the problem nowadays is that many intel machines (desktops) can only take 512mb.
This is a problem?
512MB will easily last you for the next 3 years, at which point your entire PC will be obsolete anyways.
so that's when they decided to trojan in the registration thing
huh? You mean product activation? I wasn't aware that was a bad thing. I mean all you guys keep toting that you buy software and music, so this isn't a problem, right? Unless of course you've been lying. (sorry, not intended towards you Polo). I think that it's a good move, helps to cut down on the rampant piracy. Since apparently > 1/2 the piracy is casual "hey, can I borrow that CD?" this helps to significantly reduce the amount of casual piracy.
Unfortunately the price savings will not be passed onto the consumer, which is where they should be, but you can't expect that out of any capitalist corporation. grrr....
if your laptop doesn't use SODIMMS, then it's either really old or nonstandard.
And if you have older hardware then you're most likely not wanting the latest and greatest in computer software either. Anything that's > 3 years old is considered ancient, and you can't expect the newest software to run on it (with the exception of linux, which is designed to be able to run on those). Any commercial software will choke on anything > 3 years old pretty much, so you can't fault MS there. If MS did keep it such that it could run reasonably on those old machines, they'd be choking what their OS could do, and then people would complain about the lack of new features. They can't win.
likely to have to upgrade even to _read_ documents
FYI ever since Office97 all documents are forward-compatible and backward-compatible. Any features that are implemented in newer versions will be gracefully ignored by older versions, but yet they will be kept so you can open a OfficeXP document in an older version of Office you can still edit it, save it, bring it back to your new version and still have all of your new features there. It's pretty cool.
586 with 32MB? No. considering how that is at least 3 years old, that's ancient in computer years, and no, it would not run at all on that machine, but then again very few people still have that type of machine, and the ones that still do aren't interested in the latest OS anyways and are probably still running Win95 perfectly happily.
I just booted linux on a similar machine, and it took 48s to get to logged in usage state in Mandrake via xwindows. Whoever said they boot to a usable state in 6s I think needs to give their head a shake, or provide some video footage to back up that claim. My PC takes about 6s just to POST, nevermind load the OS.
It would be really cool if Microsoft could come up with some sort of Flash-ROM boot loader to speed up boot times
Well the current system is leaps and bounds ahead of the previous system, and from post-post to usable is about 18sec, which is astounding for windows. Even if you used some sort of flash or stored image or something, you might be able to cut that down to 12s (unless you store the actual user logged in image on disk too, but then loading up all the ram will take time too)... In any case, you're talking ~5-7sec saving time, which I'm not worried about.
But yes, it would be cool =) Or just use suspend-to-ram, which will restore your system from "power on" in about 3 seconds!
a linux system that boots in 3 seconds! Thats faster than my monitor!
LOL. Yeah, I usually have my bios on "fast boot: disabled" so that I can see the bios boot screen (just hit escape to skip the memory test) otherwise by the time my monitor has warmed up it's already booting the OS.
Sticking part of your OS on the BIOS is a pretty neat idea, and you definitely couldn't do that with windows, that's for sure, but then again most of the market that it is targeted at isn't the type of market who knows how to flash their bios nevermind boot off it =)
On the other hand though, I've had poor support for some of my hardware.
Yeah, WTF happened with ATI anyways? They used to have substandard hardware and kickass drivers, and now that they've picked up in the hardware arena their drivers are sorely lacking. I know, I have a AiW128 as well and vowed never to buy another ATI card after that. However you can't blame MS for 3rd party drivers, MS has nothing to do with that.
However XP detected not only my AiW128 and installed ALL drivers for it, it also detected and installed drivers for my webcam and camera perfectly! From a fresh install within a few clicks I was already taking movies with my webcam, taking and downloading pictures with my camera and printing them, orgaizing them into picture albums, and I could capture TV and watch it as well, out of the box. I was very impressed.
It's a shame I can't somehow preview XP on my current hardware before I decide to purchase
*cough* *cough* who says that you can't preview?
IF you want to check, head on over to MS and either (a) sign up for the $10 preview program or (b) check the Hardware Compatibility List, or (c) get the program that checks your hardware and tells you if it's compatible with XP out of the box.
but I dig the ability to program simple scripts to automate tasks
I will agree that windows' scripting abilitys out of the box is somewhat lacking, but again that's not the market that they are aiming for. However getting perl or any number of other scripting languages is just a click away. Technically perl isn't part of linux either, it's just a bundled utility (woah, don't flaim for that statement, just making a point. Yes it comes with it and is heavily used by many apps, and that's a good thing that windows lacks IMO).
Something I've been dying to do is create a script to record my favorite morning radio show in the morning, convert the file to a compatible audio format, and then burn to audio CD
Well XP now includes out-of-the-box basic CD burning capabilities curtosy of Roxio (.. ugh), which means that it is most definitely possible to do this rather easily using a simple.cmd script file, windows media encoder and the built in CD burning capabilities. I'm assuming that you'd want to use a CDRW each day, and I don't know if it's easy to erase a CDRW from the prompt, I haven't tried it yet. But if you couldn't, you could just do it the night before.
XP does sound like it's come a long way from Win2k, but it will still be tough to decide to stick with Win2k, switch to XP, or switch to Linux.
Chaq'un son goût. Try out XP if you want, see how it fits. The UI is very different and much easier to use IMO, you can always dual boot to linux, or just switch to linux. But if you are interested, at least give it a try. Or just go down to your closest computer store and play with their new machine that'll be running it if you're completely against any sort of piracy.
If nothing else, passengers and crew will not sit quietly should someone take control of the plane.
Right, because they will all have been knocked out by sleeping gas before the hijackers move the next time.
There is one way, and one way only, to stop terrorism. People don't just blow up things and crash planes into buildings for no reason. People are obviously angry at the US. If you can figure out why and try to solve it, you will have a much better chance of having this not happen again than if you just "bomb" some place back to the stoneage, you can't kill'em all, and what doesn't kill them just makes them stronger and more devious.
Just put it in the baggage compartment, not in the cockpit, or bury it in a place which can't be accessed while the plane is in-flight
Are the circuit breakers in your house encased under cement? There's good reason to have them accessible, in case they blow. If you wanted to have them inaccessable, just remove them, but there MUST and will always be some sort of way to override the system in case of electrical failure / something goes wrong, and thus the hijackers can still control the plane. They can yank at wires if they have to, but for the forseeable future there will always be a way to hijack them.
And as for the "suicide" button, that doesn't work so well when you're on local flights. The plane might not be loaded with enough feul to get to a "safe" crash zone, and the plane doesn't need to have a lot of feul to be dangerous.
I firmly believe that you cannot stop someone who is willing to trade their life for their objective. If someone is willing to die to do something, there isn't going to be much, ever, that you can do to stop them.
The vast vast majority of Microsoft's money comes from OEM installations of Office and operating systems
Thanks, but you're way off base there.
OEM revenue was $4.72 billion in 1998, $6.40 billion in 1999, and $7.01 billion in 2000.
Since the revenue was $15.2bil in 1998, $19.7bil in 1999 and $23.0bil in 2000, that's hardly the "vast majority".
FYI - Productivity Applications and Developer revenue was $7.04 billion, $8.82 billion, and $10.47 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Windows Platforms revenue was $6.28 billion, $8.50 billion, and $9.38 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Consumer and Other revenue was $1.94 billion, $2.43 billion, and $3.11 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Microsoft has to CONVINCE consumers that they NEED the new operating system
Did you need that N64 or Gamecube or PS2 or Xbox? Did you need that new pair of shoes, new video card, new dvd drive, new TV? In most cases no, but people always buy things that they don't need. Indeed 95% of all marketing for all products is designed to convince people that they need things that they don't.
First, they discontinue support and patches for old products.
Oh really? I guess that discontinuing support after 3 years when there are 2 new product releases out and most people have already migrated to newer versions of your software doesn't have much of a reason there, eh? I guess you're angry at Ford because they don't make parts for the Model T anymore too?
they only support new hardware in the new operating system
Since when is MS responsible for device drivers? They're not. The people who make the hardware are responsible for drivers, MS has never been. Following that analogy I guess that I should be angry at linux because my new Geforce 3 card isn't fully supported out of the box too, eh?
Thus, if you get a new computer, you HAVE to have the new OS.
Again, the manuf's fault, not MS's.
Third, they make it very easy for users of the new Office software to make documents that are not backward compatible
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that all products are supposed to be 100% backward compatible. I guess that you still want to be using text mode and RTF then huh? You have to drop backwards compatibility sometime. And besides, you can always save as the old version, it's not that difficult if you need to. You can't expect all future releases to conform to the current format, otherwise you'd be bitching because there isn't any room for more functionality. Can't please people these days!
About a third of all people who need a new version of Office will just buy a new computer to get it pre-installed.
Where'd you get that BS from? If you have a link for that, please be sure to post it. Sounds like one of those 95% of statistics are made up on the spot things to me...
The plan is multi-faceted, but has proven to work in the past
Welcome to capitalism? That's the way that it works everywhere. People rarely need a new product or car or TV or clothes or sofa or gadget, they're convinced by the people who make them.. That's how you succeed in this economy.
The easiest solution for most people is to buy a new computer
Wow. I guess that dropping $1000 for you to get a new computer vs $200 to get the software is the same for you, huh? Care to spread some of that money this way? Or better yet donate it.
they will only have the pre-install option of getting Office XP
Funny that, I've been looking for a new laptop lately and I've seen only about 3 models that have Office XP preinstalled, and on 2 of the cases I asked if I could get it not installed and they said "sure" for a discount.
And you still end up with an OS that provides the same basic functionality to 99% of all computer users that Windows 3.1 did.
If you think that Windows XP has 99% of the same functionality that Windows 311 did you need to give your head a shake and climb out from under that rock. Linux has far far far more in common with the 70's unix than Windows XP does with Windows NT 4 nevermind Windows 3.11. There's no point in even debating this point.
If you're a linux zealot that hates microsoft then don't bother reading and just moderate away as Troll, save yourself a few minutes.
The article looked reasonable until I read this:
He can do this by releasing a new operating system even more bloated, slow and enormous than his current excrescences, thus requiring a general round of expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrading-pointless for the consumers
What type of bull-ass-shit FUD is that? Excuse me, Mr Eben Moglen, but what information do you have to base this claim on? This is hardly surprising that this would up on/. with a classic gem like that in there. For-your-information I am using XP now as I type, and there is quite a lot of innovation that went into this product. Quite a lot, I might add, that customers have been bitching about for years and years. For starters, they finally got rid of the hideous Win3.11/Win9X codebase, which BTW they have been trying to do since Windows95 came out. Windows 98 was supposed to be based on the NT kernel, but there was far too much resistance from the consumer base who was claiming that their legacy applications would not run, thus MS had to release another version off their 3.11 base. Windows98SE was supposed to be an indication that they wanted to stop yet again, and WinME was supposed to be called Win98TE (third edition) but marketing thought that it would be a very bad idea to do that again.
In any case, they have finally released a product that is, IMO, much more user friendly, finally away from the Win3.1/9x codebase, which is what people have been asking for for years. Sure, it does take a bit more processing power, however I noticed that on a fresh install, NOT ONLY does it boot in less time than linux does (30s from POWER ON to completely logged in. It's insanely fast), but it also takes LESS memory on boot than W2K did. MS did extensive user testing on their new modifications to their interface to make it much more friendly for Mom&Pop and the traditional Win9X user base, and included the options to turn this off so that you can go back to the W2K style interface. They have also abstracted the user interface layer sufficiently so that it is possible to create your own user interface entirely, as these people have done to give you whatever type of interface you want. They have made the system much more robust and fault tolerant, indeed even more than W2K. They've added driver rollback, system restore and numerous other features to save people from their own mistakes, they've implemented a much more rigerous testing plan to ensure that drivers can't cause a system problem, they've implemented a system where drivers that are known to cause system problems will have the user warned prior to installing (and before you scream foul here, you can not only disable this, but you can edit the list yourself. It will not prohibit you from installing anything that you are determined to install). They have made it very simple to use webcams and cameras and scanners and other devices with very very little effort at all, they have given simple file sharing and networking and firewall and routing capabilities for home networks, and countless other features designed to be nice to the users. Indeed this is one of the largest changes that has happened for the average user since the Windows 95 release.
In addition, the hardware requirements are negligably higher than that of W2K. The memory has been doubled under the "Recommended" arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares? I'm glad they did this too because the memory management algorithms in W2K were far too old and based upon the premise of never having enough memory so swapping was agressive.
My system is much faster now than it was running Windows 2000.
They've added in many new support features like (Essentially) a built in high efficiency PCAnywhere/VNC based on the terminal server system that is fast, and designed in this case to allow other users to connect to your desktop to interface with you and help you out to configure that printer that you just bought and can't figure out how to setup. There's numerous other enchancements that I won't bother to go.
So how do the users respond? Actually most of them like it, but there's always the super-linux-rulez-MS-sucks crowd that is impossible to please and screams foul when MS does what they've been asked to. There is no winning no matter what they do.
But prison is NOT a deterrant. There are people who would rather be in prison than on the streets. I can agree that there is merit in allowing them to exercise, watch TV, study, and do many other things that some people outside don't have the opportunity to do, but it is those who take advantage of the situation that ruin it for everybody. How can you justify sending someone to prison for hacking a computer beside someone who is a serial rapist? The justice system is royally screwed up. If prison were a box in the artic where you airdropped food in once a day, I think that we would have far far far less people becoming criminals than you do today.
I think that is the exact reason that people said that it looked just like a movie. Where do we see movies? On television. Where did we see this? On television. I think it's understandable that we can confuse the two, seeing as how they both look very much the same. We've seen these things so many times that it's easy to understand why we might immediately interpret (even if just subconsciously) that the events we saw on tuesday were just computerized images. That's a lot easier to wrap your brain around than thinking that it is real.
When I saw the first news I headed over to all the news sites that I could find (I found out shortly after the first crash) and I was engrossed. My first reaction was one of "woah!" and I just wanted to follow everything that was happening, almost on the edge of my seat waiting for the next thing to happen. Figuring that a building could not possibly stand up after being hit by a plane, I headed over to here (love that site) to find out everything that I could about how those buildings were built. I was glued to the screen for a good 2 hours, until a thought stuck me. I was looking at one of the images, and said "man, that looks so fake" and caught myself thinking (one of those 1/2 second back-of-your-mind thoughts) "they should have done a better job on the CG of that one"...
BAM!
Then it hit me. Almost all of the images looked like something out of a movie. I had been so desensitized that, upon seeing these images, my mind just assumed that they were fake. It did not want to accept the idea that they were real, so it was neat to want to see all about it that I could find.
Man was I disgusted with myself when I figured that one out.
Flame me down if you want, but I know that I wasn't the only one who thought that way. Once it sunk in that this was real, and those falling bodies out of the windows were real people, and after the first tower collapsed knowing that for the same reason the second one would collapse, and looking at it and knowing that there wasn't shit that I could do, and knowing that the people outside and the firefighters knew the same thing, man. That was a shock. I tried to donate but the stupid amazon form wouldn't accept my postal code, so I went and gave blood instead. I was half of the mind to go down there to see if there was anything that I could do to help (I was about a 5 hour drive away, I'm 1.5hr from the US border in Toronto) but when the borders were closed, and I came to my senses, I realized how entirely useless I was.
I just hope that some good does come out of this. I stopped watching the news after about 4 hours because I was disgusted at the media trying to grandstand with every little bit of information that they had, and watching the rumours go from the first emergance, and hearing them spread from newsteam to newsteam like a bad game of broken telephone, I knew that I had to stop.
Ack. May the passing of the deceased pave the way for a new era of peace and harmony amongst all beings on the earth. I would hate to know that all of this happened and the result was nothing more than a little revenge. Lets hope that this anti-terrorism coilition will stand tall over time and help to eliminate this uglyness.
The really interesting part is that this kid wasn't even a programmer. He just downloaded a kit.
and
The defendant, Jan de Wit, turned himself in to the police in his hometown Sneek, Netherlands, on Feb. 14.
I would venture a guess to say that those are the reasons why he was given such a light sentance, and the fact that he was 20 years old. A little remorse goes a long way in the courts, and turning yourself in too usually helps to give a lighter sentance.
Re:Huge outpourings of generosity
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Whoops, it was supposed to say "and their families of this horrible atrocity", not "and their of this".
Re:Huge outpourings of generosity
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Hey! That's ok!! I wasn't trying to cut you up or anything, just point out that we feel the same way too =) It was a very nice post =).
I changed my ICQ message to this today:
The normal message-of-the-day has been suspended due to unprecidented cowardly terrorist attacks in the United States. My thoughts and prayers go out to all who are victims and their of this horrible atrocity. May their passings pave the way towards a new era of peace and harmony between nations.
Hey, optimistic perhaps, but it's nice to hope. After all, hope is the only thing that so many people have left.
Re:Airport Security... Is that enough?
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I know that some people would rather not fly, and I respect that, but I wouldn't think twice about getting on another plane.
Let me point something out:
At any given point in time during the day there is up to 4,000 planes in the air over the United States.
There are more than 40,000 flights per day in the United States.
Even if a terrorist attack were to happen once a year (or lets just say that 4 planes goes down a year, on average), that is over 14 million planes per year. The average person flies round trip once every 4 years, putting your chances of getting in trouble slightly less than being the sole winner of a 15 million dollar lottery.
In addition, the targets were well chosen and high profile, and the planes were specifically chosen too.
Finally, with the super beefed up security now at airports, I'd say it will be very safe.
And for those of you who are keen on modding good posts to "Flamebait", even if I am drastically overrating the odds of getting killed on an airplane, here's a little bit of stats:
Death from electrocution         --> 1 chance in 200,000 / year
Death from drowning              --> 1 chance in 35,000 / year
Death from a car accident        --> 1 chance in 7,000 / year
Death from pneumonia/influenza   --> 1 chance in 3,000 / year
Death from cancer                --> 1 chance in 500 / year
Death from stroke/heart disease  --> 1 chance in 300 / year
Thus, even at a overreaction of about 50x over, you still have a better chance of dying from electrocution than you do from dying on an aircraft.
Re:Huge outpourings of generosity
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Wow, very good and touching post. Nice to know that sort of kindness still exists, nice to hear about it again and again after such a tragedy.
I just had one thing that I wanted to point out:
to give aid to strangers whom they shared nothing with except the distinction of being Americans
I would modify that last part to say "except with the distinction of being free, alive and greatful humans". I am Canadian. I donated blood for the event as I know that if the need is there, blood will be shipped from here. And besides, it's always good to do so. They actually waved (partially) the usual 56-day waiting period between donating blood to ensure that they could get what they could get. I must admit though that the lineups here weren't nearly as long, but they were definitely at capacity all day.
Not that it really matters (the moderation), but it's the thought that counts.
I also posted something about nostradamus (or however you spell his name) shortly after one of the stories was posted. It went all the way up to +5, Interesting and then once prooved to be false, modded all the way down to -1, Flamebait.
It's not like I invented the rumour. I could understand "Offtopic" or "Overrated", but "Troll" and "Flamebait"? Seriously...
Due to the insane number of posts (more than 8000 on the crisis alone) I would assume that the amount of moderator points distributed is proportional to the number of posts (even I had mod prividges yesterday) and thus a lot of 37337 h4x0r5 l4m3r5 got mod points and went crazy.
Are their only plants in Japan? I figured that they would have had more plants than that.
I would have also assumed that if it was purely a manufacturing issue, they wouldn't have rolled back the launch date because that gives the x-box a huge lead. Better to be a little short on products than give the competetor a head start...
And who the f**k moderated that comment (-1, Troll)?? What the hell is up with the moderators lately? IT was a fair enough post.
Aren't there already billions of particles right next to other particles in sub-millimeter lengths?
I.e. with any solid object?
I'm assuming that they meant to say "when travelling at extremely high speeds toward each other, it is possible that they would enter extra dimensions"... but still, isn't that just a vague idea that we really have no basis to make an assumption on?
"leap of faith" is an understatement. This is more like a "we have a rocket here that can put you into orbit on 2L of gas!" leap of faith.
And they "predict" by the same leap of faith that we have 100s of these forming in the atmosphere, so why can't they just go there to do their tests? If what they say is true, that the disintigration pattern is unmistakable, then it should not be difficult at all to perform this in the atmosphere, or at worst in space itself (i.e. the space station)... no?
Why can they release it in Japan before they can release it here (by several months apparently)... I'm assuming the hardware is the same (?) so why did they have to push back their NA release date?
Insane! The news reports... wow... lots of certified pilots. I'd also assume that the minimum of 3 terrorists per plane is low, because they probably had 2 to fly, and 3 terrorists in the back to handle passengers. Don't forget that the passengers usually didn't know about the pilot/terrorists.
In any case, I also read that they managed to fly the plane at an altitude of about 10m at 900km/h in order to fly *horizontally* into the pentagon, thus doing the most damage. That can't be easy either. If you could do that, you could land the plane easy, and I know from hours and hours on flight sim that _that_ is not easy =P.
Go figure. You use the throttle to determine your height, not necessarily airspeed. Once I figured that one out it was a lot easier to land the plane =P
apparently he said no such thing either, it was a student in 1995 (or sometime around then) who was doing an essay and under the infinite monkeys principle said that if you make enough sufficiently vague prophecies, there are enough events that happen in the world for most of them to become "true". The "the third great war" was added later by some unknown person.
Doesn't mean that I should have been modded to -1, Troll. Christ moderators, it's not like _I_ made up the rumour. I could understand a bunch of (-1, Overrated), but not flamebait and troll.
I posted something I thought was of interest, something that was floating around and looked credible. First it was modded up to +5, Informative, then all the way down to -1, Troll after it was found out to be a hoax. WTF?! It's not like _I_ made the hoax.
Hey, I usually live in Mississauga too, perhaps I know you =P.
Are you sure that there are players that won't play unencrypted DVDs? Because I have a pack here of unencrypted DVDs, and they seem to work fine in all DVD players around here. (Mind you, I am in France right now). However I'd assume that any video that's not copyright or protected (i.e. broadcasted TV, or perhaps commercials or music videos or those "how to use your super duper vacuum!" VHS tapes that you get, I'm sure they don't need to be encrypted. ?
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the problem nowadays is that many intel machines (desktops) can only take 512mb.
This is a problem?
512MB will easily last you for the next 3 years, at which point your entire PC will be obsolete anyways.
so that's when they decided to trojan in the registration thing
huh? You mean product activation? I wasn't aware that was a bad thing. I mean all you guys keep toting that you buy software and music, so this isn't a problem, right? Unless of course you've been lying. (sorry, not intended towards you Polo). I think that it's a good move, helps to cut down on the rampant piracy. Since apparently > 1/2 the piracy is casual "hey, can I borrow that CD?" this helps to significantly reduce the amount of casual piracy.
Unfortunately the price savings will not be passed onto the consumer, which is where they should be, but you can't expect that out of any capitalist corporation. grrr....
What about my laptop with two memory slots each with a 32Mb chip already in it
$36 for 256MB SO-DIMM
if your laptop doesn't use SODIMMS, then it's either really old or nonstandard.
And if you have older hardware then you're most likely not wanting the latest and greatest in computer software either. Anything that's > 3 years old is considered ancient, and you can't expect the newest software to run on it (with the exception of linux, which is designed to be able to run on those). Any commercial software will choke on anything > 3 years old pretty much, so you can't fault MS there. If MS did keep it such that it could run reasonably on those old machines, they'd be choking what their OS could do, and then people would complain about the lack of new features. They can't win.
likely to have to upgrade even to _read_ documents
FYI ever since Office97 all documents are forward-compatible and backward-compatible. Any features that are implemented in newer versions will be gracefully ignored by older versions, but yet they will be kept so you can open a OfficeXP document in an older version of Office you can still edit it, save it, bring it back to your new version and still have all of your new features there. It's pretty cool.
586 with 32MB? No. considering how that is at least 3 years old, that's ancient in computer years, and no, it would not run at all on that machine, but then again very few people still have that type of machine, and the ones that still do aren't interested in the latest OS anyways and are probably still running Win95 perfectly happily.
but how long to boot linux on the same hardware?
.cmd script file, windows media encoder and the built in CD burning capabilities. I'm assuming that you'd want to use a CDRW each day, and I don't know if it's easy to erase a CDRW from the prompt, I haven't tried it yet. But if you couldn't, you could just do it the night before.
I just booted linux on a similar machine, and it took 48s to get to logged in usage state in Mandrake via xwindows. Whoever said they boot to a usable state in 6s I think needs to give their head a shake, or provide some video footage to back up that claim. My PC takes about 6s just to POST, nevermind load the OS.
It would be really cool if Microsoft could come up with some sort of Flash-ROM boot loader to speed up boot times
Well the current system is leaps and bounds ahead of the previous system, and from post-post to usable is about 18sec, which is astounding for windows. Even if you used some sort of flash or stored image or something, you might be able to cut that down to 12s (unless you store the actual user logged in image on disk too, but then loading up all the ram will take time too)... In any case, you're talking ~5-7sec saving time, which I'm not worried about.
But yes, it would be cool =) Or just use suspend-to-ram, which will restore your system from "power on" in about 3 seconds!
a linux system that boots in 3 seconds! Thats faster than my monitor!
LOL. Yeah, I usually have my bios on "fast boot: disabled" so that I can see the bios boot screen (just hit escape to skip the memory test) otherwise by the time my monitor has warmed up it's already booting the OS.
Sticking part of your OS on the BIOS is a pretty neat idea, and you definitely couldn't do that with windows, that's for sure, but then again most of the market that it is targeted at isn't the type of market who knows how to flash their bios nevermind boot off it =)
On the other hand though, I've had poor support for some of my hardware.
Yeah, WTF happened with ATI anyways? They used to have substandard hardware and kickass drivers, and now that they've picked up in the hardware arena their drivers are sorely lacking. I know, I have a AiW128 as well and vowed never to buy another ATI card after that. However you can't blame MS for 3rd party drivers, MS has nothing to do with that.
However XP detected not only my AiW128 and installed ALL drivers for it, it also detected and installed drivers for my webcam and camera perfectly! From a fresh install within a few clicks I was already taking movies with my webcam, taking and downloading pictures with my camera and printing them, orgaizing them into picture albums, and I could capture TV and watch it as well, out of the box. I was very impressed.
It's a shame I can't somehow preview XP on my current hardware before I decide to purchase
*cough* *cough* who says that you can't preview?
IF you want to check, head on over to MS and either (a) sign up for the $10 preview program or (b) check the Hardware Compatibility List, or (c) get the program that checks your hardware and tells you if it's compatible with XP out of the box.
but I dig the ability to program simple scripts to automate tasks
I will agree that windows' scripting abilitys out of the box is somewhat lacking, but again that's not the market that they are aiming for. However getting perl or any number of other scripting languages is just a click away. Technically perl isn't part of linux either, it's just a bundled utility (woah, don't flaim for that statement, just making a point. Yes it comes with it and is heavily used by many apps, and that's a good thing that windows lacks IMO).
Something I've been dying to do is create a script to record my favorite morning radio show in the morning, convert the file to a compatible audio format, and then burn to audio CD
Well XP now includes out-of-the-box basic CD burning capabilities curtosy of Roxio (.. ugh), which means that it is most definitely possible to do this rather easily using a simple
XP does sound like it's come a long way from Win2k, but it will still be tough to decide to stick with Win2k, switch to XP, or switch to Linux.
Chaq'un son goût. Try out XP if you want, see how it fits. The UI is very different and much easier to use IMO, you can always dual boot to linux, or just switch to linux. But if you are interested, at least give it a try. Or just go down to your closest computer store and play with their new machine that'll be running it if you're completely against any sort of piracy.
If nothing else, passengers and crew will not sit quietly should someone take control of the plane.
Right, because they will all have been knocked out by sleeping gas before the hijackers move the next time.
There is one way, and one way only, to stop terrorism. People don't just blow up things and crash planes into buildings for no reason. People are obviously angry at the US. If you can figure out why and try to solve it, you will have a much better chance of having this not happen again than if you just "bomb" some place back to the stoneage, you can't kill'em all, and what doesn't kill them just makes them stronger and more devious.
Just put it in the baggage compartment, not in the cockpit, or bury it in a place which can't be accessed while the plane is in-flight
Are the circuit breakers in your house encased under cement? There's good reason to have them accessible, in case they blow. If you wanted to have them inaccessable, just remove them, but there MUST and will always be some sort of way to override the system in case of electrical failure / something goes wrong, and thus the hijackers can still control the plane. They can yank at wires if they have to, but for the forseeable future there will always be a way to hijack them.
And as for the "suicide" button, that doesn't work so well when you're on local flights. The plane might not be loaded with enough feul to get to a "safe" crash zone, and the plane doesn't need to have a lot of feul to be dangerous.
I firmly believe that you cannot stop someone who is willing to trade their life for their objective. If someone is willing to die to do something, there isn't going to be much, ever, that you can do to stop them.
Man that was more FUD than the article was!
The vast vast majority of Microsoft's money comes from OEM installations of Office and operating systems
Thanks, but you're way off base there.
OEM revenue was $4.72 billion in 1998, $6.40 billion in 1999, and $7.01 billion in 2000.
Since the revenue was $15.2bil in 1998, $19.7bil in 1999 and $23.0bil in 2000, that's hardly the "vast majority".
FYI - Productivity Applications and Developer revenue was $7.04 billion, $8.82 billion, and $10.47 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Windows Platforms revenue was $6.28 billion, $8.50 billion, and $9.38 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Consumer and Other revenue was $1.94 billion, $2.43 billion, and $3.11 billion in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
You can find the financial report here or here.
Microsoft has to CONVINCE consumers that they NEED the new operating system
Did you need that N64 or Gamecube or PS2 or Xbox? Did you need that new pair of shoes, new video card, new dvd drive, new TV? In most cases no, but people always buy things that they don't need. Indeed 95% of all marketing for all products is designed to convince people that they need things that they don't.
First, they discontinue support and patches for old products.
Oh really? I guess that discontinuing support after 3 years when there are 2 new product releases out and most people have already migrated to newer versions of your software doesn't have much of a reason there, eh? I guess you're angry at Ford because they don't make parts for the Model T anymore too?
they only support new hardware in the new operating system
Since when is MS responsible for device drivers? They're not. The people who make the hardware are responsible for drivers, MS has never been. Following that analogy I guess that I should be angry at linux because my new Geforce 3 card isn't fully supported out of the box too, eh?
Thus, if you get a new computer, you HAVE to have the new OS.
Again, the manuf's fault, not MS's.
Third, they make it very easy for users of the new Office software to make documents that are not backward compatible
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that all products are supposed to be 100% backward compatible. I guess that you still want to be using text mode and RTF then huh? You have to drop backwards compatibility sometime. And besides, you can always save as the old version, it's not that difficult if you need to. You can't expect all future releases to conform to the current format, otherwise you'd be bitching because there isn't any room for more functionality. Can't please people these days!
About a third of all people who need a new version of Office will just buy a new computer to get it pre-installed.
Where'd you get that BS from? If you have a link for that, please be sure to post it. Sounds like one of those 95% of statistics are made up on the spot things to me...
The plan is multi-faceted, but has proven to work in the past
Welcome to capitalism? That's the way that it works everywhere. People rarely need a new product or car or TV or clothes or sofa or gadget, they're convinced by the people who make them.. That's how you succeed in this economy.
The easiest solution for most people is to buy a new computer
Wow. I guess that dropping $1000 for you to get a new computer vs $200 to get the software is the same for you, huh? Care to spread some of that money this way? Or better yet donate it.
they will only have the pre-install option of getting Office XP
Funny that, I've been looking for a new laptop lately and I've seen only about 3 models that have Office XP preinstalled, and on 2 of the cases I asked if I could get it not installed and they said "sure" for a discount.
And you still end up with an OS that provides the same basic functionality to 99% of all computer users that Windows 3.1 did.
If you think that Windows XP has 99% of the same functionality that Windows 311 did you need to give your head a shake and climb out from under that rock. Linux has far far far more in common with the 70's unix than Windows XP does with Windows NT 4 nevermind Windows 3.11. There's no point in even debating this point.
talk about the pot and the kettle.
You accuse me of pulling out a single line and complaining about it, and you do the same thing to my post.
If you quoted the stuff before the line that you quoted from the article (I'll put it in bold for you)
by releasing a new operating system even more bloated, slow and enormous than his current excrescences
And to quote the rest of the line from my comment that you stripped out to make your point:
arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares?
I hardly call a $20 upgrade an "expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrade".
It's not expensive, and it's certainly not pointless as any system would run better with the more memory.
If you're a linux zealot that hates microsoft then don't bother reading and just moderate away as Troll, save yourself a few minutes.
/. with a classic gem like that in there. For-your-information I am using XP now as I type, and there is quite a lot of innovation that went into this product. Quite a lot, I might add, that customers have been bitching about for years and years. For starters, they finally got rid of the hideous Win3.11/Win9X codebase, which BTW they have been trying to do since Windows95 came out. Windows 98 was supposed to be based on the NT kernel, but there was far too much resistance from the consumer base who was claiming that their legacy applications would not run, thus MS had to release another version off their 3.11 base. Windows98SE was supposed to be an indication that they wanted to stop yet again, and WinME was supposed to be called Win98TE (third edition) but marketing thought that it would be a very bad idea to do that again.
The article looked reasonable until I read this:
He can do this by releasing a new operating system even more bloated, slow and enormous than his current excrescences, thus requiring a general round of expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrading-pointless for the consumers
What type of bull-ass-shit FUD is that? Excuse me, Mr Eben Moglen, but what information do you have to base this claim on? This is hardly surprising that this would up on
In any case, they have finally released a product that is, IMO, much more user friendly, finally away from the Win3.1/9x codebase, which is what people have been asking for for years. Sure, it does take a bit more processing power, however I noticed that on a fresh install, NOT ONLY does it boot in less time than linux does (30s from POWER ON to completely logged in. It's insanely fast), but it also takes LESS memory on boot than W2K did. MS did extensive user testing on their new modifications to their interface to make it much more friendly for Mom&Pop and the traditional Win9X user base, and included the options to turn this off so that you can go back to the W2K style interface. They have also abstracted the user interface layer sufficiently so that it is possible to create your own user interface entirely, as these people have done to give you whatever type of interface you want. They have made the system much more robust and fault tolerant, indeed even more than W2K. They've added driver rollback, system restore and numerous other features to save people from their own mistakes, they've implemented a much more rigerous testing plan to ensure that drivers can't cause a system problem, they've implemented a system where drivers that are known to cause system problems will have the user warned prior to installing (and before you scream foul here, you can not only disable this, but you can edit the list yourself. It will not prohibit you from installing anything that you are determined to install). They have made it very simple to use webcams and cameras and scanners and other devices with very very little effort at all, they have given simple file sharing and networking and firewall and routing capabilities for home networks, and countless other features designed to be nice to the users. Indeed this is one of the largest changes that has happened for the average user since the Windows 95 release.
In addition, the hardware requirements are negligably higher than that of W2K. The memory has been doubled under the "Recommended" arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares? I'm glad they did this too because the memory management algorithms in W2K were far too old and based upon the premise of never having enough memory so swapping was agressive.
My system is much faster now than it was running Windows 2000.
They've added in many new support features like (Essentially) a built in high efficiency PCAnywhere/VNC based on the terminal server system that is fast, and designed in this case to allow other users to connect to your desktop to interface with you and help you out to configure that printer that you just bought and can't figure out how to setup. There's numerous other enchancements that I won't bother to go.
So how do the users respond? Actually most of them like it, but there's always the super-linux-rulez-MS-sucks crowd that is impossible to please and screams foul when MS does what they've been asked to. There is no winning no matter what they do.
But prison is NOT a deterrant. There are people who would rather be in prison than on the streets. I can agree that there is merit in allowing them to exercise, watch TV, study, and do many other things that some people outside don't have the opportunity to do, but it is those who take advantage of the situation that ruin it for everybody. How can you justify sending someone to prison for hacking a computer beside someone who is a serial rapist? The justice system is royally screwed up. If prison were a box in the artic where you airdropped food in once a day, I think that we would have far far far less people becoming criminals than you do today.
I think that is the exact reason that people said that it looked just like a movie. Where do we see movies? On television. Where did we see this? On television. I think it's understandable that we can confuse the two, seeing as how they both look very much the same. We've seen these things so many times that it's easy to understand why we might immediately interpret (even if just subconsciously) that the events we saw on tuesday were just computerized images. That's a lot easier to wrap your brain around than thinking that it is real.
I know exactly what you mean.
When I saw the first news I headed over to all the news sites that I could find (I found out shortly after the first crash) and I was engrossed. My first reaction was one of "woah!" and I just wanted to follow everything that was happening, almost on the edge of my seat waiting for the next thing to happen. Figuring that a building could not possibly stand up after being hit by a plane, I headed over to here (love that site) to find out everything that I could about how those buildings were built. I was glued to the screen for a good 2 hours, until a thought stuck me. I was looking at one of the images, and said "man, that looks so fake" and caught myself thinking (one of those 1/2 second back-of-your-mind thoughts) "they should have done a better job on the CG of that one"...
BAM!
Then it hit me. Almost all of the images looked like something out of a movie. I had been so desensitized that, upon seeing these images, my mind just assumed that they were fake. It did not want to accept the idea that they were real, so it was neat to want to see all about it that I could find.
Man was I disgusted with myself when I figured that one out.
Flame me down if you want, but I know that I wasn't the only one who thought that way. Once it sunk in that this was real, and those falling bodies out of the windows were real people, and after the first tower collapsed knowing that for the same reason the second one would collapse, and looking at it and knowing that there wasn't shit that I could do, and knowing that the people outside and the firefighters knew the same thing, man. That was a shock. I tried to donate but the stupid amazon form wouldn't accept my postal code, so I went and gave blood instead. I was half of the mind to go down there to see if there was anything that I could do to help (I was about a 5 hour drive away, I'm 1.5hr from the US border in Toronto) but when the borders were closed, and I came to my senses, I realized how entirely useless I was.
I just hope that some good does come out of this. I stopped watching the news after about 4 hours because I was disgusted at the media trying to grandstand with every little bit of information that they had, and watching the rumours go from the first emergance, and hearing them spread from newsteam to newsteam like a bad game of broken telephone, I knew that I had to stop.
Ack. May the passing of the deceased pave the way for a new era of peace and harmony amongst all beings on the earth. I would hate to know that all of this happened and the result was nothing more than a little revenge. Lets hope that this anti-terrorism coilition will stand tall over time and help to eliminate this uglyness.
The really interesting part is that this kid wasn't even a programmer. He just downloaded a kit.
and
The defendant, Jan de Wit, turned himself in to the police in his hometown Sneek, Netherlands, on Feb. 14.
I would venture a guess to say that those are the reasons why he was given such a light sentance, and the fact that he was 20 years old. A little remorse goes a long way in the courts, and turning yourself in too usually helps to give a lighter sentance.
Whoops, it was supposed to say "and their families of this horrible atrocity", not "and their of this".
Hey! That's ok!! I wasn't trying to cut you up or anything, just point out that we feel the same way too =) It was a very nice post =).
I changed my ICQ message to this today:
The normal message-of-the-day has been suspended due to unprecidented cowardly terrorist attacks in the United States. My thoughts and prayers go out to all who are victims and their of this horrible atrocity. May their passings pave the way towards a new era of peace and harmony between nations.
Hey, optimistic perhaps, but it's nice to hope. After all, hope is the only thing that so many people have left.
I know that some people would rather not fly, and I respect that, but I wouldn't think twice about getting on another plane.
Let me point something out:
At any given point in time during the day there is up to 4,000 planes in the air over the United States.
There are more than 40,000 flights per day in the United States.
Even if a terrorist attack were to happen once a year (or lets just say that 4 planes goes down a year, on average), that is over 14 million planes per year. The average person flies round trip once every 4 years, putting your chances of getting in trouble slightly less than being the sole winner of a 15 million dollar lottery.
In addition, the targets were well chosen and high profile, and the planes were specifically chosen too.
Finally, with the super beefed up security now at airports, I'd say it will be very safe.
And for those of you who are keen on modding good posts to "Flamebait", even if I am drastically overrating the odds of getting killed on an airplane, here's a little bit of stats:
Death from electrocution         --> 1 chance in 200,000 / year
Death from drowning              --> 1 chance in 35,000 / year
Death from a car accident        --> 1 chance in 7,000 / year
Death from pneumonia/influenza   --> 1 chance in 3,000 / year
Death from cancer                --> 1 chance in 500 / year
Death from stroke/heart disease  --> 1 chance in 300 / year
Thus, even at a overreaction of about 50x over, you still have a better chance of dying from electrocution than you do from dying on an aircraft.
Wow, very good and touching post. Nice to know that sort of kindness still exists, nice to hear about it again and again after such a tragedy.
I just had one thing that I wanted to point out:
to give aid to strangers whom they shared nothing with except the distinction of being Americans
I would modify that last part to say "except with the distinction of being free, alive and greatful humans". I am Canadian. I donated blood for the event as I know that if the need is there, blood will be shipped from here. And besides, it's always good to do so. They actually waved (partially) the usual 56-day waiting period between donating blood to ensure that they could get what they could get. I must admit though that the lineups here weren't nearly as long, but they were definitely at capacity all day.
Hey thanks, I was a bit pissed by that too.
Not that it really matters (the moderation), but it's the thought that counts.
I also posted something about nostradamus (or however you spell his name) shortly after one of the stories was posted. It went all the way up to +5, Interesting and then once prooved to be false, modded all the way down to -1, Flamebait.
It's not like I invented the rumour. I could understand "Offtopic" or "Overrated", but "Troll" and "Flamebait"? Seriously...
Due to the insane number of posts (more than 8000 on the crisis alone) I would assume that the amount of moderator points distributed is proportional to the number of posts (even I had mod prividges yesterday) and thus a lot of 37337 h4x0r5 l4m3r5 got mod points and went crazy.
Are their only plants in Japan? I figured that they would have had more plants than that.
I would have also assumed that if it was purely a manufacturing issue, they wouldn't have rolled back the launch date because that gives the x-box a huge lead. Better to be a little short on products than give the competetor a head start...
And who the f**k moderated that comment (-1, Troll)?? What the hell is up with the moderators lately? IT was a fair enough post.
Aren't there already billions of particles right next to other particles in sub-millimeter lengths?
I.e. with any solid object?
I'm assuming that they meant to say "when travelling at extremely high speeds toward each other, it is possible that they would enter extra dimensions"... but still, isn't that just a vague idea that we really have no basis to make an assumption on?
"leap of faith" is an understatement. This is more like a "we have a rocket here that can put you into orbit on 2L of gas!" leap of faith.
And they "predict" by the same leap of faith that we have 100s of these forming in the atmosphere, so why can't they just go there to do their tests? If what they say is true, that the disintigration pattern is unmistakable, then it should not be difficult at all to perform this in the atmosphere, or at worst in space itself (i.e. the space station)... no?
Why can they release it in Japan before they can release it here (by several months apparently)... I'm assuming the hardware is the same (?) so why did they have to push back their NA release date?
Insane! The news reports... wow... lots of certified pilots. I'd also assume that the minimum of 3 terrorists per plane is low, because they probably had 2 to fly, and 3 terrorists in the back to handle passengers. Don't forget that the passengers usually didn't know about the pilot/terrorists.
In any case, I also read that they managed to fly the plane at an altitude of about 10m at 900km/h in order to fly *horizontally* into the pentagon, thus doing the most damage. That can't be easy either. If you could do that, you could land the plane easy, and I know from hours and hours on flight sim that _that_ is not easy =P.
Go figure. You use the throttle to determine your height, not necessarily airspeed. Once I figured that one out it was a lot easier to land the plane =P
apparently he said no such thing either, it was a student in 1995 (or sometime around then) who was doing an essay and under the infinite monkeys principle said that if you make enough sufficiently vague prophecies, there are enough events that happen in the world for most of them to become "true". The "the third great war" was added later by some unknown person.
Doesn't mean that I should have been modded to -1, Troll. Christ moderators, it's not like _I_ made up the rumour. I could understand a bunch of (-1, Overrated), but not flamebait and troll.
[/gripe]
Jesus christ, /. readers are crazy (not you).
I posted something I thought was of interest, something that was floating around and looked credible. First it was modded up to +5, Informative, then all the way down to -1, Troll after it was found out to be a hoax. WTF?! It's not like _I_ made the hoax.
Hey, I usually live in Mississauga too, perhaps I know you =P.
Are you sure that there are players that won't play unencrypted DVDs? Because I have a pack here of unencrypted DVDs, and they seem to work fine in all DVD players around here. (Mind you, I am in France right now). However I'd assume that any video that's not copyright or protected (i.e. broadcasted TV, or perhaps commercials or music videos or those "how to use your super duper vacuum!" VHS tapes that you get, I'm sure they don't need to be encrypted. ?