No... there really isn't a reason to sell it any more.
If you want simplicity over everything else, you Tivo. Otherwise, on the Windows side, Vista has ALL the media center stuff including the simplified on-tv interface just like the media center "version" of Windows had... It's not a seperate product that requires a seperate machine any more.
There is simply no place for the product that HP was selling, so of course they stopped making it, simple as that.
Microsoft is selling their own product, so no, that would not apply. In fact it would allow Microsoft to specifically FORBID stores to sell their software at below net cost.
Something that is probably enforced currently through the age old practises used by every other manufacterer as outlined by many of the other posts here...
Though as some others have pointed out, there are two sides to the story, and a lot of retaiors actoully LIKE it this way. They don't ALL have to compete at a razor-thin cut-throat margin levels with the biggest retialer in their sector. Not doing it can lead to there NOT being any mom and pop stures ebcause they could nto possible compete with ten cent per package margin stores like wallmart.
I work on kernel and X drivers as well as drivers for Windows. I have a machine I swap HDs in and out of for dev and testing, including many version of Linux, several very current, as well as most all versions of Windows including Vista.
On this machine, a 2.8gig P4 with 2 gig of ram, Linux loses to every version of Windows. Linux runs about:50 to 1:30 in boot time to an X desktop. Windows from 30-45 seconds.
Most of these are relatively clean and minimal installs, but even the XP box which is now three years old and loaded with crap still boots in less than 45 seconds.
The difference is not big enough to really complain about but the fact is, stock installs of nearly every, (if not every) desktop Linux distro DO take longer to boot than any version of windows (when booting into a functionaly similar state, i.e. into X)
I infact just tested this within the last month for S&G
So.. it costs like 5-10$ to fill a single scuba tank. Where do they get their $1.50 figure from? There is no mention of how that figure is arrived at at all.
Running a two stage compressor for 3-4 hours will probably cost more than $1.50:/
And "Zero-pollution"? Can we have some truth in advertising please? Using the car causes pollution, plain and simple. Maybe it's 1/10th or maybe less of a petrol car but at least be honest about it and let us know exactly how much pollution it does cause. It's certainly not 0. Saying so leads to people assiming that this is some kind of crank.
The OpenBSD team is SUPPOSED to assume the worst case when no facts are known. They are supposed to investigate EVERY bug as being a potential exploit. Unlike Linux, it is not the external commuities responsibility to find and fix bugs, it is OpenBSDs. They are supposed to be providing a completly vetted and secure system. It's what makes them special.
At least they used to. Now they are like/everyone/ else, deny deny deny, till they get egg shoved in their face. Having an external company more vigilent about exploits in OpenBSD than OpenBSD itself is is disturbing. OpenBSD fails it this time.
And in fact it may be this type of internal behavior that has led to the existance of this bug in the first place. Rather than giving them a pass, they should be crucified for this. They need to be reminded that they cannot go slack or their entire reason for being will evaporate.
I don't see HD's going anywhere for the forseeable future.
Well yes, IF flash ram can overcome it's shortcomings AND cost which is extreme.
you can get 750 gig of HD for $350, probably less now, how much would that cost in flash?
And unfortuantely flash is about as reliable as HDs right now for long term use. Even though it is not mechanical, it still wears out and is subject to out of box failures. (Memory manufacturing is about as poor as HD manufactuing is these days based on the number opf bad flash mosdules I've run into.)
And... it is so very very slow.
So yes, it woulf be GREAT to get rid of the bulky, loud, power hungry, slow access, mechanical HD of the last century, but... there is really nothing even close on the horizon right now:( Sadly, flash just isn't practical at all in it's current form for anythig OTHER than small devices that only need a small number of gig in a tiny form factor.
And "System Clock"? You mean the thing on the motherboard that ususally knows knows NOTHING about times zones or DST? And if it does then ALSO requires a patch to work right now? How will that help in any way?:(
This is not a flame, it is an honest cry out for some sanity, with a little frustration in the mix.
Does there really need to be 2000 people working on the kernel?
Is the fact that tiny tiny pieces of the kernel are being hacked at by so many uncorrellated developers to be blamed for why "Stable" 2.6 kernel line has had so many terrible ABI breakages?
A kernel is not "stable" when the the USB init structure has new function pointers jammed into the middle of it between two..point releases:(
Who really oversees all this and why are they allowing such things to happen? They days are fast dwindling where complete world recompiles being required for every point release are acceptable. The 2.6 line has been the most "unstable" line of kernels ever, not in day to day running but in point to point consistancy.
The constant updates to the kernel are not helping either as auto-updates to a lot of distros then cull out any third party drivers that HAD been installed. This makes adding a piece of hardware to your system that is not supported by your distro and keeping it running is a constant battle. We are reaching a point where casual uses of Linux get to choose from the supported hardware devices that their distro provides and NOTHING ELSE.
The kernel is a too important to be handled in the cavalier manner that it is today. A consortiom need to take control, patch submissions need to be FULLY vetted before being included. Sure they are/somewhat/ now but there needs to be a little more work done to make sure that good design procedures and good programming practices are met. They certainly are not today:( the number of things that would get you an F in basic programming 101 that come my way on the tiny portion of the kernel I have to deal with every day is almost unbelievable.
You are NOT "running out of memory". As programs require memory, disk cache is instantly dumped.
The only way you would run out of memory in 2 gig on Vista is if you are running Photoshop and have 15 RAW files open with 10 layers each or some other highly memory intensive apps going.
I thought that basic ideas like this were pretty well understood at this point in time.
Not to be too snarky but tying to gleen ANY sort of actual factual information by reading hand picked flame-bait/. articels is the quick road to stupidity.
Careful, you live in a glass house. The entire Linux permission and security system is at it's heart so utterly outdated as to be almost rediculous. NT had (and all version s of windows based on it) a beter base persmission and security system (Regardless of the fact that people decided not to use it) than Linux has at it's heart even today.
SE Linux is a hack on top of a lacking persmission system of a level even worse than what you are describing (wich is mostly false anyway).
What Linux needs to do is completely scrap it's kernel level permission and security and start over from scratch. But.. that would pretty much upset the entire universe and everyone and all code within it. Which is why it hasn't been done. Sound familiar?
Please don't offer sage advice about other peoples OSes when your OS is in the same boat.
That's pretty self centered of Unbuntu to include the drivers only for their own purposes. As if a 3d desktop that were the ONLY reason for including them? Like no one ever plans to run a 3d app? Yes I know you can install them yourself, why not have that functionality out of the box even though the desktop doesn't need it? That's called "Thinking of the user".
Are the users interests really at heart here? I find that most Linux distros, well, maybe all of them, are VERY self centered this way. They are produced to be self consistant only. This is very bad news for the power user but not programmer types that want to work with Linux...
They had stable vista drivers out for their older cards for somettime. This is specifically to do with a brand new card that has such a different archetecture that they had to redo the driver from the ground up and seriously underestimated the time it would take.
Marketing went ahead and sold the hardware as "The first vista ready video card" (DX 10 whee), engineering was not ready. It really is borderline plausible that they could be gulty of false advertising.
I have not looked at the client source yet but there has not been any discussion of hook funtionality. I used libSL to "hook" into the chat stream and redirect it to an external chat program, but that basically relied on intercepting the raw cilent/server packet structure which is subject to change at a moments notice. There is no (as of yet) reasonablly immutable and well documented API between client and server. Some of it has not changed in a while but other parts are changed often.
While I would LOVE to see the 500 client bugs fixes even if it means getting the fixed from third parties, as well as MUCH NEEDED UI improvements, I can't actually see much of that happening for a couple of reasons.
1) Normally the SL client is updated every two weeks, and at least once a month with MAJOR changes. That is a hell of a lot of work to keep up with for anyone wanting to provide an alternate client.
2) LL has been typically resitive to advice. They have shown all the signs of a pure "Not Invented Here" attitude. (With that I do NOT mean not using things like MySQL and mozilla, they have, it's IDEAS that they hate to hear from outside. They do everything their own way and reinvent the wheel constantly with typically bad results, repeating the mistakes of every other on line game in the past) So I wonder how much input for bug fixes that they will accept back into their main tree. Of if they are even capable of doing it. They maintain at least 2 seperate development lines at once and have/terrible/ bug regression problems as they are never compeltely in sync.
I bet that it is/mostly/ for reference for people wanting to do compeltely different things as an SL interface rather than as a way of improving the main client. THey love that kind of stuff. Having people create 3d immursion versions of the basic client etc...
The one main thing I hope they've done well is gotten their "API" secure becuase as much as they have been hacked in the past with libSL and in-world scripting hacks, this client release will spur a HUGE hack fest on them for the next month or so...
This story is nothing but the ramblings of someone that has never used or seen a product but proclaims to know all kinds of horrible things about it which in fact have absolutely nothing to do with him or his work anyway. There is ZERO information in this article. "News for nerds" no no more. There is not one tiny nerdy piece of factual or technical information presented here. It is 100% FUD and put on the front page for no other reason than it is "anti-Vista".
Shame on you/.!
Then we have the article about smashing your RFID chip with a hammer to disable it. How many levels of neanderthol is that? No mention of the fact that you can buy RFID secure wallets (THat's atleast a little bit nerdy) from multiple sources that prevent the problem in an elegant way that won't get you arrested (contrary to what that person postulates). Or AT LEAST it could have been an article on using your microwave, that would have been a tiny bit nerdy (but still stupid).
Come on! PLEASE stop sinking onto National Enquirer terrirtory!!! Reject FUD and reject stupidity for the love of...
If the FSF had any credibiilty I think this has to pretty much remove every last shred of it. This is the least professional piece of ranting FUD I've seen by ANYONE. Half of the items are just plain wrong and the rest are either nothing new or of no consequence at all to 99% of all computer users anyway. Some of them like the driver thing are like some kind of stupid freudian slip, points that apply to Linux far more than they apply to Windows... uh-mazing. I mean... it's shocking to see such low class work.
This is just UTTERLY the worst way to go about getting your message out.:(
It helps prevent it because every one of the 50 million windows servers out there will have different memory layouts, even if they are never rebooted. They are booted at least ONCE with a ramdom layout. That stops wide spread attacks/of this sort/ dead.
Yes, there are many many MANY ways to attack a machine, this is just one, a hole being closed. BTW to all those people that are yapping about how this is some kind of unique MS shenanigans to patch a busted OS, you DO realize that Linux has this capability too? It's a Good Thing[tm]
The one and only truly sane and rational "Big Wig" in the entire FOSS/GNU/Linux universe.
Thank ghod for Linus! He keeps a reign on the rampant ideology that continuously threatens to destroy Linux entirely for anything other than hobbiest or academic use. If only there were more Linus to go around.
If Linux is going to make inroads on the desktop, binary compatibility between all point versions of the kernel and X and glib and all the other base libs has to be maintained so that binary distribution of software can reasonably be expected to work. EVEN IF the source is also/required/ to be available. 99.99% of the worlds population DOES NOT CARE. They just want something that installs relably and WORKS. Similarly, manufacturers want to focus on a version of Linux so they can build, test and release and have any customer be able to use their product.
I get at least one or two calls a week from a customer of ours using a version of linux that I didn't even realize was out yet or something completely new and I have to DL, install, compile and test our software for every single one because they DO NOT WANT TO DO IT THEMSELVES! This kind of support is horrendous for large projects. Linux seems to throw every roadblock imaginable in the path of developers, FOSS or not. This needs to END.
Thank you Linus! Now if only you would come to the conclusion that kernel API stability was just as important, we might really have something:)
USB subsystem changes between SUSE 10.0 and 10.1 produced some spectacular driver failures. New elements inserted in the middle of USB data structs in a point upgrade of a "stable" kernel?!?!? What is stable about that?
The Linux development and distrribution process has a LOT to learn about system stability. Expecting EVERYONE to ALWAYS be 100% current and recompile EVERYTHING for EVERY distro and then NEVER updrade an installed kernel or libs again (you know to fix bugs or security holes?) without chancing having to rebuild the entire universe or suffer random breakages is completely and utterly wrong headed.:(
This may have been fine in the good old days of "install and forget". But these days with the need to be CONSTANTLY up on security patches, it's become quite a nightmare to maintain a linux box for any length of time without having to do a complete reinstall because of unresolvable incompatibility problems between the Kernel, libs and software. Doing it by hand is a major recipe for disaster, but even keeping up with a distro's precompiled sets of upgrades is a crap shoot and has resulted in serveral system failures.
Linux needs stability in a BAD way.
Flimsiness? It's more about cost pressure.
on
Why Do Gadgets Break?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
yes, yes, planned obsolescense etc...
The #1 reason that modern gadgets break is because market pricing pressure makes then that way. They are cheap cheap cheap. While a/few/ people would pay the $120 it would take to create and sell a heavy duty all metal, robust keyboard, it would not be enough to compete with the millions that won't pay over $12.95.
I work in the hardware industry and pricing pressure causes manufacturers to do crazy/dangerous things to reduce the cost of every single component in a 1000 component product. Farm out calls for 1000 parts to the lowest bidder and you can pretty much guess what the total end result will be on the quality.
ISO 9000 has pretty much gone out the window in the last few years as being just too expensive to implement and manitain by the entire supply chain. Thus we are now constantly (Yes, still even today) dealing with capaciters that explode after 100 hours use, switches that break after 100 presses and an almost infinate variety of unplanned but inevitable hardware failures.
And in the end, if that means that someone has to buy a new phone and a new keyboard every year well, the companies that make them could have worse things happen than selling another product to the same customer. Even if the customer gets mad an never buys from that company again, it doesn't matter, pissed off customers of the competitor will come running back to THEM. As long as their quality is not significantly worse than their competitiors anyway.
But in the end, the age of the flimsy is mostly the end result of the age of extreme consumerism where everyone must have everything and it must all cost 12.95 or less.
Slashdot Mirror
No... there really isn't a reason to sell it any more.
If you want simplicity over everything else, you Tivo. Otherwise, on the Windows side, Vista has ALL the media center stuff including the simplified on-tv interface just like the media center "version" of Windows had... It's not a seperate product that requires a seperate machine any more.
There is simply no place for the product that HP was selling, so of course they stopped making it, simple as that.
Microsoft is selling their own product, so no, that would not apply. In fact it would allow Microsoft to specifically FORBID stores to sell their software at below net cost.
Something that is probably enforced currently through the age old practises used by every other manufacterer as outlined by many of the other posts here...
Though as some others have pointed out, there are two sides to the story, and a lot of retaiors actoully LIKE it this way. They don't ALL have to compete at a razor-thin cut-throat margin levels with the biggest retialer in their sector. Not doing it can lead to there NOT being any mom and pop stures ebcause they could nto possible compete with ten cent per package margin stores like wallmart.
I work on kernel and X drivers as well as drivers for Windows. I have a machine I swap HDs in and out of for dev and testing, including many version of Linux, several very current, as well as most all versions of Windows including Vista.
:50 to 1:30 in boot time to an X desktop. Windows from 30-45 seconds.
On this machine, a 2.8gig P4 with 2 gig of ram, Linux loses to every version of Windows. Linux runs about
Most of these are relatively clean and minimal installs, but even the XP box which is now three years old and loaded with crap still boots in less than 45 seconds.
The difference is not big enough to really complain about but the fact is, stock installs of nearly every, (if not every) desktop Linux distro DO take longer to boot than any version of windows (when booting into a functionaly similar state, i.e. into X)
I infact just tested this within the last month for S&G
The simple fact it, it takes energy to move a car.
There are many ways of storing that energy IN the car to move it.
But SOMEHWERE oil, gas, coal or nulcear fule is bunerd to produce that energy.
Running this car causes oil or something else to be burned at a power plant to make it go.
This is NOT splitting hairs, it's a simple fact. There is no such thing as a zero emission car. Period.
Your toaster may not be an appretiable source of energy drain but these cars certainly ARE. It would be nice to know exactly how much.
So.. it costs like 5-10$ to fill a single scuba tank. Where do they get their $1.50 figure from? There is no mention of how that figure is arrived at at all.
:/
Running a two stage compressor for 3-4 hours will probably cost more than $1.50
And "Zero-pollution"? Can we have some truth in advertising please? Using the car causes pollution, plain and simple. Maybe it's 1/10th or maybe less of a petrol car but at least be honest about it and let us know exactly how much pollution it does cause. It's certainly not 0. Saying so leads to people assiming that this is some kind of crank.
The OpenBSD team is SUPPOSED to assume the worst case when no facts are known. They are supposed to investigate EVERY bug as being a potential exploit. Unlike Linux, it is not the external commuities responsibility to find and fix bugs, it is OpenBSDs. They are supposed to be providing a completly vetted and secure system. It's what makes them special.
/everyone/ else, deny deny deny, till they get egg shoved in their face. Having an external company more vigilent about exploits in OpenBSD than OpenBSD itself is is disturbing. OpenBSD fails it this time.
At least they used to. Now they are like
And in fact it may be this type of internal behavior that has led to the existance of this bug in the first place. Rather than giving them a pass, they should be crucified for this. They need to be reminded that they cannot go slack or their entire reason for being will evaporate.
I don't see HD's going anywhere for the forseeable future.
:( Sadly, flash just isn't practical at all in it's current form for anythig OTHER than small devices that only need a small number of gig in a tiny form factor.
Well yes, IF flash ram can overcome it's shortcomings AND cost which is extreme.
you can get 750 gig of HD for $350, probably less now, how much would that cost in flash?
And unfortuantely flash is about as reliable as HDs right now for long term use. Even though it is not mechanical, it still wears out and is subject to out of box failures. (Memory manufacturing is about as poor as HD manufactuing is these days based on the number opf bad flash mosdules I've run into.)
And... it is so very very slow.
So yes, it woulf be GREAT to get rid of the bulky, loud, power hungry, slow access, mechanical HD of the last century, but... there is really nothing even close on the horizon right now
Where is the free patch for Apple's OLDER OSes?
:(
MS has free patches for all current OSes as well.
MS wins this round.
And "System Clock"? You mean the thing on the motherboard that ususally knows knows NOTHING about times zones or DST? And if it does then ALSO requires a patch to work right now? How will that help in any way?
This is not a flame, it is an honest cry out for some sanity, with a little frustration in the mix.
..point releases :(
/somewhat/ now but there needs to be a little more work done to make sure that good design procedures and good programming practices are met. They certainly are not today :( the number of things that would get you an F in basic programming 101 that come my way on the tiny portion of the kernel I have to deal with every day is almost unbelievable.
Does there really need to be 2000 people working on the kernel?
Is the fact that tiny tiny pieces of the kernel are being hacked at by so many uncorrellated developers to be blamed for why "Stable" 2.6 kernel line has had so many terrible ABI breakages?
A kernel is not "stable" when the the USB init structure has new function pointers jammed into the middle of it between two
Who really oversees all this and why are they allowing such things to happen? They days are fast dwindling where complete world recompiles being required for every point release are acceptable. The 2.6 line has been the most "unstable" line of kernels ever, not in day to day running but in point to point consistancy.
The constant updates to the kernel are not helping either as auto-updates to a lot of distros then cull out any third party drivers that HAD been installed. This makes adding a piece of hardware to your system that is not supported by your distro and keeping it running is a constant battle. We are reaching a point where casual uses of Linux get to choose from the supported hardware devices that their distro provides and NOTHING ELSE.
The kernel is a too important to be handled in the cavalier manner that it is today. A consortiom need to take control, patch submissions need to be FULLY vetted before being included. Sure they are
You are NOT "running out of memory". As programs require memory, disk cache is instantly dumped.
/. articels is the quick road to stupidity.
The only way you would run out of memory in 2 gig on Vista is if you are running Photoshop and have 15 RAW files open with 10 layers each or some other highly memory intensive apps going.
I thought that basic ideas like this were pretty well understood at this point in time.
Not to be too snarky but tying to gleen ANY sort of actual factual information by reading hand picked flame-bait
Cruft on cruft?
You just described SELinux to a T.
Careful, you live in a glass house. The entire Linux permission and security system is at it's heart so utterly outdated as to be almost rediculous. NT had (and all version s of windows based on it) a beter base persmission and security system (Regardless of the fact that people decided not to use it) than Linux has at it's heart even today.
SE Linux is a hack on top of a lacking persmission system of a level even worse than what you are describing (wich is mostly false anyway).
What Linux needs to do is completely scrap it's kernel level permission and security and start over from scratch. But.. that would pretty much upset the entire universe and everyone and all code within it. Which is why it hasn't been done. Sound familiar?
Please don't offer sage advice about other peoples OSes when your OS is in the same boat.
Disk cache? (Not that is not the same thing as "virtual memory", it's actually the inverse of it)
Why would you want ANY "free" ram on a system when having bits on the HD in memory is a million times faster to access? Free ram is WASTED ram.
And uh, Linux does the same thing?
That's pretty self centered of Unbuntu to include the drivers only for their own purposes. As if a 3d desktop that were the ONLY reason for including them? Like no one ever plans to run a 3d app? Yes I know you can install them yourself, why not have that functionality out of the box even though the desktop doesn't need it? That's called "Thinking of the user".
Are the users interests really at heart here? I find that most Linux distros, well, maybe all of them, are VERY self centered this way. They are produced to be self consistant only. This is very bad news for the power user but not programmer types that want to work with Linux...
No.
By default the 64 bit version wants this but it is easily turned off if you like.
So... No.
This has nothing to do with that.
They had stable vista drivers out for their older cards for somettime. This is specifically to do with a brand new card that has such a different archetecture that they had to redo the driver from the ground up and seriously underestimated the time it would take.
Marketing went ahead and sold the hardware as "The first vista ready video card" (DX 10 whee), engineering was not ready. It really is borderline plausible that they could be gulty of false advertising.
Huh.
:(
I thought they stood for free and open source software and open standards.
I guess that was wrong. At least they are being honest now, all they care about is Linux after all
I have not looked at the client source yet but there has not been any discussion of hook funtionality. I used libSL to "hook" into the chat stream and redirect it to an external chat program, but that basically relied on intercepting the raw cilent/server packet structure which is subject to change at a moments notice. There is no (as of yet) reasonablly immutable and well documented API between client and server. Some of it has not changed in a while but other parts are changed often.
While I would LOVE to see the 500 client bugs fixes even if it means getting the fixed from third parties, as well as MUCH NEEDED UI improvements, I can't actually see much of that happening for a couple of reasons.
/terrible/ bug regression problems as they are never compeltely in sync.
/mostly/ for reference for people wanting to do compeltely different things as an SL interface rather than as a way of improving the main client. THey love that kind of stuff. Having people create 3d immursion versions of the basic client etc...
1) Normally the SL client is updated every two weeks, and at least once a month with MAJOR changes. That is a hell of a lot of work to keep up with for anyone wanting to provide an alternate client.
2) LL has been typically resitive to advice. They have shown all the signs of a pure "Not Invented Here" attitude. (With that I do NOT mean not using things like MySQL and mozilla, they have, it's IDEAS that they hate to hear from outside. They do everything their own way and reinvent the wheel constantly with typically bad results, repeating the mistakes of every other on line game in the past) So I wonder how much input for bug fixes that they will accept back into their main tree. Of if they are even capable of doing it. They maintain at least 2 seperate development lines at once and have
I bet that it is
The one main thing I hope they've done well is gotten their "API" secure becuase as much as they have been hacked in the past with libSL and in-world scripting hacks, this client release will spur a HUGE hack fest on them for the next month or so...
This story is nothing but the ramblings of someone that has never used or seen a product but proclaims to know all kinds of horrible things about it which in fact have absolutely nothing to do with him or his work anyway. There is ZERO information in this article. "News for nerds" no no more. There is not one tiny nerdy piece of factual or technical information presented here. It is 100% FUD and put on the front page for no other reason than it is "anti-Vista".
/.!
Shame on you
Then we have the article about smashing your RFID chip with a hammer to disable it. How many levels of neanderthol is that? No mention of the fact that you can buy RFID secure wallets (THat's atleast a little bit nerdy) from multiple sources that prevent the problem in an elegant way that won't get you arrested (contrary to what that person postulates). Or AT LEAST it could have been an article on using your microwave, that would have been a tiny bit nerdy (but still stupid).
Come on! PLEASE stop sinking onto National Enquirer terrirtory!!! Reject FUD and reject stupidity for the love of...
If the FSF had any credibiilty I think this has to pretty much remove every last shred of it. This is the least professional piece of ranting FUD I've seen by ANYONE. Half of the items are just plain wrong and the rest are either nothing new or of no consequence at all to 99% of all computer users anyway. Some of them like the driver thing are like some kind of stupid freudian slip, points that apply to Linux far more than they apply to Windows... uh-mazing. I mean... it's shocking to see such low class work.
:(
This is just UTTERLY the worst way to go about getting your message out.
It helps prevent it because every one of the 50 million windows servers out there will have different memory layouts, even if they are never rebooted. They are booted at least ONCE with a ramdom layout. That stops wide spread attacks /of this sort/ dead.
Yes, there are many many MANY ways to attack a machine, this is just one, a hole being closed. BTW to all those people that are yapping about how this is some kind of unique MS shenanigans to patch a busted OS, you DO realize that Linux has this capability too? It's a Good Thing[tm]
Is that the same reason that Linux has implementations of it too?
The one and only truly sane and rational "Big Wig" in the entire FOSS/GNU/Linux universe.
/required/ to be available. 99.99% of the worlds population DOES NOT CARE. They just want something that installs relably and WORKS. Similarly, manufacturers want to focus on a version of Linux so they can build, test and release and have any customer be able to use their product.
:)
Thank ghod for Linus! He keeps a reign on the rampant ideology that continuously threatens to destroy Linux entirely for anything other than hobbiest or academic use. If only there were more Linus to go around.
If Linux is going to make inroads on the desktop, binary compatibility between all point versions of the kernel and X and glib and all the other base libs has to be maintained so that binary distribution of software can reasonably be expected to work. EVEN IF the source is also
I get at least one or two calls a week from a customer of ours using a version of linux that I didn't even realize was out yet or something completely new and I have to DL, install, compile and test our software for every single one because they DO NOT WANT TO DO IT THEMSELVES! This kind of support is horrendous for large projects. Linux seems to throw every roadblock imaginable in the path of developers, FOSS or not. This needs to END.
Thank you Linus! Now if only you would come to the conclusion that kernel API stability was just as important, we might really have something
Boy that's for sure :(
:(
USB subsystem changes between SUSE 10.0 and 10.1 produced some spectacular driver failures. New elements inserted in the middle of USB data structs in a point upgrade of a "stable" kernel?!?!? What is stable about that?
The Linux development and distrribution process has a LOT to learn about system stability. Expecting EVERYONE to ALWAYS be 100% current and recompile EVERYTHING for EVERY distro and then NEVER updrade an installed kernel or libs again (you know to fix bugs or security holes?) without chancing having to rebuild the entire universe or suffer random breakages is completely and utterly wrong headed.
This may have been fine in the good old days of "install and forget". But these days with the need to be CONSTANTLY up on security patches, it's become quite a nightmare to maintain a linux box for any length of time without having to do a complete reinstall because of unresolvable incompatibility problems between the Kernel, libs and software. Doing it by hand is a major recipe for disaster, but even keeping up with a distro's precompiled sets of upgrades is a crap shoot and has resulted in serveral system failures.
Linux needs stability in a BAD way.
yes, yes, planned obsolescense etc...
/few/ people would pay the $120 it would take to create and sell a heavy duty all metal, robust keyboard, it would not be enough to compete with the millions that won't pay over $12.95.
The #1 reason that modern gadgets break is because market pricing pressure makes then that way. They are cheap cheap cheap. While a
I work in the hardware industry and pricing pressure causes manufacturers to do crazy/dangerous things to reduce the cost of every single component in a 1000 component product. Farm out calls for 1000 parts to the lowest bidder and you can pretty much guess what the total end result will be on the quality.
ISO 9000 has pretty much gone out the window in the last few years as being just too expensive to implement and manitain by the entire supply chain. Thus we are now constantly (Yes, still even today) dealing with capaciters that explode after 100 hours use, switches that break after 100 presses and an almost infinate variety of unplanned but inevitable hardware failures.
And in the end, if that means that someone has to buy a new phone and a new keyboard every year well, the companies that make them could have worse things happen than selling another product to the same customer. Even if the customer gets mad an never buys from that company again, it doesn't matter, pissed off customers of the competitor will come running back to THEM. As long as their quality is not significantly worse than their competitiors anyway.
But in the end, the age of the flimsy is mostly the end result of the age of extreme consumerism where everyone must have everything and it must all cost 12.95 or less.