Actually, consumer level windows (32bit vista/xp) are artificially limited... Windows 2003 supports PAE, and will support upto 64GB memory in a single 32bit machine with a pentium pro or newer CPU. I've seen it do so myself on some xeon boxes (older non 64bit xeons). I would imagine that windows 2000 also supported it, PAE is hardly new and linux has had support for it for many years.
And even with PAE, as under a 64bit os, a single 32bit process still cannot use more than 2GB of address space.
Ofcourse PAE is a nasty hack, and reduces performance, so you have to decide for yourself if that reduced performance is less of a hassle than the incompatibility of a 64bit os. On linux it's mostly a no brainer, because aside from a very small subset of proprietary apps almost everything runs fine (and often faster) when compiled for 64bit. Windows would benefit more from PAE support, due to a larger base of proprietary apps and drivers, but if microsoft were to support pae in consumer versions of windows then noone would bother using the 64bit version (and people would complain that more ram actually made the machine slower).
You can also use a 64bit kernel, but 32bit usermode apps/libs. Some closed source apps (flash etc) are not available as 64bit, and thus you'd still need a 32bit browser to interface with it meaning 2 sets of libs etc. With a 64bit kernel but 32bit userland, you can still address 64bit memory, and no single 32bit program can use more than 2gb, which works nicely if your running third party binaries like flash which like to go screwy and consume all your ram sometimes.
They are not undermining content or freedom of speech... The format is only a container. They already mandate the use of standard containers or transmission media for other types of information, you can call the government on the telephone but you can't contact them using ham radio... You can write them a letter on a piece of paper, but you can't carve them a stone tablet.
They have to standardise on one format for practical reasons, to support a wide range of formats is more expensive and more error prone. As a taxpayer, i don't want to be paying unnecessarily for the government to support multiple formats.
They should standardise on published documented standards for several reasons. They provide the widest and lowest cost access for the population who have to deal with the government, programs for reading/writing standard formats such as PDF and ODF are available for a wide range of systems and at a wide range of pricing/support structures. Meaning, you can obtain such programs for free if you want, or if your needs/budget are different you can obtain software with varying levels of commercial support. Big vendors such as IBM, Sun and Novell provide commercial applications and support for ODF if that's what you need. Because there are multiple vendors, competition pushes the prices down and quality up.
If they were to use a proprietary format, not only would they lock themselves in but also force third parties dealing with them to get themselves locked in too. By using a proprietary format the government are forced to purchase proprietary products at whatever price is set, and the end users are similarly forced. Because they need these particular programs (and anything else they might require) to deal with the government, people have no choice but to buy them. Because of this, the vendor can charge ridiculous amounts for retail copies while potentially giving the government big discounts to discourage them from migrating.
As a taxpayer, i don't want the government to waste money dealing with multiple formats. As a taxpayer, i want them purchasing their software in a competitive marketplace so that they get the best deal. As an end user, i want the same ability to go for the best deal rather than being forced down a particular route. As a taxpayer, most important of all i want a government that does the best for ITS PEOPLE... I want a government that fights for the best deal, I want a government that buys from local suppliers whenever possible (paying more to a local supplier than to a foreign one is often a better deal, since a big chunk of that money will come back as tax), I want a government that doesn't force unnecessary expenses on it's people - especially expenses that cause money to leave the country.
Any government that forces all of it's taxpayers to spend $450 on a foreign product is acting irresponsibly, that's a huge amount of money leaving the country.
It makes sense to specify a single format, and ODF is the only standard format that currently suits the purpose and is free to be implemented by anyone. There may be a minority of people using it, but i don't believe any of those people would be forced to pay extra to be able to.
As for sending files back in the format you sent, what happens if they're sending something new and aren't aware what format you want? Aside from the fact that the government will need to maintain a large selection of apps to support all the different formats, and they have to draw the line somewhere... Otherwise what's to stop someone creating their own proprietary format and then charging the government for a program capable of reading it?
The cost of supporting multiple formats is prohibitive, and forcing the use of a proprietary format just pushes an unnecessary cost burden onto the people and makes the online government services less accessible.
Instead, if they support only a small set of standard formats, they reduce their own costs and any users who can't use the files can be pointed to a free download or provided with free apps on cd.
Aside from that, there is really very little need to mandate standard formats for audio/images and to a slightly lesser extent video because pretty much everyone is already using standard (or if not officially standards blessed, at least open) formats for such things.
ODF does support spreadsheets, and slideshows although a series of standard images could also comprise a slideshow...
And databases, they are usually hosted on a server rather than kicked around as files.
Well, have you reported this annoyance to the openoffice developers? Or looked for a way to turn it off? I'm pretty sure excel behaves in the same way, but most people turn it off.
Very true, however skilled staff are far more expensive than unskilled ones. MacOS is more secure out of the box than windows, it has less crap running by default and makes it easier for you to run as an unprivileged user.
Also, in my experience, the most skilled IT staff all had a good level of unix knowledge and the majority would prefer to use unix/mac/linux given the choice.
Yes, the RIAA won't provide customers with something so desirable they dream about it... So these customers have to turn to piracy to get what they want.
That old CD i bought a few years ago, which is now all scratched and plays badly must be pirated because it sounds atrocious... While those FLAC files i downloaded from bittorrent must be legit because they don't sound atrocious.
But do consider that this release is due to the EU ruling... Software patents are not valid in the EU, so such concerns are not directly relevant to developers/users in the EU, and it is european people who the european commission's job is to look out for.
Well, Camino was always mozilla's preferred mac browser. Firefox is a cross platform browser, so it won't work so well with some of the things macos does in a unique way. The only issue is the lack of plugins for camino, which is otherwise a really great mac browser.
That pricing is for brand new memory that's still being mass produced... Also a 1GB module is mid-range these days... Older memory is more expensive because it's no longer mass produced, and the (for the time) higher end modules more expensive still, because they never sold in such huge numbers. To give an example, 512Mb of PC133 memory for a Dell Latitude C610 (1.2ghz P3-M) starts at $61.99 for the cheapest brand, and goes up to around $84.99 for the most expensive branded premium ram. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000260381+1309221146&name=PC+133
I imagine anyone who has a laptop with 128MB memory currently installed, is probably using an older machine which requires PC133 or even older memory.
I also have a Sony Vaio C1-MHP laptop, an extra 256mb for it will cost me $89.98, bringing me to the maximum total memory of 384mb (minus 20mb for it's cpu to use for code morphing): http://www.memoryx.net/sonvapcmem17.html
With older memory priced as it is, unless you can find a bargain on ebay where someone is trying to get rid of old memory (often these people only have small modules for sale), it's often cheaper to buy a new low-end system which will be significantly more powerful.
Tabs are popular because people perceive the existing window management to be inadequate... They are also usually slightly less resource intensive than having lots of separate windows open.
And they achieve that 10% capacity by having a little inflatable bag inside the cartridge to occupy most of the space, so even if you refill them you won't get much in... You have to burst the bag.
It's usually the driver... I have several printers that behave that way on windows and mac with the official drivers, but running unofficial drivers or using them on linux it will print increasingly light shades of grey until it runs out completely... Some will actually print with no ink, and just feed out blank sheets.
Well, open source tends to offer the best of both worlds in this respect. If you want a supported version that will only have security patches and no feature upgrades, several linux distributions operate in this way, such as debian stable and centos. Of course you are still free to install the updated feature versions of packages too, if you wish.
Microsoft give you no choice, there is typically only a single patch for a given hole which may or may not introduce new untested features or change functionality, or even fix other undisclosed vulnerabilities (leaving you wondering why the hell a patch for X is modifying Y).
Your password isn't as weak as "root" "test" or "password"... So long as there is lower hanging fruit you'll be just fine. The more user/password combinations someone tries the longer their scanning takes. So the kiddies will select their wordlist based on the lowest time expended to acquire access to a system.
Any code signing system will harm users more than it helps them. It will create a cartel, preventing free development of applications, how much will this hinder people who simply want to program in their back bedroom? Only companies with sufficient money will be able to release software, this is microsoft's wet dream because it will shut out open source developers.
Malware is big business, so companies profiting from malware will simply buy certificates for their rootkits. And because the whole system would revolve around money, anyone could bribe their way into a position of trust.
And not to mention the chance that the signing authority could be hacked, resulting in all kinds of malware being signed.
Microsoft knows code signing would do little or nothing to improve security, they are pushing it as a way to exclude independent developers. Other companies they can buy, but open source they can't do much about.
And so swiping your thumb will become as instinctive to users as clicking yes, ok or next. And serious criminals wanting to break into a machine will simply cut off your thumb, i hate the idea of biometric authentication. At least with a password they need to keep you alive to extract your password from you. Very few people are willing to lose body parts to protect their data.
UAC dialogs are annoying, people will just hit yes without even reading them. Create a website that tries to install something on a user's machine, make it something totally mundane that just phones home and increments a counter, but make sure the website requires a confirmation dialog first, that tells the user something like "Do you want to install a rootkit on your machine yes/no". You want to see how many people actually just hit yes and install that? More amusingly that may even be a legal way to install a rootkit, because the user has consented to it.
UAC is intrusive enough that users will get annoyed and either turn it off, or just blindly hit yes... Similarly, people will get annoyed enough with their badly written apps not working that they just run as a privileged user (i assume unpriv accounts are separate and in addition to uac, i haven't used vista much). People's solution to forgetting their password, is to turn the password requirement off... They will simply bypass any security that gets in their way. The same is true for firewalls and other "security software", when joe user wants to run his p2p program or play a game and the firewall gets in the way, off it goes. I remember hearing from someone proudly talking about how much faster his windows box was after he performed some "performance optimization"... He'd turned off the firewall (no more popups when programs try to access the network, his p2p program now ran a lot faster too) and turned off the antivirus (sped everything up).
You need to be secure by default, and have that security not impact the user's daily life. Users are used to an easy life, without needing passwords or such (thanks to windows) so now they're seen as an onerous annoyance. And now windows has gone too far in the other direction, it's security is now more annoying than what unix had originally. Had people's first and/or only experience of computing been as a nonroot user on a unix system, people would have much different expectations.
Can't speak for vista, but XP is definitely far less secure in it's standard setup.
XP encourages users to run as admin, whereas OSX forces you to run as an unprivileged user. Most of the system services on XP run under a privileged account, whereas OSX sandboxes more of them... XP ships with considerably more network-listening services by default than OSX does, and it's often not obvious (and definately beyond the capabilities of an average home user) how to turn them off.
That's not to say you can't harden it, but the fact is most home users won't ever do that. Anything designed to be used by technically illiterate people needs to be secure out of the box.
Your not used to it, you've not used OSX enough to get used to it. People don't like change, and will prefer what they're most comfortable with. Very few people will even spend enough time with something else to get used to it and realise it's benefits. It takes a lot for people to change, they have to see significant value in doing so before they will try, but once they get used to something else they will stick with it (unless it's found to be significantly worse). The longer they use it, the greater the chance of sticking with it.
I'm most comfortable with unix, before that i used an amiga. I liked the amiga a lot, and i was very used to it and very efficient at working with it's os, however i saw significant advantages in switching to unix (no new amiga hardware was being made, third party software support was dwindling, a lot of the third party software was overpriced and inferior to windows/mac/unix equivalents which were often free, any poorly written app could bring down the whole os - even the overpriced apps)... After the initial learning curve of linux (redhat 4 or so) i got used to it, broke my amigaos habits, became used to the advantages of unix and learnt of many new ones i wasn't aware of at the time. I also quite like macosx, because of it's similarities to unix but i could never get to grips with earlier versions. I've never been able to get on with windows either, the window manager doesnt suit me at all, and the commandline is weak (aside from being different from what im used to)
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Actually, consumer level windows (32bit vista/xp) are artificially limited...
Windows 2003 supports PAE, and will support upto 64GB memory in a single 32bit machine with a pentium pro or newer CPU. I've seen it do so myself on some xeon boxes (older non 64bit xeons). I would imagine that windows 2000 also supported it, PAE is hardly new and linux has had support for it for many years.
And even with PAE, as under a 64bit os, a single 32bit process still cannot use more than 2GB of address space.
Ofcourse PAE is a nasty hack, and reduces performance, so you have to decide for yourself if that reduced performance is less of a hassle than the incompatibility of a 64bit os. On linux it's mostly a no brainer, because aside from a very small subset of proprietary apps almost everything runs fine (and often faster) when compiled for 64bit. Windows would benefit more from PAE support, due to a larger base of proprietary apps and drivers, but if microsoft were to support pae in consumer versions of windows then noone would bother using the 64bit version (and people would complain that more ram actually made the machine slower).
You can also use a 64bit kernel, but 32bit usermode apps/libs. Some closed source apps (flash etc) are not available as 64bit, and thus you'd still need a 32bit browser to interface with it meaning 2 sets of libs etc.
With a 64bit kernel but 32bit userland, you can still address 64bit memory, and no single 32bit program can use more than 2gb, which works nicely if your running third party binaries like flash which like to go screwy and consume all your ram sometimes.
They are not undermining content or freedom of speech... The format is only a container.
They already mandate the use of standard containers or transmission media for other types of information, you can call the government on the telephone but you can't contact them using ham radio... You can write them a letter on a piece of paper, but you can't carve them a stone tablet.
They have to standardise on one format for practical reasons, to support a wide range of formats is more expensive and more error prone. As a taxpayer, i don't want to be paying unnecessarily for the government to support multiple formats.
They should standardise on published documented standards for several reasons.
They provide the widest and lowest cost access for the population who have to deal with the government, programs for reading/writing standard formats such as PDF and ODF are available for a wide range of systems and at a wide range of pricing/support structures. Meaning, you can obtain such programs for free if you want, or if your needs/budget are different you can obtain software with varying levels of commercial support. Big vendors such as IBM, Sun and Novell provide commercial applications and support for ODF if that's what you need. Because there are multiple vendors, competition pushes the prices down and quality up.
If they were to use a proprietary format, not only would they lock themselves in but also force third parties dealing with them to get themselves locked in too. By using a proprietary format the government are forced to purchase proprietary products at whatever price is set, and the end users are similarly forced. Because they need these particular programs (and anything else they might require) to deal with the government, people have no choice but to buy them. Because of this, the vendor can charge ridiculous amounts for retail copies while potentially giving the government big discounts to discourage them from migrating.
As a taxpayer, i don't want the government to waste money dealing with multiple formats.
As a taxpayer, i want them purchasing their software in a competitive marketplace so that they get the best deal.
As an end user, i want the same ability to go for the best deal rather than being forced down a particular route.
As a taxpayer, most important of all i want a government that does the best for ITS PEOPLE... I want a government that fights for the best deal, I want a government that buys from local suppliers whenever possible (paying more to a local supplier than to a foreign one is often a better deal, since a big chunk of that money will come back as tax), I want a government that doesn't force unnecessary expenses on it's people - especially expenses that cause money to leave the country.
Any government that forces all of it's taxpayers to spend $450 on a foreign product is acting irresponsibly, that's a huge amount of money leaving the country.
It makes sense to specify a single format, and ODF is the only standard format that currently suits the purpose and is free to be implemented by anyone.
There may be a minority of people using it, but i don't believe any of those people would be forced to pay extra to be able to.
As for sending files back in the format you sent, what happens if they're sending something new and aren't aware what format you want?
Aside from the fact that the government will need to maintain a large selection of apps to support all the different formats, and they have to draw the line somewhere... Otherwise what's to stop someone creating their own proprietary format and then charging the government for a program capable of reading it?
The cost of supporting multiple formats is prohibitive, and forcing the use of a proprietary format just pushes an unnecessary cost burden onto the people and makes the online government services less accessible.
Instead, if they support only a small set of standard formats, they reduce their own costs and any users who can't use the files can be pointed to a free download or provided with free apps on cd.
ODF does have a "drawing" format i believe...
Aside from that, there is really very little need to mandate standard formats for audio/images and to a slightly lesser extent video because pretty much everyone is already using standard (or if not officially standards blessed, at least open) formats for such things.
ODF does support spreadsheets, and slideshows although a series of standard images could also comprise a slideshow...
And databases, they are usually hosted on a server rather than kicked around as files.
Well, have you reported this annoyance to the openoffice developers? Or looked for a way to turn it off?
I'm pretty sure excel behaves in the same way, but most people turn it off.
Very true, however skilled staff are far more expensive than unskilled ones.
MacOS is more secure out of the box than windows, it has less crap running by default and makes it easier for you to run as an unprivileged user.
Also, in my experience, the most skilled IT staff all had a good level of unix knowledge and the majority would prefer to use unix/mac/linux given the choice.
Yes, the RIAA won't provide customers with something so desirable they dream about it...
So these customers have to turn to piracy to get what they want.
Pirate copies sound atrocious huh?
That old CD i bought a few years ago, which is now all scratched and plays badly must be pirated because it sounds atrocious...
While those FLAC files i downloaded from bittorrent must be legit because they don't sound atrocious.
// avoid 'compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan
Yes, because fans (read: customers) could only ever dream of the riaa actually providing them with what they want.
But do consider that this release is due to the EU ruling...
Software patents are not valid in the EU, so such concerns are not directly relevant to developers/users in the EU, and it is european people who the european commission's job is to look out for.
How about the proprietary protocols used by exchange and such?
And what about sharepoint? does that rely on any proprietary protocols?
Well, Camino was always mozilla's preferred mac browser. Firefox is a cross platform browser, so it won't work so well with some of the things macos does in a unique way.
The only issue is the lack of plugins for camino, which is otherwise a really great mac browser.
That pricing is for brand new memory that's still being mass produced...
Also a 1GB module is mid-range these days...
Older memory is more expensive because it's no longer mass produced, and the (for the time) higher end modules more expensive still, because they never sold in such huge numbers.
To give an example, 512Mb of PC133 memory for a Dell Latitude C610 (1.2ghz P3-M) starts at $61.99 for the cheapest brand, and goes up to around $84.99 for the most expensive branded premium ram.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000260381+1309221146&name=PC+133
I imagine anyone who has a laptop with 128MB memory currently installed, is probably using an older machine which requires PC133 or even older memory.
I also have a Sony Vaio C1-MHP laptop, an extra 256mb for it will cost me $89.98, bringing me to the maximum total memory of 384mb (minus 20mb for it's cpu to use for code morphing):
http://www.memoryx.net/sonvapcmem17.html
With older memory priced as it is, unless you can find a bargain on ebay where someone is trying to get rid of old memory (often these people only have small modules for sale), it's often cheaper to buy a new low-end system which will be significantly more powerful.
Tabs are popular because people perceive the existing window management to be inadequate...
They are also usually slightly less resource intensive than having lots of separate windows open.
And they achieve that 10% capacity by having a little inflatable bag inside the cartridge to occupy most of the space, so even if you refill them you won't get much in... You have to burst the bag.
It's usually the driver...
I have several printers that behave that way on windows and mac with the official drivers, but running unofficial drivers or using them on linux it will print increasingly light shades of grey until it runs out completely... Some will actually print with no ink, and just feed out blank sheets.
Well, open source tends to offer the best of both worlds in this respect.
If you want a supported version that will only have security patches and no feature upgrades, several linux distributions operate in this way, such as debian stable and centos.
Of course you are still free to install the updated feature versions of packages too, if you wish.
Microsoft give you no choice, there is typically only a single patch for a given hole which may or may not introduce new untested features or change functionality, or even fix other undisclosed vulnerabilities (leaving you wondering why the hell a patch for X is modifying Y).
Your password isn't as weak as "root" "test" or "password"... So long as there is lower hanging fruit you'll be just fine. The more user/password combinations someone tries the longer their scanning takes. So the kiddies will select their wordlist based on the lowest time expended to acquire access to a system.
Any code signing system will harm users more than it helps them.
It will create a cartel, preventing free development of applications, how much will this hinder people who simply want to program in their back bedroom?
Only companies with sufficient money will be able to release software, this is microsoft's wet dream because it will shut out open source developers.
Malware is big business, so companies profiting from malware will simply buy certificates for their rootkits. And because the whole system would revolve around money, anyone could bribe their way into a position of trust.
And not to mention the chance that the signing authority could be hacked, resulting in all kinds of malware being signed.
Microsoft knows code signing would do little or nothing to improve security, they are pushing it as a way to exclude independent developers. Other companies they can buy, but open source they can't do much about.
And so swiping your thumb will become as instinctive to users as clicking yes, ok or next.
And serious criminals wanting to break into a machine will simply cut off your thumb, i hate the idea of biometric authentication. At least with a password they need to keep you alive to extract your password from you. Very few people are willing to lose body parts to protect their data.
Hmm, never used final cut myself...
None of the mac apps i use tend to crash on me, tho i would quickly switch to different apps if they did.
UAC dialogs are annoying, people will just hit yes without even reading them.
Create a website that tries to install something on a user's machine, make it something totally mundane that just phones home and increments a counter, but make sure the website requires a confirmation dialog first, that tells the user something like "Do you want to install a rootkit on your machine yes/no".
You want to see how many people actually just hit yes and install that? More amusingly that may even be a legal way to install a rootkit, because the user has consented to it.
UAC is intrusive enough that users will get annoyed and either turn it off, or just blindly hit yes...
Similarly, people will get annoyed enough with their badly written apps not working that they just run as a privileged user (i assume unpriv accounts are separate and in addition to uac, i haven't used vista much).
People's solution to forgetting their password, is to turn the password requirement off... They will simply bypass any security that gets in their way. The same is true for firewalls and other "security software", when joe user wants to run his p2p program or play a game and the firewall gets in the way, off it goes.
I remember hearing from someone proudly talking about how much faster his windows box was after he performed some "performance optimization"... He'd turned off the firewall (no more popups when programs try to access the network, his p2p program now ran a lot faster too) and turned off the antivirus (sped everything up).
You need to be secure by default, and have that security not impact the user's daily life. Users are used to an easy life, without needing passwords or such (thanks to windows) so now they're seen as an onerous annoyance. And now windows has gone too far in the other direction, it's security is now more annoying than what unix had originally.
Had people's first and/or only experience of computing been as a nonroot user on a unix system, people would have much different expectations.
Can't speak for vista, but XP is definitely far less secure in it's standard setup.
XP encourages users to run as admin, whereas OSX forces you to run as an unprivileged user.
Most of the system services on XP run under a privileged account, whereas OSX sandboxes more of them...
XP ships with considerably more network-listening services by default than OSX does, and it's often not obvious (and definately beyond the capabilities of an average home user) how to turn them off.
That's not to say you can't harden it, but the fact is most home users won't ever do that. Anything designed to be used by technically illiterate people needs to be secure out of the box.
Your not used to it, you've not used OSX enough to get used to it.
People don't like change, and will prefer what they're most comfortable with. Very few people will even spend enough time with something else to get used to it and realise it's benefits.
It takes a lot for people to change, they have to see significant value in doing so before they will try, but once they get used to something else they will stick with it (unless it's found to be significantly worse). The longer they use it, the greater the chance of sticking with it.
I'm most comfortable with unix, before that i used an amiga. I liked the amiga a lot, and i was very used to it and very efficient at working with it's os, however i saw significant advantages in switching to unix (no new amiga hardware was being made, third party software support was dwindling, a lot of the third party software was overpriced and inferior to windows/mac/unix equivalents which were often free, any poorly written app could bring down the whole os - even the overpriced apps)...
After the initial learning curve of linux (redhat 4 or so) i got used to it, broke my amigaos habits, became used to the advantages of unix and learnt of many new ones i wasn't aware of at the time.
I also quite like macosx, because of it's similarities to unix but i could never get to grips with earlier versions.
I've never been able to get on with windows either, the window manager doesnt suit me at all, and the commandline is weak (aside from being different from what im used to)