The big difference between MS and Linux distro's including such utilities is that MS is forcing competing commercial offerings out of the market by leveraging it's OS.
Nothing in Windows stops me using alternative software for browsing, search, etc.
The one about Windows Defender is quite transparent, first they write software (OS and applications) that is suseptible to abuse and expect others to build a line of defence.
Windows Defender (and similar products from Symantec, etc) do next to nothing to protect against OS flaws. That is not their purpose. They exist to protect the ignorant user from his mistakes.
By the time the defensive stuff starts making money off it's own, Microsoft (the originator of the weaknesses) comes up with an in-house 'solution'. Had that solution been the hardening of the OS and applications no-one would have complained but with Defender they try to make money off their own failings.
Firstly, Defender is free. Secondly, it's not solving a problem that "hardening of the OS and applications" would.
In addition to that, since the antitrust procedings started, the list price for Windows has quadrupled.
You are lying.
Windows 95: $209
Windows 98: $209
Windows XP Home: $199
Windows Vista Home Basic: $199
Windows Vista Home Premium: $239
Taking into account *only* inflation (not even additional features and functional improvements) Windows has gotten _cheaper_ over the last decade or so. Even if you looked at Vista Ultimate, which retails for $400, it's only about 50% higher in adjusted price to Windows 95.
Under current law, you can have a monopoly so long as you don't use that monopoly to gain a monopoly to another market. Microsoft used their desktop OS monopoly to get a browser monopoly and then a media player monopoly.
Saying "browsers" and "media players" are whole markets unto themselves is like saying "TCP/IP stacks" or "text editors" are.
Incidentally, it's hard to argue with a straight face that Microsoft's "monopoly" was the reason it dominated the browser and media player markets, when Netscape did such an excellent job of screwing up Navigator and the main alternatives on offer in the latter were Quicktime player and Realplayer (both of which remain black holes of suck, even after a decade of significant improvement).
They've had print-the-barcode-and-scan-it check-in here (Australia) for years now. You print your barcode when you book your flight and scan it at a machine at the airport, which then confirms and even lets you do things like change seats if there are others available. Then you just walk on through (or check bags and walk on through... and I can't see how you could get around that, bags being physical objects and all).
The only other downside is if you're 6'2 and want to sit in an exit row, you can't allocate yourself one, as someone has to ask you the obligatory "in the unlikely event of an emergency, blahblahblah" and make sure you look physically capable of opening the emergency exit. One trick I've learnt, however, is that the service desk *inside* the terminal, past the security gates, is also able to reallocate seats. So now if I'm travelling without baggage, I just wander straight through the security gates and get bumped to an exit row there.
Unfortunately, a lot more people seem to know about the extra leg room in exit rows these days, so it's gotten to the point now that arriving any less than an hour before departure means there's none left:(.
From the comments I would propose that the traditional linux stronghold has been lost. Anyone making negative references to Microsoft products seems to be modded down and 'out yelled', whether the comments are on technical merits, anecdotal or opinionated, or derogatory.
You must be reading some other Slashdot.
Here, pretty much any post that criticises Windows or Microsoft is a shoe-in for some sort of positive moderation, regardless of its accuracy or how (badly) it might be written. Anyone posting about Microsoft in a non-critical fashion - even if they do nothing more than correct factual errors in a neutral fashion - is considered "pro Microsoft", a "shill", an "Astroturfer" or similar. Technical arguments against Windows are few, far between and typically based on 10+ year old (outdated) information, if not on a completely different product (Windows 9x). Posters revel in their ignorance of Windows and other technology they don't like (eg: DRM) and see no problem whatsoever in basing rants against such topics upon that ignorance.
Slashdot lost as a "traditional Linux stronghold" ? You must be joking. Slashdot has become the Fox News of the Linux world.
Hmm Australians should pickup Autopatcher. WindizUpdate cannot be stopped unless Windows Update Supports other browers. Breach of Australia's fair trade laws.
My current MBP has a 17" screen at 1920x1200, compare that with the top of the line ThinkPad with a 15.4" screen at 1600×1024. If you're using a TP, you're not on the right equipment for "serious" graphical work.
However, while Apple only makes one laptop - in the "aircraft carrier" class - with such a high screen resolution (and as a BTO option at that), which they released a few scant months ago, PC laptops have had LCD resolutions that high for _years_.
Copyright law has worked very well for hundreds of years as an industrial regulation. Legally restricting how and what companies sell actually works pretty well. The problem with copyright law starts when people expect it to restrict non-commercial private uses by individuals.
True, but that's mostly due to the (historically) extreme difficulty in enforcing copyright in that context. To the point that the futility of doing so has even been recognised in legislation (eg: format and time-shifting).
DRM isn't doing anything outside the fundamental spirit and purpose of copyright (that is, it's giving the owners of the content as much control over it as possible). The problem is that it's now making 'policing' copyright on "non-commercial private use" possible.
One of the few good things about DRM, is that it is exposing the basic problems with the whole concept of copyright. That whole "but it's just information" thing is hard for people to grasp when the information and the medium are difficult and/or (relatively) expensive to separate. Now that 'anyone' can make a million copies of something, practically instantly, at near zero cost, the flawed premise behind trying to treat information like physical property is becoming more obvious.
Those with their snouts in the copyright trough have been watching this moment in time approach with dread since the first printing press was invented, and they're doing everything they can since then to avoid their deserved fate with the buggy-whip manufacturers.
A former co-worker used to turn her G5 off every day by pressing the front button. I saw her do this once and said (very nicely) "You know it's better to shut down from the menu, right?" and she answered "Yeah, I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's faster." She had been doing that nightly (or maybe just weekly) for a couple years.
On a G5 (and, indeed, most PCs anf Macs <6-7 years old) pressing the power button should result in a clean shutdown.
My current desktop PC build (put together 18 mos ago) has 2GB of RAM that ran me somewhere around $130. So - roughly 3 times as much RAM as that first PC had in hard drive space - for roughly 1/3 the price.
Misinterpretation on my part, I though the OP was saying when he got his first hard disk, his machine's RAM size was larger than it.
When I first bought a hard drive it had less capacity than all the RAM on this computer, and it was a big drive. The salesperson laughed at me thinking there was no way to fill it. And I paid more for the drive than I paid for this RAM by a factor of 2 or 3.
If (hard) drugs were legal, it would be very hard to prove murder by overdose, etc. You could kill pretty much anyone you want: just lace something with a drug and say "Oh, he liked LSD on his cereal in the morning. It was a horrible accident." (I don't really know how lethal LSD is, but you get the idea).
How would the situation be any different to drugs that are currently legal, but lethal in sufficient quanities ?
Like, oh, I don't know, alcohol ? Or sleeping pills ?
There are _lethal_ drugs today that are in common use (albeit often requiring a prescription). Further, there are recreational drugs that are legal today but are more dangerous than many illegal drugs.
I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.
Right. YOU don't seem to be having the problem, so there is no problem.
Actually, it only takes one working example (GP may or may not be telling the truth, it's irrelevant) to prove that it *isn't* Vista itself, but some outside influence (drivers, hardware bugs, etc).
Are you implying DRM would have worked if only they'd done more, sooner? I try to avoid such phrasing. DRM-- the entire idea of DRM, not just the implementations-- is fundamentally flawed. Don't want any non-tech people who happen to read these posts to get the wrong idea. DRM works about as well as a locked door in a free standing wall-- a few people will be fooled and not notice the wall can be walked around or that they can be on either side of the wall anytime they want, and that in turn fools a few more into thinking DRM maybe could work.
No, DRM is more like the little padlock on your luggage. Stops 90% of people (because they're honest/disinterested/incapable), but is ineffectual against any sort of targeted attack (analogue holes, etc).
That MS tried it anyway shows even many smart, technologically sophisticated people got it wrong, or more likely knew better but couldn't convince a few key people (presumably smart, knowledgeable people themselves) that DRM wouldn't work and should not be tried.
Microsoft "tried it" because if they didn't their platform wouldn't have been able to be licensed for "HD" content. Given that consumers are quite interested in said content, and will get it via commodity hardware (that implements exactly the same DRM) if they don't get it via their computers, that's just smart business.
DRM doesn't need to be perfect. Heck, it doesn't even need to be close to perfect. It just needs to be good enough so that customers will simply buy the content rather than spend time trying to work around the DRM, or locating a pirated, DRM-free version. For another example of the principle, it's exactly the same approach Apple use with regards to OS X on non-Apple hardware.
I really hope Microsoft adopts an iterative development and release cycle on the order of around every six months for Windows some time in the future.
They're called Service Packs.
Please note that OS X has proven that a faster iterative development model can work for a desktop operating system. They're releasing every year or so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X#Mac_OS_X_10. 0_.28Cheetah.29/, which might be the sweet spot, but I bet they could do better.
No, they're not. It's over 2 years since 10.4 and it was 18 months between 10.3 and 10.4. The last time is was close to a year between OS X released was 10.2 and 10.3, back in 2003. OS X's development cycle is lengthening because the product is maturing (as expected). After 10.5, I'd be surprised if we see 10.6 before mid-2010, as it rounds out to that rough "industry standard" average of 2.5 - 3 years.
You won't see full-blown product refreshes of commercial OSes every 6 months, if for no other reason than people actually have to pay for them (and wouldn't, that frequently - not even the Apple customers). It's bad enough hearing the "forced upgrade" FUD when the upgrades come every few years. Imagine what it would be like if they came twice a year.
Big-bang software releases, ala Vista taking years to develop, are destined for bugs and customer rejection like this. If you, as a software developer are stuck in a project with a release date longer than a year away, please take the time to set your project manager straight.
Significant product updates like Vista (and to a lesser extent, OS X 10.5) take years because they're *big*. Vista is easily the biggest update to Windows NT in its history. Further, it's typically a poorly used example, as well, because while the _product_ (replacement for XP) took a bit under 6 years to release, the actual _code development_ time was only about 3 years (after the "Longhorn reboot" in 2003). Given its scope, 3 years was not an unreasonable timeframe at all (heck, 4 years wouldn't have been).
When you've actually got to worry about things like running a business, and more importantly selling to other busineses, that whole "release early, release often" mantra doesn't work very well.
Besides all that, ultimately, Microsoft aren't markedly worse than anyone else. They're averaging around 3 years between OS releases (NT4 - 1996, NT5 - 2000, NT 5.1 - 2001, NT 5.2 - 2003, NT 6.0 - 2006). RHEL is in the same ballpark (RHEL2 - 2002, RHEL3 - 2003, RHEL4 - 2005, RHEL5 - 2007). Solaris 10 has been kicking around since 2005 (and 9 since 2002).
Slashdot Mirror
The big difference between MS and Linux distro's including such utilities is that MS is forcing competing commercial offerings out of the market by leveraging it's OS.
Nothing in Windows stops me using alternative software for browsing, search, etc.
The one about Windows Defender is quite transparent, first they write software (OS and applications) that is suseptible to abuse and expect others to build a line of defence.
Windows Defender (and similar products from Symantec, etc) do next to nothing to protect against OS flaws. That is not their purpose. They exist to protect the ignorant user from his mistakes.
By the time the defensive stuff starts making money off it's own, Microsoft (the originator of the weaknesses) comes up with an in-house 'solution'. Had that solution been the hardening of the OS and applications no-one would have complained but with Defender they try to make money off their own failings.
Firstly, Defender is free. Secondly, it's not solving a problem that "hardening of the OS and applications" would.
In addition to that, since the antitrust procedings started, the list price for Windows has quadrupled.
You are lying.
Windows 95: $209
Windows 98: $209
Windows XP Home: $199
Windows Vista Home Basic: $199
Windows Vista Home Premium: $239
Taking into account *only* inflation (not even additional features and functional improvements) Windows has gotten _cheaper_ over the last decade or so. Even if you looked at Vista Ultimate, which retails for $400, it's only about 50% higher in adjusted price to Windows 95.
The rest of your post is about as credible.
Under current law, you can have a monopoly so long as you don't use that monopoly to gain a monopoly to another market. Microsoft used their desktop OS monopoly to get a browser monopoly and then a media player monopoly.
Saying "browsers" and "media players" are whole markets unto themselves is like saying "TCP/IP stacks" or "text editors" are.
Incidentally, it's hard to argue with a straight face that Microsoft's "monopoly" was the reason it dominated the browser and media player markets, when Netscape did such an excellent job of screwing up Navigator and the main alternatives on offer in the latter were Quicktime player and Realplayer (both of which remain black holes of suck, even after a decade of significant improvement).
They've had print-the-barcode-and-scan-it check-in here (Australia) for years now. You print your barcode when you book your flight and scan it at a machine at the airport, which then confirms and even lets you do things like change seats if there are others available. Then you just walk on through (or check bags and walk on through... and I can't see how you could get around that, bags being physical objects and all).
The only other downside is if you're 6'2 and want to sit in an exit row, you can't allocate yourself one, as someone has to ask you the obligatory "in the unlikely event of an emergency, blahblahblah" and make sure you look physically capable of opening the emergency exit. One trick I've learnt, however, is that the service desk *inside* the terminal, past the security gates, is also able to reallocate seats. So now if I'm travelling without baggage, I just wander straight through the security gates and get bumped to an exit row there.
Unfortunately, a lot more people seem to know about the extra leg room in exit rows these days, so it's gotten to the point now that arriving any less than an hour before departure means there's none left :(.
From the comments I would propose that the traditional linux stronghold has been lost. Anyone making negative references to Microsoft products seems to be modded down and 'out yelled', whether the comments are on technical merits, anecdotal or opinionated, or derogatory.
You must be reading some other Slashdot.
Here, pretty much any post that criticises Windows or Microsoft is a shoe-in for some sort of positive moderation, regardless of its accuracy or how (badly) it might be written. Anyone posting about Microsoft in a non-critical fashion - even if they do nothing more than correct factual errors in a neutral fashion - is considered "pro Microsoft", a "shill", an "Astroturfer" or similar. Technical arguments against Windows are few, far between and typically based on 10+ year old (outdated) information, if not on a completely different product (Windows 9x). Posters revel in their ignorance of Windows and other technology they don't like (eg: DRM) and see no problem whatsoever in basing rants against such topics upon that ignorance.
Slashdot lost as a "traditional Linux stronghold" ? You must be joking. Slashdot has become the Fox News of the Linux world.
Hmm Australians should pickup Autopatcher. WindizUpdate cannot be stopped unless Windows Update Supports other browers. Breach of Australia's fair trade laws.
How do you figure that ?
My current MBP has a 17" screen at 1920x1200, compare that with the top of the line ThinkPad with a 15.4" screen at 1600×1024. If you're using a TP, you're not on the right equipment for "serious" graphical work.
However, while Apple only makes one laptop - in the "aircraft carrier" class - with such a high screen resolution (and as a BTO option at that), which they released a few scant months ago, PC laptops have had LCD resolutions that high for _years_.
Copyright law has worked very well for hundreds of years as an industrial regulation. Legally restricting how and what companies sell actually works pretty well. The problem with copyright law starts when people expect it to restrict non-commercial private uses by individuals.
True, but that's mostly due to the (historically) extreme difficulty in enforcing copyright in that context. To the point that the futility of doing so has even been recognised in legislation (eg: format and time-shifting).
DRM isn't doing anything outside the fundamental spirit and purpose of copyright (that is, it's giving the owners of the content as much control over it as possible). The problem is that it's now making 'policing' copyright on "non-commercial private use" possible.
One of the few good things about DRM, is that it is exposing the basic problems with the whole concept of copyright. That whole "but it's just information" thing is hard for people to grasp when the information and the medium are difficult and/or (relatively) expensive to separate. Now that 'anyone' can make a million copies of something, practically instantly, at near zero cost, the flawed premise behind trying to treat information like physical property is becoming more obvious.
Those with their snouts in the copyright trough have been watching this moment in time approach with dread since the first printing press was invented, and they're doing everything they can since then to avoid their deserved fate with the buggy-whip manufacturers.
Music and movies are intellectual content you PAY to own.
I pay nothing for radio and FTA TV.
Once you have actual ownership of it, you should have more fair usage rights.
You don't own it in any meaningful sense. You might own the media it is on (or not, eg: streaming video), but you don't own the work.
The GPL is telling you, the user, what you can do with my software. DRM is telling you, the user, what you can do with your own data.
You don't own "data" that someone else has the copyright to. DRM is telling you what you can do with *someone else's* data.
If a company wants to build a black box from the ground up they should be free to.
The author(s) of the GPL disagree. They consider doing so to be morally wrong.
Truly, they are evil, and any person of conscience could not work there and retain their integrity.
If Microsoft is your measure of "evil", then you need a serious LARTing.
On the 1-10 scale of evil corporate bastardry, Microsoft wouldn't even merit a 5.
A former co-worker used to turn her G5 off every day by pressing the front button. I saw her do this once and said (very nicely) "You know it's better to shut down from the menu, right?" and she answered "Yeah, I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's faster." She had been doing that nightly (or maybe just weekly) for a couple years.
On a G5 (and, indeed, most PCs anf Macs <6-7 years old) pressing the power button should result in a clean shutdown.
My current desktop PC build (put together 18 mos ago) has 2GB of RAM that ran me somewhere around $130. So - roughly 3 times as much RAM as that first PC had in hard drive space - for roughly 1/3 the price.
Misinterpretation on my part, I though the OP was saying when he got his first hard disk, his machine's RAM size was larger than it.
When I first bought a hard drive it had less capacity than all the RAM on this computer, and it was a big drive. The salesperson laughed at me thinking there was no way to fill it. And I paid more for the drive than I paid for this RAM by a factor of 2 or 3.
I find that difficult to believe. When ?
Vista has its "ReadyBoost" feature which AFAIK is pretty much like using a USB flash drive as a kind of specialized swap file.
Readyboost is more akin to another layer of disk/filesystem cache, rather than VM/swap.
If (hard) drugs were legal, it would be very hard to prove murder by overdose, etc. You could kill pretty much anyone you want: just lace something with a drug and say "Oh, he liked LSD on his cereal in the morning. It was a horrible accident." (I don't really know how lethal LSD is, but you get the idea).
How would the situation be any different to drugs that are currently legal, but lethal in sufficient quanities ?
Like, oh, I don't know, alcohol ? Or sleeping pills ?
There are _lethal_ drugs today that are in common use (albeit often requiring a prescription). Further, there are recreational drugs that are legal today but are more dangerous than many illegal drugs.
As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me, [...]
It shoudn't. That's the sort of attitude tyrants depend on.
Just wondering how you guys would draw the line.
Well before the prosecution of victimless crimes like drug use. Alas, the legal system in most countries is far beyond where I would draw the line.
I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.
Economics.
You aren't required to teach. You can teach or work in the field, for a minimum of 4 years.
There are people who slog through 4 years of an Engineering degree and then *don't* work as an Engineer !?
/Why ?
Right. YOU don't seem to be having the problem, so there is no problem.
Actually, it only takes one working example (GP may or may not be telling the truth, it's irrelevant) to prove that it *isn't* Vista itself, but some outside influence (drivers, hardware bugs, etc).
Are you implying DRM would have worked if only they'd done more, sooner? I try to avoid such phrasing. DRM-- the entire idea of DRM, not just the implementations-- is fundamentally flawed. Don't want any non-tech people who happen to read these posts to get the wrong idea. DRM works about as well as a locked door in a free standing wall-- a few people will be fooled and not notice the wall can be walked around or that they can be on either side of the wall anytime they want, and that in turn fools a few more into thinking DRM maybe could work.
No, DRM is more like the little padlock on your luggage. Stops 90% of people (because they're honest/disinterested/incapable), but is ineffectual against any sort of targeted attack (analogue holes, etc).
That MS tried it anyway shows even many smart, technologically sophisticated people got it wrong, or more likely knew better but couldn't convince a few key people (presumably smart, knowledgeable people themselves) that DRM wouldn't work and should not be tried.
Microsoft "tried it" because if they didn't their platform wouldn't have been able to be licensed for "HD" content. Given that consumers are quite interested in said content, and will get it via commodity hardware (that implements exactly the same DRM) if they don't get it via their computers, that's just smart business.
DRM doesn't need to be perfect. Heck, it doesn't even need to be close to perfect. It just needs to be good enough so that customers will simply buy the content rather than spend time trying to work around the DRM, or locating a pirated, DRM-free version. For another example of the principle, it's exactly the same approach Apple use with regards to OS X on non-Apple hardware.
Continuing your reasoning, I see few reasons anyone would use XP as an OS over 2K...
Better manageability through Group Policy and better performance on higher-end machines are two reasons that spring immediately to mind.
I really hope Microsoft adopts an iterative development and release cycle on the order of around every six months for Windows some time in the future.
They're called Service Packs.
Please note that OS X has proven that a faster iterative development model can work for a desktop operating system. They're releasing every year or so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X#Mac_OS_X_10. 0_.28Cheetah.29/, which might be the sweet spot, but I bet they could do better.
No, they're not. It's over 2 years since 10.4 and it was 18 months between 10.3 and 10.4. The last time is was close to a year between OS X released was 10.2 and 10.3, back in 2003. OS X's development cycle is lengthening because the product is maturing (as expected). After 10.5, I'd be surprised if we see 10.6 before mid-2010, as it rounds out to that rough "industry standard" average of 2.5 - 3 years.
You won't see full-blown product refreshes of commercial OSes every 6 months, if for no other reason than people actually have to pay for them (and wouldn't, that frequently - not even the Apple customers). It's bad enough hearing the "forced upgrade" FUD when the upgrades come every few years. Imagine what it would be like if they came twice a year.
Big-bang software releases, ala Vista taking years to develop, are destined for bugs and customer rejection like this. If you, as a software developer are stuck in a project with a release date longer than a year away, please take the time to set your project manager straight.
Significant product updates like Vista (and to a lesser extent, OS X 10.5) take years because they're *big*. Vista is easily the biggest update to Windows NT in its history. Further, it's typically a poorly used example, as well, because while the _product_ (replacement for XP) took a bit under 6 years to release, the actual _code development_ time was only about 3 years (after the "Longhorn reboot" in 2003). Given its scope, 3 years was not an unreasonable timeframe at all (heck, 4 years wouldn't have been).
When you've actually got to worry about things like running a business, and more importantly selling to other busineses, that whole "release early, release often" mantra doesn't work very well.
Besides all that, ultimately, Microsoft aren't markedly worse than anyone else. They're averaging around 3 years between OS releases (NT4 - 1996, NT5 - 2000, NT 5.1 - 2001, NT 5.2 - 2003, NT 6.0 - 2006). RHEL is in the same ballpark (RHEL2 - 2002, RHEL3 - 2003, RHEL4 - 2005, RHEL5 - 2007). Solaris 10 has been kicking around since 2005 (and 9 since 2002).
I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood. I thought playing back media IS "normal usage" for a desktop computer.
Media != DRM-encumbered media. That's the problem.