Windows Media Player is an optional component, and can be removed via Add/Remove Programs.
IE can be "removed" via "Set Program Access and Defaults", or by just setting another browser as your default. Yes, IE is still there, but who cares? It _is_ part of the OS, regardless of what many people think it should be. It drives a lot of "Help" screens, Outlook's reading panes, etc. -- maybe in the future we can all work on some standard API so that any browser engine can replace IE's in these uses... but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. I don't even think it needs to happen.
Yeah, that logic makes no sense. Let's say Microsoft put all their "extras" into the "Plus!" pack, and started to give it away for free to all people who purchase computers with Windows already installed. Would that make it alright with you then?
When IE6 came out, it was the most "standards compatable" browser of it's time! Microsoft has even worked with the W3C to build/establish standards, as has many other companies and groups (*cough*FireFox*cough*) -- does that make them evil too?
Also, why should they be required to essentially "open source" _their_ video standard, especially since it has DRM and proprietary technoligies? Why don't you use a competing format? (QuickTime/OGG/DiVX/XViD/Real/etc.)
Not to mention that other people _have_ written their own media players. There is VLC, ZoomPlayer, and Media Player Classic just to name a few. The API and documentation is all available on MSDN.
Your last line.. "why should I have to use" -- that's just the thing; you don't! Go run linux, BSD, OSX, whatever the heck you want. That's the beauty of computers.
MS uses their OS dominance to ensure that everyone uses WMP instead of any other media app
I was unaware that people weren't installing RealPlayer or Quicktime... also, what part of the OS "ensures" that people only use WMP? Would you rather it not have media support out of the box? Also, why does it matter that Microsoft has their own media format(s)? You're free to design your own container/codec (*cough*Matroska*cough*DiVX*cough*OGG*cough*)
Second, of the things you mention, only web browsing and media playback come bundled with MS Windows. There is no included video editing and no included photo manipulation -- at least nothing capable of doing anything serious.
Apparently you haven't looked at a Windows XP retail box lately.. they tout these extra features. There is a movie editing program, and you can even download it for free from Microsot's website. There is also basic photo manipulation on the left panel of Explorer when an image is selected. There's also paint, and the Plus! pack offers more multimedia stuff..
truly modern OS like OS X or GNU/Linux
Such arrogance. No wonder you think Microsoft is the big bad man. You don't like it? Do better! That's the beauty of capitalism and business.
Might want to re-think that; Apple doesn't have a dominating postion in Apple computers?
Even if what you said was true-- who cares? If Microsoft wants to _sell_ the customer these things in their OS, why should the government/etc. be able to stop them? It seems like people want a PC that comes with functionality "out of the box". They don't care that FireFox is free, or that Picasa is out there for photos, etc... they just want the damn thing to work. Is that Microsoft's fault?
I'm all for "alternative"/free software, but that's the beauty of it.. end-users don't have to use the Microsoft applications, they can use anything they want on the OS. Antitrust/"Micro$oft" zealots seem to forget that (and play a blind eye to Apple's activities.)
This never made sense to me-- Apple is doing the same thing, yet it's ok? I mean, iTunes, Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie, etc..
People who purchase Windows expect certain features in a modern OS, such as web browsing, video editing, photo manipulation, multimedia playback, etc.-- why is it wrong for Microsoft to include these features in an OS _they_ made and sold?
1.0.6 -- I have around 10 different extensions installed (none that deal with tabs, though) and loading multiple tabs (especially if a tab has Quicktime/Flash/lots of images/etc.) results in the browser "locking up" for a second or so as each tab is loaded. This wouldn't be happening if it was truly multi-threaded.
FireFox has major threading issues anyhow. Go to any website, and start right clicking->'T' (open in tab) on every link you can find. Behold the slowness!
After looking around that person's website some more, I found this gem.
Come on.. 99% of the things mentioned on that page are things that could apply to most any programming language. Yes, beginners are going to make "beginner's mistakes", like the ones listed on that page, but that is not the fault of.Net! Also, the implication that never learning Java is bad thing is just hilarious. I'm sorry, I can write just fine without any knowledge of Java programming. It isn't like Java is the only programming language with good practices/structures.
If no one caught the exception in.Net, the.Net runtime itself would "catch" it (which is better than nothing.) Unless you're catching it and not throwing it, and that'd be bad anyhow.
I also don't see how it's more unsafe-- good programmers are going to always implement a consistent and reliable error handling practice, regardless of the programming language. Yes, you can write code that is terrible with respect to exception handling in.Net (as well as many other languages), but that is hardly the fault of the language itself.
That website you linked to presents.NET and Java examples, and makes it seem like.NET is incapable of the same error handling as Java (which is incorrect.) This example, for instance:
If while scanning the state of Pennsylvania, KillerSearch receives an IOException, a checked exception in Java, the Java class will stop processing and REPORT the error to KillerSearchManager, who will Log the error, send an email notification to the responsible owner of this application, and CONTINUE THE SEARCH. KSM will then pass the Next State to the KilllerSearch class and the Hunt will Continue. Later that night KSM finds a match for the killer in the state of California. The CA FBI is emailed the results, they pick up the killer at 5am.
A Dot Net solution will receive the IOException from the state of Pennsylvania and QUIT. The NEXT DAY, around 8 or 9 am, the Dot Net programmer will read the log file of the KSM and determine how many states were processed, rebuild a new list of states to process, and start a rerun of the job. The killer will Not be caught. The FBI will look like a bunch of idiots.
Is particularly incorrect-- what is stopping the.Net code from being written in such a way to "continue" after an exception is thrown in a deeper layer? There is none. You could do the same thing in Java _and_.Net.
This excerpt is also just plain wrong:
Dot Net ( VB or C# ) takes the error and dies, Dot Net goes into battle naked, unarmed and doesn't last long. Dot Net frees the developer of that 1% penalty up front, only to deliver a 1000% penalty at the back end, that re-occurs again and again as an application runs and encounters unexpected error after error.
Huh? It sounds like this person has never even written a line of.Net in his/her life.
I don't know Java, so I don't know the particulars of what you're ranting about..
but it sounds like you don't really understand.Net's exception handling, with a gem like this:
'm sure they love not being forced to think about important things like whether or not a call is going over a network.
You can specify different exception "catch"'s, for specific errors or criteria. For example, when perfoming a simple query to a SQL server, I have a "generic" catch-all exception handler, and then a "connection failure" exception handler, doing something a little different.
Have you checked out Visual Web Developer Express 2005? It is in beta, and "free" to try right now. Or if you have an MSDN subscription, you can download the latest VS2005 build and check it out yourself.
I've been using both for a few months now (Express I have been using since it came out..) and I don't have many complaints. They are waaay easier to use than VS2003. And yes, it doesn't touch your HTML code like VS2003/Web Matrix used to.
Huh? No one forces you to use wizards. You can do DataSets/etc. on your own, if you'd like.
I've been developing in.Net for 2+ years now, and have never really had a use for any of the wizards in VS2003 (other than maybe the XSD ones.)
As for web projects, VS2003 works fine if you know how to set it up (takes a bit of time)-- but VS2005 dramatically changes the way things are structured with this, to make it easier to work with (and I am glad.)
SP1 has a CD key blacklist, for the most common pirated keys back in the day. This was news when SP1 came out.. where have you been?
Search around, you'll find all sorts of webpages detailing how to change a CD key after installing Windows.. and even some free CD key generators.
But anyway, back to the original point.. security updates are still being allowed for non-geniune copies of Windows XP, when using the automatic updates client. If you visit the update webpage, you will not be able to download anything.
Can you be more specific about crashing/heavy loads? Like I said, an FPS is going to strain your machine more than any video or audio editing is going to.
Most of the time, when you are dealing with add-in video or audio cards, the companies that make them cut corners in hardware or driver design, or worse, design strictly for Mac (with PC being an afterthought.) This leads to terrible non-WHQL'd drivers, which cause crashes/blue screens/other fun things, and leads people to blame Microsoft when they shouldn't.
That's probably the most generic and incorrect statement I've ever heard.
Want to put a huge strain on your systems components? Go play a first person shooter, like Doom3 or Battlefield2. This is going to tax your system more than video editing will. And if that crashes or locks up, you can take your pick from the typical problems:
1) Cheapo power supplies. Sorry, a $15 power supply is crap. You get what you pay for.
2) Custom cases with little/no ventilation. You need a fan pulling in cool air, at the bare minimum, in combination of your power supply fan exhausting hot air. If you've got a billion hard drives and the latest video cards, you probably should have more fans.
4) "Enhanced" drivers, or non-WHQL drivers. While WHQL drivers aren't "perfect" (thanks to dis-honest companies) they do ensure that the drivers have met a certain quality level. The tweaked/enhanced driver sets that people install don't have to go through these checks, and do all sort of stupid things (see overclocking above.)
So yeah, thanks again for talking down to me about what I do for a living, and yet proving that you do not know anywhere near enough to be partaking in this discussion in such a demeaning pedantic way.
The whole reason for the machine.config's browser capabilities section is to have the ability for.NET controls to "downgrade" themselves to lesser capable browsers-- so if you try and use Netscape v3, etc. to view a.NET page, it won't look like absolute garbage and be non-functional. It isn't meant to "lock in" to Internet Explorer; it's totally extendable by yourself or anyone else (hence the slingFive link I posted.)
Any web design job that will reach the masses is sure as heck going to try and work for as many browsers as possible, including older/legacy ones. If not, you're just limiting yourself. Not everyone has IE6, or the latest Safari. Heck, most Mac users still use IE for the Mac (*barf*) Have you checked out some browser statistics lately?
And congrats for being an asshat-- there's nothing wrong with server-side detection of a browser. Unless your browser is lame and spoofing IE (*cough*Opera*cough*) which fudges up the works sometimes.
Combine that with client-side JavaScript for browser detection, and you've got a force to be reckoned with.
As for attacking what I do for a living.. do you help design and maintain a site viewed by almost half a million people a day, all using different browsers and operating systems, and making the site behave almost the same on all of them? Didn't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows Media Player is an optional component, and can be removed via Add/Remove Programs.
IE can be "removed" via "Set Program Access and Defaults", or by just setting another browser as your default. Yes, IE is still there, but who cares? It _is_ part of the OS, regardless of what many people think it should be. It drives a lot of "Help" screens, Outlook's reading panes, etc. -- maybe in the future we can all work on some standard API so that any browser engine can replace IE's in these uses... but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. I don't even think it needs to happen.
Your logic makes no sense, man!
Apple (hardware) and Apple (software) are the same entity!
Yeah, that logic makes no sense. Let's say Microsoft put all their "extras" into the "Plus!" pack, and started to give it away for free to all people who purchase computers with Windows already installed. Would that make it alright with you then?
Wha?
When IE6 came out, it was the most "standards compatable" browser of it's time! Microsoft has even worked with the W3C to build/establish standards, as has many other companies and groups (*cough*FireFox*cough*) -- does that make them evil too?
Also, why should they be required to essentially "open source" _their_ video standard, especially since it has DRM and proprietary technoligies? Why don't you use a competing format? (QuickTime/OGG/DiVX/XViD/Real/etc.)
Not to mention that other people _have_ written their own media players. There is VLC, ZoomPlayer, and Media Player Classic just to name a few. The API and documentation is all available on MSDN.
Your last line.. "why should I have to use" -- that's just the thing; you don't! Go run linux, BSD, OSX, whatever the heck you want. That's the beauty of computers.
MS uses their OS dominance to ensure that everyone uses WMP instead of any other media app
I was unaware that people weren't installing RealPlayer or Quicktime... also, what part of the OS "ensures" that people only use WMP? Would you rather it not have media support out of the box? Also, why does it matter that Microsoft has their own media format(s)? You're free to design your own container/codec (*cough*Matroska*cough*DiVX*cough*OGG*cough*)
Second, of the things you mention, only web browsing and media playback come bundled with MS Windows. There is no included video editing and no included photo manipulation -- at least nothing capable of doing anything serious.
Apparently you haven't looked at a Windows XP retail box lately.. they tout these extra features. There is a movie editing program, and you can even download it for free from Microsot's website. There is also basic photo manipulation on the left panel of Explorer when an image is selected. There's also paint, and the Plus! pack offers more multimedia stuff..
truly modern OS like OS X or GNU/Linux
Such arrogance. No wonder you think Microsoft is the big bad man. You don't like it? Do better! That's the beauty of capitalism and business.
Might want to re-think that; Apple doesn't have a dominating postion in Apple computers?
Even if what you said was true-- who cares? If Microsoft wants to _sell_ the customer these things in their OS, why should the government/etc. be able to stop them? It seems like people want a PC that comes with functionality "out of the box". They don't care that FireFox is free, or that Picasa is out there for photos, etc... they just want the damn thing to work. Is that Microsoft's fault?
I'm all for "alternative"/free software, but that's the beauty of it.. end-users don't have to use the Microsoft applications, they can use anything they want on the OS. Antitrust/"Micro$oft" zealots seem to forget that (and play a blind eye to Apple's activities.)
This never made sense to me-- Apple is doing the same thing, yet it's ok? I mean, iTunes, Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie, etc..
People who purchase Windows expect certain features in a modern OS, such as web browsing, video editing, photo manipulation, multimedia playback, etc.-- why is it wrong for Microsoft to include these features in an OS _they_ made and sold?
No, like I said, I have no extensions that affect tabs (as far as I know.)
1.0.6 -- I have around 10 different extensions installed (none that deal with tabs, though) and loading multiple tabs (especially if a tab has Quicktime/Flash/lots of images/etc.) results in the browser "locking up" for a second or so as each tab is loaded. This wouldn't be happening if it was truly multi-threaded.
FireFox has major threading issues anyhow. Go to any website, and start right clicking->'T' (open in tab) on every link you can find. Behold the slowness!
After looking around that person's website some more, I found this gem.
.Net! Also, the implication that never learning Java is bad thing is just hilarious. I'm sorry, I can write just fine without any knowledge of Java programming. It isn't like Java is the only programming language with good practices/structures.
Come on.. 99% of the things mentioned on that page are things that could apply to most any programming language. Yes, beginners are going to make "beginner's mistakes", like the ones listed on that page, but that is not the fault of
If no one caught the exception in .Net, the .Net runtime itself would "catch" it (which is better than nothing.) Unless you're catching it and not throwing it, and that'd be bad anyhow.
.Net (as well as many other languages), but that is hardly the fault of the language itself.
.NET and Java examples, and makes it seem like .NET is incapable of the same error handling as Java (which is incorrect.) This example, for instance:
.Net code from being written in such a way to "continue" after an exception is thrown in a deeper layer? There is none. You could do the same thing in Java _and_ .Net.
.Net in his/her life.
I also don't see how it's more unsafe-- good programmers are going to always implement a consistent and reliable error handling practice, regardless of the programming language. Yes, you can write code that is terrible with respect to exception handling in
That website you linked to presents
If while scanning the state of Pennsylvania, KillerSearch receives an IOException, a checked exception in Java, the Java class will stop processing and REPORT the error to KillerSearchManager, who will Log the error, send an email notification to the responsible owner of this application, and CONTINUE THE SEARCH.
KSM will then pass the Next State to the KilllerSearch class and the Hunt will Continue.
Later that night KSM finds a match for the killer in the state of California. The CA FBI is emailed the results, they pick up the killer at 5am.
A Dot Net solution will receive the IOException from the state of Pennsylvania and QUIT.
The NEXT DAY, around 8 or 9 am, the Dot Net programmer will read the log file of the KSM and determine how many states were processed, rebuild a new list of states to process, and start a rerun of the job. The killer will Not be caught. The FBI will look like a bunch of idiots.
Is particularly incorrect-- what is stopping the
This excerpt is also just plain wrong:
Dot Net ( VB or C# ) takes the error and dies, Dot Net goes into battle naked, unarmed and doesn't last long. Dot Net frees the developer of that 1% penalty up front, only to deliver a 1000% penalty at the back end, that re-occurs again and again as an application runs and encounters unexpected error after error.
Huh? It sounds like this person has never even written a line of
I don't know Java, so I don't know the particulars of what you're ranting about..
.Net's exception handling, with a gem like this:
but it sounds like you don't really understand
'm sure they love not being forced to think about important things like whether or not a call is going over a network.
You can specify different exception "catch"'s, for specific errors or criteria. For example, when perfoming a simple query to a SQL server, I have a "generic" catch-all exception handler, and then a "connection failure" exception handler, doing something a little different.
Have you checked out Visual Web Developer Express 2005? It is in beta, and "free" to try right now. Or if you have an MSDN subscription, you can download the latest VS2005 build and check it out yourself.
I've been using both for a few months now (Express I have been using since it came out..) and I don't have many complaints. They are waaay easier to use than VS2003. And yes, it doesn't touch your HTML code like VS2003/Web Matrix used to.
VS2005 will do most of the things you mentioned.
:)
If not, people are free to write/buy an addon for VS
Huh? No one forces you to use wizards. You can do DataSets/etc. on your own, if you'd like.
.Net for 2+ years now, and have never really had a use for any of the wizards in VS2003 (other than maybe the XSD ones.)
I've been developing in
As for web projects, VS2003 works fine if you know how to set it up (takes a bit of time)-- but VS2005 dramatically changes the way things are structured with this, to make it easier to work with (and I am glad.)
Yeah, and I like how I get modded down for speaking truth.
Like I said, the real businesses/large corporations are _not_ using PHP for applications, and will probably not hire you for PHP skills.
Define "good money". 20k a year doesn't count.
What McAfee stuff are you running on a server? Yuck.
SP1 has a CD key blacklist, for the most common pirated keys back in the day. This was news when SP1 came out.. where have you been?
Search around, you'll find all sorts of webpages detailing how to change a CD key after installing Windows.. and even some free CD key generators.
But anyway, back to the original point.. security updates are still being allowed for non-geniune copies of Windows XP, when using the automatic updates client. If you visit the update webpage, you will not be able to download anything.
Like .NET, preferrably C#. You know, something you'll use in the real world and get hired for. It's free, and it's much better than PHP.
Can you be more specific about crashing/heavy loads? Like I said, an FPS is going to strain your machine more than any video or audio editing is going to.
Most of the time, when you are dealing with add-in video or audio cards, the companies that make them cut corners in hardware or driver design, or worse, design strictly for Mac (with PC being an afterthought.) This leads to terrible non-WHQL'd drivers, which cause crashes/blue screens/other fun things, and leads people to blame Microsoft when they shouldn't.
That's probably the most generic and incorrect statement I've ever heard.
Want to put a huge strain on your systems components? Go play a first person shooter, like Doom3 or Battlefield2. This is going to tax your system more than video editing will. And if that crashes or locks up, you can take your pick from the typical problems:
1) Cheapo power supplies. Sorry, a $15 power supply is crap. You get what you pay for.
2) Custom cases with little/no ventilation. You need a fan pulling in cool air, at the bare minimum, in combination of your power supply fan exhausting hot air. If you've got a billion hard drives and the latest video cards, you probably should have more fans.
3) Overclocking (CPU, GPU, Memory). Retarded. Enough said.
4) "Enhanced" drivers, or non-WHQL drivers. While WHQL drivers aren't "perfect" (thanks to dis-honest companies) they do ensure that the drivers have met a certain quality level. The tweaked/enhanced driver sets that people install don't have to go through these checks, and do all sort of stupid things (see overclocking above.)
Hey, you attacked me personally first:
So yeah, thanks again for talking down to me about what I do for a living, and yet proving that you do not know anywhere near enough to be partaking in this discussion in such a demeaning pedantic way.
Have a nice day,
-Asshole
The whole reason for the machine.config's browser capabilities section is to have the ability for .NET controls to "downgrade" themselves to lesser capable browsers-- so if you try and use Netscape v3, etc. to view a .NET page, it won't look like absolute garbage and be non-functional. It isn't meant to "lock in" to Internet Explorer; it's totally extendable by yourself or anyone else (hence the slingFive link I posted.)
Any web design job that will reach the masses is sure as heck going to try and work for as many browsers as possible, including older/legacy ones. If not, you're just limiting yourself. Not everyone has IE6, or the latest Safari. Heck, most Mac users still use IE for the Mac (*barf*) Have you checked out some browser statistics lately?
And congrats for being an asshat-- there's nothing wrong with server-side detection of a browser. Unless your browser is lame and spoofing IE (*cough*Opera*cough*) which fudges up the works sometimes.
Combine that with client-side JavaScript for browser detection, and you've got a force to be reckoned with.
As for attacking what I do for a living.. do you help design and maintain a site viewed by almost half a million people a day, all using different browsers and operating systems, and making the site behave almost the same on all of them? Didn't think so.