An OS should work as the mediator between the user and the programs he desires to run. From the user's perspective, that is (of course there are technical issues what an OS should do, let's stay on the user side for now). That's what an OS is about. Enabling the user to run what he wants to run. Neither browser, nor content player, nor firewall, nor word processing tools are what I'd call part of an OS. I'd even go to the length that the file manager isn't necessarily an intrinsic part of the OS.
This isn't even an interesting argument to an academic any more. An OS is a platform, not just a kernel and some drivers. I remember the good old days of having to patch together a bunch of different applications in DOS, to reach levels of functionality that would today not even be considered basic and entry-level, and I have no interest in revisiting them again.
Neither, I'll wager, do 99% of people. For the remainder, there are things like DIY Linux, etc.
In fact, about the only people suggesting the only thing an OS should come with is a kernel, some drivers and *maybe* a few libraries, are the "crazy eyes" type. Everyone else - Sun, IBM, Apple, *BSD, Linux distro vendors, etc, understands what an OS is from a "people want to use it" rather than "academic masturbation" sense.
Those are tasks that can be tackled by others.
And they will, almost inevitably, from any sort of integration perspective, suck. Exhibit A: the patchwork quilt of interface and functionality that is most Linux distributions. Exhibit B: an average Windows application.
And I think this is why Windows is in the sorry state is is today. Too much was crammed into it, too many accessoires were made part of the system, for all the wrong reasons. It can be a good idea to weave the file manager into the core OS level, there are maybe good technical reasons to do this, from security to speed. There is no good reason to weave the webbrowser into it, from a technical point of view.
None of these things are "weaved" into the "core OS level". They're user-space applications, just like they are on Linux, OS X, etc. It's just you don't have the option to buy Windows without them. This is a *marketing decision*, not a *technical decision*. You can't buy just the Windows kernel because the proportion of customers who would actually be interested in such thing is basically zero, and hence it would cost Microsoft far more to cater to them than they could ever hope to generate in revenue.
There are no more real "accessories" in Windows than there are in its only direct contemporary, OS X. There are substantially more in the average desktop-oriented Linux distribution. There are varying degrees less in more server-oriented distros and OSes like Solaris or FreeBSD.
It's not designed to run Vista, therefore it does not necessitate any reference to Vista, it probably wouldnt run Ubuntu very well either, or OSX... and it can't chew my food for me, so my food must suck too...
The Atom CPU in this thing (even the single core variant) will run Vista fine (assuming the rest of the machine is up to snuff, of course).
I mean, give me a break. This is the company the _invented_ FUD.
I think you meant IBM.
For years we've been hearing "Linux is hard to install", "Linux has poor hardware support", "Command line everything" "No games", etc, etc, etc.
Difference is, most of that stuff was (or still is, in the case of games) true. Pretty much everything negative that gets written about Vista - *especially* on Slashdot - is just flat-out wrong.
Microsoft's FUD pales into insignificance compared to the anti-Vista (and anti-Microsoft in general) crowd's.
One need only look at the very example that started this thread to see that. The "Diamondville" Atom CPU this machine is supposed to have comes in a 2.2Ghz, dual-core version. A CPU like that will run Vista fine (heck, the single-core version will run it fine).
When reinstalling windows I found out that I couldn't access my old documents, so I did a quick google search and you just disable simple file sharing in folder options, then right click the folder, go to a tab named "security" and give yourself ownership of the folder. The funniest part is windows saying "By doing this, you will have full unrestricted access to this folder, are you sure you want to?"
My wife is an architect. She has just started using CAD (Autodesk Revit). We were at the shop yesterday looking for a new windows box for her to use but she fell in love with an iMAC which was on display.
If she "fell in love" with it just because of the 'looks cool' factor, rather than OSX, then just install Windows on it...
What are you basing that on? Are you honestly stating you see enough innovation and technical progress in Vista to warrant its 6-7 years of development?
Vista was only in development that long from a marketing perspective. From an actual software development perspective it took about 3 years to finish.
Further, yes, there is more than enough advancement in Vista to justify that timescale. Vista is a *significant* update to pretty much every aspect of Windows NT - probably the biggest ever.
Are you buying that they changed the driver model as a security measure as opposed to a vehicle for DRM implementation?
I'm pretty sure they "changed the driver model" because it was a requirement for the various new systems (video, networking, sound, I/O - all have had significant and qualitative improvements over XP).
Considering that Linux swaps out entire subsystems every couple of years (often in so-called stable releases, no less) and break binary drivers with even a minor kernel update, while OS X can barely offer a driver model stability for more than 12-24 months at a time, the average of about 6 *years* between "changing driver models" for Windows is a shining beacon of stability. About the only other remotely mainstream OS that could compare is Solaris.
You can keep telling yourself the only reason things got changed was to support DRM if you want, but the massive amount of real and definite improvements those changes have brought make it a pretty dumb position to take.
Do you consider the extra cost in hardware and effort in driver creation to be advantageous to the consumer? If so, we just have to agree to disagree.
Considering that there's little evidence to indicate that extra cost is even meaningful, let alone significant, that it delivers the ability to access content they would otherwise be unable to, and that they always have the option of buying a card that doesn't support DRM, and hence isn't exposed to those "additional costs", I'd have to answer yes.
Last I checked Microsoft was not a media company. They were under no obligation to remodel its operating system to cater for the media companies.
They were if they wanted said media company's products to be usable by their customers.
In addition, the way in which Microsoft has chosen to implement is also likely to limit the possibilities of creating open source drivers.
Rubbish. This is one of the more egregrious bits of FUD from the OSS camp.
True, catering to the media companies is the root cause, but Microsoft choosing to do that instead of concentrating on creating the best possible operating system was their choice.
Given that a fairly significant proportion of their customers are quite interested in video, audio, and various other types of content, it's difficult to see how catering to that need is a poor decision.
What momentous, customer-demanding feature(s) do you think could have been delivered in leiu of DRM ?
Would the media companies stop making media if Microsoft did not re-engineer Vista to please them? Of course not, thus it would only have been a benefit to the consumers.
Except for those customers who don't want to buy another device to view their DRM-encumbered content. Or where the extra costs might be too high. Or where space might be at a premium. Etc, etc.
That is very true. However, most operating systems are not designed with "features" that exist exclusively to disable parts of the OS. Without those features there would be no way to erroneously trigger them. Making an operating system defective by design is not a good sales argument for me.
Many software programs have similar "features". Haven't you ever seen a hardware dongle ? A license server ?
Please explain how not having any protected content on my machine removes the code designed to disable the OS or parts of it.
Same way you avoid some human error from disabling any of your other software via things like updates or licensing controls.
Granting for a moment that the user won't be able to play materials on his computer without DRM, this is not a reason to put DRM into the operating system. It's not optimal from the user's standpoint, nor is it really optimal from the copyright holder's standpoint. It's only optimal from the standpoint of the party that controls the operating system.
At worst it's irrelevant to the user. It's ideal for the content owner, because it reduces the number of "unauthorised devices" they have to worry about and increases their potential audience. For the OS vendor, it's little more than a pain in the arse - extra code, extra complexity, greater maintenance - for a system that is inevitably doomed to failure.
The benefit is a simpler, more efficient operating system for everything other than playing HD video.
Except when you're not playing DRM-encumbered video, it's irrelevant. It has no impact on the system.
In any case you are conflating the two issues. DRM doesn't have to go into the operating system. If people really need it it'd ideally be built into TVs and monitors using a transferable hardware key -- like a GSM SIM.
You still need to be able to get the content to the output device in a "secure" fashion.
Ultimately, DRM needs to be in every piece of hardware and every piece of software for it to "work" - and even then it can still be defeated by a HD camcorder, a tripod and some decent recording gear.
Does Vista run on a 32bit RISC G4 1.42 Ghz Processor, 1 Gig installed laptop grade RAM with ALL features enabled? That is what I do with the Mini G4. It works better than Tiger installed.
It will certainly run at least as well as Leopard will on an equivalent PC (even more so if you want to spec the "equivalent PC" based on the timeframe and price you bought your mini rather than raw processing power).
Incidentally, Leopard won't run "with ALL features enabled" on your Mac Mini. The video card in it isn't good enough - it doesn't support core image.
With respect to MAFIAA, that's exactly my point. They didn't pay to have it put there. MS put it there in order to attract them as business partners.
But they did have to put it there to become a presence in the market for devices capable of playing DRM-encumbered media.
The the end user, DRM just means they have the ability to play media on their computer that they otherwise couldn't. It's hard to see how most of them would see this as anything but an advantage.
What benefit to the end user would there be in Microsoft not implementing DRM infrastructure and therefore denying them the ability to play DRM-encumbered content on their computers ?
Vista was developed not as an OS to give customers a better experience, but as a DRM platform. This is rather evident in the final product.
Untrue. It is unlikely the majority of Windows Vista users will ever even activate any of its DRM features, let alone be negatively impacted by them.
Not to mention, the DRM support *does* give customers "a better experience". It offers them the ability to use their computers to view DRM-encumbered content, something they would otherwise be unable to do.
The DRM is a large cause of the sluggishness and poor driver stability.
Also untrue, for the reason above.
Not to mention it drives up the cost of hardware in general due to Microsoft now dictating certain aspects of hardware design to satisfy the DRM requirements.
No, the media companies are dictating what hardware needs to be capable of to be considered "safe".
And what about when it breaks [msdn.com]?.
Human errors cause software problems. These things happen regardless of platform.
I would say it is most relevant to me regardless of use. The OS is full of code designed specifically to deny my use of it.
No, it's full of code for the people who own the content to use in an effort to protect their copyrights. The fundamental problem here is copyright.
It doesn't matter that I "might never trigger it". What matters is that it's there. It's like having a bucket of acid over my head with the guy holding the chain swearing he won't let it drop unless I misbehave. Where is the sense in me paying a guy to do that?
You leave out the part where you have the choice whether or not to go and stand under the bucker by avoiding DRM-encumbered content.
Where does hardware requirements of Aero really come from? I got a Mac Mini G4 upstairs with a 32MB Laptop grade (I guess) ATI video card, it does every kind of OS X trick except the very needed (Plasma HDTV) transparent menu bar.
Vista's minimum requirements are the equivalent of a video card that does that (and the little water effects in Dashboard). To put that in context, sufficiently powerful video cards have been around since 2003 and cost about $30 today.
Hopefully you can see why it would have been foolish fir Microsoft to waste developer effort supporting hardware less capable, given the vast majority of customers will either a) get Vista with a new PC or b) have machines with sufficiently capable video cards already.
Isn't the Aero a "photocopy" of OS X GUI tricks?
Sure, in the same way OS X was a "photocopy" of Windows NT.
They have real bad coders there at Redmond I guess...
Vista and Leopard have basically the same hardware requirements.
I think Vista is largely a mixed bag; it was released beta quality, which (in part) probably contributes to its heroic resource demands on hardware. Even the early MacOS 10 releases were pretty inefficient.
When OS X was released (and for a couple of *years* afterwards), even the fastest Macs available could not run it well. When Vista was released, a mid-range PC could run it fine. Today, a year later, a <$500 PC runs it well.
They got to the point they felt like they could live with XP; they'd probably pay good money for an improved XP. What they got was something which was not as radical as intended (no WinFS), [...]
I really don't get why people go on about WinFS. What practical improvements over the search facility already in Vista do you think it would have offered ?
Some of the changes in Vista are unqualified improvements, some of the changes are defensible with implementation faults (UAC and Windows File Protection), [...]
I don't get why people complain about the "implementation" of UAC, either, given pretty much all unreasonable UAC prompts are the fault of application developers.
[...] and some are there to support Microsoft's agenda alone (DRM).
DRM is there for the MAFIAA. It's little more than overhead and expense for Microsoft.
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for database servers, presuming you don't want to piss-away 1/2 of your storage in a RAID 10 arrangement.
RAID5 has inherently bad random write performance (*especially* when degraded). Thus, RAID5 (or similar schemes) is typically a poor choice for any remotely write-heavy DB.
(On the other hand, read performance is great - hence my question about these particular DBs not being write-heavy - it would be a quite reasonable decision for a mostly-read DB).
Checksum calculations are largely a non-issue with hardware RAID.
No "hardware RAID" can escape the extra physical IOs RAID5 requires.
Berne - Zurich may be a somewhat unfair example as it's one of the most important sections -- but large parts of the swiss train network are similarly fast and extremely on time. Going by train will get you to most places equally fast as driving and let you do work, eat relaxedly, enjoy a movie or enjoy some quality time with your significant other joining the rail high club. Or so I heard. Heh.
I forgot to say that, yes, the Swiss Rail system is indeed awesome (although more so the intercity stuff than urban stuff). It takes me ~15 minutes door to door to get to work (Zollikon-Zurich) and the handful of times we've "needed" a vehicle, Mobility.ch was quick and easy.
We have no plans of purchasing a car - although I am going to get myself a motorcycle to enjoy some of those alpine roads.
Depends. Try driving from Berne to Zurich around 1700.
I was actually making a more generalised comment about "Swiss efficiency" and how that, while the Swiss may well be "efficient", you shouldn't count on anything happening particularly quickly (took 2 months to get my ADSL running, been waiting over 5 months for my B permit to appear - and I'm an EU citizen employed on a good salary, so it's not like there's anything "weird" - very annoying, since we need it for my wife to get hers, etc).
However, it's also directly relevant. Trains certainly can move things at a "more efficiently" in terms of "energy expenditure per kilogram" or some such, but to do so in terms of freight, they need to be full, which means they can't leave "right now" to get your delivery to your ASAP. In terms of passengers, trains need to run on a schedule - so if you want to arrive or leave outside their schedule, then your trip may well turn out "faster" by car.
Also, regarding your sig: Wine 1.0 is scheduled (and apparently moving ahead on time) for release in june, 1.0-rc1 is out.
Indeed. Seems there's only 3 Horsemen of the Apocalypse to go.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. I was referring to the separation between user and administrator;how the system is locked down and away from users hands;deny-by-default and better enforced access controls. I would be interested in hearing what you meant, I just don't follow.
In that case I don't know what *you're* talking about. Windows has the separation you are talking about. Vista makes it more accessible in unmanaged environments, but in unmanaged environments it's much less useful because it depends on the ignorant end user to make educated decisions.
You'd have to go the social engineering route then. You'd need to convince someone to intentionally execute the contents. You can't be serious can you? That reminds me of the old joke about the Irish computer virus...you get a list of files to delete on your C: drive and a thank you with it.
What ? You do realise most "viruses" and malware need user interaction and rely on social engineering to get into user's systems, right ?
Freakin' hell. People will happily open *password protected zip files* and run the executables in them. A tarball wouldn't be more than a brief interruption.
True, though as I said less distro are coming with default listening services and NAT makes these tools far less effective.
But the same is also true for Windows, and has been for years. Every version of Windows since XP SP2 has had the firewall enabled by default (and earlier versions also had the firewall).
At which point it can scale or you can change the setting in your word processor to use a different sized paper (which you have to do in Word already).
Scaling makes the output look different, which is supposed to be the thing you're complaining about.
Changing the paper size to match the source - assuming you end up with the same margins, etc and that computer has the same fonts available - will result in a document that looks the same (and if that doesn't *then* it's a bug).
We're talking about printing the same document onto the same sized paper.
With the same margins ? To the same printer ?
Some versions of MS word screw this up, because they rely upon the fonts installed on the printer. This is a bug. Have you really drank the MS kool-aid so much that you believe this bug is a feature?
It *is* a feature (more accurately, correct behaviour). It's working exactly the way it's designed to and is supposed to. If your document is formatted based on the metrics of a font that isn't present on the machine (eg: a printer font on another machine), then the correct action for a word processor to take is to reformat the page. This is true regardless of who may happen to have developed said word processor.
The only behaviours you have hinted at that could be considered bugs are a) identical printer, margin, page, font, etc configurations producing different outputs, and b) Word using printer fonts even though the user had specified non-printer fonts.
However your main complaint is about word processors reformatting documents at all. When a Word Processor reformats a document to match the capabilities and configuration of the select output device (eg: a printer) it is working _exactly_ as it should. If it does not, then it is broken. If you find this behaviour unexpected, then you're using the wrong tool for the job.
On the other hand, if your account only has User or Power User privileges, [...]
It's probably worth pointing out here that being a Power User doesn't offer a whole lot more protection than being an Administrator. Like an 'admin' in OSX, they have write privileges to several system areas.
I read somewhere that if I didn't run Windows as an admin, that would help a lot, which is what I do now, but to be honest I really don't understand the reasoning, other than that you have to be an admin to install programs.
Because malware is frequently just as badly written as other software, and shits itself when run from anything other than an Administrator account.
It's basically a version of security through obscurity, but much like using OS X or Linux, it was pretty well for the moment.
Your best defense against malware is common sense. The vast, vast majority of malware requires some form of user interaction to work.
I really don't buy that targetted-system argument. It takes a lot more to damage a Unix-like system for architectural reasons.
Defaulting to an Administrator on unmanaged systems is in no way, shape, or form an "architectural" problem.
Unix systems don't have execute-by-default permissions.
This barely even counts as a bump in the road. Just distribute your malware in a tarball.
There's a difference between a directed attack and the type of stuff most Windows users are experiencing.
Kinda. There are a *lot* of scanners out there attempting automated exploits. I'm pretty sure that's what the GP was referring to. I don't think it's really fair to class them as "directed attacks".
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An OS should work as the mediator between the user and the programs he desires to run. From the user's perspective, that is (of course there are technical issues what an OS should do, let's stay on the user side for now). That's what an OS is about. Enabling the user to run what he wants to run. Neither browser, nor content player, nor firewall, nor word processing tools are what I'd call part of an OS. I'd even go to the length that the file manager isn't necessarily an intrinsic part of the OS.
This isn't even an interesting argument to an academic any more. An OS is a platform, not just a kernel and some drivers. I remember the good old days of having to patch together a bunch of different applications in DOS, to reach levels of functionality that would today not even be considered basic and entry-level, and I have no interest in revisiting them again.
Neither, I'll wager, do 99% of people. For the remainder, there are things like DIY Linux, etc.
In fact, about the only people suggesting the only thing an OS should come with is a kernel, some drivers and *maybe* a few libraries, are the "crazy eyes" type. Everyone else - Sun, IBM, Apple, *BSD, Linux distro vendors, etc, understands what an OS is from a "people want to use it" rather than "academic masturbation" sense.
Those are tasks that can be tackled by others.
And they will, almost inevitably, from any sort of integration perspective, suck. Exhibit A: the patchwork quilt of interface and functionality that is most Linux distributions. Exhibit B: an average Windows application.
And I think this is why Windows is in the sorry state is is today. Too much was crammed into it, too many accessoires were made part of the system, for all the wrong reasons. It can be a good idea to weave the file manager into the core OS level, there are maybe good technical reasons to do this, from security to speed. There is no good reason to weave the webbrowser into it, from a technical point of view.
None of these things are "weaved" into the "core OS level". They're user-space applications, just like they are on Linux, OS X, etc. It's just you don't have the option to buy Windows without them. This is a *marketing decision*, not a *technical decision*. You can't buy just the Windows kernel because the proportion of customers who would actually be interested in such thing is basically zero, and hence it would cost Microsoft far more to cater to them than they could ever hope to generate in revenue.
There are no more real "accessories" in Windows than there are in its only direct contemporary, OS X. There are substantially more in the average desktop-oriented Linux distribution. There are varying degrees less in more server-oriented distros and OSes like Solaris or FreeBSD.
Write a new, well-designed OS.
What's wrong with the design ?
Include a minimalist Win32 environment in a VM sandbox. Basically, Wine for Windows to run legacy apps.
Ah. So basically the same thing they did with NT ?
Apple has done it twice.
MacOS Classic -> MacOS X (basically the same as DOS-based Windows -> Windows NT, only a bit over half a decade later).
What's the second one ?
It's not designed to run Vista, therefore it does not necessitate any reference to Vista, it probably wouldnt run Ubuntu very well either, or OSX... and it can't chew my food for me, so my food must suck too...
The Atom CPU in this thing (even the single core variant) will run Vista fine (assuming the rest of the machine is up to snuff, of course).
I mean, give me a break. This is the company the _invented_ FUD.
I think you meant IBM.
For years we've been hearing "Linux is hard to install", "Linux has poor hardware support", "Command line everything" "No games", etc, etc, etc.
Difference is, most of that stuff was (or still is, in the case of games) true. Pretty much everything negative that gets written about Vista - *especially* on Slashdot - is just flat-out wrong.
Microsoft's FUD pales into insignificance compared to the anti-Vista (and anti-Microsoft in general) crowd's.
One need only look at the very example that started this thread to see that. The "Diamondville" Atom CPU this machine is supposed to have comes in a 2.2Ghz, dual-core version. A CPU like that will run Vista fine (heck, the single-core version will run it fine).
When reinstalling windows I found out that I couldn't access my old documents, so I did a quick google search and you just disable simple file sharing in folder options, then right click the folder, go to a tab named "security" and give yourself ownership of the folder. The funniest part is windows saying "By doing this, you will have full unrestricted access to this folder, are you sure you want to?"
So it's... just like every other OS ?
only now that the pc have a equal number of specialist chips inside it, can it be outperformed.
And by "only now" you mean back around the mid-90s, right ?
The Amiga was, indeed, impressive for its time - but its time was nearly 2 decades ago.
My wife is an architect. She has just started using CAD (Autodesk Revit). We were at the shop yesterday looking for a new windows box for her to use but she fell in love with an iMAC which was on display.
If she "fell in love" with it just because of the 'looks cool' factor, rather than OSX, then just install Windows on it...
What are you basing that on? Are you honestly stating you see enough innovation and technical progress in Vista to warrant its 6-7 years of development?
Vista was only in development that long from a marketing perspective. From an actual software development perspective it took about 3 years to finish.
Further, yes, there is more than enough advancement in Vista to justify that timescale. Vista is a *significant* update to pretty much every aspect of Windows NT - probably the biggest ever.
Are you buying that they changed the driver model as a security measure as opposed to a vehicle for DRM implementation?
I'm pretty sure they "changed the driver model" because it was a requirement for the various new systems (video, networking, sound, I/O - all have had significant and qualitative improvements over XP).
Considering that Linux swaps out entire subsystems every couple of years (often in so-called stable releases, no less) and break binary drivers with even a minor kernel update, while OS X can barely offer a driver model stability for more than 12-24 months at a time, the average of about 6 *years* between "changing driver models" for Windows is a shining beacon of stability. About the only other remotely mainstream OS that could compare is Solaris.
You can keep telling yourself the only reason things got changed was to support DRM if you want, but the massive amount of real and definite improvements those changes have brought make it a pretty dumb position to take.
Do you consider the extra cost in hardware and effort in driver creation to be advantageous to the consumer? If so, we just have to agree to disagree.
Considering that there's little evidence to indicate that extra cost is even meaningful, let alone significant, that it delivers the ability to access content they would otherwise be unable to, and that they always have the option of buying a card that doesn't support DRM, and hence isn't exposed to those "additional costs", I'd have to answer yes.
Last I checked Microsoft was not a media company. They were under no obligation to remodel its operating system to cater for the media companies.
They were if they wanted said media company's products to be usable by their customers.
In addition, the way in which Microsoft has chosen to implement is also likely to limit the possibilities of creating open source drivers.
Rubbish. This is one of the more egregrious bits of FUD from the OSS camp.
True, catering to the media companies is the root cause, but Microsoft choosing to do that instead of concentrating on creating the best possible operating system was their choice.
Given that a fairly significant proportion of their customers are quite interested in video, audio, and various other types of content, it's difficult to see how catering to that need is a poor decision.
What momentous, customer-demanding feature(s) do you think could have been delivered in leiu of DRM ?
Would the media companies stop making media if Microsoft did not re-engineer Vista to please them? Of course not, thus it would only have been a benefit to the consumers.
Except for those customers who don't want to buy another device to view their DRM-encumbered content. Or where the extra costs might be too high. Or where space might be at a premium. Etc, etc.
That is very true. However, most operating systems are not designed with "features" that exist exclusively to disable parts of the OS. Without those features there would be no way to erroneously trigger them. Making an operating system defective by design is not a good sales argument for me.
Many software programs have similar "features". Haven't you ever seen a hardware dongle ? A license server ?
Please explain how not having any protected content on my machine removes the code designed to disable the OS or parts of it.
Same way you avoid some human error from disabling any of your other software via things like updates or licensing controls.
Granting for a moment that the user won't be able to play materials on his computer without DRM, this is not a reason to put DRM into the operating system. It's not optimal from the user's standpoint, nor is it really optimal from the copyright holder's standpoint. It's only optimal from the standpoint of the party that controls the operating system.
At worst it's irrelevant to the user. It's ideal for the content owner, because it reduces the number of "unauthorised devices" they have to worry about and increases their potential audience. For the OS vendor, it's little more than a pain in the arse - extra code, extra complexity, greater maintenance - for a system that is inevitably doomed to failure.
The benefit is a simpler, more efficient operating system for everything other than playing HD video.
Except when you're not playing DRM-encumbered video, it's irrelevant. It has no impact on the system.
In any case you are conflating the two issues. DRM doesn't have to go into the operating system. If people really need it it'd ideally be built into TVs and monitors using a transferable hardware key -- like a GSM SIM.
You still need to be able to get the content to the output device in a "secure" fashion.
Ultimately, DRM needs to be in every piece of hardware and every piece of software for it to "work" - and even then it can still be defeated by a HD camcorder, a tripod and some decent recording gear.
Does Vista run on a 32bit RISC G4 1.42 Ghz Processor, 1 Gig installed laptop grade RAM with ALL features enabled? That is what I do with the Mini G4. It works better than Tiger installed.
It will certainly run at least as well as Leopard will on an equivalent PC (even more so if you want to spec the "equivalent PC" based on the timeframe and price you bought your mini rather than raw processing power).
Incidentally, Leopard won't run "with ALL features enabled" on your Mac Mini. The video card in it isn't good enough - it doesn't support core image.
With respect to MAFIAA, that's exactly my point. They didn't pay to have it put there. MS put it there in order to attract them as business partners.
But they did have to put it there to become a presence in the market for devices capable of playing DRM-encumbered media.
The the end user, DRM just means they have the ability to play media on their computer that they otherwise couldn't. It's hard to see how most of them would see this as anything but an advantage.
What benefit to the end user would there be in Microsoft not implementing DRM infrastructure and therefore denying them the ability to play DRM-encumbered content on their computers ?
Vista was developed not as an OS to give customers a better experience, but as a DRM platform. This is rather evident in the final product.
Untrue. It is unlikely the majority of Windows Vista users will ever even activate any of its DRM features, let alone be negatively impacted by them.
Not to mention, the DRM support *does* give customers "a better experience". It offers them the ability to use their computers to view DRM-encumbered content, something they would otherwise be unable to do.
The DRM is a large cause of the sluggishness and poor driver stability.
Also untrue, for the reason above.
Not to mention it drives up the cost of hardware in general due to Microsoft now dictating certain aspects of hardware design to satisfy the DRM requirements.
No, the media companies are dictating what hardware needs to be capable of to be considered "safe".
And what about when it breaks [msdn.com]?.
Human errors cause software problems. These things happen regardless of platform.
I would say it is most relevant to me regardless of use. The OS is full of code designed specifically to deny my use of it.
No, it's full of code for the people who own the content to use in an effort to protect their copyrights. The fundamental problem here is copyright.
It doesn't matter that I "might never trigger it". What matters is that it's there. It's like having a bucket of acid over my head with the guy holding the chain swearing he won't let it drop unless I misbehave. Where is the sense in me paying a guy to do that?
You leave out the part where you have the choice whether or not to go and stand under the bucker by avoiding DRM-encumbered content.
Uhm, no, this [auckland.ac.nz] is why I'm staying away from Vista for as long as humanly possible.
Avoid DRM-encumbered content and pretty much everything written there is irrelevant to you.
Where does hardware requirements of Aero really come from? I got a Mac Mini G4 upstairs with a 32MB Laptop grade (I guess) ATI video card, it does every kind of OS X trick except the very needed (Plasma HDTV) transparent menu bar.
Vista's minimum requirements are the equivalent of a video card that does that (and the little water effects in Dashboard). To put that in context, sufficiently powerful video cards have been around since 2003 and cost about $30 today.
Hopefully you can see why it would have been foolish fir Microsoft to waste developer effort supporting hardware less capable, given the vast majority of customers will either a) get Vista with a new PC or b) have machines with sufficiently capable video cards already.
Isn't the Aero a "photocopy" of OS X GUI tricks?
Sure, in the same way OS X was a "photocopy" of Windows NT.
They have real bad coders there at Redmond I guess...
Vista and Leopard have basically the same hardware requirements.
I think Vista is largely a mixed bag; it was released beta quality, which (in part) probably contributes to its heroic resource demands on hardware. Even the early MacOS 10 releases were pretty inefficient.
When OS X was released (and for a couple of *years* afterwards), even the fastest Macs available could not run it well. When Vista was released, a mid-range PC could run it fine. Today, a year later, a <$500 PC runs it well.
They got to the point they felt like they could live with XP; they'd probably pay good money for an improved XP. What they got was something which was not as radical as intended (no WinFS), [...]
I really don't get why people go on about WinFS. What practical improvements over the search facility already in Vista do you think it would have offered ?
Some of the changes in Vista are unqualified improvements, some of the changes are defensible with implementation faults (UAC and Windows File Protection), [...]
I don't get why people complain about the "implementation" of UAC, either, given pretty much all unreasonable UAC prompts are the fault of application developers.
[...] and some are there to support Microsoft's agenda alone (DRM).
DRM is there for the MAFIAA. It's little more than overhead and expense for Microsoft.
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for database servers, presuming you don't want to piss-away 1/2 of your storage in a RAID 10 arrangement.
RAID5 has inherently bad random write performance (*especially* when degraded). Thus, RAID5 (or similar schemes) is typically a poor choice for any remotely write-heavy DB.
(On the other hand, read performance is great - hence my question about these particular DBs not being write-heavy - it would be a quite reasonable decision for a mostly-read DB).
Checksum calculations are largely a non-issue with hardware RAID.
No "hardware RAID" can escape the extra physical IOs RAID5 requires.
Single Quad Core Intel E5345 with RAID 5 of 7xSAS drives w/ a hot spare
Seems like an poor choice of disk configuration for a database server. Or do these database servers not see a lot of writes ?
Bit surprising you didn't get more RAM, either, seeing its so cheap. We basically don't buy boxes with less than 16G now.
Berne - Zurich may be a somewhat unfair example as it's one of the most important sections -- but large parts of the swiss train network are similarly fast and extremely on time. Going by train will get you to most places equally fast as driving and let you do work, eat relaxedly, enjoy a movie or enjoy some quality time with your significant other joining the rail high club. Or so I heard. Heh.
I forgot to say that, yes, the Swiss Rail system is indeed awesome (although more so the intercity stuff than urban stuff). It takes me ~15 minutes door to door to get to work (Zollikon-Zurich) and the handful of times we've "needed" a vehicle, Mobility.ch was quick and easy.
We have no plans of purchasing a car - although I am going to get myself a motorcycle to enjoy some of those alpine roads.
Depends. Try driving from Berne to Zurich around 1700.
I was actually making a more generalised comment about "Swiss efficiency" and how that, while the Swiss may well be "efficient", you shouldn't count on anything happening particularly quickly (took 2 months to get my ADSL running, been waiting over 5 months for my B permit to appear - and I'm an EU citizen employed on a good salary, so it's not like there's anything "weird" - very annoying, since we need it for my wife to get hers, etc).
However, it's also directly relevant. Trains certainly can move things at a "more efficiently" in terms of "energy expenditure per kilogram" or some such, but to do so in terms of freight, they need to be full, which means they can't leave "right now" to get your delivery to your ASAP. In terms of passengers, trains need to run on a schedule - so if you want to arrive or leave outside their schedule, then your trip may well turn out "faster" by car.
Also, regarding your sig: Wine 1.0 is scheduled (and apparently moving ahead on time) for release in june, 1.0-rc1 is out.
Indeed. Seems there's only 3 Horsemen of the Apocalypse to go.
Does this help with the fact that a lot of stuff can be shipped more efficiently by train?
However, as we have learned since moving to Switzerland, "efficient" does not necessarily mean "fast".
I'm not sure I know what you mean. I was referring to the separation between user and administrator;how the system is locked down and away from users hands;deny-by-default and better enforced access controls. I would be interested in hearing what you meant, I just don't follow.
In that case I don't know what *you're* talking about. Windows has the separation you are talking about. Vista makes it more accessible in unmanaged environments, but in unmanaged environments it's much less useful because it depends on the ignorant end user to make educated decisions.
You'd have to go the social engineering route then. You'd need to convince someone to intentionally execute the contents. You can't be serious can you? That reminds me of the old joke about the Irish computer virus...you get a list of files to delete on your C: drive and a thank you with it.
What ? You do realise most "viruses" and malware need user interaction and rely on social engineering to get into user's systems, right ?
Freakin' hell. People will happily open *password protected zip files* and run the executables in them. A tarball wouldn't be more than a brief interruption.
True, though as I said less distro are coming with default listening services and NAT makes these tools far less effective.
But the same is also true for Windows, and has been for years. Every version of Windows since XP SP2 has had the firewall enabled by default (and earlier versions also had the firewall).
At which point it can scale or you can change the setting in your word processor to use a different sized paper (which you have to do in Word already).
Scaling makes the output look different, which is supposed to be the thing you're complaining about.
Changing the paper size to match the source - assuming you end up with the same margins, etc and that computer has the same fonts available - will result in a document that looks the same (and if that doesn't *then* it's a bug).
We're talking about printing the same document onto the same sized paper.
With the same margins ? To the same printer ?
Some versions of MS word screw this up, because they rely upon the fonts installed on the printer. This is a bug. Have you really drank the MS kool-aid so much that you believe this bug is a feature?
It *is* a feature (more accurately, correct behaviour). It's working exactly the way it's designed to and is supposed to. If your document is formatted based on the metrics of a font that isn't present on the machine (eg: a printer font on another machine), then the correct action for a word processor to take is to reformat the page. This is true regardless of who may happen to have developed said word processor.
The only behaviours you have hinted at that could be considered bugs are a) identical printer, margin, page, font, etc configurations producing different outputs, and b) Word using printer fonts even though the user had specified non-printer fonts.
However your main complaint is about word processors reformatting documents at all. When a Word Processor reformats a document to match the capabilities and configuration of the select output device (eg: a printer) it is working _exactly_ as it should. If it does not, then it is broken. If you find this behaviour unexpected, then you're using the wrong tool for the job.
On the other hand, if your account only has User or Power User privileges, [...]
It's probably worth pointing out here that being a Power User doesn't offer a whole lot more protection than being an Administrator. Like an 'admin' in OSX, they have write privileges to several system areas.
I read somewhere that if I didn't run Windows as an admin, that would help a lot, which is what I do now, but to be honest I really don't understand the reasoning, other than that you have to be an admin to install programs.
Because malware is frequently just as badly written as other software, and shits itself when run from anything other than an Administrator account.
It's basically a version of security through obscurity, but much like using OS X or Linux, it was pretty well for the moment.
Your best defense against malware is common sense. The vast, vast majority of malware requires some form of user interaction to work.
I really don't buy that targetted-system argument. It takes a lot more to damage a Unix-like system for architectural reasons.
Defaulting to an Administrator on unmanaged systems is in no way, shape, or form an "architectural" problem.
Unix systems don't have execute-by-default permissions.
This barely even counts as a bump in the road. Just distribute your malware in a tarball.
There's a difference between a directed attack and the type of stuff most Windows users are experiencing.
Kinda. There are a *lot* of scanners out there attempting automated exploits. I'm pretty sure that's what the GP was referring to. I don't think it's really fair to class them as "directed attacks".