How's that old joke go, again? "Windows is a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit operating system designed for an 8 bit processor by a company that isn't worth two bit" or something like that?
This 128 bit operating system thing is a joke - or, more accurately, marketing nonsense. "Windows 8" is so far away at this point that it's unlikely they've slated this feature; 128 bit processors are even further away than Windows 8 might be. I say 10 years at the smallest inside.
Now, if we're talking about something other than processors, it might be a possibility (filesystem?). But I doubt it.
Eh, the current Linux version does that already - "fully offloads h264 decoding to the GPU" - via OpenGL. It's just that it's the wrong way to do it due to all the layers it's got to go through to get there. It sounds nice, but I suspect that the article is just marketing buzz.
If 10.1 offered any significant improvements on the desktop, there'd be useful beta builds not only available right now but also in wide use by the geek community.
Click your user interface into existence and have it work identically on a half dozen platforms, for starters. With HTML5, you've got to write it - by hand - and hack a bunch of crude nonsense together to get it to work on multiple browsers.
The only reason why Flash eats system resources like the undead is because the implementations are horrible. They're poorly implemented. Take the Linux Flash plugin, for instance: instead of doing video properly by using Xrender and EXA (or even XAA), it uses OpenGL for video. It does things Xrender should be doing in software, and adds an additional several levels of complexity and overhead to OGL rendering.
I'm not saying Flash is lightweight, but certainly it's not a problem endemic to the toolkit and can be improved. It's the "players" that have the problem, and if they're essentially implementing a player at the hardware level, there's no reason why it couldn't be just as fast and lightweight as something like, say, Java within Jazelle.
That probably has to do with several generations of German males dying off before they were able to effectively reproduce, only to have the following generations largely composed of single-parent children and children of war-torn families.
Not that it means anything, just some postulation. It could likewise be argued that the complete decimation of the male population in France had similar results. They were once a proud, strong nation, but they're pretty limp-wristed now.
That's one of the things that's pushed me away from MMORPGs and the like, actually: the whole concept that you're playing "with" someone else, preferably in a team based environment. Why would I want to do that? It's not fun, and it's mostly a poor replacement for emotionally unstable people who can't handle "losing".
Take FPS games, for instance, for team based gameplay as a microcosm (like Team Fortress). You've got your medic, tank, engineer, and balanced characters. Why do people pick a given character? Certainly part of it comes down to the personality of the player, but it always comes back to the same basic concept of "what will allow me to do best?" Teamwork is a mere means to an end of not dying, or being valued to the others. If it serves no purpose, then people will all just (say) pick the heavy weapons character, or some other single-sided gameplay.
What we need in the MMORPG arena is the ability to solo play and not miss out on any part of the game. IE, think Fallout 3 or Deus Ex or some similar RPG, but in a universe instead of a world. Everyone is a part of the game, and there are factions - but it does not define you as a character, and your identity as a character is just as, if not more important, to your character as the faction/team you're on. To the player, the character is what matters, just as in real life, and trying to push a "socialist" type game world on a player only detracts from the quality of the game.
IMO, what we need is a good MMORPG post-apocalyptic game which effectively combines role playing/character stats and development with FPS gameplay (again, see Fallout 3 and Deus Ex as how such a thing -might- be conceptualized). If you're good at the game, your level 5 might take out someone else's level 80 - but as a result, that level 80's team puts a bounty out on you, or some such thing. I think it'd work really well in an urban desert type environment with gang factions (which would be fully organic, no pre-conceived groups but some weak ones to get the first players started). Gameplay could be team based, but you're just a human with a gun and a molotov cocktail fighting block to block and hiding or running when you're outnumbered, taking safe harbor when you can.
Eve kinda gets it right here, but it's also a dull and fairly slow-paced space game. However, cast a FPS game within the same MMORPG framework, and I think they'd have somethign incredible.
Like everything, there's a "temperature band" tolerance for any given device. There's the "works well" band, which is smaller and sits somewhere within the overall band which is "acceptable" - and a gradual gradient between "well" and "acceptable", all the way up to "melts solder" and "PCB forms frost". I'd wager that the temperature band google studied was almost entirely within the "works range" range, so any variances wouldn't show that much difference.
Correct; however, quite a few of the "higher end" (ie $50 and up, thereabout) PSUs have power conditioning. They call it active (or passive) PFC - power filter control. Any decent PSU you buy today (eg. Antec earthwatts) is going to have it.
Actually, didn't the google drive study find that disks performed better at warm-but-not-hot temperatures, and that excessive cooling was actually detrimental? That's what I recall coming away from it.
Add to that the fact that Google (apparently) tends to run their data centers "hot" compared to what is commonly accepted, and use significantly cheaper components, and you've got a good explanation for why their error count is as high as it is.
Also, if you look at total devices sold with a mobile OS, I think you'll find the numbers substantially skewered in MS's favor: there are far more WinMo phones sold than there are iPhones, if I recall correctly. Nevermind Linux.
Actually I think it's been shown the (rough) opposite (posted to from slashdot, even): Mac users are less critical/intelligent than your average Windows users. Not that it makes a difference in the long run; it's a stupid study.
In a demographic study like this, IT professionals/geeks need not apply. Just because you've got 20 systems in your basement, almost half being older than you yourself are, does not skewer things in any significant way.
Yep. I've got four systems installed with my MSDN Win7 RTM right now (1 new laptop that came with Vista, an ancient and worn Thinkpad X30, and two VMs). It outnumbers the XP machines and VMs I've got now (though Linux and BSD are still the ones I use primarily).
Do note that MS is offering free MSDN subscriptions to small businesses right now; W7 is available to those subscriptions. That likely accounts for quite a few users (that's how I got mine).
However, I suspect most of that 1% of users are getting Windows 7 from torrent sites, illicitly. The RTM is available in Corporate and Enterprise, and there are a myriad of cracks out there for activation.
This guy got modded funny, but there's a nugget of truth in the greater turd.
In science as a whole, and particularly fields like archeology, there seems to be a very unhealthy "not invented here" mentality. It's particularly evident in Egyptology, from what I've read: despite any evidence to the contrary, they insist upon primitive, labor-intensive, and often easily-explained-away methods of construction.
Two examples are the Giza pyramid (ignoring the astounding geometric and architectural complexity which we can only explain by creating 'ancient rituals') and the famous granite sarcophagi also from ancient Egypt.
The Giza pyramid has stones upwards of 60 tons and experimental 'rebuilds' at a smaller scale (1/8th rings a bell) have been attempted in modern times, using modern machinery - and failed. The mechanics of lifting or moving 60 tons simply can't be explained using modern science without completely rejecting the precepts of the field (and even then, it's a bit questionable).
The sarcophagi I mentioned are multiple, identical boxes found at a single location. The contemporary explanation, as I understand it, is that they were pounded out by hand using basalt and maybe rubbed out with sand. Yet the inner corners show inexplicable marks consistent with what might occur if the boxes were cut today using modern machinery - and to an absurdly high precision, at that.
These are things which simply don't make sense within our contemporary understanding. In the case of the large granite (etc.) pillars throughout the world, it would make sense that some machinery, of some sort, was employed. Having done a fair amount of "large heavy lifting" and seeing it take 6 people and a 1 ton motor to lift and maneuver a 1500lb, 4x8x8 stage prop, and then over 10 people to move it while on wheels on a flat, smooth surface, I'm highly skeptical of any claims to hemp ropes and wooden block and tackle being able to handle something of this scale. Possible, I suppose, but it seems just as likely that they might have invented internal combustion (or some other technology) and their lesser machines (the ones made from metal) have all since decayed - as to believe that a bunch of relative primitives could do something which a group of highly determined (and not particularly fond of failure - they were Japanese) engineers couldn't do with modern technology at a significantly smaller scale.
Oh, no you didn't. Brother does NOT have good Linux support. I've got an older - yet still USB - Brother 1435, and the OpenPrinting record for it considers it a paperweight. Sure, there's a driver for it - but it's a pain in the ass to get set up, doesn't work consistently, and is a lost cause on x64.
As others have said here, HP, HP, HP. And by "HP" We mean "HP LaserJet". Inkjet is straight out the window due to cost-per-page and the unavailability of refills after a number of years - never mind the cost.
Until recently, I was using an HP LJ IIImv. It died due to electrical overload (PCB not fuser), but I got it used for $30, and it lasted me 5 years and about a box and a half of paper. I've seen HP LJs last 10 years and 10s of thousands of pages without any significant part - and even at that age, HP is awesome about providing replacement parts for their older printers.
Absolutely, positively avoid anything from Brother, Dell, Canon, or Epson, as well as any sort of MFD. Brother printers don't seem to be all that reliable (even the "HP clones") or don't use standard languages; Dells break surprisingly fast/don't life up to the MTBF ratings, and Epsons are likewise iffy on drivers and quality. Canon is pretty bad about EOL'ing their products "early" as well, and don't tend to play nicely with standards.
MFD (multifunction device) printers are to be avoided due to the driver issues frequently encountered with such devices (ie you can still use the printer but scanning becomes impossible after a couple years).
If I were to buy a new printer today and I had money to burn, it would be a small office color laser from HP. Or maybe just their 'entry level' @ $150, which doesn't do color but does do 24ppm as well as support PCL5e.
That's rarely something which needs to be described, and in most small environments, it's usually something of marginal consequence.
The biggest concern for security breaches is malware and the associated data harvesting. When you've got users running as Administrator, it's a bit of a problem. The users will get into pissing fights when you've got to revoke their ability to install "screensavers" and the like.
The alternative to "it's company policy" is explaining Active Directory/UAC/ACLs to them, and they feel like you're talking over their heads/insulting them. Or trying, in some sort of perverted fashion which doesn't actually make all that much sense - and then they feel like you're condescending/insulting them.
When your average IT worker has (say) an IQ of 120, which is 10-15 points higher than the average officer worker (best case scenario!), you're not working in an "intelligent workplace". Most workplaces are not "intelligent". And even in an "intelligent" work place (say, an accounting firm or a law firm), the chances are high that the domain of knowledge is so far divorced from their reality that you might as well speak in reverse-polish notation Sanskrit.
More likely, it's a year where barely anyone has been hiring, and a lot of layoffs have been made. I was thinking it was bad last fall, but shit! This year I saw no more than 2 IT related postings locally from February until August. In 2008, I'd see 5-10 or so a month.
When your IT staff is at "skeleton" levels because you don't know what you're doing, you're going to reap the whirlwind. The first thing to go out the door is security vigilance, because it's usually the last thing that's given conscious thought (unless users are complaining about something specific, in which case it becomes your first thought).
"Top end protection", these days, means one thing on Windows: unplug the damn ethernet/router! There is no Windows product which even comes close to properly keeping a stupid computer user from infecting the machine once it's connected to the Internet, regardless of how few programs are installed or how up-to-date it is. None.
Not so much "when" but "where". IT was very glorious in the good old days when there was no "Internet" to speak of, just a bunch of Unis networked together, UNIX was king, and if you wanted a home computer, you used a Mac, Trash-80 or similar.
There was once a time where being a police man was a title of privilege and respect.
Eh, maybe. But I doubt it. Maybe in the idealized Mr. Rogers/Andy Mayburry worlds, and quite possibly even at some point and in some parts of the country (1800s in Midwestern towns). But I think there's been a fairly broad acceptance (if subconscious) that to catch a thief, you've got to think like (or at least understand) a thief - and that makes most people who don't think about such things uncomfortable.
My great-grand Da was a town police officer, back when there was only one in the town. This would've been 1920s in NY. He was a philandering drunk with a crazy-mean streak while drunk. Sure, he was a suave guy liked by many, but he slept with all the pretty girls in town and wasn't on the up-and-up all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean they're releasing Windows 7 a full 10 days early, then?
C'mon man. Too soon!
How's that old joke go, again? "Windows is a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit operating system designed for an 8 bit processor by a company that isn't worth two bit" or something like that?
This 128 bit operating system thing is a joke - or, more accurately, marketing nonsense. "Windows 8" is so far away at this point that it's unlikely they've slated this feature; 128 bit processors are even further away than Windows 8 might be. I say 10 years at the smallest inside.
Now, if we're talking about something other than processors, it might be a possibility (filesystem?). But I doubt it.
Eh, the current Linux version does that already - "fully offloads h264 decoding to the GPU" - via OpenGL. It's just that it's the wrong way to do it due to all the layers it's got to go through to get there. It sounds nice, but I suspect that the article is just marketing buzz.
If 10.1 offered any significant improvements on the desktop, there'd be useful beta builds not only available right now but also in wide use by the geek community.
Click your user interface into existence and have it work identically on a half dozen platforms, for starters. With HTML5, you've got to write it - by hand - and hack a bunch of crude nonsense together to get it to work on multiple browsers.
Not saying I like it, but it's true.
The only reason why Flash eats system resources like the undead is because the implementations are horrible. They're poorly implemented. Take the Linux Flash plugin, for instance: instead of doing video properly by using Xrender and EXA (or even XAA), it uses OpenGL for video. It does things Xrender should be doing in software, and adds an additional several levels of complexity and overhead to OGL rendering.
I'm not saying Flash is lightweight, but certainly it's not a problem endemic to the toolkit and can be improved. It's the "players" that have the problem, and if they're essentially implementing a player at the hardware level, there's no reason why it couldn't be just as fast and lightweight as something like, say, Java within Jazelle.
That probably has to do with several generations of German males dying off before they were able to effectively reproduce, only to have the following generations largely composed of single-parent children and children of war-torn families.
Not that it means anything, just some postulation. It could likewise be argued that the complete decimation of the male population in France had similar results. They were once a proud, strong nation, but they're pretty limp-wristed now.
That's one of the things that's pushed me away from MMORPGs and the like, actually: the whole concept that you're playing "with" someone else, preferably in a team based environment. Why would I want to do that? It's not fun, and it's mostly a poor replacement for emotionally unstable people who can't handle "losing".
Take FPS games, for instance, for team based gameplay as a microcosm (like Team Fortress). You've got your medic, tank, engineer, and balanced characters. Why do people pick a given character? Certainly part of it comes down to the personality of the player, but it always comes back to the same basic concept of "what will allow me to do best?" Teamwork is a mere means to an end of not dying, or being valued to the others. If it serves no purpose, then people will all just (say) pick the heavy weapons character, or some other single-sided gameplay.
What we need in the MMORPG arena is the ability to solo play and not miss out on any part of the game. IE, think Fallout 3 or Deus Ex or some similar RPG, but in a universe instead of a world. Everyone is a part of the game, and there are factions - but it does not define you as a character, and your identity as a character is just as, if not more important, to your character as the faction/team you're on. To the player, the character is what matters, just as in real life, and trying to push a "socialist" type game world on a player only detracts from the quality of the game.
IMO, what we need is a good MMORPG post-apocalyptic game which effectively combines role playing/character stats and development with FPS gameplay (again, see Fallout 3 and Deus Ex as how such a thing -might- be conceptualized). If you're good at the game, your level 5 might take out someone else's level 80 - but as a result, that level 80's team puts a bounty out on you, or some such thing. I think it'd work really well in an urban desert type environment with gang factions (which would be fully organic, no pre-conceived groups but some weak ones to get the first players started). Gameplay could be team based, but you're just a human with a gun and a molotov cocktail fighting block to block and hiding or running when you're outnumbered, taking safe harbor when you can.
Eve kinda gets it right here, but it's also a dull and fairly slow-paced space game. However, cast a FPS game within the same MMORPG framework, and I think they'd have somethign incredible.
Like everything, there's a "temperature band" tolerance for any given device. There's the "works well" band, which is smaller and sits somewhere within the overall band which is "acceptable" - and a gradual gradient between "well" and "acceptable", all the way up to "melts solder" and "PCB forms frost". I'd wager that the temperature band google studied was almost entirely within the "works range" range, so any variances wouldn't show that much difference.
Correct; however, quite a few of the "higher end" (ie $50 and up, thereabout) PSUs have power conditioning. They call it active (or passive) PFC - power filter control. Any decent PSU you buy today (eg. Antec earthwatts) is going to have it.
Actually, didn't the google drive study find that disks performed better at warm-but-not-hot temperatures, and that excessive cooling was actually detrimental? That's what I recall coming away from it.
Add to that the fact that Google (apparently) tends to run their data centers "hot" compared to what is commonly accepted, and use significantly cheaper components, and you've got a good explanation for why their error count is as high as it is.
Also, if you look at total devices sold with a mobile OS, I think you'll find the numbers substantially skewered in MS's favor: there are far more WinMo phones sold than there are iPhones, if I recall correctly. Nevermind Linux.
Actually I think it's been shown the (rough) opposite (posted to from slashdot, even): Mac users are less critical/intelligent than your average Windows users. Not that it makes a difference in the long run; it's a stupid study.
In a demographic study like this, IT professionals/geeks need not apply. Just because you've got 20 systems in your basement, almost half being older than you yourself are, does not skewer things in any significant way.
Follows suit? The W7 taskbar look and feel has been available in KDE4 for some time now; long before the first W7 beta.
Yep. I've got four systems installed with my MSDN Win7 RTM right now (1 new laptop that came with Vista, an ancient and worn Thinkpad X30, and two VMs). It outnumbers the XP machines and VMs I've got now (though Linux and BSD are still the ones I use primarily).
Do note that MS is offering free MSDN subscriptions to small businesses right now; W7 is available to those subscriptions. That likely accounts for quite a few users (that's how I got mine).
However, I suspect most of that 1% of users are getting Windows 7 from torrent sites, illicitly. The RTM is available in Corporate and Enterprise, and there are a myriad of cracks out there for activation.
This guy got modded funny, but there's a nugget of truth in the greater turd.
In science as a whole, and particularly fields like archeology, there seems to be a very unhealthy "not invented here" mentality. It's particularly evident in Egyptology, from what I've read: despite any evidence to the contrary, they insist upon primitive, labor-intensive, and often easily-explained-away methods of construction.
Two examples are the Giza pyramid (ignoring the astounding geometric and architectural complexity which we can only explain by creating 'ancient rituals') and the famous granite sarcophagi also from ancient Egypt.
The Giza pyramid has stones upwards of 60 tons and experimental 'rebuilds' at a smaller scale (1/8th rings a bell) have been attempted in modern times, using modern machinery - and failed. The mechanics of lifting or moving 60 tons simply can't be explained using modern science without completely rejecting the precepts of the field (and even then, it's a bit questionable).
The sarcophagi I mentioned are multiple, identical boxes found at a single location. The contemporary explanation, as I understand it, is that they were pounded out by hand using basalt and maybe rubbed out with sand. Yet the inner corners show inexplicable marks consistent with what might occur if the boxes were cut today using modern machinery - and to an absurdly high precision, at that.
These are things which simply don't make sense within our contemporary understanding. In the case of the large granite (etc.) pillars throughout the world, it would make sense that some machinery, of some sort, was employed. Having done a fair amount of "large heavy lifting" and seeing it take 6 people and a 1 ton motor to lift and maneuver a 1500lb, 4x8x8 stage prop, and then over 10 people to move it while on wheels on a flat, smooth surface, I'm highly skeptical of any claims to hemp ropes and wooden block and tackle being able to handle something of this scale. Possible, I suppose, but it seems just as likely that they might have invented internal combustion (or some other technology) and their lesser machines (the ones made from metal) have all since decayed - as to believe that a bunch of relative primitives could do something which a group of highly determined (and not particularly fond of failure - they were Japanese) engineers couldn't do with modern technology at a significantly smaller scale.
Oh, no you didn't. Brother does NOT have good Linux support. I've got an older - yet still USB - Brother 1435, and the OpenPrinting record for it considers it a paperweight. Sure, there's a driver for it - but it's a pain in the ass to get set up, doesn't work consistently, and is a lost cause on x64.
As others have said here, HP, HP, HP. And by "HP" We mean "HP LaserJet". Inkjet is straight out the window due to cost-per-page and the unavailability of refills after a number of years - never mind the cost.
Until recently, I was using an HP LJ IIImv. It died due to electrical overload (PCB not fuser), but I got it used for $30, and it lasted me 5 years and about a box and a half of paper. I've seen HP LJs last 10 years and 10s of thousands of pages without any significant part - and even at that age, HP is awesome about providing replacement parts for their older printers.
Absolutely, positively avoid anything from Brother, Dell, Canon, or Epson, as well as any sort of MFD. Brother printers don't seem to be all that reliable (even the "HP clones") or don't use standard languages; Dells break surprisingly fast/don't life up to the MTBF ratings, and Epsons are likewise iffy on drivers and quality. Canon is pretty bad about EOL'ing their products "early" as well, and don't tend to play nicely with standards.
MFD (multifunction device) printers are to be avoided due to the driver issues frequently encountered with such devices (ie you can still use the printer but scanning becomes impossible after a couple years).
If I were to buy a new printer today and I had money to burn, it would be a small office color laser from HP. Or maybe just their 'entry level' @ $150, which doesn't do color but does do 24ppm as well as support PCL5e.
That's rarely something which needs to be described, and in most small environments, it's usually something of marginal consequence.
The biggest concern for security breaches is malware and the associated data harvesting. When you've got users running as Administrator, it's a bit of a problem. The users will get into pissing fights when you've got to revoke their ability to install "screensavers" and the like.
The alternative to "it's company policy" is explaining Active Directory/UAC/ACLs to them, and they feel like you're talking over their heads/insulting them. Or trying, in some sort of perverted fashion which doesn't actually make all that much sense - and then they feel like you're condescending/insulting them.
When your average IT worker has (say) an IQ of 120, which is 10-15 points higher than the average officer worker (best case scenario!), you're not working in an "intelligent workplace". Most workplaces are not "intelligent". And even in an "intelligent" work place (say, an accounting firm or a law firm), the chances are high that the domain of knowledge is so far divorced from their reality that you might as well speak in reverse-polish notation Sanskrit.
More likely, it's a year where barely anyone has been hiring, and a lot of layoffs have been made. I was thinking it was bad last fall, but shit! This year I saw no more than 2 IT related postings locally from February until August. In 2008, I'd see 5-10 or so a month.
When your IT staff is at "skeleton" levels because you don't know what you're doing, you're going to reap the whirlwind. The first thing to go out the door is security vigilance, because it's usually the last thing that's given conscious thought (unless users are complaining about something specific, in which case it becomes your first thought).
"Top end protection", these days, means one thing on Windows: unplug the damn ethernet/router! There is no Windows product which even comes close to properly keeping a stupid computer user from infecting the machine once it's connected to the Internet, regardless of how few programs are installed or how up-to-date it is. None.
Not so much "when" but "where". IT was very glorious in the good old days when there was no "Internet" to speak of, just a bunch of Unis networked together, UNIX was king, and if you wanted a home computer, you used a Mac, Trash-80 or similar.
There was once a time where being a police man was a title of privilege and respect.
Eh, maybe. But I doubt it. Maybe in the idealized Mr. Rogers/Andy Mayburry worlds, and quite possibly even at some point and in some parts of the country (1800s in Midwestern towns). But I think there's been a fairly broad acceptance (if subconscious) that to catch a thief, you've got to think like (or at least understand) a thief - and that makes most people who don't think about such things uncomfortable.
My great-grand Da was a town police officer, back when there was only one in the town. This would've been 1920s in NY. He was a philandering drunk with a crazy-mean streak while drunk. Sure, he was a suave guy liked by many, but he slept with all the pretty girls in town and wasn't on the up-and-up all the time.