the fact that everyone else has buggy, slow, incomplete 3D drivers, and that's the way they want to keep it.
If Apple has access to the API as Cringley has stated in his past two articles, Apple in theory could enable OSX to launch WinXP apps inside a process similar to how it ran "Classic Mode" for OS9 apps.
.NET CLR
In theory, yes. In practice, the Win32 API is very, very big. If you want any kind of application compatibility, you need to implement:
- OLE / COM / DCOM
- MFC
- DirectX (DirectShow, DirectPlay, Direct3D, etc.)
- The
- Internet Explorer (many apps depend on it)
- 100s of standard controls (e.g. ListView, etc)
- The Registry
- User Profiles
The Wine project knows just how difficult this is. There's nothing magic about having API documentation - it's still a huge amount of reimplementation and compatibility work to create a product that is probably less compatible than Windows Vista will be (which runs most Windows 95 apps fine).
With IIS's myriad of security issues
Frankly, this kind of crap needs to stop.
Over the past three years, IIS 6 has had a grand total of 2 vulnerabilities - neither one being particularly severe. If you can point out more, I'd like to hear it.
Microsoft has a lot of problems with security, but IIS 6 isn't one of them. IIS 6 has proven to be a very secure webserver.
Intel has three fabs ramping to 65 then 45 nm
Intel has always had a process technology advantage over AMD. That never stopped AMD from shipping competitive products. Also, note that AMD's fab situation has gotten a lot better in the last year - with Fab 36 (and soon Chartered), AMD has the capacity to take on Intel in the market - something that they just couldn't do in the early Athlon days.
AMD has always been conservative in launching new processes, and it has benifited them in the past. Intel's 90nm process turned out to be the nail in the Prescott coffin, but AMD's 90nm launch resulted in CPUs that clocked much higher, used less power, and cost less money.
nothing on the horizion for 2 more years
K8L, for one. Dual-core Turions. 65nm in 1Q 2007. Quad-core in 2007.
two years worth of products that handily defeat anything from AMD
Ah, another Intel Conroe fanboy. While I'd agree that Conroe is looking quite good, note that Athlon 64 is not sitting still. Even a simple die shrink may allow AMD to put out 3.4-3.6GHz parts, which would be quite competitive with what we're currently seeing from Conroe.
I would certainly hope that Conroe has a performance advantage over AMD64, though. No desktop or server part that Intel has put out in the last two years has been competitive from a performance standpoint with Athlon 64. The dual-core Xeon parts are a joke (and everyone in the industry knows it), the Pentium D gobbles down power and can't match Athlon 64's performance at half the wattage, and even Intel's low-end Celeron D is killed by the cheaper Sempron.
It's only rarely about performance anymore. Most PCs sold do absolutely nothing 95% of the time. It's about power usage, availability, the strength of the chipsets and the price of the chipset and CPU.
AMD chipsets are cheaper than Intel chipsets. Semprons are cheaper than Celeron Ds. Unless that changes, AMD is going to continue to destroy Intel's marketshare in the low-end and mid-range PC business. Only Dell is keeping Intel alive in the low-end market now.
Take a look in any retail store. You see more AMD than Intel. That has never been the case before - AMD has never had this kind of shelf space. They've never had this much fab capacity. They've never had this much acceptance in the corporate world.
That alone should have Intel very, very worried.
. The NiMH are another story, they are a heavier metal and need more electroncis to properly charge and discharge them, probably the worst of the three.
Actually, this is not the case at all. NiMH is one of the most environmentally friendly battery technologies - unlike NiCd and Lead-Acid batteries, NiMH batteries don't contain hazardous metals (Cadmium or Lead), but like Lead-Acid and NiCD batteries, they are extensively recycled. Ni isn't eactly cheap, so it makes sense economically to recycle NiMH batteries - Toyota, for example, pays a $500 "bounty" for recycling the Prius battery.
NiMH is also less volatile than Li-Ion. Li-Ion batteries can present a disposal problem because of their high reactivity - if shorted, crushed, or punctured, there is a chance of explosion.
Non-bolded text should stay non-bolded in applications unless you specifically configure something that way. That's another convention.
ClearType certainly does not bold non-bolded text. The fact that some people seem to think that antialised rendering is "bold" indicates their ignorance.
Honestly, if you are using an LCD monitor, it's stupid not to have ClearType turned on. The fact that it is off by default always stunned me.
Unix shell scripts are also incredibly good at manipulating text files, using awk, grep, sed, cut, etc. I tried to do such a task with PowerShell and found it wanting.
There's your problem right there. String parsing is neither easy nor robust. When you have executables that each output data in their own format, how do you find a simple, robust way to work with that output? That's what PowerShell is all about - you don't have to parse text files because data isn't presented as plaintext.
It sounds like you want to be able to connect a VoIP service to the PSTN. What you need is an Asterisk box and an FXO. The X100P "clone" FXOs are around $10-15, and with a little bit of setup you can use SIP to connect to your Asterisk PBX and make outgoing calls using your traditional phone lines.
There are also services that let you connect Asterisk to the PSTN through their own gateways - generally rates are around $0.02-$0.05 per minute.
I have the best of both worlds - I can use the landline for local calls (POTS service is included in my housing fees for college), but long-distance calls are automatically routed to my low-cost VoIP provider. I also have custom extensions for friends & family (who connect using a SIP softphone), and I set up the voicemail system. We even have a cool recording that plays when you dial "0".
Switch to more honest advertising practices, please.
There's nothing dishonest about using a perfectly valid prefix in the way that it should be used. If your operating system reports GiB as GB, than that's an OS issue. The IEC and NIST have both standardized on GB meaning 10^9 bytes.
Assuming that there is consistancy is a big mistake. DVDs, for example, use the correct 10^9 GB, as do most newer flash drives.
GB means 2^30 bytes, and that's just the way it is.
Not when measuring hard disk capacity, optical disc capacity (DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD; CDs are measured in MiB), or the capacity of newer flash cards / mass-storage devices.
The IEC and NIST already settled this one.
true innovation
What precisely is true innovation? So what if Vista is simply a version of XP with a redone graphics subsystem, new sound subsystem, new network stack, significant security improvements, major UI changes, kernel improvements, and new versions of Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, Windows Meida Player, and the rest of the built-in Windows apps? What were you expecting?
Your example, XP Media Center, is probably the easiest to set up and easiest to use PC-based DVR solution out there. Ever try getting an old Samsung DirecTV reciever to work with Myth? Ever have the joy of going through Tribune's registration for guide listings? Normal users aren't going to edit config files to get their cable box to work.
FYI, I understand that there's a possibilty that your post is meant as satire, but if it is, it's not particularly good satire. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that you are being serious.
In short, if there isn't a direct payoff to me, then fuck it.
That sort of attiude is why we have corporations who cut R&D to increase the short term balance, why consumer debt is at an all-time high, and why the Feds keep spending us deeper and deeper into debt.
It's not just irresponsible to have a "me and now" attidue, it's also downright stupid. If everyone wants to help themselves by screwing everyone else over, then we end up with a society which simply doesn't work.
Just like you can't argue the Savior's sacrifice with an atheist, you can't use extinction to argue with us; we just don't care.
Funny, because we find it interesting that you still choose to believe without hard evidence - and that's not something that I'm ashamed to admit.
That and a 20% consumer tax
There are good arguments for a VAT, but the simple fact is that sales tax generally disproportinately affects the poor. Wealthy individuals spend a much smaller percentage of their income, which means that, percentage wise, they actually pay less tax under a purely VAT system than those who have less income.
Of course, if you're arguing for a VAT in addition to the current tax system, that's an entirely different matter. Adding money to the federal budget won't really stop our financial problems - it is runaway spending - particularly on the military (17.2%), Medicare/Medicaid (23.6%), and interest on the debt (8.10%) - that is driving our government further into debt.
Being smart about environmentalism means that you can still eat your tuna (without killing dolphins), you can still have your deck (from a well-managed forest), you can still eat steak (without antibiotic abuse), and drive your car/SUV (hybrid, EV, hydrogen, or biofuel powered).
Technology has the ability to solve many of our environmental problems without changing our quality of life - we just have to care enough to use it. Unfortunately, it appears that you don't.
When you get down to it, the fundamental problem that Wikipedia admins seem to have is that their creation has become too successful. Remember that the predecessors to the Internet (NSFNet, ARPANET, and others) were often limited to research and educational purposes - not the widespread commercial use we see today.
Wikipedia is not Britanica. It needs to stop pretending that it's a traditional encyclopedia. The whole concept of deleting articles because they aren't "notable" enough is bunk. If a Wyoming town with 17 pepole is "notable" enoguh to warrant an article, certainly an article on an internet fad is. Far too often, the Wikipedia admins hide behind the convenient excuse of "notability" when they are eliminating an article that is too offensive or controversial.
Wikipedia's status as an "encyclopedia" ceased long ago. Wikipedia is more like a mini version of the Internet itself, a version where pages can be edited by anyone and vandalism and immaturity is removed by helpful moderators. That's the role of the admins - keep vandalism off, keep the articles on-topic, and make sure that articles keep a more-or-less neutral point of view. If an article doesn't meet the standards of quality, it should be revised, not deleted. Nor should it be the role of the moderators to decide whose opinion carries more weight. The header on the request for deletion page says it all - your opinion, however valid, may not carry much weight at all, unless the moderator decides that it should. For a project that has built itself on transparency and objectivity, this is a massive failure. What if the state legislature decided whose votes were most important when voting on a referrendum? The current deletion method is like a city council who asks for votes on an important decision, then goes ahead and does whatever they want.
"Now someone will probably make a point about a 4096 bit key to make the effort take years, but consider this: how long ago would a 64 bit key been considered sufficient?"
Public-key cyphers, such as RSA, need a significantly longer key length to provide security. While I'm sure you know this, your post attempts to equivocate key lengths for public and private key systems in order to enhance your point.
Notably, even 64-bit ciphers can offer a significant margin of safety - it took distributed.net nearly 5 years with a vast network of systems to crack 64-bit RC5; while the NSA and related agencies certainly have significant computing resources at their disposal, tjere is a point at which attacking more than a few messages becomes infeasable.
While I certainly agree with the premise that curent ciphers/key lengths will be broken at some point in the future, it's not necessarily as soon as you imply. 56-bit DES, considered by some to be weak in 1977 when it was standardized, was not cracked until 1997. If Rijndael provides the same margin of security, your secrets should be safe until 2018.
I've come across Windows machines that would noticably drop frames, let the video fall out of sync with the audio, and pixelate due to some background process suddenly grabbing part of the CPU where similarly speced linux machines never had the same problems. Not to mention that Windows XP SP2 doesn't ship with DVD playback support, you have to buy it from a third party.
Don't you just love anecdotal reports? I've come accross Linux machines where the audio randomly clicks or pops, where overlay support doesn't work on the display, or where the DVD drive doesn't work at all.
We can all tell stories.
If you have the master key, it's not called "Trusted Computing" anymore.
The definition of "Trusted Computing" is that the Powers That Be have the ability to make your computer secure against you.
I suggest that you actually learn how "Trusted Computing" works. Claiming that it is a bold plot to force you to accept DRM is like claiming that cryptography is evil because it can be used by terrorists.
The TPM has a whole range of interesting applications; DRM just happens to be one of them.
Using ARD to do tasks like install packages over the network is much easier then in Active Directory or any Linux counterpart. That is to say its more intuitive.
Having deployed multiple different software packages throughout an AD network, I don't really know what you're talking about. It doesn't get a whole lot easier than "add the package to the MMC snapin and it installs on the next login".
There's also SMS if you have more extensive needs.
The good news is that you'll have no problems finding software for Windows. The bad news is that much of it is crap.
Recommendations:
- Cygwin (Bash, SSH, GCC, and other GNU/Linux tools)
- WinSCP (SCP client)
- PuTTY (excellent SSH client with tons of options)
- EmEditor (free version is a great replacement for Notepad)
- vi (if you like vi)
- CCleaner (cleans up temp files, browser cache, etc. for tons of programs)
- Spybot S&D (effective antispyware)
- Mozilla Firefox or Opera (if you don't like IE; I keep all three for testing)
- Mozilla Thunderbird (you are using IMAP, aren't you?)
- Microsoft Office
- PDFCreator (make PDFs by printing)
- iTunes (if you have an iPod)
- K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (every codec you'll need plus Media Player Classic, Quicktime and Real alternatives, and a lot more)
- Daemon Tools (CD/DVD drive emulator with copy protection circumvention)
- Ethereal (for network troubleshooting)
- Nero (CD/DVD burning)
- RMClock (lets you control PowerNow/Cool 'n Quiet/SpeedStep)
- EVEREST Home Edition (excellent system information tool)
- AVG Anti-Virus (Free Edition)
- Adobe Reader 7.0
- Windows Desktop Search (corporate edition - without the MSN crap)
You might also want to install some Windows games - there are plenty to choose from.
This is better than IMAP and POP3
IMAP4 with IDLE support can be used to implement push-email, and you can set up filters on the server-side. Many providers, including fastmail.fm, provide a web-based interface to do it.
If only there were a decent email client with IMAP IDLE support.