And how exactly is "get an account and wait for a while" a secret "inner circle"? Because that's all you'll have to do to be able to edit (and presumably approve) - just as is currently the case for editing protected articles.
This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.
That's it. Any editor can approve, just by having had an account for a certain amount of time (presumably the same period as currently used for protected articles).
This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.
That's all. And "editor", in Wikipedia speak, is "anyone who edits". It's not an admin, not some second class of "trusted editors". All it filters out is those who haven't signed up for an account, and people who only recently did so.
More like: someone was giving you 25 grams for free last month, and now they give you 30. Why are you complaining?
Comparing this to rationing is absurd. Aside from the fact that Wikipedia is a private encyclopedia, and not some free for all - and certainly not what food people are allowed to eat, there's the fact that anyone can avoid the restrictions simply by getting an account and waiting a given period of time. If you want a website where you can write what you like, I dunno, get a blog.
But hey, I'm sure that if Wikipedia went back to the old days, people like you would be first in line to criticise it, when it was found that a false claim was once made on somebody's article, for a whole 1 minute before being reverted...
Yes, I bet would-be scammers the world over are kicking themselves for not thinking of this one first:
1. Spend time and money putting up servers to allow people contribute to and access an encyclopedia, all for free. 2. Have everything released under free licences, so the contributors, and anyone else, can use the material for free. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
For years, Slashdotters have pondered over the mystery of the ???, but it can now be revealed. It's: make subtle change to the way that edits are made on currently locked articles.
Brilliant! I bet all the other creators of Top 10 websites are now kicking themselves that they should have followed Wales's scam model and done it all for free, instead of making billions off of their sites like they did.
Wales has basically conned people into providing him with a fantastic quantity of content under the banner of free editing and free use, then he has moved to monetize it and lock it down.
Your evidence for this outlandish claim?
Contributions are clearly licenced under the GFDL (and now under CC too) - if you didn't like that, you shouldn't have contributed. Yes, that means Wikipedia can present the information you contributed (what, are you going to complain that Slashdot is allowed to publish the comments you post on this website?) But it also means that you still own your contributions, and you can still do what you like with it - as well as taking a copy of Wikipedia as a whole, if you like.
I'm not sure what you mean by monetising it - even if that were true, commercial use is explicitly allowed under free licences such as the GFDL. Whether it's Wales, you, or anyone else.
Locking it down? How does one lock down material available under the GFDL, exactly? And what articles can no longer be viewed?
Btw, it's already the case that articles have to be protected. This is therefore a step backwards towards more openness again, as it allows new editors to make editors to those articles again, albeit with this approval system. If you wanted to complain, you should've done it when they introduced article protection.
Yes, clearly a free online encyclopedia checking edits before publishing them is comparable to dictatorship authoritarian states.
I bet Britannica must be like Nazi Germany, by your reasoning, since most people aren't even allowed to submit edits.
Anyhow, citation needed? There's nothing in the article about a small "clique" of editors taking control here. It's likely that vast numbers will be needed to approve edits to 3 million articles, and I presume it'll just be the standard system where anyone who's had an account for a given period of time will be allowed to approve.
Some clique! Let alone a dictator... (Yeah, no one's allowed to vote, unless you've lived here for a while. Oh wait, actually that describes just about every free democracy in the world. And for most of them, even coming to live in the country doesn't get you the vote.)
That's not an argument against bureaucracy, that's an argument for better hierarchy. Imagine if a maintainer in the Linux kernel deliberately accepted the same patch that fuck up a driver.
I agree, but:
Each article should have exactly one maintainer who has total control over it, and an appeal process to replace him if he's caught deliberately changing to incorrect and/or biased versions.
I think that's a bad idea. How do you decide who owns an article? Many problems come precisely because one editor assumes control.
And if the maintainer can be changed by consensus, how is that any different to now, where changes can be made through consensus? I'm not sure what problem this solves, that the currently proposed approval method wouldn't?
What happens if there's a consensus that the current maintainer's actions on the article are wrong, and he needs to go, but there's no consensus on a particular person to replace him? I feel this would just add more complication and yes, bureaucracy, for no clear benefit. As well as discussing the article, now every single article has to have long-winded debates on choosing the maintainer.
I know this has it's own problems, but what if Wikipedia had a "Moderation" mode, normal Wiki is the same, but you can enter Mod-Mode, and vote on each sentence in the article (ie: "Fact", "Untrue", "Citation Needed", "Citation Invalid", etc)
For "citation needed" etc, why not just write those tags directly into the article, as is currently done? If something needs a citation, it doesn't need a vote on the matter.
For "untrue", bad idea - something being true or not is not a matter for popular vote, it is a question of reliable verifiable sources. It doesn't matter how many people claim something is so, if they can't find reliable sources, it shouldn't be on Wikipedia (or at least, it's fair game to challenge it and remove it). And if you can find reliable sources, you'd better have more than a few people voting to challenge this.
"Read this Wiki according to Females, from Italy, over the age of 13", or people able to switch from "True" mode to "Untrue" mode, etc.
Why? That just demonstrates how bad the idea is - facts should not change depending on what "view" you look at.
This would just put into place all the usual currently-false criticisms that people make about Wikipedia (e.g., straw man arguments how Wikipedia decides truth by vote, or nonsense terms like "truthiness").
The country I live in is a former British colony, and the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country is firmly controlled by the government, and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false
So come on, what's the article?
If what you say is true, editors who read this will go and see if they can fix the problem. If necessary, raising the issue to get more editors looking at it. Whilst sometimes an annoying person can revert edits, there is no way to control an article, and anyone who keeps reverting will find themselves getting banned.
And if a Government is really doing this kind of stuff, that's something serious that will be dealt with.
So why not tell us what the article is, instead of us taking your word for it? (I just don't get it - people will often claim on Slashdot that an article is false, yet they never tell us the entry, and expect us to believe unreferenced claims made on a webforum...)
Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward: currently the only method at the moment is to protect articles, locking anonymous and new editors out completely. With this system, they'll now be allowed to edit again.
It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries.
For years, people here have ridiculed Wikipedia on the notion that anyone can edit it, and edits appear instantly without any checking by another person. Yet now they implement such a system - that's wrong too!
I don't know if this idea is good or not, but at least put forward a proper debate rather than claims about creating "two classes" or whining that people no longer have an "equal right" (hey, do I have an equal right to edit the NYTimes article?) It's always the same. Some people say that Wikipedia has too much fancruft. Others blame Wikipedia for deleting too much stuff. Some people complain that Wikipedia allows edits from anyone without sources. Others whine when their edits were reverted. Can't both sides argue among themselves, rather than blaming Wikipedia everytime?
Because the NYTimes don't cite their sources, it's hard to see what's being proposed. If it's like the current rules for protected article, then the decision on who can approve an article will purely be based on having an account for a given period of time. There's no unequal rights, no second class system, no old-boy-network.
I can see this making sense - when Wikipedia was new, allowing anonymous edits to appear straight away was important to get people hooked, and get as many people using it as possible. Now with 3 million articles, that's really not needed - what's needed is to stabilise mature articles, and to improve the quality.
none of them even seems to be trying to match the capabilities of the iPhone, let alone to knock us down with features that far surpass those of Apple's device
Wait, what now? All of a sudden it's okay to compare on features? What happened to all those people saying it doesn't matter that another phone has far more features than the Iphone, because that's just on paper, and features don't matter - that's just "grumpy featurism"?
But now an Android phone (allegedly) has fewer features (though we aren't told what the Iphone has in addition), features are suddenly worth comparing?
I'm glad that at long last, a Slashdot article actually acknowledges the existence of another phone - the Blackberry. For once we're not just faced with the false dichotomy of Iphone vs Android (artificially set up to make the Iphone look like it's the only phone worth having, by only comparing it to a phone that's even more of a niche product).
But even with the mention of the Blackberry, TFS still has to go on about the Iphone as if it's the only phone in existence.
It's also misleading to only look at the ill-defined market of "smart phones". In the mobile market as a whole, there are far bigger names (e.g., Nokia). The days of "phones for phoning, and smart phones for running programs and Internet" are long gone, as all but the cheapest phones can now do what was once the domain of the smart phone. And arguably, the Iphone is not well placed in the smart phone category, with it lacking features that even non-smart phones have. The only reason for putting it there is either due to its cost, or to artificially inflate its market share figure.
Except operating systems are judged by how many people upgrade
Are they? Says who?
The point is there are many ways of rating a product - and sure, it's no doubt of concern to MS that Vista isn't as successful as XP (although we still have to take into account that XP has been on sale a lot longer - what was XP's share in 2003?), but in no meaningful sense is over 20% market share a "failure".
But I don't know why I bother - evidently even posting hard figures from sources is "flamebait", if it doesn't toe the pro-Apple line of the mods. Why aren't mod points given out fairly, randomly, and evenly anymore?
And I have never had this issue with Windows. I've used various versions of Windows on multiple computers for years, with no such troubles. Just wait? How long should I wait, exactly? The only slowdown is when I run Itunes.
Ah that's right - anyone claiming to have an experience otherwise is obviously a "troll".
Why is my anecdote not valid? Or is this a case of sticking your head in the sand if it doesn't concur with your preconceived assumption?
Perhaps the mod points should be given out to those who use them properly for a change.
Yes, just like those in favour of strong copyright laws are fighting for the "values" of "making more money off other people without doing any extra work". Or in fact, any work at all, since in the vast majority of cases the copyright owners aren't the original artists.
It gets a headline because the BBC, like a lot of the press, bend over backwards to give free advertising to Apple (possibly due to a higher number of Mac fans than usual, due to the niche use of Macs traditionally in DTP?)
Fuck, it's my licence fee that's paying for this.
FTA:
Snow Leopard is Apple's biggest operating system update since the firm moved from the "Classic" OS in 2001.
So they've ditched OS X and replaced it with a completely new one, have they? Okay, technically their statement could still be true, but it's misleading to present the updates as anywhere remotely near comparable.
VERY IMPORTANT - Apple will stop selling 10.5 the day they release 10.6.
Interesting - worth remembering, what with all the pro-Apple people criticising MS for no longer selling XP, years after the next version of Windows was released (even though, in fact, you can still buy it).
But, but - surely Macs now run the same OS as the Iphones? That's what Iphone fans told us, right?
(On that note, does this mean that Macs can run more than one program, or copy and paste yet? I thought this was always possible, but I heard it's not on OS X that runs on Iphones and Macs.)
And I have never had this issue with Windows. I've used various versions of Windows on multiple computers for years, with no such troubles. Just wait? How long should I wait, exactly? The only slowdown is when I run Itunes.
But of course, pro-Apple anecdote will get you +1 insightful everytime.
Indeed - they've dug themselves into a hole in that "OS X" is the brandname, as much as "XP" or "Vista", and not simply a version number. Already they acknowledge this by the fact that they call it OS X 10.4, when repeating the "10" is redundant. It wouldn't surprise me if they bring out "OS X 11" or something dumb like that (or more likely, they'll eventually switch to a new brandname altogether).
It's not like the 10 was ever a version number anyway, in that it's a derivative of Next, not ("classic") Mac OS, which they had to ditch. The "X" has always been a marketing thing.
The failure is only in comparison to the phenomenal success of Windows XP - and when you've got almost everyone using a product, shifting them onto the next version is always going to be hard. But I wouldn't say their results are in any way a failure.
For heaven's sake - I hate Vista as much as anyone (in comparison to 2000/XP), but let's not make things up that are in complete opposition to known facts.
Slashdot Mirror
And how exactly is "get an account and wait for a while" a secret "inner circle"? Because that's all you'll have to do to be able to edit (and presumably approve) - just as is currently the case for editing protected articles.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm :
This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.
But hey, don't let known facts stop your wild speculation.
Complete rubbish. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm :
This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.
That's it. Any editor can approve, just by having had an account for a certain amount of time (presumably the same period as currently used for protected articles).
No need to worry - it'll be anyone who's simply had an account for a certain amount of time.
TFA doesn't mention this, but I found a better source at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm , which says:
This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.
That's all. And "editor", in Wikipedia speak, is "anyone who edits". It's not an admin, not some second class of "trusted editors". All it filters out is those who haven't signed up for an account, and people who only recently did so.
More like: someone was giving you 25 grams for free last month, and now they give you 30. Why are you complaining?
Comparing this to rationing is absurd. Aside from the fact that Wikipedia is a private encyclopedia, and not some free for all - and certainly not what food people are allowed to eat, there's the fact that anyone can avoid the restrictions simply by getting an account and waiting a given period of time. If you want a website where you can write what you like, I dunno, get a blog.
But hey, I'm sure that if Wikipedia went back to the old days, people like you would be first in line to criticise it, when it was found that a false claim was once made on somebody's article, for a whole 1 minute before being reverted...
A pretty good scam, isn't it?
Oh, it's a scam now is it, not a dictatorship?
Yes, I bet would-be scammers the world over are kicking themselves for not thinking of this one first:
1. Spend time and money putting up servers to allow people contribute to and access an encyclopedia, all for free.
2. Have everything released under free licences, so the contributors, and anyone else, can use the material for free.
3. ???
4. Profit!
For years, Slashdotters have pondered over the mystery of the ???, but it can now be revealed. It's: make subtle change to the way that edits are made on currently locked articles.
Brilliant! I bet all the other creators of Top 10 websites are now kicking themselves that they should have followed Wales's scam model and done it all for free, instead of making billions off of their sites like they did.
Wales has basically conned people into providing him with a fantastic quantity of content under the banner of free editing and free use, then he has moved to monetize it and lock it down.
Your evidence for this outlandish claim?
Contributions are clearly licenced under the GFDL (and now under CC too) - if you didn't like that, you shouldn't have contributed. Yes, that means Wikipedia can present the information you contributed (what, are you going to complain that Slashdot is allowed to publish the comments you post on this website?) But it also means that you still own your contributions, and you can still do what you like with it - as well as taking a copy of Wikipedia as a whole, if you like.
I'm not sure what you mean by monetising it - even if that were true, commercial use is explicitly allowed under free licences such as the GFDL. Whether it's Wales, you, or anyone else.
Locking it down? How does one lock down material available under the GFDL, exactly? And what articles can no longer be viewed?
Btw, it's already the case that articles have to be protected. This is therefore a step backwards towards more openness again, as it allows new editors to make editors to those articles again, albeit with this approval system. If you wanted to complain, you should've done it when they introduced article protection.
Yes, clearly a free online encyclopedia checking edits before publishing them is comparable to dictatorship authoritarian states.
I bet Britannica must be like Nazi Germany, by your reasoning, since most people aren't even allowed to submit edits.
Anyhow, citation needed? There's nothing in the article about a small "clique" of editors taking control here. It's likely that vast numbers will be needed to approve edits to 3 million articles, and I presume it'll just be the standard system where anyone who's had an account for a given period of time will be allowed to approve.
Some clique! Let alone a dictator... (Yeah, no one's allowed to vote, unless you've lived here for a while. Oh wait, actually that describes just about every free democracy in the world. And for most of them, even coming to live in the country doesn't get you the vote.)
That's not an argument against bureaucracy, that's an argument for better hierarchy. Imagine if a maintainer in the Linux kernel deliberately accepted the same patch that fuck up a driver.
I agree, but:
Each article should have exactly one maintainer who has total control over it, and an appeal process to replace him if he's caught deliberately changing to incorrect and/or biased versions.
I think that's a bad idea. How do you decide who owns an article? Many problems come precisely because one editor assumes control.
And if the maintainer can be changed by consensus, how is that any different to now, where changes can be made through consensus? I'm not sure what problem this solves, that the currently proposed approval method wouldn't?
What happens if there's a consensus that the current maintainer's actions on the article are wrong, and he needs to go, but there's no consensus on a particular person to replace him? I feel this would just add more complication and yes, bureaucracy, for no clear benefit. As well as discussing the article, now every single article has to have long-winded debates on choosing the maintainer.
I know this has it's own problems, but what if Wikipedia had a "Moderation" mode, normal Wiki is the same, but you can enter Mod-Mode, and vote on each sentence in the article (ie: "Fact", "Untrue", "Citation Needed", "Citation Invalid", etc)
For "citation needed" etc, why not just write those tags directly into the article, as is currently done? If something needs a citation, it doesn't need a vote on the matter.
For "untrue", bad idea - something being true or not is not a matter for popular vote, it is a question of reliable verifiable sources. It doesn't matter how many people claim something is so, if they can't find reliable sources, it shouldn't be on Wikipedia (or at least, it's fair game to challenge it and remove it). And if you can find reliable sources, you'd better have more than a few people voting to challenge this.
"Read this Wiki according to Females, from Italy, over the age of 13", or people able to switch from "True" mode to "Untrue" mode, etc.
Why? That just demonstrates how bad the idea is - facts should not change depending on what "view" you look at.
This would just put into place all the usual currently-false criticisms that people make about Wikipedia (e.g., straw man arguments how Wikipedia decides truth by vote, or nonsense terms like "truthiness").
Indeed. If those things don't work, people can:
* Raise the issue on the talk page to see if other editors are watching.
* Raise the issue on related talk pages, or a related WikiProject page.
* Raise the issue on general pages specifically for this issue - e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Third_opinion , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
(Yes it takes effort. Who said writing an encyclopedia was easy?)
The country I live in is a former British colony, and the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country is firmly controlled by the government, and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false
So come on, what's the article?
If what you say is true, editors who read this will go and see if they can fix the problem. If necessary, raising the issue to get more editors looking at it. Whilst sometimes an annoying person can revert edits, there is no way to control an article, and anyone who keeps reverting will find themselves getting banned.
And if a Government is really doing this kind of stuff, that's something serious that will be dealt with.
So why not tell us what the article is, instead of us taking your word for it? (I just don't get it - people will often claim on Slashdot that an article is false, yet they never tell us the entry, and expect us to believe unreferenced claims made on a webforum...)
Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward: currently the only method at the moment is to protect articles, locking anonymous and new editors out completely. With this system, they'll now be allowed to edit again.
Oh please:
It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries.
For years, people here have ridiculed Wikipedia on the notion that anyone can edit it, and edits appear instantly without any checking by another person. Yet now they implement such a system - that's wrong too!
I don't know if this idea is good or not, but at least put forward a proper debate rather than claims about creating "two classes" or whining that people no longer have an "equal right" (hey, do I have an equal right to edit the NYTimes article?) It's always the same. Some people say that Wikipedia has too much fancruft. Others blame Wikipedia for deleting too much stuff. Some people complain that Wikipedia allows edits from anyone without sources. Others whine when their edits were reverted. Can't both sides argue among themselves, rather than blaming Wikipedia everytime?
Because the NYTimes don't cite their sources, it's hard to see what's being proposed. If it's like the current rules for protected article, then the decision on who can approve an article will purely be based on having an account for a given period of time. There's no unequal rights, no second class system, no old-boy-network.
I can see this making sense - when Wikipedia was new, allowing anonymous edits to appear straight away was important to get people hooked, and get as many people using it as possible. Now with 3 million articles, that's really not needed - what's needed is to stabilise mature articles, and to improve the quality.
Indeed. And I had to laugh at this gem in TFS:
none of them even seems to be trying to match the capabilities of the iPhone, let alone to knock us down with features that far surpass those of Apple's device
Wait, what now? All of a sudden it's okay to compare on features? What happened to all those people saying it doesn't matter that another phone has far more features than the Iphone, because that's just on paper, and features don't matter - that's just "grumpy featurism"?
But now an Android phone (allegedly) has fewer features (though we aren't told what the Iphone has in addition), features are suddenly worth comparing?
I'm glad that at long last, a Slashdot article actually acknowledges the existence of another phone - the Blackberry. For once we're not just faced with the false dichotomy of Iphone vs Android (artificially set up to make the Iphone look like it's the only phone worth having, by only comparing it to a phone that's even more of a niche product).
But even with the mention of the Blackberry, TFS still has to go on about the Iphone as if it's the only phone in existence.
It's also misleading to only look at the ill-defined market of "smart phones". In the mobile market as a whole, there are far bigger names (e.g., Nokia). The days of "phones for phoning, and smart phones for running programs and Internet" are long gone, as all but the cheapest phones can now do what was once the domain of the smart phone. And arguably, the Iphone is not well placed in the smart phone category, with it lacking features that even non-smart phones have. The only reason for putting it there is either due to its cost, or to artificially inflate its market share figure.
You'll get your citations, when we get citations for the "The Iphone is better, it just integrates it better, it just is"...
Except operating systems are judged by how many people upgrade
Are they? Says who?
The point is there are many ways of rating a product - and sure, it's no doubt of concern to MS that Vista isn't as successful as XP (although we still have to take into account that XP has been on sale a lot longer - what was XP's share in 2003?), but in no meaningful sense is over 20% market share a "failure".
But I don't know why I bother - evidently even posting hard figures from sources is "flamebait", if it doesn't toe the pro-Apple line of the mods. Why aren't mod points given out fairly, randomly, and evenly anymore?
And I have never had this issue with Windows. I've used various versions of Windows on multiple computers for years, with no such troubles. Just wait? How long should I wait, exactly? The only slowdown is when I run Itunes.
Ah that's right - anyone claiming to have an experience otherwise is obviously a "troll".
Why is my anecdote not valid? Or is this a case of sticking your head in the sand if it doesn't concur with your preconceived assumption?
Perhaps the mod points should be given out to those who use them properly for a change.
Yes, just like those in favour of strong copyright laws are fighting for the "values" of "making more money off other people without doing any extra work". Or in fact, any work at all, since in the vast majority of cases the copyright owners aren't the original artists.
QuickTime X with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video
But can it do full screen yet, or do I still have to pay?
It gets a headline because the BBC, like a lot of the press, bend over backwards to give free advertising to Apple (possibly due to a higher number of Mac fans than usual, due to the niche use of Macs traditionally in DTP?)
Fuck, it's my licence fee that's paying for this.
FTA:
Snow Leopard is Apple's biggest operating system update since the firm moved from the "Classic" OS in 2001.
So they've ditched OS X and replaced it with a completely new one, have they? Okay, technically their statement could still be true, but it's misleading to present the updates as anywhere remotely near comparable.
VERY IMPORTANT - Apple will stop selling 10.5 the day they release 10.6.
Interesting - worth remembering, what with all the pro-Apple people criticising MS for no longer selling XP, years after the next version of Windows was released (even though, in fact, you can still buy it).
But, but - surely Macs now run the same OS as the Iphones? That's what Iphone fans told us, right?
(On that note, does this mean that Macs can run more than one program, or copy and paste yet? I thought this was always possible, but I heard it's not on OS X that runs on Iphones and Macs.)
And I have never had this issue with Windows. I've used various versions of Windows on multiple computers for years, with no such troubles. Just wait? How long should I wait, exactly? The only slowdown is when I run Itunes.
But of course, pro-Apple anecdote will get you +1 insightful everytime.
Indeed - they've dug themselves into a hole in that "OS X" is the brandname, as much as "XP" or "Vista", and not simply a version number. Already they acknowledge this by the fact that they call it OS X 10.4, when repeating the "10" is redundant. It wouldn't surprise me if they bring out "OS X 11" or something dumb like that (or more likely, they'll eventually switch to a new brandname altogether).
It's not like the 10 was ever a version number anyway, in that it's a derivative of Next, not ("classic") Mac OS, which they had to ditch. The "X" has always been a marketing thing.
Speaking for myself, I've kept with XP, and even 2000 on my desktop, because they already do everything I need. They Just Work.
WinXP is only shipped with Netbooks as of 2008
Really? Not in my country. (And note, this was just the first PC seller I thought of off the top of my head.)
Just to put things into perspective - by "failure to sell Vista" you mean over 4 times all versions of Mac OS X combined.
The failure is only in comparison to the phenomenal success of Windows XP - and when you've got almost everyone using a product, shifting them onto the next version is always going to be hard. But I wouldn't say their results are in any way a failure.
For heaven's sake - I hate Vista as much as anyone (in comparison to 2000/XP), but let's not make things up that are in complete opposition to known facts.