Seriously, they do have this little windows update thing that sends out updates, I'm sure it's mostly trivial for them to fix the flaw...
It is not a flaw... it is a feature. Will corporates or home users willingly shell out big bucks for 8-times more hardware resources just to find the new OS cannot be pirated easily like the old one?
Every OS from MS-DOS onwards has been piratable by design, for a reason.
In DOS, you run format b:/s to get a pirated boot floppy with io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com. With Vista, you hack a few registry settings, and MS will pretend not to notice.
Until Service Pack 1 comes out. Or until you insert an Ubuntu CD. Or until you stop the messy Windows Update service. Or you keep posting negative comments about Microsoft on Slashdot.
The lazy bums who will not learn Linux... the resellers in Asian markets who cannot upsell the new OS which requires 8 times more RAM just so the home user can surf the web... the so-called sysadmins in Corporate settings who will not learn ipconfig, iptables and basic Unix commands... and prefers to get one more worthless certification on Vista instead..
The mindshare monopoly of the retarded lethargic users is critical to Microsoft.
With Vista available for downgrading US computers, clueless staff are expected to have a nightmare clicking furiously on UAC prompts... apparently for every Vista sold, one job will be created for supporting the user!
Millions of Indians were used in the beta testing for Vista, maybe Gates feels he needs them all to improve Vista uptake in the US!
With Dell pushing Vista aggressively, and removing escape routes like Linux or XP; support lines for Vista will soon hog the internet tubes... maybe Gates' idea of Vista support is one Indian sitting next to every American Vista user, advising him / her on the right choice for every alert:
a superior product. Office 2007 is leaps and bounds easier and more plesant to use than Office 2003 and it produces prettier results to boot. Let's not even talk about how Office 2007 compares to OO.o....
Having used word processors for more than 15 years, I can confidently say that there is nothing prettier than Office 95, insofar as word-processing is concerned. The mail client (LookOut) is total crap, and has been so since it first launched.
Users don't waste time making documents pretty; they use word processors for 3 things: 1. To create them. 2. To read them. 3. To share them (that includes mail AND print).
Office 95 does all the above to the satisfaction of more than 99% users out there. Every subsequent version has been silly Bloatware and Bugware, and nothing innovative or useful, except maybe Clippie;-)
To create, read and share documents, there are much better packages than Office.... personally, I find AbiWord and LaTex the best packages among the lot.
MS Office is certainly not a superior product for any of the above tasks.
Throughout it's existence, Novell has never been a credible threat to Microsoft over a reasonable lenth of time. Their agreement with Microsoft further reinforces the suspicion that Novell might not be realy competing, rather they might be collaborating with Microsoft to further extend the monopoly situation and exclude genuine choice, and freedom of software. Some concerns:
1. Does Novell's translator work well with OO.org, or Novell's version of Open Office only? 2. Like Mono's port of VB, is the usage of the translator covered by the patent deal between MS and Novell? 3. Why did Novell abandon the Netware range of products?
This does not appear to be a nail in the coffin of Office, it seems to be an extended lease of life for a dying format and bloatware from the 800lb gorilla.
There is nothing at all here to get excited about yet, if ever.
On the one hand we have a company which names it's format as "Office Open XML" but documents the specification in over 6000 pages, using words like Windows 95 compatibility etc. in that spec... and yet has the guts to call it Open.
And on the other, we have a bunch of companies who have realised it's no use talking to the 800lb gorilla.. and basically decided to implement a workable, truly open, truly interoperable format... that may or may not be superior to the MS OOXML.
Now, Opera's CTO might think (and I largely agree with him) that BOTH specs are way off the mark, while simple HTML + CSS can do the trick....
But I find it truly amazing that for more than 10 years, people in the US have been shelling out billions of dollars buying crippleware.... money that is now used to enslave them to sub-standard, bug-ridden, inefficient, unreliable software and formats...
And yet, a comment on Slashdot that says nothing might happen yet for Microsoft or the marketplace gets modded +5 Insightful!
Looks like Lincoln was wrong... in America, you can apparently fool all the people all the time.
Who the hell modded the parent post Troll? All 20 responses so far have been just Funny or Clueless so far... and all in a science.slashdot.org article.
What useful scientific knowledge does this article provide? Should we trivialise space research to mean flying noodles or some more ultra-high-tech weapons that no one knows anything about?
didn't care for standards compliant bowsers didn't refrain from using IE-only quirks in the server didn't find anything wrong in re-coding the server every time a new browser version came out...
It is unfair that you are still a webmaster.
The world needs webmasters who understand their job is to be compliant with the entire web - not just the Microsoft portion of it.
6. Microsoft will write a Wok Driver for their media Center edition of Vista... 6a. What do you want to fry today? 6b.What do you want to see today? 6c. You're frying your Vista DVD... Allow / Cancel?
Steven A. Ballmer, Microsofts chief executive, said, "Everybody in the operating system business wants to be the guy on the bottom...." (From the referenced article)
Everybody would love if Microsoft reached the absolute rock-bottom of the Operating System business... and with people like Ballmer in charge, that goal shouldn't be far off!
PS: Sarcasm and humour impaired are advised to read this post with caution.
WOW that's pretty amazing. I have never seen any MS development shop not use SQL server. What's your company?
We aren't an MS development company. We happen to develop and deliver IT solutions to customers mainly in the BFSI segment. Ironically, the biggest cost in s/w development happens to be trained manpower; and using.Net allows us to hire cheap workforce that can do 'Brains-Free Programming!'.
One of our important offerings for the stock brokers is built around .Net and Oracle ; we're trying to now change the database to MySQL / Postgres instead. Small broking firms find the database licensing (SQL and Oracle) as expensive as our product. Postgres seems much faster and more suited at first glance.
Step 1: Convince company to run postgres on windows.
Step 2: Postgress run like crap.
Step 3: Convince customer that it is postgres and *not* windows that is the problem.
The problem for Microsoft is that Postgres runs very well indeed on all other operating systems. Developers are by definition slightly more knowledgable than end-users; and will abandon Windows Server if this happened. Microsoft's moves to improve PHP performance on Windows servers might also be in the same direction.
Anyone wise enough to know about Postgres would also know how to get it running on Linux... and these days, even Solaris; along with apache and PHP.
Postgres on Windows is more useful to keep developers hooked onto.Net; the expensive MS-SQL database could be a hindrance to widespread.Net adoption; now they can replace it with Postgres; which in many ways is superior to MySQL.
However PHP continues to improve by the day; and with accelerators and compilers providing the ability to deliver 'exes' or 'jars'-like code to customers; it is becoming more and more attractive to ISVs. This move by MS might extend the active lifespan of the Windows Server and.Net development platform by about 2 years; after which LAMP or LAPP or SAPP can be expected to be the market leader.
Postgres is one of the longest running open source databases it has been around for nearly 11 years. The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it?
Firstly, an article on Port 25 is not promotion. It does not count as mainstream media by any stretch.
Remember the ads on TV.. where there's a forklift, lifting up what looks like battery cells... and placing them on top of a huge building... and then you see, SQL Server 2005. If Microsoft replaces those ads with Postgres instead; we can call it promotion... not until then.
Many firms (like mine) would like to use the manpower conversant with and trained on.Net... but use a free (as in beer) database. MySQL is pretty slow with joins, so Postgres with PL/SQL and stored procedures support, may be the answer.
both MS and Free Software folks have a big party together with beer kegs and streamers and drunken install CD swapping
I can picture the scene... MS: Have some more beer... no more patents to file... all our IP goes down the drain. Hippie 1: I don't drink branded beer.. only Open Source beer. Bruce: I told you so... patents are like spitting in the wind. I've brought my own beer along, rejoice! RMS : I only touch Free Beer. Make it GNU Free Beer and I'll drop plans for GPL3. MS: No need to pay lawyers anymore... billions saved every year... some more beer, anyone? Linus: I take back whatever nonsense I spoke about Patent Pools. Maybe RMS is right after all? ESR: I think I'll start writing FetchBeer now... Moglen: Patents may be gone, but copyright still remains.. and DRM, DMCA as well. Can I have some free beer? Ballmer: I've brought a chair for all of you!
Blocking msn, yahoo and skype is a sysadmin nightmare.... every user wants this on corporate networks... since they're addicted to the stuff at home. Whatever proxy is used; whatever the rules and 'policies'... these things have a nasty way of tunnelling and punching through the firewalls... a week after a new 'policy'.. you see a few guys chatting happily; and worms and botnets start eating the bandwidth.
I'd love for this bill to become law; so we have a simple and effective method to ban such sites. Interesting times ahead indeed.
Botnets and malware hog more than 50% upstream bandwidth, the rest is taken by Windows Updates and Adobe updates. From the release of XP to date, more than 1GB of service packs and critical updates are needed to keep it going in home PCs. Why not simply ban Windows then?
I suggest we go the whole way and return to VT-100 terminals... they only need 9.6K baud rate to work. No Youtube. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
Brilliant work!
o m/
The documentation, as usual does not give a clue as to the real intent of the registry setting.
Interesting article here:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/03/08/msdn_glo
Seriously, they do have this little windows update thing that sends out updates, I'm sure it's mostly trivial for them to fix the flaw...
It is not a flaw... it is a feature. Will corporates or home users willingly shell out big bucks for 8-times more hardware resources just to find the new OS cannot be pirated easily like the old one?
Every OS from MS-DOS onwards has been piratable by design, for a reason.
In DOS, you run format b:/s to get a pirated boot floppy with io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com.
With Vista, you hack a few registry settings, and MS will pretend not to notice.
Until Service Pack 1 comes out.
Or until you insert an Ubuntu CD.
Or until you stop the messy Windows Update service.
Or you keep posting negative comments about Microsoft on Slashdot.
whichever is earlier.
The lazy bums who will not learn Linux... the resellers in Asian markets who cannot upsell the new OS which requires 8 times more RAM just so the home user can surf the web... the so-called sysadmins in Corporate settings who will not learn ipconfig, iptables and basic Unix commands... and prefers to get one more worthless certification on Vista instead..
The mindshare monopoly of the retarded lethargic users is critical to Microsoft.
Bruce, is that you? You should know better about HP support for Debian, eh!
With Vista available for downgrading US computers, clueless staff are expected to have a nightmare clicking furiously on UAC prompts... apparently for every Vista sold, one job will be created for supporting the user!
8 5065,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,392
Millions of Indians were used in the beta testing for Vista, maybe Gates feels he needs them all to improve Vista uptake in the US!
With Dell pushing Vista aggressively, and removing escape routes like Linux or XP; support lines for Vista will soon hog the internet tubes... maybe Gates' idea of Vista support is one Indian sitting next to every American Vista user, advising him / her on the right choice for every alert:
Today is Thursday: Allow / Cancel?
He said 655360 immigrants, plus 393216 Extended immigrants. Also, he is still factoring large prime numbers....
Techies love to complain about things like the ribbon, but everyone I see actually use it loves it.
....
I'm not so sure. Using ribbons to tie up the hair is so 18th century. Nice-looking girls have switched to prettier things like hair-bands
Besides, do female techies exist? And if so, do they read Slashdot???
a superior product. Office 2007 is leaps and bounds easier and more plesant to use than Office 2003 and it produces prettier results to boot. Let's not even talk about how Office 2007 compares to OO.o....
;-)
Having used word processors for more than 15 years, I can confidently say that there is nothing prettier than Office 95, insofar as word-processing is concerned. The mail client (LookOut) is total crap, and has been so since it first launched.
Users don't waste time making documents pretty; they use word processors for 3 things:
1. To create them.
2. To read them.
3. To share them (that includes mail AND print).
Office 95 does all the above to the satisfaction of more than 99% users out there. Every subsequent version has been silly Bloatware and Bugware, and nothing innovative or useful, except maybe Clippie
To create, read and share documents, there are much better packages than Office.... personally, I find AbiWord and LaTex the best packages among the lot.
MS Office is certainly not a superior product for any of the above tasks.
Throughout it's existence, Novell has never been a credible threat to Microsoft over a reasonable lenth of time. Their agreement with Microsoft further reinforces the suspicion that Novell might not be realy competing, rather they might be collaborating with Microsoft to further extend the monopoly situation and exclude genuine choice, and freedom of software. Some concerns:
1. Does Novell's translator work well with OO.org, or Novell's version of Open Office only?
2. Like Mono's port of VB, is the usage of the translator covered by the patent deal between MS and Novell?
3. Why did Novell abandon the Netware range of products?
This does not appear to be a nail in the coffin of Office, it seems to be an extended lease of life for a dying format and bloatware from the 800lb gorilla.
-
There is nothing at all here to get excited about yet, if ever.
On the one hand we have a company which names it's format as "Office Open XML" but documents the specification in over 6000 pages, using words like Windows 95 compatibility etc. in that spec... and yet has the guts to call it Open.
And on the other, we have a bunch of companies who have realised it's no use talking to the 800lb gorilla.. and basically decided to implement a workable, truly open, truly interoperable format... that may or may not be superior to the MS OOXML.
Now, Opera's CTO might think (and I largely agree with him) that BOTH specs are way off the mark, while simple HTML + CSS can do the trick....
But I find it truly amazing that for more than 10 years, people in the US have been shelling out billions of dollars buying crippleware.... money that is now used to enslave them to sub-standard, bug-ridden, inefficient, unreliable software and formats...
And yet, a comment on Slashdot that says nothing might happen yet for Microsoft or the marketplace gets modded +5 Insightful!
Looks like Lincoln was wrong... in America, you can apparently fool all the people all the time.
Who the hell modded the parent post Troll? All 20 responses so far have been just Funny or Clueless so far... and all in a science.slashdot.org article.
What useful scientific knowledge does this article provide? Should we trivialise space research to mean flying noodles or some more ultra-high-tech weapons that no one knows anything about?
Mods, get a clue, will you?
didn't care for standards compliant bowsers
didn't refrain from using IE-only quirks in the server
didn't find anything wrong in re-coding the server every time a new browser version came out...
It is unfair that you are still a webmaster.
The world needs webmasters who understand their job is to be compliant with the entire web - not just the Microsoft portion of it.
NASA's frantic efforts to remind the world of their existence and relavance
or
Microsoft's desperate efforts to popularise the flying pig called Vista.
Daily articles (slashvertisements) on Slashdot can't help either cause.
Much ado about less than nothing.
if the Wok setup goes down for any reason
If the Wok goes down... or rather upside down, it becomes a 'tawa'... used to make rotis and parathas in Northern India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_cuisine/
You forgot:
6. Microsoft will write a Wok Driver for their media Center edition of Vista...
6a. What do you want to fry today?
6b.What do you want to see today?
6c. You're frying your Vista DVD... Allow / Cancel?
Everybody would love if Microsoft reached the absolute rock-bottom of the Operating System business... and with people like Ballmer in charge, that goal shouldn't be far off!
PS: Sarcasm and humour impaired are advised to read this post with caution.
If kids are gonna be driving cars.... I don't want to be in Australia.
;-(
Besides if kids start dating at age 2, what happens to poor Aussie slashdotters
WOW that's pretty amazing. I have never seen any MS development shop not use SQL server. What's your company?
.Net allows us to hire cheap workforce that can do 'Brains-Free Programming!'.
.Net and Oracle ; we're trying to now change the database to MySQL / Postgres instead. Small broking firms find the database licensing (SQL and Oracle) as expensive as our product. Postgres seems much faster and more suited at first glance.
We aren't an MS development company. We happen to develop and deliver IT solutions to customers mainly in the BFSI segment. Ironically, the biggest cost in s/w development happens to be trained manpower; and using
One of our important offerings for the stock brokers is built around
Step 1: Convince company to run postgres on windows.
.Net; the expensive MS-SQL database could be a hindrance to widespread .Net adoption; now they can replace it with Postgres; which in many ways is superior to MySQL.
.Net development platform by about 2 years; after which LAMP or LAPP or SAPP can be expected to be the market leader.
Step 2: Postgress run like crap.
Step 3: Convince customer that it is postgres and *not* windows that is the problem.
The problem for Microsoft is that Postgres runs very well indeed on all other operating systems. Developers are by definition slightly more knowledgable than end-users; and will abandon Windows Server if this happened. Microsoft's moves to improve PHP performance on Windows servers might also be in the same direction.
Anyone wise enough to know about Postgres would also know how to get it running on Linux... and these days, even Solaris; along with apache and PHP.
Postgres on Windows is more useful to keep developers hooked onto
However PHP continues to improve by the day; and with accelerators and compilers providing the ability to deliver 'exes' or 'jars'-like code to customers; it is becoming more and more attractive to ISVs. This move by MS might extend the active lifespan of the Windows Server and
Postgres is one of the longest running open source databases it has been around for nearly 11 years. The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it?
.Net... but use a free (as in beer) database. MySQL is pretty slow with joins, so Postgres with PL/SQL and stored procedures support, may be the answer.
Firstly, an article on Port 25 is not promotion. It does not count as mainstream media by any stretch.
Remember the ads on TV.. where there's a forklift, lifting up what looks like battery cells... and placing them on top of a huge building... and then you see, SQL Server 2005. If Microsoft replaces those ads with Postgres instead; we can call it promotion... not until then.
Many firms (like mine) would like to use the manpower conversant with and trained on
both MS and Free Software folks have a big party together with beer kegs and streamers and drunken install CD swapping
I can picture the scene...
MS: Have some more beer... no more patents to file... all our IP goes down the drain.
Hippie 1: I don't drink branded beer.. only Open Source beer.
Bruce: I told you so... patents are like spitting in the wind. I've brought my own beer along, rejoice!
RMS : I only touch Free Beer. Make it GNU Free Beer and I'll drop plans for GPL3.
MS: No need to pay lawyers anymore... billions saved every year... some more beer, anyone?
Linus: I take back whatever nonsense I spoke about Patent Pools. Maybe RMS is right after all?
ESR: I think I'll start writing FetchBeer now...
Moglen: Patents may be gone, but copyright still remains.. and DRM, DMCA as well. Can I have some free beer?
Ballmer: I've brought a chair for all of you!
Blocking msn, yahoo and skype is a sysadmin nightmare.... every user wants this on corporate networks... since they're addicted to the stuff at home. Whatever proxy is used; whatever the rules and 'policies'... these things have a nasty way of tunnelling and punching through the firewalls... a week after a new 'policy'.. you see a few guys chatting happily; and worms and botnets start eating the bandwidth.
I'd love for this bill to become law; so we have a simple and effective method to ban such sites. Interesting times ahead indeed.
Reference here for upstream bandwidth:
c le/2006/09/23/AR2006092300510.html/
http://www.honeynet.org/papers/bots/
and here for the amount of bugfixes since XP rollout:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
EVERY Home PC that runs Windows XP needs updates, to remain stable and sane. How many home users run P2P? Very tiny fraction, IMO.
Amazing... my rectum's got more wisdom than your brain, perhaps.
Botnets and malware hog more than 50% upstream bandwidth, the rest is taken by Windows Updates and Adobe updates. From the release of XP to date, more than 1GB of service packs and critical updates are needed to keep it going in home PCs. Why not simply ban Windows then?
I suggest we go the whole way and return to VT-100 terminals... they only need 9.6K baud rate to work. No Youtube. Problem solved.