Are you suggesting we should compare them against a *different*, *cheaper* PC? Now, that's a fair comparison.
No, I'm saying you should compare them based on what you want to achieve. If all you want is a basic computer, the Mac Mini is relatively expensive. If having a single integrated piece of hardware is not a high priority, you can buy an iMac-equivalent PC for a lot less. If you want multiple screens or a beefy video card in what is otherwise an unremarkable computer, a Mac Pro is ridiculous overkill.
Macs are better. Period. For the same price as a comparable system (which you have admitted), you also get the added bonus of a better-designed computer. Macs are damned fine pieces of machinery for their price.
No, they're what you should expect for their price. They carry a premium cost, and that premium cost pays for their features.
Sure, you don't have as many options. But really, who wants to fuck with their video card anyway? Geeks and gamers. So Macs aren't designed for geeks and gamers. They're designed for *everyday users.* Like my wife. Like my daughter. Like 90% of the population.
Businesses who want something slightly outside of Apple's box. Us, for example. All our users have dual-screen setups. Some have more. Our radiologists require screens that meet particular standards. Since the iMac and Mac Mini are both rendered useless by our basic requirements, a US$2500 Mac Pro is the minimum buy in point for a job that a PC costing less than half as much can do more than adequately.
On the PC side, you have MS-Windows (which fuckin' sucks, and not in a good way). You have *BSD. You have Linux. Of those, none come close to OS X as an operating system. Not even close enough to frag with a sniper rifle.
Being a regular user of just about every mainstream OS, my preferred OS is Windows. OS X is my (close) second choice, losing out primarily because it's still comparitively sluggish to use and to a lesser extent because of the hardware restrictions previously mentioned. Linux trails far, far behind. I can't think of a single reason why I would want to use it instead of Windows or OS X on the desktop, even considering I have a couple of hundred Linux servers to manage.
You do have a point, however, in that OS X is for "everyday users" - which is why I bought my mum an iMac and my wife bought (based on my recommendation) a MacBook Pro.
Now, me I use Linux, because it's superior to MS-Windows, and better supported than *BSD. But for everyone else who is not a geek or a gamer, I recommend Macs. Why? Because they are *better.* Period. You can cover your ears and sing "La-la-la-la" all you want, but it doesn't change the FACT: Macs are better.
No, they're not. For me to buy the Mac Pro I'd need to meet my basic home PC requirements (which I do not deny are somewhat atypical - albeit not unusually - but you are insisting that Macs are "better, period"), I could buy nearly two PCs that exceed them (and *that's* assuming I didn't use Apple for things like memory and hard disk BTO options). On the work side, the MBP has no docking station, making it unsuitable - as far as I am concerned - compared to alternatives.
I compare MS-Windows users to Budweiser drinkers. They think because Bud is the best-selling beer, it's the best. They aren't willing to recognize that their drink of choice just fuckin' sucks. Same thing with Folgers drinkers. Oh, no. It's those people who are willing to pay a little bit more for a much better experience that are stupid. Not them.
I choose to use Windows in full knowledge of all the available alternatives, because having used all of them extensively, it meets my needs (and wants) the best. I am far from the only person I know who does so. I see as many annoying problems using OS X as I do using Windows (although both have far less than Linux, even Ubuntu). You're welcome to your opinion, but don't try and pretend it's anything else.
Another suitable candidate for baseload energy generation is geothermal.
However, nuclear really is the only practical future solution to widespread baseload generation. Hydro and geothermal are too location-constrained, clean coal is decades aways from "production" use and "carbon sequestration" is really just like "cleaning up" by sweeping all the rubbish under the bed.
What it boils down to is that I am profoundly disappointed with Microsoft and its release of Vista. There was no need that I was aware of to redo the Printer Drivers or the Video subsystem. Perhaps I am wrong, I don't know.
There were very good reasons. From NT4 to Windows 2003, Printer drivers ran in kernel space. This meant that a buggy printer driver could BSOD the machine. Now print drivers run in user space (there are other benefits as well, but that's probably the biggest).
The video system overhaul was well overdue, and mainly introduces something that matches - indeed, exceeds - the capabilities of OS X's "Quartz 2D/3D/Extreme/whatever". Further, stability is dramatically improved. You can literally hotplug a video card in Vista (even on hardware that technically doesn't support it) and all that will happen is the video subsystem will restart. On any previous versions of Windows - and other mainstream OSes - you'd be looking at a BSOD (/kernel panic). Since something like 50% of *all* BSODs are caused just by video drivers, according to Microsoft's statistics (that come from those "crash reporter" thingies), this represents a potentially *huge* user-visible reliability improvement.
(Caution: don't try it with anything you care about. Most video hardware *is not* hotplug capable, and doing so can certainly lead to physical damage that renders the hardware inoperable.)
What I do know is that video drivers were stable, frame rates were fast (I am not a gamer, but) video playback worked great. Things were stable enough that Windows 2003 has been out for five years and were only at SP2 level. Things were pretty stable coming out of the redesign starting with Win2k.
Vista is improving as the hardware developers refine their drivers. Framerates are already comparable between Vista and XP with the latest drivers from ATI and NVIDIA.
Many moons ago, I worked at WordPerfect. I was there when WordPerfect for Windows was first released. It was a disaster. WPWin5.1 was nothing but WP DOS 5.1 with a WYSIWYG interface bolted on. WPWin6.0 was a complete redesign that was arguably worse than WPWin5.1. For users that were accustomed to the stability of WP Dos 5.1, they were furious - and rightfully so, such that when Microsoft came out with Word, even though it sucked, it at least worked. And thus was the fall of WordPerfect.
I remember it well. Word was already making significant inroads against WP, but the first iterations of WPWIN really were the screwups that killed WP.
The only parallel I wish to draw here is that there was a LOT riding on WordPerfect getting it right. With Vista, there is/was a lot riding on MS getting it right. Well, MS didn't get it done right. Vista is the modern day equivalent of the Edsel.
Not really. There's a lot of people complaining about Vista, but most (if not all) of their arguments are utter bollocks. The hardware requirements are not high - I have run it happily on machines that were 5+ years old - and UAC is, ultimately, no different to the equivalents on OS X and Linux. "DRM" is probably the biggest non-argument of the lot, since either you're not using DRM-encumbered media, and it's completely irrelevant, or you are using DRM-encumbered media, and the alternative would be a blank screen.
Ultimately, the "problem" is not that Vista is bad, it's that XP is "good enough". So most people aren't going to "upgrade" until they get a new computer. It's not that they don't want VIsta, it's that they don't see any reason to go out of their way to get it.
On the corporate/business side, it's business as usual. There is *nothing* at all different about the supposed slow uptake of Vista compared to previous releases of Windows. Businesses move on a 3-5 year cycle, and outside of unmanaged small business networks, and those on the "cutting edge", no-one with any industry experience expected Vista to be rolled out any faster than it has been. You won't see any significant c
available RAM in single-digit megs (not a bad thing. empty ram is wasted ram, but if something in the foreground needs that ram for something, it needs to be made available right now.), drive activity going nuts whenever i do something simple like open a menu, page file size rising, programs running extremely slow. to me, all this fits the usual "out of ram. go use the swap" symptoms.
Sounds like some application had gone out of control. Not much the OS could do about that.
yes, and what i'm saying it that it seems to be reacting to something it shouldn't react to and the randomness of it is irritating. i can't think of anything that should require permission that it would do only every 3rd run, or anything that it does anytime that should require permission.
While this is true, there's not much the OS can do about a program that, say, every third run tries to write to a system-level Registry key to update it's default configuration.
UAC is triggered by programs trying to access protected parts of the system. This is not the OS's fault, it's the application's fault.
Bollocks. (a) Updates are free through Software Update. Unless you're talking about paid support, which as a home user I somehow doubt. (b) No one forces you to buy the new OS. I'm still running 10.4 on all machines and am chugging away quite happily, still getting software updates.
Each version of OS X has a relatively short support lifetime. For example, Apple no longer release updates for OS X 10.2, so you need to buy a newer version if you want bugs or security vulnerabilities addressed. 10.3 will probably suffer the same fate sometime in 2008.
Bollocks. Apple machines have been price competitive-to-cheaper than their counterparts in the PC world for a long, long time, especially when you take into account the software that you get in the deal. Google is your friend. Apple laptops are especially a deal, not even taking software into account.
Macs are price competitive if you are comparing *exactly* the same PC configuration. Otherwise they are not. If you want a cheap computer, Macs start at US$500, sans monitor, keyboard and mouse. If you want a cheap PC, Dell will sell you a whole computer for that price. Further up the specifications list, if you want a machine with a replaceable video card, or that can drive two external monitors, your minimum buy-in is a US$2500 Mac Pro. On the PC side, $500 will get you that same functionality.
This is before even looking at areas where Apple simply does not have a product, like a mid-range standalone computer, or a business-oriented laptop with a docking station.
People know what text editors and text processors are. They have been there since the dawn of computing, and there never was something special about them.
You do realise the *sole reason* a non-trivial chunk of contemporary computer users even have a computer is to access the web, right ?
But they don't know what web browsers are. When they became popular with the layman, it was Internet Exploder who was leading the market. It also had a generic name.
No, that would have been Netscape Navigator. You know, the guys who gave us the <BLINK> tag ?
Moreover, it's just a viewer. They don't have to actually work with what it views, unlike text editors.
What ?
It's obvious why bundling it with Windows made it the most popular web browser.
No, it's not. IE4 made IE the most popular web browser before Windows 98 was even released. IE5 finished the job before Windows 98 was even close to a majority market share.
MS doesn't want those fixed. Seriously, they make money by ensuring that other browsers can't compete because the Web is broken to conform to IE's modifications of the standards. In this way they lock people into their platform. If IE was standard compliant, then soon Web apps would be standard compliant, and then why the hell would big companies stick with IE and an expensive OS, when they can just run Linux for free?
For the vast, vast, VAST majority of consumers, Windows isn't expensive. For most of them, it's also free.
IE will never have the same functionality, at least in terms of standards compliance, as other browsers as long as MS is allowed to bundle it without also bundling competitors.
Who gets to define who the "competitors" are ? Who will keep this list updated ? Who will wear the additional support costs ? Who is responsible for fixing bugs ? Who will wear the costs of the "competitors" that aren't free, like Opera ?
If it has nothing to do with DRM, then please explain to me why every single device needs updated drivers in order to work properly under Vista when it used to be that Windows 2000, XP and 2003 all used the same exact driver?
For the same reason most NT 4.0 drivers don't work in Windows 2000, XP or 2003. Because it's a major kernel revision. Windows 2000 = NT 5.0, Windows XP = NT 5.1, Windows 2003 - NT 5.2. Windows Vista is NT 6.0.
This is before even getting into the complete redesign and reimplementation that the video display system, audio stack and network stack have gone. At the kernel level, XP->Vista is like Linux 2.2 -> 2.6, or NeXTSTEP 4.x -> OSX 10.4. Make no mistake, it is a large and significant update to the Windows NT kernel.
Crikey, Linux drivers typically can't even survive a trivial +0.0.1 kernel bump without breaking, OSX drivers have frequently broken after +0.1 revisions, yet you're getting upset because Windows has a major +1.x kernel revision and needs driver updates ? If only anti-Microsoft zealots had the same low expectations of Microsoft as they did to other vendors...
Forget that this is impossible to accomplish, but that didn't matter. Microsoft didn't rewrite the kernel to make it more secure, they rewrote it to secure premium content.
They didn't rewrite it at all - and the inclusion of protected paths were far from the only changes made. If you were more interested in the technology than the Microsoft-bashing, you'd probably be prepared to go out and learn about it.
This entire reworking of the kernel architecture has screwed everything up because every few milliseconds, the kernel needs to check to see if premium content is being played.
No, it doesn't. This *ONLY* happens when the ICT is set - ie: you are playing DRM-encumbered content. Further, modern computers have more than enough horsepower to make up for the overheads even when the protected paths are active (which is essentially never, at this particular point in time, given no content uses the ICT yet).
Let me ask you this: At what point do you think the Vista DRM activates when playing premium content?
The DRM systems are activated when the playback software indicates they should be by setting the Image Constraint Token.
When it reads the data from the HD-DVD disk? Yes... but what if you disabled that level... whelllll, we need to check at the kernel level, ring0, see if it is trying to get snuck past the front gates. You see, at every step along the way, your content is being checked, and double checked to see if DRM should be getting applied. If it didn't, then the advanced DRM features of Vista would have been trivial to circumvent.
You don't appear to have a clue what you're talking about.
You cannot have this level of kernel modification and NOT have it impact every other part of the system... Peering into the kernel activity using debug tools you can see the OS methodically checking itself, navel gazing if you will.
Please link to some evidence that the DRM subsystems are being used even when non-DRM-encumbered media is being played.
From the look of it you're just parroting standard Slashdot FUD, which is mostly embellishments on Gutmann's Vista paper. These claims have been refuted on numerous occasions, and most of the more outrageous ones - eg: the suggestion that HD video, regardless of its DRM status, simply wouldn't play on analogue screens, or that SPDIF outputs would be disabled regardless of whether the audio is DRM-encumbered - are trivially disproven simply by *using* Vista (something Mr Gutmann has not actually done, AFAIK).
If Vista has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft is laser-focused on superficial and eye-candy improvements, while caring very little about improving (or even fixing) the underlying technologies.
Uh, what ? The amount of changes in Vista relevant to "superficial and eye candy improvements" would struggle to be more than 10-15%.
The vast, vast bulk of work done to Vista was done to the internals - kernel, APIs, security, compatibility layers, etc. Very little was done with "eye candy" (as should be obvious, given how little the GUI has changed from XP - or, heck, even Windows *95* - to Vista).
Ah, so I go and look at the licenses for FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, which all seem to come with strings attached, no matter how loose. Note that each of these licenses are based on the premise that copyright law is valid and enforceable.
The elimination of copyright would have essentially zero impact on how the BSDL works, and its goals.
However, for the GPL, the elimination of copyright would completely circumvent how the GPL works and render it incapable of supporting its objectives.
There is a significant, qualitative difference between how copyright impacts the BSDL and the GPL, which is the point. GP was suggesting that without copyright - and hence without the GPL - something like "GNU/Linux" would have been impossible. I pointed out that the effect of no copyright on the BSDL would be negligible and as such would have had little impact on the development of BSDL licenses OSes like FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
Remember the old FSF party line: "Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary".
Of course it would be necessary, assuming you were attempting to do what the GPL does.
Kids today. Sheesh. Think about it: if copyright doesn't exist, freely copyable binary-only software is competing with freely-copyable source-provided software. My money would be on source-provided software doing better - it has a killer extra feature! the source!. Programmers would be paid to code up new features (less boring wheel reinventing code, too!), computer users would still want and buy newer, faster computers. The people who would lose would be boxed software distributors. Like, er, Microsoft.
Your logic is broken. Binary-only software today dominates the industry, despite its - relative to open source software - high cost. Eliminating copyright will make binary-only software free (ie: make it price-competitive with open source software). Most people have zero interest in the source code today. What makes you think they would if copyright didn't exist ?
This is before getting into how eliminating copyright would make the GPL unenforceable, and thus *substantially* change the economic arguments for commercial investment in GPLed source code.
Eliminating copyright would hurt closed-source software suppliers, since they would generally be only able to derive income from support contracts and the like. However, it would hurt the OSS world a *lot* more, by defanging the GPL and creating significant disincentives for corporate investment in OSS.
Without copyright law, the power of the GPL would be zilch, zippo, nada. The entire evolution of the GNU operating system environment would probably not exist, and you'd be all using pirated versions of Windows XP (or probably ME, since MSFT would probably not have invested anything like the money and resources they have into their OS's.
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD laugh at your scaremongering.
No, that is how Vista *SHOULD* work... How it *ACTUALLY* works in practice is something else entirely.
That's exactly how it works. Unless some DRM-encumbered media sets the ICT, no DRM is applied. None. Nada. Zilch.
The saving grace that keeps up the appearance of it working, albeit slowly, is that they spent so much development time creating error recovery that resets the stack/application and resumes without actually crashing. Put a debug trace on the app, you'll be able to see it tanking and restarting. So people complain about speed instead of it just not working, or crashing.
Third-party applications and drivers that crash have nothing to do with DRM, nor can blame for them be laid at Microsoft's feet.
There have already been numerous benchmarks showing that with up to date drivers and hardware, Vista matches - if not exceeds - the performance of Windows XP. Whatever you might think is causing your Vista installation to be slow and/or unstable, DRM ain't it.
For the record- I'm using Vista64 to write this. I've been trying to use Vista all year since its release. I use MS products 24/7, I'm not just some Linux junkie that is lookin to bash MS.
Makes no difference, you're still wrong.
As I've said elsewhere, "DRM" is quite possible the single biggest non-argument made against Vista (with the possible exception of "hardware requirements"). If you don't have DRM-encumbered media, the DRM subsystems never activate, and it simple doesn't matter. If you *do* have DRM-encumbered media, Vista isn't doing anything more than any other device capable of playing it would do (and the alternative to both is not being able to use the media at all).
Until they completely pull DRM out of the kernel, I will never support the corporate adoption within our enterprise. In a perfect world, the DRM should only activate when "Premium Content" is being played.
That's exactly how Vista works. No DRM-encumbered content, no DRM being applied.
I've had more than one instance (happens at least every other day that I use this machine) where I have only OpenOffce.org writer (or a similarly non-intensive program) open, and it's SWAPPING with practically zero remaining RAM!
Firstly, how did you confirm what you thought was happening ?
Secondly, Windows will pre-emptively swap out when the machine is otherwise idle. Linux does it as well. It's a *good* thing, because it means if the machine really does have to swap (because of memory pressure), most of the heavy lifting is already done.
A bit of a shame IMO, as i really like some of vista's new stuff (the WGF stuff is a great improvement over the previous system and UAC would be great if they could make it a little less hyperactive (about every 3rd time i run KiCAD, it prompts me for some reason), along with several of the things you point out.)
UAC is only reacting to what the program is trying to do. It is the program, not UAC, that is broken.
"Released" is an utterly worthless metric in the OSS world, where it can mean anything from a feature-complete, well-tested, well-documented, supported product to someone creating an empty Sourceforge site.
Your example is laughable (although not as stupid the equivalent Vista functionality was a reaction to it). Even as little as 6 months ago, getting Compiz/Beryl/whatever working *at all* (let alone reliably) required either a great deal or in-depth knowledge of the system.
That may be the case in the US, it is not the case in Switzerland. I recently checked at MediaMarkt (which is a huge local chain) and retail prices are still in that ballpark. Granted, hardly anybody buys reatil, but I don't think it's unfair when I compare the price with comparable offers. And both, OS/X and Ubuntu 7.10 are comparable offers.
Regarding OSX, it is invalid to compare full retail Vista with it. You need to use upgrade prices (since every off the shelf copy of OS X is priced as an upgrade). You must also account for functionality Vista Ultimate has, that OSX does not. Media Centre, for example (a feature of non-trivial value on its own, for those who are interested).
Further, you need to remember that for most purchasers, Vista *is* free. It comes with their computer.
My point is that "free" and "free" are also not synonymous. Some software is free but not free, and some is free but not free, and some is both free and free. Two almost completely unrelated words that happen to be spelled and pronounced the same way in English. See how English fails us here? This is why you see people devolving to French (libre vs gratis), or syntax (free vs Free), or even examples (free-as-in-beer vs free-as-in-speech) to make the distinction more clear.
English only "fails" here because some people are dishonestly trying to leverage the commonly understood meaning of a particular word for their own agenda.
The same problem exists even with languages that have another word. "GPL" is no more synonymous with "libre" as it is with "free". The GPL is a software license. It lets you do some things and stops you doing others.
If you mean "GPL" then say it. Highlight the key aspects of it (eg: control over how other people's code is licensed) you believe delivers a net benfit. But do not try to dress it up with (inaccurate) slogans like "free as in speech", you are simply being dishonest.
An operating system that claims compatibility with existing software, should be compatible with existing software. If it's not, then the operating system has failed to fulfill its own promises.
Only if the applications are written using documented, supported and recommended APIs and methods.
*Vast* amounts of Windows software do not. Just look at how much of it breaks when not running under an Administrator account (no piece of software released in the last 8 or so years has any excuse for this), or from a service pack.
Microsoft have _zero_ responsibility to retain compatibility with undocumented, unsupported or deprecated APIs. That they expend _any_ effort to do so, in itself, is significant. This is before even getting into the massive scale of their work to remain "bug compatible" (eg: having special code in the Windows 95 memory manager to detect when Sim City is running and modify its behaviour to support a Sim City bug).
Yes, some software breaks from version to version of Windows - but in the context of the millions (if not tens of millions) of Windows (and DOS) programs that continue to work, it's statistical noise. No other platform or vendor even goes close to Microsoft and Windows, in terms of legacy code support coverage.
Sun has an interesting warranty with Solaris. If the new version of Solaris breaks any old program you have, Sun will work continuously with you until the problem is solved. What this means is that they will put real engineers (not telephone support people) on your problem and change the OS if required.
Somehow I doubt they do that if the application is using undocumented, unsupported or deprecated APIs and system features - which is why 99% of the software that breaks in new versions of Windows, does so.
I understand the distinction perfectly. My point is that "GPL" and "free" are not synonymous, despite dishonest (and ongoing) attempts to create that perception.
Incidentally, that whole "freedom from" argument that gets bandied about frequently regarding the GPL, doesn't carry a great deal of weight. It's *way* to easy to use it for justifying just about anything ("freedom from terrorism" being the most obvious contemporary example).
In the end, I think it would have been easier and cheaper to just subscribe to the damn cable, but that's not the point.
For most people, it is. They're not "hacking" the cable boxes out of principle, or to see how it works, they're doing it because they don't want to pay for it. All the CableCos need to do is making buying the same cost - or only marginally more expensive - than the "hacking", and they're set.
This is pretty much the same principle Apple uses. So long as getting OS X working on a frankenmac has about the same "cost" for most people as just buying a Mac, Apple has nothing to worry about.
History books will write about the Internet as a 1990s phenomenon, even though it existed long before, because only in the 1990s could most people use it.
I would go so far as to say history books will write that the Internet was a 2000s phenomenon (driven by MySpace, Facebook, et al) and that the 1990s were the "early days" of "primitive internet connectivity".
It is unlikely things like Gopher or Usenet will be anything more than footnotes - if that - outside of specialised books.
I meant libre, not gratis. Don't blame me for English's failings.
GPLed software is not "libre", it is simply GPLed software.
Likewise, your problem is not with the lanugage, it is with the loaded use of inappropriate words in an appeal to emotion. Fortunately, RMS's 1984-esque abuse of the word "free" has gained little recognition outside of a tiny proportion of the computing industry.
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Are you suggesting we should compare them against a *different*, *cheaper* PC? Now, that's a fair comparison.
No, I'm saying you should compare them based on what you want to achieve. If all you want is a basic computer, the Mac Mini is relatively expensive. If having a single integrated piece of hardware is not a high priority, you can buy an iMac-equivalent PC for a lot less. If you want multiple screens or a beefy video card in what is otherwise an unremarkable computer, a Mac Pro is ridiculous overkill.
Macs are better. Period. For the same price as a comparable system (which you have admitted), you also get the added bonus of a better-designed computer. Macs are damned fine pieces of machinery for their price.
No, they're what you should expect for their price. They carry a premium cost, and that premium cost pays for their features.
Sure, you don't have as many options. But really, who wants to fuck with their video card anyway? Geeks and gamers. So Macs aren't designed for geeks and gamers. They're designed for *everyday users.* Like my wife. Like my daughter. Like 90% of the population.
Businesses who want something slightly outside of Apple's box. Us, for example. All our users have dual-screen setups. Some have more. Our radiologists require screens that meet particular standards. Since the iMac and Mac Mini are both rendered useless by our basic requirements, a US$2500 Mac Pro is the minimum buy in point for a job that a PC costing less than half as much can do more than adequately.
On the PC side, you have MS-Windows (which fuckin' sucks, and not in a good way). You have *BSD. You have Linux. Of those, none come close to OS X as an operating system. Not even close enough to frag with a sniper rifle.
Being a regular user of just about every mainstream OS, my preferred OS is Windows. OS X is my (close) second choice, losing out primarily because it's still comparitively sluggish to use and to a lesser extent because of the hardware restrictions previously mentioned. Linux trails far, far behind. I can't think of a single reason why I would want to use it instead of Windows or OS X on the desktop, even considering I have a couple of hundred Linux servers to manage.
You do have a point, however, in that OS X is for "everyday users" - which is why I bought my mum an iMac and my wife bought (based on my recommendation) a MacBook Pro.
Now, me I use Linux, because it's superior to MS-Windows, and better supported than *BSD. But for everyone else who is not a geek or a gamer, I recommend Macs. Why? Because they are *better.* Period. You can cover your ears and sing "La-la-la-la" all you want, but it doesn't change the FACT: Macs are better.
No, they're not. For me to buy the Mac Pro I'd need to meet my basic home PC requirements (which I do not deny are somewhat atypical - albeit not unusually - but you are insisting that Macs are "better, period"), I could buy nearly two PCs that exceed them (and *that's* assuming I didn't use Apple for things like memory and hard disk BTO options). On the work side, the MBP has no docking station, making it unsuitable - as far as I am concerned - compared to alternatives.
I compare MS-Windows users to Budweiser drinkers. They think because Bud is the best-selling beer, it's the best. They aren't willing to recognize that their drink of choice just fuckin' sucks. Same thing with Folgers drinkers. Oh, no. It's those people who are willing to pay a little bit more for a much better experience that are stupid. Not them.
I choose to use Windows in full knowledge of all the available alternatives, because having used all of them extensively, it meets my needs (and wants) the best. I am far from the only person I know who does so. I see as many annoying problems using OS X as I do using Windows (although both have far less than Linux, even Ubuntu). You're welcome to your opinion, but don't try and pretend it's anything else.
Another suitable candidate for baseload energy generation is geothermal.
However, nuclear really is the only practical future solution to widespread baseload generation. Hydro and geothermal are too location-constrained, clean coal is decades aways from "production" use and "carbon sequestration" is really just like "cleaning up" by sweeping all the rubbish under the bed.
What it boils down to is that I am profoundly disappointed with Microsoft and its release of Vista. There was no need that I was aware of to redo the Printer Drivers or the Video subsystem. Perhaps I am wrong, I don't know.
There were very good reasons. From NT4 to Windows 2003, Printer drivers ran in kernel space. This meant that a buggy printer driver could BSOD the machine. Now print drivers run in user space (there are other benefits as well, but that's probably the biggest).
The video system overhaul was well overdue, and mainly introduces something that matches - indeed, exceeds - the capabilities of OS X's "Quartz 2D/3D/Extreme/whatever". Further, stability is dramatically improved. You can literally hotplug a video card in Vista (even on hardware that technically doesn't support it) and all that will happen is the video subsystem will restart. On any previous versions of Windows - and other mainstream OSes - you'd be looking at a BSOD (/kernel panic). Since something like 50% of *all* BSODs are caused just by video drivers, according to Microsoft's statistics (that come from those "crash reporter" thingies), this represents a potentially *huge* user-visible reliability improvement.
(Caution: don't try it with anything you care about. Most video hardware *is not* hotplug capable, and doing so can certainly lead to physical damage that renders the hardware inoperable.)
What I do know is that video drivers were stable, frame rates were fast (I am not a gamer, but) video playback worked great. Things were stable enough that Windows 2003 has been out for five years and were only at SP2 level. Things were pretty stable coming out of the redesign starting with Win2k.
Vista is improving as the hardware developers refine their drivers. Framerates are already comparable between Vista and XP with the latest drivers from ATI and NVIDIA.
Many moons ago, I worked at WordPerfect. I was there when WordPerfect for Windows was first released. It was a disaster. WPWin5.1 was nothing but WP DOS 5.1 with a WYSIWYG interface bolted on. WPWin6.0 was a complete redesign that was arguably worse than WPWin5.1. For users that were accustomed to the stability of WP Dos 5.1, they were furious - and rightfully so, such that when Microsoft came out with Word, even though it sucked, it at least worked. And thus was the fall of WordPerfect.
I remember it well. Word was already making significant inroads against WP, but the first iterations of WPWIN really were the screwups that killed WP.
The only parallel I wish to draw here is that there was a LOT riding on WordPerfect getting it right. With Vista, there is/was a lot riding on MS getting it right. Well, MS didn't get it done right. Vista is the modern day equivalent of the Edsel.
Not really. There's a lot of people complaining about Vista, but most (if not all) of their arguments are utter bollocks. The hardware requirements are not high - I have run it happily on machines that were 5+ years old - and UAC is, ultimately, no different to the equivalents on OS X and Linux. "DRM" is probably the biggest non-argument of the lot, since either you're not using DRM-encumbered media, and it's completely irrelevant, or you are using DRM-encumbered media, and the alternative would be a blank screen.
Ultimately, the "problem" is not that Vista is bad, it's that XP is "good enough". So most people aren't going to "upgrade" until they get a new computer. It's not that they don't want VIsta, it's that they don't see any reason to go out of their way to get it.
On the corporate/business side, it's business as usual. There is *nothing* at all different about the supposed slow uptake of Vista compared to previous releases of Windows. Businesses move on a 3-5 year cycle, and outside of unmanaged small business networks, and those on the "cutting edge", no-one with any industry experience expected Vista to be rolled out any faster than it has been. You won't see any significant c
available RAM in single-digit megs (not a bad thing. empty ram is wasted ram, but if something in the foreground needs that ram for something, it needs to be made available right now.), drive activity going nuts whenever i do something simple like open a menu, page file size rising, programs running extremely slow. to me, all this fits the usual "out of ram. go use the swap" symptoms.
Sounds like some application had gone out of control. Not much the OS could do about that.
yes, and what i'm saying it that it seems to be reacting to something it shouldn't react to and the randomness of it is irritating. i can't think of anything that should require permission that it would do only every 3rd run, or anything that it does anytime that should require permission.
While this is true, there's not much the OS can do about a program that, say, every third run tries to write to a system-level Registry key to update it's default configuration.
UAC is triggered by programs trying to access protected parts of the system. This is not the OS's fault, it's the application's fault.
Bollocks. (a) Updates are free through Software Update. Unless you're talking about paid support, which as a home user I somehow doubt. (b) No one forces you to buy the new OS. I'm still running 10.4 on all machines and am chugging away quite happily, still getting software updates.
Each version of OS X has a relatively short support lifetime. For example, Apple no longer release updates for OS X 10.2, so you need to buy a newer version if you want bugs or security vulnerabilities addressed. 10.3 will probably suffer the same fate sometime in 2008.
Bollocks. Apple machines have been price competitive-to-cheaper than their counterparts in the PC world for a long, long time, especially when you take into account the software that you get in the deal. Google is your friend. Apple laptops are especially a deal, not even taking software into account.
Macs are price competitive if you are comparing *exactly* the same PC configuration. Otherwise they are not. If you want a cheap computer, Macs start at US$500, sans monitor, keyboard and mouse. If you want a cheap PC, Dell will sell you a whole computer for that price. Further up the specifications list, if you want a machine with a replaceable video card, or that can drive two external monitors, your minimum buy-in is a US$2500 Mac Pro. On the PC side, $500 will get you that same functionality.
This is before even looking at areas where Apple simply does not have a product, like a mid-range standalone computer, or a business-oriented laptop with a docking station.
People know what text editors and text processors are. They have been there since the dawn of computing, and there never was something special about them.
You do realise the *sole reason* a non-trivial chunk of contemporary computer users even have a computer is to access the web, right ?
But they don't know what web browsers are. When they became popular with the layman, it was Internet Exploder who was leading the market. It also had a generic name.
No, that would have been Netscape Navigator. You know, the guys who gave us the <BLINK> tag ?
Moreover, it's just a viewer. They don't have to actually work with what it views, unlike text editors.
What ?
It's obvious why bundling it with Windows made it the most popular web browser.
No, it's not. IE4 made IE the most popular web browser before Windows 98 was even released. IE5 finished the job before Windows 98 was even close to a majority market share.
MS doesn't want those fixed. Seriously, they make money by ensuring that other browsers can't compete because the Web is broken to conform to IE's modifications of the standards. In this way they lock people into their platform. If IE was standard compliant, then soon Web apps would be standard compliant, and then why the hell would big companies stick with IE and an expensive OS, when they can just run Linux for free?
For the vast, vast, VAST majority of consumers, Windows isn't expensive. For most of them, it's also free.
IE will never have the same functionality, at least in terms of standards compliance, as other browsers as long as MS is allowed to bundle it without also bundling competitors.
Who gets to define who the "competitors" are ? Who will keep this list updated ? Who will wear the additional support costs ? Who is responsible for fixing bugs ? Who will wear the costs of the "competitors" that aren't free, like Opera ?
If it has nothing to do with DRM, then please explain to me why every single device needs updated drivers in order to work properly under Vista when it used to be that Windows 2000, XP and 2003 all used the same exact driver?
For the same reason most NT 4.0 drivers don't work in Windows 2000, XP or 2003. Because it's a major kernel revision. Windows 2000 = NT 5.0, Windows XP = NT 5.1, Windows 2003 - NT 5.2. Windows Vista is NT 6.0.
This is before even getting into the complete redesign and reimplementation that the video display system, audio stack and network stack have gone. At the kernel level, XP->Vista is like Linux 2.2 -> 2.6, or NeXTSTEP 4.x -> OSX 10.4. Make no mistake, it is a large and significant update to the Windows NT kernel.
Crikey, Linux drivers typically can't even survive a trivial +0.0.1 kernel bump without breaking, OSX drivers have frequently broken after +0.1 revisions, yet you're getting upset because Windows has a major +1.x kernel revision and needs driver updates ? If only anti-Microsoft zealots had the same low expectations of Microsoft as they did to other vendors...
Forget that this is impossible to accomplish, but that didn't matter. Microsoft didn't rewrite the kernel to make it more secure, they rewrote it to secure premium content.
They didn't rewrite it at all - and the inclusion of protected paths were far from the only changes made. If you were more interested in the technology than the Microsoft-bashing, you'd probably be prepared to go out and learn about it.
This entire reworking of the kernel architecture has screwed everything up because every few milliseconds, the kernel needs to check to see if premium content is being played.
No, it doesn't. This *ONLY* happens when the ICT is set - ie: you are playing DRM-encumbered content. Further, modern computers have more than enough horsepower to make up for the overheads even when the protected paths are active (which is essentially never, at this particular point in time, given no content uses the ICT yet).
Let me ask you this: At what point do you think the Vista DRM activates when playing premium content?
The DRM systems are activated when the playback software indicates they should be by setting the Image Constraint Token.
When it reads the data from the HD-DVD disk? Yes... but what if you disabled that level... whelllll, we need to check at the kernel level, ring0, see if it is trying to get snuck past the front gates. You see, at every step along the way, your content is being checked, and double checked to see if DRM should be getting applied. If it didn't, then the advanced DRM features of Vista would have been trivial to circumvent.
You don't appear to have a clue what you're talking about.
You cannot have this level of kernel modification and NOT have it impact every other part of the system... Peering into the kernel activity using debug tools you can see the OS methodically checking itself, navel gazing if you will.
Please link to some evidence that the DRM subsystems are being used even when non-DRM-encumbered media is being played.
From the look of it you're just parroting standard Slashdot FUD, which is mostly embellishments on Gutmann's Vista paper. These claims have been refuted on numerous occasions, and most of the more outrageous ones - eg: the suggestion that HD video, regardless of its DRM status, simply wouldn't play on analogue screens, or that SPDIF outputs would be disabled regardless of whether the audio is DRM-encumbered - are trivially disproven simply by *using* Vista (something Mr Gutmann has not actually done, AFAIK).
If Vista has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft is laser-focused on superficial and eye-candy improvements, while caring very little about improving (or even fixing) the underlying technologies.
Uh, what ? The amount of changes in Vista relevant to "superficial and eye candy improvements" would struggle to be more than 10-15%.
The vast, vast bulk of work done to Vista was done to the internals - kernel, APIs, security, compatibility layers, etc. Very little was done with "eye candy" (as should be obvious, given how little the GUI has changed from XP - or, heck, even Windows *95* - to Vista).
Ah, so I go and look at the licenses for FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, which all seem to come with strings attached, no matter how loose. Note that each of these licenses are based on the premise that copyright law is valid and enforceable.
The elimination of copyright would have essentially zero impact on how the BSDL works, and its goals.
However, for the GPL, the elimination of copyright would completely circumvent how the GPL works and render it incapable of supporting its objectives.
There is a significant, qualitative difference between how copyright impacts the BSDL and the GPL, which is the point. GP was suggesting that without copyright - and hence without the GPL - something like "GNU/Linux" would have been impossible. I pointed out that the effect of no copyright on the BSDL would be negligible and as such would have had little impact on the development of BSDL licenses OSes like FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
Remember the old FSF party line: "Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary".
Of course it would be necessary, assuming you were attempting to do what the GPL does.
Kids today. Sheesh. Think about it: if copyright doesn't exist, freely copyable binary-only software is competing with freely-copyable source-provided software. My money would be on source-provided software doing better - it has a killer extra feature! the source!. Programmers would be paid to code up new features (less boring wheel reinventing code, too!), computer users would still want and buy newer, faster computers. The people who would lose would be boxed software distributors. Like, er, Microsoft.
Your logic is broken. Binary-only software today dominates the industry, despite its - relative to open source software - high cost. Eliminating copyright will make binary-only software free (ie: make it price-competitive with open source software). Most people have zero interest in the source code today. What makes you think they would if copyright didn't exist ?
This is before getting into how eliminating copyright would make the GPL unenforceable, and thus *substantially* change the economic arguments for commercial investment in GPLed source code.
Eliminating copyright would hurt closed-source software suppliers, since they would generally be only able to derive income from support contracts and the like. However, it would hurt the OSS world a *lot* more, by defanging the GPL and creating significant disincentives for corporate investment in OSS.
Without copyright law, the power of the GPL would be zilch, zippo, nada. The entire evolution of the GNU operating system environment would probably not exist, and you'd be all using pirated versions of Windows XP (or probably ME, since MSFT would probably not have invested anything like the money and resources they have into their OS's.
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD laugh at your scaremongering.
No, that is how Vista *SHOULD* work... How it *ACTUALLY* works in practice is something else entirely.
That's exactly how it works. Unless some DRM-encumbered media sets the ICT, no DRM is applied. None. Nada. Zilch.
The saving grace that keeps up the appearance of it working, albeit slowly, is that they spent so much development time creating error recovery that resets the stack/application and resumes without actually crashing. Put a debug trace on the app, you'll be able to see it tanking and restarting. So people complain about speed instead of it just not working, or crashing.
Third-party applications and drivers that crash have nothing to do with DRM, nor can blame for them be laid at Microsoft's feet.
There have already been numerous benchmarks showing that with up to date drivers and hardware, Vista matches - if not exceeds - the performance of Windows XP. Whatever you might think is causing your Vista installation to be slow and/or unstable, DRM ain't it.
For the record- I'm using Vista64 to write this. I've been trying to use Vista all year since its release. I use MS products 24/7, I'm not just some Linux junkie that is lookin to bash MS.
Makes no difference, you're still wrong.
As I've said elsewhere, "DRM" is quite possible the single biggest non-argument made against Vista (with the possible exception of "hardware requirements"). If you don't have DRM-encumbered media, the DRM subsystems never activate, and it simple doesn't matter. If you *do* have DRM-encumbered media, Vista isn't doing anything more than any other device capable of playing it would do (and the alternative to both is not being able to use the media at all).
Either way, it's irrelevant.
Until they completely pull DRM out of the kernel, I will never support the corporate adoption within our enterprise. In a perfect world, the DRM should only activate when "Premium Content" is being played.
That's exactly how Vista works. No DRM-encumbered content, no DRM being applied.
I've had more than one instance (happens at least every other day that I use this machine) where I have only OpenOffce.org writer (or a similarly non-intensive program) open, and it's SWAPPING with practically zero remaining RAM!
Firstly, how did you confirm what you thought was happening ?
Secondly, Windows will pre-emptively swap out when the machine is otherwise idle. Linux does it as well. It's a *good* thing, because it means if the machine really does have to swap (because of memory pressure), most of the heavy lifting is already done.
A bit of a shame IMO, as i really like some of vista's new stuff (the WGF stuff is a great improvement over the previous system and UAC would be great if they could make it a little less hyperactive (about every 3rd time i run KiCAD, it prompts me for some reason), along with several of the things you point out.)
UAC is only reacting to what the program is trying to do. It is the program, not UAC, that is broken.
RELEASED in 2006.
"Released" is an utterly worthless metric in the OSS world, where it can mean anything from a feature-complete, well-tested, well-documented, supported product to someone creating an empty Sourceforge site.
Your example is laughable (although not as stupid the equivalent Vista functionality was a reaction to it). Even as little as 6 months ago, getting Compiz/Beryl/whatever working *at all* (let alone reliably) required either a great deal or in-depth knowledge of the system.
The list is long.
You misspelled "wrong". Windows has had all of those things since it was released in 1993.
That may be the case in the US, it is not the case in Switzerland. I recently checked at MediaMarkt (which is a huge local chain) and retail prices are still in that ballpark. Granted, hardly anybody buys reatil, but I don't think it's unfair when I compare the price with comparable offers. And both, OS/X and Ubuntu 7.10 are comparable offers.
Regarding OSX, it is invalid to compare full retail Vista with it. You need to use upgrade prices (since every off the shelf copy of OS X is priced as an upgrade). You must also account for functionality Vista Ultimate has, that OSX does not. Media Centre, for example (a feature of non-trivial value on its own, for those who are interested).
Further, you need to remember that for most purchasers, Vista *is* free. It comes with their computer.
My point is that "free" and "free" are also not synonymous. Some software is free but not free, and some is free but not free, and some is both free and free. Two almost completely unrelated words that happen to be spelled and pronounced the same way in English. See how English fails us here? This is why you see people devolving to French (libre vs gratis), or syntax (free vs Free), or even examples (free-as-in-beer vs free-as-in-speech) to make the distinction more clear.
English only "fails" here because some people are dishonestly trying to leverage the commonly understood meaning of a particular word for their own agenda.
The same problem exists even with languages that have another word. "GPL" is no more synonymous with "libre" as it is with "free". The GPL is a software license. It lets you do some things and stops you doing others.
If you mean "GPL" then say it. Highlight the key aspects of it (eg: control over how other people's code is licensed) you believe delivers a net benfit. But do not try to dress it up with (inaccurate) slogans like "free as in speech", you are simply being dishonest.
An operating system that claims compatibility with existing software, should be compatible with existing software. If it's not, then the operating system has failed to fulfill its own promises.
Only if the applications are written using documented, supported and recommended APIs and methods.
*Vast* amounts of Windows software do not. Just look at how much of it breaks when not running under an Administrator account (no piece of software released in the last 8 or so years has any excuse for this), or from a service pack.
Microsoft have _zero_ responsibility to retain compatibility with undocumented, unsupported or deprecated APIs. That they expend _any_ effort to do so, in itself, is significant. This is before even getting into the massive scale of their work to remain "bug compatible" (eg: having special code in the Windows 95 memory manager to detect when Sim City is running and modify its behaviour to support a Sim City bug).
Yes, some software breaks from version to version of Windows - but in the context of the millions (if not tens of millions) of Windows (and DOS) programs that continue to work, it's statistical noise. No other platform or vendor even goes close to Microsoft and Windows, in terms of legacy code support coverage.
Sun has an interesting warranty with Solaris. If the new version of Solaris breaks any old program you have, Sun will work continuously with you until the problem is solved. What this means is that they will put real engineers (not telephone support people) on your problem and change the OS if required.
Somehow I doubt they do that if the application is using undocumented, unsupported or deprecated APIs and system features - which is why 99% of the software that breaks in new versions of Windows, does so.
I hope that helps draw the distinction for you.
I understand the distinction perfectly. My point is that "GPL" and "free" are not synonymous, despite dishonest (and ongoing) attempts to create that perception.
Incidentally, that whole "freedom from" argument that gets bandied about frequently regarding the GPL, doesn't carry a great deal of weight. It's *way* to easy to use it for justifying just about anything ("freedom from terrorism" being the most obvious contemporary example).
In the end, I think it would have been easier and cheaper to just subscribe to the damn cable, but that's not the point.
For most people, it is. They're not "hacking" the cable boxes out of principle, or to see how it works, they're doing it because they don't want to pay for it. All the CableCos need to do is making buying the same cost - or only marginally more expensive - than the "hacking", and they're set.
This is pretty much the same principle Apple uses. So long as getting OS X working on a frankenmac has about the same "cost" for most people as just buying a Mac, Apple has nothing to worry about.
History books will write about the Internet as a 1990s phenomenon, even though it existed long before, because only in the 1990s could most people use it.
I would go so far as to say history books will write that the Internet was a 2000s phenomenon (driven by MySpace, Facebook, et al) and that the 1990s were the "early days" of "primitive internet connectivity".
It is unlikely things like Gopher or Usenet will be anything more than footnotes - if that - outside of specialised books.
I meant libre, not gratis. Don't blame me for English's failings.
GPLed software is not "libre", it is simply GPLed software.
Likewise, your problem is not with the lanugage, it is with the loaded use of inappropriate words in an appeal to emotion. Fortunately, RMS's 1984-esque abuse of the word "free" has gained little recognition outside of a tiny proportion of the computing industry.