Oh, come on. Longhorn is going to be RTM in less than a year. Any major features that Microsoft is adding to Longhorn have long-since been added.
Microsoft has been talking about Fast Search (ala Tiger) since 2002. It's not like Apple thought of the idea - they just beat Microsoft to market in implementing it.
Longhorn is in "polish, debug, and ship" mode right now. Of course, how good the final product is will have to be seen.
"FF will have advanced way beyond what IE can hope to achieve from typical corporate development."
Are you an idiot?
It took the Mozilla project nearly five years to build what Firefox is today. Hell, Mozilla didn't even surpass IE4 until 2002, five years after IE4's release.
Microsoft went from not having a browser to having the *best* browser in two years.
If they have to, they will build a standards-compliant, fast, extensible browser.
The only question now is whether they will have to. But it already looks like the popularity of Firefox has answered that question.
The Mozilla Foundation has a lot of great talent. But they don't have 300 full-time developers. Microsoft has plenty of bright people - and plenty of money. Don't sell them short.
"most of the reason I junked IE was security issues"
What did you switch to? Mozilla?
I don't think that Mozilla is exactly a model for security. At my company, we've had to deploy three complete updates since the release of Firefox 1.0.
It's clearly not "perfect".
Of course, IE is far from a model citizen, but IE6-SP2 is much better, and *security* is the focus of IE7 according to the developers.
I think that Microsoft can build a competitive browser. They just need an incentive to do so.
Now they have that incentive. Firefox has given it to them.
"Suse is the dominant desktop Linux distro and Suse is KDE-oriented."
No, it's not. Have you heard of "Novell Linux Desktop", the product that is intended to replace SuSE on the desktop? It's GNOME based, which is understandable because Novell also purchased Ximian.
RHEL and Fedora are also GNOME-focused, as is Ubuntu.
"Qt apps look better and are more integrated with eachother."
According to whom? I personally love the look and feel of GTK+, and I don't think that there's any problem with integration.
"The second thing they need is a "SwingLite", or some easier way to do common things. For example, it is very common to need a text field that allows the user to enter a number, but not text. Should be easy, right? This is the code I have to use to do it:"
Welcome to the world of Java. If you don't like the object-oriented Kool-Aid, you're probably using the wrong language. BS like that is why I use Python/PyGTK for programming on Linux.
"I've found that whenever someone does custom widgets that tries to emulate the native look, there's always something missing or slightly different that produces a disconcerting GUI feeling."
What about Firefox? With the Qute theme, it's pretty damn hard to tell that it's not a native app.
I'm sorry, but OOo just blows. I've used 1.1 and 2.0 (beta), and they both suck in a wide variety of ways.
Here's a few:
- OOo defaults to A4 on my distro. You have to recreate the damn template to get it to use Letter.
- OOo's spell checker has neither the comprehensive dictionary nor the excellent suggestions that make Word's usable
- OOo manages to use 171MB on my Windows system, and a similar amount under Linux. Compare that to 15MB for Word - more than a 10x difference.
- OOo's spreadsheet doesn't autofill well. For example, Excel's autofill doesn't muck with the unchanging "data" part of the percentile function. OOo's does. In addition, if you move an entire column in OOo, the cells often don't update properly.
- OOo doesn't use native file selector dialogs (on Linux) without buggy 3rd party plugins.
- OOo sometimes coredumps when I try to start a presentation under Linux.
- OOo's 2.0 beta doesn't have working spellcheck at all on Linux.
- OOo doesn't use native GUI calls, so every element has that "not quite right" feeling.
- OOo can't autosave to a temp file; it must save to the original file
- OOo Impress doesn't ship with any templates.
- OOo has no groupware integration.
- OOo's outlining doesn't work like Word, AbiWord, KWord, or practically any other word processor.
- OOo de-italicizes an entire word if you hit CTRL+I before typing the space.
These are not minor squabbles. They are major issues that add up to a product that feels buggy, bloated, and awkward. It's a suite that just doesn't feel ready.
"Wow. Cannot Microsoft even come up with their own mantras rather than copy others?"
Because, as we know "It Just Works" was invented by Apple.
It's not like the phrase returns 150,000 hits on Google or anything. And Linux distros like Ubuntu certainly haven't used that phrase to describe their OS.
"*every* printer I have attempted to install by first "plugging it in" then choosing the driver on the CD has put something to the effect of "You must run SETUP" in the 'select your printer model' list."
That's funny, because neither my HP 970CXi nor my Cannon minded installing the software after connecting the printer.
"What I meant is that it is similar to the steps to manually setting up a printer in Windows"
Which isn't something that you have to do. You missed the point entirely. I know that you can go through the "add printer wizard".
As compared to CUPS, where you're damn lucky to get a USB printer to work at all. My Cannon laser printer doesn't work at all, and the LaserJet 4 that I use at work only works with rasterized mode (which looks terrible on this particular printer).
Don't give me crap about how CUPS is "just as easy" when it's clearly not. Why, for example, can't CUPS *detect* my printer's model? And why does it give me driver choices - some which work and some which don't? And why is it so much of a pain to set up with Samba shared printers?
Windows not only allows you to browse for printers, it downloads the drivers automatically.
"The question is what are those differences, how significant are they, from whose point of view?"
The differences are significant becase a phrase like "Die Jews Die" essentially amounts to a threat.
Seeing "Nirvanna Rocks" isn't likely to interfere with my ability to feel secure.
It's the same thing with hate crime. Killing a person randomly isn't likely to cause a specific group of individuals to feel threatened. Killing a Jew and cutting a swastika into their chest is.
If you call me and annoy me, it could possibly be harassment. If you call me and tell me that you're going to kill me, it's a threat. The punishment is far more severe.
That's the difference between a "normal" crime and a "hate" crime.
"Yet Microsoft breaks previous versions of software and APIs with new releases."
Only rarely. The media player that I developed for Windows 98 still runs fine on Windows XP, 7 years later. I have no doubt that it will run on Windows Longhorn as well.
Hell, it's pretty dammed impressive that my code still runs on an OS with a completely different kernel, filesystem, driver model, and just about everything else. By all means, XP is a *very* different OS from 98.
There were good reasons for breaking compatibility with GNOME2. I don't think it's necessary to do it again to advance the OS. Microsoft sure doesn't think so.
"Honestly -- what comes with the XP install these days?"
Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, IIS, Windows Messenger, Windows Netmeeting.
Oh, and a *lot* of drivers.
It's not as much as an Ubuntu desktop, but it is by no means "tiny".
" Even a 'default' install that doesn't install everything still has vast swaths of software from compilers to office suites to web browsers to web servers to image manipulation to whatever."
I don't know what distro you're using, but the default installs of Fedora and Ubuntu don't include Apache or GCC.
One more reason I like Ubuntu - the basics come on the CD, but you can add more with apt-get. Unlike Fedora, where invariably you will end up needing a few packages on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th CDs.
"So you're prefectly fine with paying for in-game items with time but think paying for them with money is a mortal sin..?"
Yes. Well, not exactly a mortal sin.
It's like those damn trading card games. You couldn't be competitive unless you wanted to spend thousands of dollars on cards.
Or like those newer Pac Man machines where you could continue. Suddenly, the high score doesn't mean anything.
Similarly, MMOs should reward effort and skill, not money. It's not fair to the poeple who invested their time into the game to be outclassed by those who simply slapped down their credit card.
Doing so cheapens higher levels. Cool items and high levels only mean something because they are difficult to obtain.
Imagine if a chess player could be highly ranked because they paid others to play for him/her.
"Referring to an OS that is at least 15 months from release in the present tense is plain crazy,"
Not Really. Longhorn Beta 1 ships in just over a month, and the RTM date is set in May 2006.
"No matter what features it has, they're not doing anybody any good at 6PM on April 29th, 2005"
Yeah, and Tiger's features aren't doing anybody any good at 5:59PM on April 29, 2005.
Yes, Tiger will be released before Longhorn. But, when you get down to it, neither product has shipped yet. Right now, it's prerelease vs. prerelease.
Microsoft *will* get Longhorn out the door in 2006. Whether it will be a good product has yet to be seen.
Don't sell them short, though. They have a *lot* of programming talent and they *can* release a solid product. More and more, it's looking like they will *have* to release a solid product.
" must admit I am somewhat spoiled, as my new main since moving to Laughing Skull a month ago, is a priest. I can count the number of groups I have been turned away from in 44 levels on two fingers."
That has to do with demographics. No one, except people like you and me, wants to be the "weak" Priest. That's OK, because the fewer Priests there are, the more in demand their skills will be.
Plus, Power Word: Shield is damn cool. I feel like I'm in a Star Trek episode: "Shields Up".
It takes up to 64GB in a 4CPU configuration, or 32GB in a 2CPU configuration.
Loaded with 2 1.8GHz Opterons and 32GB, it runs $31,538.00. Not cheap, but it *does* have redundant power/cooling, remote management (ILO), and the capability to expand to 8way/64GB (with dual-core CPUs).
Or consider the DL585, which supports 32GB with two Opterons. It runs $31K with 2x 1.8GHz Opterons and 32GB, plus you have the option to upgrade to 4-way/64GB later (or, with dual core, 8-way).
Slashdot Mirror
"Longhorn does copy some features of Tiger."
Oh, come on. Longhorn is going to be RTM in less than a year. Any major features that Microsoft is adding to Longhorn have long-since been added.
Microsoft has been talking about Fast Search (ala Tiger) since 2002. It's not like Apple thought of the idea - they just beat Microsoft to market in implementing it.
Longhorn is in "polish, debug, and ship" mode right now. Of course, how good the final product is will have to be seen.
"FF will have advanced way beyond what IE can hope to achieve from typical corporate development."
Are you an idiot?
It took the Mozilla project nearly five years to build what Firefox is today. Hell, Mozilla didn't even surpass IE4 until 2002, five years after IE4's release.
Microsoft went from not having a browser to having the *best* browser in two years.
If they have to, they will build a standards-compliant, fast, extensible browser.
The only question now is whether they will have to. But it already looks like the popularity of Firefox has answered that question.
The Mozilla Foundation has a lot of great talent. But they don't have 300 full-time developers. Microsoft has plenty of bright people - and plenty of money. Don't sell them short.
They are complacent, not stupid.
"most of the reason I junked IE was security issues"
What did you switch to? Mozilla?
I don't think that Mozilla is exactly a model for security. At my company, we've had to deploy three complete updates since the release of Firefox 1.0.
It's clearly not "perfect".
Of course, IE is far from a model citizen, but IE6-SP2 is much better, and *security* is the focus of IE7 according to the developers.
I think that Microsoft can build a competitive browser. They just need an incentive to do so.
Now they have that incentive. Firefox has given it to them.
I, for one, welcome the new browser wars.
"Then why haven't they ever done so before?"
As far as Office goes, they have. Office 2003 is a damn solid product.
As far as Windows, it's because they've never needed to. "Good enough" has been plenty to keep their customers hooked.
With Apple turning up the heat and Linux finally becoming a viable alternative, Microsoft is going to stop being complacent.
Look at Windows Server 2003 - it's a solid product that came about because Microsoft was losing its shirt to Linux-based servers.
"Until it's preloaded on systems, and in boxes on store shelves, and can be bought and used by the public at large, it doesn't exist"
So then Tiger doesn't exist?
That was my whole point. Today, Tiger is no more "real" than Longhorn.
Apple has released betas and screenshots. So has Microsoft. Other than the fact that Tiger ships a year earlier, I fail to see the difference.
"Suse is the dominant desktop Linux distro and Suse is KDE-oriented."
No, it's not. Have you heard of "Novell Linux Desktop", the product that is intended to replace SuSE on the desktop? It's GNOME based, which is understandable because Novell also purchased Ximian.
RHEL and Fedora are also GNOME-focused, as is Ubuntu.
"Qt apps look better and are more integrated with eachother."
According to whom? I personally love the look and feel of GTK+, and I don't think that there's any problem with integration.
"The second thing they need is a "SwingLite", or some easier way to do common things. For example, it is very common to need a text field that allows the user to enter a number, but not text. Should be easy, right? This is the code I have to use to do it:"
Welcome to the world of Java. If you don't like the object-oriented Kool-Aid, you're probably using the wrong language. BS like that is why I use Python/PyGTK for programming on Linux.
"I've found that whenever someone does custom widgets that tries to emulate the native look, there's always something missing or slightly different that produces a disconcerting GUI feeling."
What about Firefox? With the Qute theme, it's pretty damn hard to tell that it's not a native app.
Office 2003 all the way.
I'm sorry, but OOo just blows. I've used 1.1 and 2.0 (beta), and they both suck in a wide variety of ways.
Here's a few:
- OOo defaults to A4 on my distro. You have to recreate the damn template to get it to use Letter.
- OOo's spell checker has neither the comprehensive dictionary nor the excellent suggestions that make Word's usable
- OOo manages to use 171MB on my Windows system, and a similar amount under Linux. Compare that to 15MB for Word - more than a 10x difference.
- OOo's spreadsheet doesn't autofill well. For example, Excel's autofill doesn't muck with the unchanging "data" part of the percentile function. OOo's does. In addition, if you move an entire column in OOo, the cells often don't update properly.
- OOo doesn't use native file selector dialogs (on Linux) without buggy 3rd party plugins.
- OOo sometimes coredumps when I try to start a presentation under Linux.
- OOo's 2.0 beta doesn't have working spellcheck at all on Linux.
- OOo doesn't use native GUI calls, so every element has that "not quite right" feeling.
- OOo can't autosave to a temp file; it must save to the original file
- OOo Impress doesn't ship with any templates.
- OOo has no groupware integration.
- OOo's outlining doesn't work like Word, AbiWord, KWord, or practically any other word processor.
- OOo de-italicizes an entire word if you hit CTRL+I before typing the space.
These are not minor squabbles. They are major issues that add up to a product that feels buggy, bloated, and awkward. It's a suite that just doesn't feel ready.
"Wow. Cannot Microsoft even come up with their own mantras rather than copy others?"
Because, as we know "It Just Works" was invented by Apple.
It's not like the phrase returns 150,000 hits on Google or anything. And Linux distros like Ubuntu certainly haven't used that phrase to describe their OS.
"*every* printer I have attempted to install by first "plugging it in" then choosing the driver on the CD has put something to the effect of "You must run SETUP" in the 'select your printer model' list."
That's funny, because neither my HP 970CXi nor my Cannon minded installing the software after connecting the printer.
"What I meant is that it is similar to the steps to manually setting up a printer in Windows"
Which isn't something that you have to do. You missed the point entirely. I know that you can go through the "add printer wizard".
As compared to CUPS, where you're damn lucky to get a USB printer to work at all. My Cannon laser printer doesn't work at all, and the LaserJet 4 that I use at work only works with rasterized mode (which looks terrible on this particular printer).
Don't give me crap about how CUPS is "just as easy" when it's clearly not. Why, for example, can't CUPS *detect* my printer's model? And why does it give me driver choices - some which work and some which don't? And why is it so much of a pain to set up with Samba shared printers?
Windows not only allows you to browse for printers, it downloads the drivers automatically.
"Oddly, it's *very* similar to the steps needed to set a printer up in Windows."
No, it's not.
Windows steps:
- Plug in printer
- (Possibly) install software from CD
- Print
"The question is what are those differences, how significant are they, from whose point of view?"
The differences are significant becase a phrase like "Die Jews Die" essentially amounts to a threat.
Seeing "Nirvanna Rocks" isn't likely to interfere with my ability to feel secure.
It's the same thing with hate crime. Killing a person randomly isn't likely to cause a specific group of individuals to feel threatened. Killing a Jew and cutting a swastika into their chest is.
If you call me and annoy me, it could possibly be harassment. If you call me and tell me that you're going to kill me, it's a threat. The punishment is far more severe.
That's the difference between a "normal" crime and a "hate" crime.
"Yet Microsoft breaks previous versions of software and APIs with new releases."
Only rarely. The media player that I developed for Windows 98 still runs fine on Windows XP, 7 years later. I have no doubt that it will run on Windows Longhorn as well.
Hell, it's pretty dammed impressive that my code still runs on an OS with a completely different kernel, filesystem, driver model, and just about everything else. By all means, XP is a *very* different OS from 98.
There were good reasons for breaking compatibility with GNOME2. I don't think it's necessary to do it again to advance the OS. Microsoft sure doesn't think so.
"Honestly -- what comes with the XP install these days?"
Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, IIS, Windows Messenger, Windows Netmeeting.
Oh, and a *lot* of drivers.
It's not as much as an Ubuntu desktop, but it is by no means "tiny".
" Even a 'default' install that doesn't install everything still has vast swaths of software from compilers to office suites to web browsers to web servers to image manipulation to whatever."
I don't know what distro you're using, but the default installs of Fedora and Ubuntu don't include Apache or GCC.
One more reason I like Ubuntu - the basics come on the CD, but you can add more with apt-get. Unlike Fedora, where invariably you will end up needing a few packages on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th CDs.
So now we find out that Apple has used - and is using - undocumented API calls.
Sounds like something Microsoft would pull.
Oh, wait, this is Slashdot. I forgot.
Well, then Apple's just trying to protect its intellectual property. No harm.
THERE IS NO SATA II.
There is a new 3GB/s speed, and there is also NCQ, but there is no "SATA II" specification.
Read for yourself:
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
As for the new 3GB/s speed and NCQ, Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 and Seagate's 7200.8 both support it.
"So you're prefectly fine with paying for in-game items with time but think paying for them with money is a mortal sin..?"
Yes. Well, not exactly a mortal sin.
It's like those damn trading card games. You couldn't be competitive unless you wanted to spend thousands of dollars on cards.
Or like those newer Pac Man machines where you could continue. Suddenly, the high score doesn't mean anything.
Similarly, MMOs should reward effort and skill, not money. It's not fair to the poeple who invested their time into the game to be outclassed by those who simply slapped down their credit card.
Doing so cheapens higher levels. Cool items and high levels only mean something because they are difficult to obtain.
Imagine if a chess player could be highly ranked because they paid others to play for him/her.
"So...what would the kids say if daddy is recording American Idol when they want to play?"
If it's anything like XP-MCE, that won't be a problem. I can play WOW or UT2004 while I record without any issues.
"Any one know whether this deactivation is reversible?"
No. The traces are cut by a laser before the CPU ships.
"Referring to an OS that is at least 15 months from release in the present tense is plain crazy,"
Not Really. Longhorn Beta 1 ships in just over a month, and the RTM date is set in May 2006.
"No matter what features it has, they're not doing anybody any good at 6PM on April 29th, 2005"
Yeah, and Tiger's features aren't doing anybody any good at 5:59PM on April 29, 2005.
Yes, Tiger will be released before Longhorn. But, when you get down to it, neither product has shipped yet. Right now, it's prerelease vs. prerelease.
Microsoft *will* get Longhorn out the door in 2006. Whether it will be a good product has yet to be seen.
Don't sell them short, though. They have a *lot* of programming talent and they *can* release a solid product. More and more, it's looking like they will *have* to release a solid product.
" must admit I am somewhat spoiled, as my new main since moving to Laughing Skull a month ago, is a priest. I can count the number of groups I have been turned away from in 44 levels on two fingers."
That has to do with demographics. No one, except people like you and me, wants to be the "weak" Priest. That's OK, because the fewer Priests there are, the more in demand their skills will be.
Plus, Power Word: Shield is damn cool. I feel like I'm in a Star Trek episode: "Shields Up".
No mission-critical application would ever use memory without ECC. You don't have anything to worry about.
The HP DL585 is a 4U rackmount Opteron server.
It takes up to 64GB in a 4CPU configuration, or 32GB in a 2CPU configuration.
Loaded with 2 1.8GHz Opterons and 32GB, it runs $31,538.00. Not cheap, but it *does* have redundant power/cooling, remote management (ILO), and the capability to expand to 8way/64GB (with dual-core CPUs).
"an HP DL580"
Or consider the DL585, which supports 32GB with two Opterons. It runs $31K with 2x 1.8GHz Opterons and 32GB, plus you have the option to upgrade to 4-way/64GB later (or, with dual core, 8-way).
"Opteron boards can support 8 gigs per CPU. The singles support 8, duals support 16, quads 32."
Not true. At my office, we routinely configure HP DL585 servers (4way Opteron) with 64GB of memory.
You need 2GB DIMMs to get 64GB, plus the right motherboard (most only have 4 DIMMs per CPU). But you definately can put 16GB on a single Opteron.