Funny that "threat mitigation" doesn't exist in the aerospace industry Of course it does. Just because *gasp* a different industry doesnt use exactly the same terms, doesnt mean the practice isnt there.
Things like redundancy and backup systems are a perfect example of this. The threat analysis has to be done up front to understand what failures cause death, which cause inconvenience, and the redundancies and backup efforts go into those that have the more unfortunate outcome. Also just like software, system interdependency analysis is a big part of this.
This is just basic logic. No engineer/designer/implementer can make everything perfect, everything perfectly redundant, and everything with perfect contingencies.
And even if you could, it would weight-too-much-to-launch/be-too-bloated-to-use.
Heck, even the engineering differences between USSR and USA aerospace is a perfect example of two divergent points on that spectrum. The US folks would tend to get much closer to perfect across the whole artifact, and at 100x the cost. The Russian folks would take a much more tightly targeted optimization, and only do that work where absolutely critical, at some loss of perfection/redundancy.
A great example of this was the MiGs vs US jets. The US folks would create a nearly perfect aerodynamic surface across the whole craft. The Russians, however, would do the aerodynamic tests, and only optimize the points on the craft that were the most critical. Other parts still had bolt heads sticking out and such.
(mind you, I'm horribly paraphrasing this study which I read many many years ago, but the gist is there)
Two other links I should have put in the original post.
Innovate on Vista site http://innovateonwindowsvista.com/ (I actually hate this site, and I think its hidden behind a partners login, but it does have some useful content buried in the graphics-heavy crap.)
Sorry, I havent mentally translated to Vista apps yet, and they changed the names everywhere (to the better, but the change is a pain).
I dont have a vista box or vm in front of me at the moment, but what was 'All Users' is now 'Public'.
So on Vista, its now this:
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Applications Data\Roaming and %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Applications Data\Local
On vista, %ALLUSERSPROFILE% should resolve to C:\Users\Public\ by default, but this can be changed by group policy, so be careful.
These distinguish between data that should roam (when users are using roaming profiles) and that which is local to that machine (temp data, caches, stuff that doesnt need to follow on a roaming profile).
Go to a command prompt, and type:
C:\>echo %allusersprofile%
to see what the default is.
Now you have to be careful with paths. What seems simple isnt really that simple. Because you have to deal with roaming profiles and non-roaming profiles (ie, the roaming vs. local above). You have to deal with the case where Redirected MyDocuments is in effect. You have to deal with group policy which can change the default locations of all these things.
The 'correct' way to do it, so that all these things are handled behind the scenes, is to use the 'Known Folders' API in Vista.
Mind you, this is not the simplest stuff out there, and is really targeted with those more familiar with the C windows API. But there are COM interfaces, which can be consumed by traditional VB6-type of apps, or.NET apps through COM interop (IIRC). If your app is in C/C++ and you're used to consuming win32 api's in shell then this should be easy stuff for you.
There is a ton of documentation out there from MS, but unfortunately, its not as well organized as it should be. And its gotten worse over the years as the underlying systems get more complicated, and facilities/abstractions are created to deal with different versions.
Here's some links, hopefully this doesnt scare you off. The goal should be that your app can and does pass the 'Certified for Windows Vista' (or the XP equiv if you're targeting XP only for now). This is for more than just marketing bling, this means that your apps will deal with all the things that people complain about on Vista, like UAC, etc. Basically the software logo program (the 'certified for vista' and 'works with vista') is a set of best practices for the desktop app developer. Like the WHQL is for drivers and hardware.
(WARN: some of this stuff is hidden behind the MS partner program logins. The good news is that you can become a registered partner for about 30 minutes of your time filling out information, and no cost. There are bennies too. You can use the Microsoft Empower ISV program, to get 5 MSDN Universal-equivalent licenses for ~$400 for the first two years. Then you can translate to the Action Pack subscription. Makes getting all your MS infrastructure very cheap and easy for the small ISV.)
Writing to anything in Program Files for regular use (ie, not an install or upgrade) is incorrect and 'bad' behavior for the application.
It is explicitly warned against in the isv logo program best practices documentation.
The correct thing is this:
Settings or temp files for the app common to all users: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
Settings for the specific user: %APPDATA%\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
Temp storage specific to the user: %TEMP%\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
If anything, even the app itself, can modify its own binaries, then its a security risk, as a compromise in it could be used to trojan itself. Restricting this helps mitigate this attack vector.
The new memory management does some very odd things that really screw over folks like myself who use large amounts of ram in their applications, such as 3d animation video editing, photoshop etc. I'll keep it short by just saying on many occasions on a 64bit system with 8 gigs of ram, i've seen 4 GIGS cached by WINDOWS, and i've run out of ram completely, thus sending the system into swap file hell. Windows did no such thing to release the 4 GB of ram it was holding hostage for god knows what. It's supposed to... but it did not. I dont know if this is what was happening or not, but some 3rd party applications dont like to use the windows memory manager. They like to do their own memory management. The problem is then they generall dont play well with others. And you may (though I'm not 100% certain of this) lose the ability for the system to know that there is memory pressure, and release cache memory.
What app were you using that needed the ram? I wonder if this was part of it. Some MS apps do this too, like SQL Server, but they also have many settings inside them to let you configure how well they 'play well with others'.
Kontact is not a competitor to Outlook/Exchange, its a competitor to standalone Outlook, without any server component whatsoever. It's not an apples to apples comparison.
And besides, looking at Kontact, both on the website w/ screenshots and on the version I have on kubuntu on a vm, holy crap is it ugly.
I know thats not functionality, but why does this stuff have to always look so amateurish? Compared to Outlook 2007, which is smooth, polished, very easy to use, bullet-proof, and beautiful to boot.
SFTP? What does a file-transfer format have to do with a calendar/email/pim software?
Have you used Outlook/Exchange for email/calendar/tasks/shared-contacts?
Or do you just use it for email, and so thinks thats all it does?
Seriously, if you have the type of job where email, calendar, tasks and contacts are 80% of your job (lots and lots of people, including the vast majority of managers and up, and also including small businesses where everyone does everything), then Exchange and Outlook simply cannot be beat.
I've looked at the other options, they're terrible, amateurish, and poorly executed.
Check out some sysadmin mailing list archives is you really want to see how bad Exchange actually is - true in recent versions you can actually back it up properly for bare metal recovery and it isn't an open relay by default and doesn't leak huge amounts of memory but it's still inferior in many ways to other sotware releases ten years older than it's current release. I've admin'd medium (never more than a few thousand mailboxes) sized exchange installations, and you know what? It's pretty straightforward, and pretty bulletproof once you get it setup and configured properly.
Bare metal restore isnt an exchange backup issue, thats an OS backup issue.
Exchange hasnt been an open relay by default since at least Exchange 2000, maybe earlier.
Exchange doesnt leak memory, it does use memory. It's basically a big database, so the more of the mailbox stores that it can stuff in memory the better. So like any database, it needs to be given as much memory as you can give it.
The biggest problem I've seem with Exchange administration, is that often unix and unix mail admins get stuck with it. And their skills dont transfer. And so because it doesnt behave exactly like the stuff they're used to, and they're not willing to learn, they do a crappy-ass job managing it, and it doesnt work well.
Compare that to people who are willing to learn how to manage it properly, and thos exchange shops run like a well oiled machine.
You can't even recover a corrupted Outlook mailbox with Microsoft tools - you have to investigate the realms of dodgy shareware. Outlook not so good. Two problems with that.
1. Outlook mailboxes (ie, PSTs) have nothing to do with anything if you're running an Exchange organization. Outlook doesnt use PST files when you're using Exchange. It stores a local copy of the exchange data in an.OST file, but thats it.
2. Microsoft DOES have decent PST corruption repair tools, do a search for them. I'll grant you that there are some commercial tools that do a better job. But lets be honest, your folks shouldnt be using PST's anyway if you're on Exchange.
It's way better than it used to be, but it still has hilarious flaws like the 2gig pst limit and crap like that. Just to be clear, there hasnt been a 2-GB PST limit since the release of Outlook 2003. That problem was removed almost 5 years ago.
I honestly don't know why people accept this as "ok". Because its the best that the video-card manufacturers are willing to do, and the market accepts it as 'good-enough'.
Note that the experience he's describing has nothing to do with windows, I've seen this same behavior on a number of ATI video cards while playing 3d games under load.
Not sure at this point whether its a heat dissipation issue, which causes the card to misbehave and the driver to bugcheck, or just a flat-out bug in the drivers.
But these things are not exactly bug-free pieces of software. I have a ticket in with my manufacturer to re-release a new version of the ATI drivers for my laptop, due to a reproducible bug in the driver which is a pain in the ass.
Are you using the same operational approach towards the windows boxen that you do to the *nix ones?
In other words, do you script and remote config all your *nix boxes but then walk over to the windows systems and do pointy-clicky stuff?
Or are you doing all your sysadmin on windows from the command line and scripts, like you do on your *nix boxes?
I ask because every time I hear someone say what you said, it turns out that they've taken the time to learn how to be a good sa on unix systems, but never bothered to learn how to be a good sa on a windows box.
Well, wont solve all your problems, but you really should just set the office ribbon to auto-hide. Do the same thing for your start bar with the giant search box.
It's still not probably exactly what you want, but it'll let you reclaim most of your desktop space for apps.
Based on my experience, what you describe is very much not typical.
Just in the past month, I did another experiment (give linux a try every year or two) with Kubuntu 7.04 and a Dell Latitude D630.
Massive, massive problems. Took 3 days to get it installed and working, with the help of the local linux guy. Just to get it to boot and have a terminal console visible, we had to install from the alternate disc, and then go edit the grub console to remove the/splash option. This was necessary to figure out and then execute before any gui was available, even the console.
I had to blacklist several drivers and do a bunch of things in config files and on the command line that were very much not-obvious (to me at least).
And even then, once we finally got it up, got the wifi working, got the nvidia drivers downloaded, got the broadcom drivers fixed so it wouldnt spam the command line every 30 seconds with the driver problem message. Even then it was flaky.
Forget about standby/hibernate working. Gaim/Pidgin was buggy as hell. Evolution wouldnt even install, it would just 'poof' disappear during the install. None of the laptop buttons would work. Couldnt config the touchpad (in any way that we could find at least).
So yeah, for the few things that work, after days of pain getting the system setup, it works okay. And yes, it probably will require less reboots (windows systems dont randomly crash anymore either, havent for 5+ years).
But what about the randomly duplicating windows, the silently poofing/crashing applications, the default x-style mouse behavior which drove me crazy.
I'm sure if you have an entire IT department to customize these setups and train people how to configure them, then this might work in some situations. But for the home user? No way. On windows, all you do is set the patching to auto-update, set the anti-virus to auto-update, and make sure the person is working as non-admin. Then the thing will 'just work' and will chug along for years, with the only reboots once or twice a month at 3am.
Well, clearly we value our own time differently, but look at the math from your post.
Using the allofmp3.com client, it takes me ~5 minutes to find the song, pay for it, and start the download. Then I'm done, I walk away. Thats it. The files are automatically filled out with ID3 tags, automatically named right, and automatically stuck in the right folder.
So in a comparison, the 5 minutes is the same, your way is $11 vs my $3-4, and I didnt have to drive to the damn store to buy a CD.
Even if you declare that the time value of the cost to acquire the CD is zero (which it isnt even close for me), you're still spending at least another $7-8 extra. And out of all three, at least in my world, the time spent driving to the CD store (which never happens), is by far the most expensive component.
You quite clearly hugely overestimate how much your time is worth. Actually no, I dont. The figure I quoted is just about right for salary, but even if that wasnt an accurate figure... some of us, like me, are just always freaking busy. My free time is so very precious to me, that I'll pay $10 or $20 if it saves me half an hour of work on something that I need, but the work itself is useless to me. Thats worth every penny to me.
So my time is worth exactly how much I say it is, modified by what I'm willing to pay in money-time exchanges.
I am a big fan of pink floyd, but I've been listening to them for a _lot_ of years, so they have to come in moderation at this point.
For example, the only real pink floyd song I like listening to right now (ie, this year) is 'Lost for Words', from the Division Bell. The rest of their songs, when they come up in rotation, unless I'm really cranking on the code and not really listening, I'll just hit FF and skip them.
Right now, and for most of my life, a whole album at a time, in sequence, of Pink Floyd would just drive me up the wall. It's too much of the same kind of music at once.
I'll also give you a maybe on the dj/club situation. If the DJ keeps the variety high, and its not just a series of the same kind of songs, then I can enjoy them in the sequence they setup, and there is some kind of contextual meaningfulness. But that works when its a real 'mix' of music, so even though its by one 'artist', its the variety that I need, that you can get in that situation.
Not to mention you're usually not sober in a DJ situation, which alters the chemistry a bit.:)
My original point is just that its outrageously absurd for an artist to try to force me to buy an entire album to get the one or two songs I want. Art, in general, just doesnt work like that. The experience and value that people can get out of a piece of art, or music, is entirely subjective, and can be completely different from anything the artist anticipated. The best art taps into something deep in the human psyche, and a high percentage of the population can 'relate' to it in some fashion. But the artist doesnt get to choose how the person relates to it, all they can do is throw it on the wall and see if it sticks.
Errors? I've seen some minor bugs on the website, but I've never had anything fail to download through the client, and end up on my machine, named exactly what I want, with exactly the encoding I want, with exactly the ID3 tags I want.
I've tried alot of music systems, from streaming to downloads, to the ultra craptacular iTunes. AllOfMp3.com is bar none the easiest and most convenient. I get exactly what I want, for a price I can stomach, and nothing else.
Thats garbage. Some artists may, in some cases, intend for all the songs of an album to be part of some 'integrated holistic artistic experience'.
But that has nothing to do with what I enjoy. They dont get to tell me how I have to enjoy their music.
And I cant think of a single album, ever, where I've ever wanted to listen to it all, end-to-end, or even give a rat's hairy butt about listening to them in context with each other.
In every cases, I'd prefer to listen to 1, maybe 2 (in exceptional cases) songs from an artist, then I want something different. Listening to the same singer/artist over and over again just bores me.
.. if you can only find one or two songs off an album that you like, then maybe you need to find some artists that make music better suited to your tastes. See thats the thing. You dont get to tell me how I have to enjoy music. I can enjoy it in whatever dynamic or process I like. I like what I like, and thats all that matters. It's not like listening to music has some net societal effect that matters, its just something that makes you feel good when listening to it.
How do you figure? A full album of mp3 encoded with lame preset 'insane' runs about $4. This produces 6-10MB mp3 files of excellent quality. A CD costs about $12, plus half an hour or so to rip it. Figure a minimum of $50/hr my time is worth, to buy a CD and rip it costs well over $20.
Even if CD's were free, I'd pay $3-4 to allofmp3.com, just for the convenience of having THEM rip it, having their software do the ID3 tags, etc. It's worth my time just to have guaranteed high quality rips at the rate I want, set with the filenames I want, and ID3 tags filled.
Except for the hours or days you need to now spend tracking down drivers and arcane workarounds for all the things that dont work.
And what do you do when the graphics dont work, at all, not even in terminal mode?
Not to mention the touchpad, wifi, 3-d video, laptop-buttons.
And dont even get me started on hibernate/standby.
In both cases (windows & linux) you're going to have to track down drivers. But with Linux, the things you have to do go far, far beyond just double-clicking on a driver installer. Blacklisting other drivers, modifying various system files in ways that make no sense unless you're a pro, etc.
I'm fairly sure that a fair amount of people reading here want non-bundled hardware The/. crowd represents a tiny tiny minority of the people buying computers though. So pretty much by definition, what you want is not what the average (non-business) buyer wants.
still Dell and HP will not sell an unbundled PC. Yes, they do. And have for years.
I'm not going to link you, because I've done it several times in this thread so far, and I'm sick of doing people's research for them.
Dell sells nearly every one of their business class machines with the 'free-dos' silliness (ie, no OS), and they sell a handful of machines pre-baked with Ubuntu.
When you consider it takes at least 2 hours to just do the Microsoft updates/service packs (including the option software) -- after the OS has been installed with drivers -- before protection apps and then beautification you should be able to see why $85.00 is not out of line. It can take 4-8 hours just to complete the install with everything. If it takes you 2-8 hours to build a windows machine, you're not only a terrible tech, but you're a terrible business-person.
Build a combo disc with the sp and all patches built into it, with the answer file setup, and the common 3rd party app installs scripted. Takes ~1 hour to build the machine, and only about 10 minutes of that does anyone have to be at the keyboard.
This is basic, entry-level stuff for a tech, and a massive loss of profit for a business owner.
Slashdot Mirror
Things like redundancy and backup systems are a perfect example of this. The threat analysis has to be done up front to understand what failures cause death, which cause inconvenience, and the redundancies and backup efforts go into those that have the more unfortunate outcome. Also just like software, system interdependency analysis is a big part of this.
This is just basic logic. No engineer/designer/implementer can make everything perfect, everything perfectly redundant, and everything with perfect contingencies.
And even if you could, it would weight-too-much-to-launch/be-too-bloated-to-use.
Heck, even the engineering differences between USSR and USA aerospace is a perfect example of two divergent points on that spectrum. The US folks would tend to get much closer to perfect across the whole artifact, and at 100x the cost. The Russian folks would take a much more tightly targeted optimization, and only do that work where absolutely critical, at some loss of perfection/redundancy.
A great example of this was the MiGs vs US jets. The US folks would create a nearly perfect aerodynamic surface across the whole craft. The Russians, however, would do the aerodynamic tests, and only optimize the points on the craft that were the most critical. Other parts still had bolt heads sticking out and such.
(mind you, I'm horribly paraphrasing this study which I read many many years ago, but the gist is there)
Two other links I should have put in the original post.
Innovate on Vista site
http://innovateonwindowsvista.com/
(I actually hate this site, and I think its hidden behind a partners login, but it does have some useful content buried in the graphics-heavy crap.)
Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 (for Vista)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905102.aspx
Now the app compat toolkit will have a bunch of stuff you might not care about, but its also got some useful stuff in there.
Sorry, I havent mentally translated to Vista apps yet, and they changed the names everywhere (to the better, but the change is a pain).
.NET apps through COM interop (IIRC). If your app is in C/C++ and you're used to consuming win32 api's in shell then this should be easy stuff for you.
I dont have a vista box or vm in front of me at the moment, but what was 'All Users' is now 'Public'.
So on Vista, its now this:
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Applications Data\Roaming
and
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Applications Data\Local
On vista, %ALLUSERSPROFILE% should resolve to C:\Users\Public\ by default, but this can be changed by group policy, so be careful.
These distinguish between data that should roam (when users are using roaming profiles) and that which is local to that machine (temp data, caches, stuff that doesnt need to follow on a roaming profile).
Go to a command prompt, and type:
C:\>echo %allusersprofile%
to see what the default is.
Now you have to be careful with paths. What seems simple isnt really that simple. Because you have to deal with roaming profiles and non-roaming profiles (ie, the roaming vs. local above). You have to deal with the case where Redirected MyDocuments is in effect. You have to deal with group policy which can change the default locations of all these things.
The 'correct' way to do it, so that all these things are handled behind the scenes, is to use the 'Known Folders' API in Vista.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756896.aspx
Mind you, this is not the simplest stuff out there, and is really targeted with those more familiar with the C windows API. But there are COM interfaces, which can be consumed by traditional VB6-type of apps, or
There is a ton of documentation out there from MS, but unfortunately, its not as well organized as it should be. And its gotten worse over the years as the underlying systems get more complicated, and facilities/abstractions are created to deal with different versions.
Here's some links, hopefully this doesnt scare you off. The goal should be that your app can and does pass the 'Certified for Windows Vista' (or the XP equiv if you're targeting XP only for now). This is for more than just marketing bling, this means that your apps will deal with all the things that people complain about on Vista, like UAC, etc. Basically the software logo program (the 'certified for vista' and 'works with vista') is a set of best practices for the desktop app developer. Like the WHQL is for drivers and hardware.
(WARN: some of this stuff is hidden behind the MS partner program logins. The good news is that you can become a registered partner for about 30 minutes of your time filling out information, and no cost. There are bennies too. You can use the Microsoft Empower ISV program, to get 5 MSDN Universal-equivalent licenses for ~$400 for the first two years. Then you can translate to the Action Pack subscription. Makes getting all your MS infrastructure very cheap and easy for the small ISV.)
App Compat Forums for Vista
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=904&SiteID=1
Windows Vista Developer Story (odd name, but top level for lots of info)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa904951.aspx
Vista/Server2008 App Compat Cookbook
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480152.aspx
Developing Quality Applications with Known Folders
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756896.aspx
http://microsoft.mrmpslc.com/Inno
The WHQL is a driver/hardware program, and is completely different from the ISV program (Logo, Designed for Vista, etc).
Thats why there is an \All Users\AppData\ folder.
Writing to anything in Program Files for regular use (ie, not an install or upgrade) is incorrect and 'bad' behavior for the application.
It is explicitly warned against in the isv logo program best practices documentation.
The correct thing is this:
Settings or temp files for the app common to all users:
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
Settings for the specific user:
%APPDATA%\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
Temp storage specific to the user:
%TEMP%\[CompanyName]\[AppName]\
If anything, even the app itself, can modify its own binaries, then its a security risk, as a compromise in it could be used to trojan itself. Restricting this helps mitigate this attack vector.
One of the big problems with this is that its just death on the ISVs.
It gives them alot more versions of windows to have to certify for support with their software.
It's a lot easier on the ISV and 3rd party ecosystem to have fewer, bigger releases.
What app were you using that needed the ram? I wonder if this was part of it. Some MS apps do this too, like SQL Server, but they also have many settings inside them to let you configure how well they 'play well with others'.
To be fair, both of these things are only a problem if your DCs and CIFS servers are SAMBA, is that right?
Because Vista does Roaming & Redirect just fine against a Win2003 server. And why are you using decade old legacy policy files to execute policies?
Kontact is not a competitor to Outlook/Exchange, its a competitor to standalone Outlook, without any server component whatsoever. It's not an apples to apples comparison.
And besides, looking at Kontact, both on the website w/ screenshots and on the version I have on kubuntu on a vm, holy crap is it ugly.
I know thats not functionality, but why does this stuff have to always look so amateurish? Compared to Outlook 2007, which is smooth, polished, very easy to use, bullet-proof, and beautiful to boot.
SFTP? What does a file-transfer format have to do with a calendar/email/pim software?
Or do you just use it for email, and so thinks thats all it does?
Seriously, if you have the type of job where email, calendar, tasks and contacts are 80% of your job (lots and lots of people, including the vast majority of managers and up, and also including small businesses where everyone does everything), then Exchange and Outlook simply cannot be beat.
I've looked at the other options, they're terrible, amateurish, and poorly executed. Check out some sysadmin mailing list archives is you really want to see how bad Exchange actually is - true in recent versions you can actually back it up properly for bare metal recovery and it isn't an open relay by default and doesn't leak huge amounts of memory but it's still inferior in many ways to other sotware releases ten years older than it's current release. I've admin'd medium (never more than a few thousand mailboxes) sized exchange installations, and you know what? It's pretty straightforward, and pretty bulletproof once you get it setup and configured properly.
Bare metal restore isnt an exchange backup issue, thats an OS backup issue.
Exchange hasnt been an open relay by default since at least Exchange 2000, maybe earlier.
Exchange doesnt leak memory, it does use memory. It's basically a big database, so the more of the mailbox stores that it can stuff in memory the better. So like any database, it needs to be given as much memory as you can give it.
The biggest problem I've seem with Exchange administration, is that often unix and unix mail admins get stuck with it. And their skills dont transfer. And so because it doesnt behave exactly like the stuff they're used to, and they're not willing to learn, they do a crappy-ass job managing it, and it doesnt work well.
Compare that to people who are willing to learn how to manage it properly, and thos exchange shops run like a well oiled machine. You can't even recover a corrupted Outlook mailbox with Microsoft tools - you have to investigate the realms of dodgy shareware. Outlook not so good. Two problems with that.
1. Outlook mailboxes (ie, PSTs) have nothing to do with anything if you're running an Exchange organization. Outlook doesnt use PST files when you're using Exchange. It stores a local copy of the exchange data in an
2. Microsoft DOES have decent PST corruption repair tools, do a search for them. I'll grant you that there are some commercial tools that do a better job. But lets be honest, your folks shouldnt be using PST's anyway if you're on Exchange.
Note that the experience he's describing has nothing to do with windows, I've seen this same behavior on a number of ATI video cards while playing 3d games under load.
Not sure at this point whether its a heat dissipation issue, which causes the card to misbehave and the driver to bugcheck, or just a flat-out bug in the drivers.
But these things are not exactly bug-free pieces of software. I have a ticket in with my manufacturer to re-release a new version of the ATI drivers for my laptop, due to a reproducible bug in the driver which is a pain in the ass.
Are you using the same operational approach towards the windows boxen that you do to the *nix ones?
In other words, do you script and remote config all your *nix boxes but then walk over to the windows systems and do pointy-clicky stuff?
Or are you doing all your sysadmin on windows from the command line and scripts, like you do on your *nix boxes?
I ask because every time I hear someone say what you said, it turns out that they've taken the time to learn how to be a good sa on unix systems, but never bothered to learn how to be a good sa on a windows box.
Well, wont solve all your problems, but you really should just set the office ribbon to auto-hide. Do the same thing for your start bar with the giant search box.
It's still not probably exactly what you want, but it'll let you reclaim most of your desktop space for apps.
Based on my experience, what you describe is very much not typical.
/splash option. This was necessary to figure out and then execute before any gui was available, even the console.
Just in the past month, I did another experiment (give linux a try every year or two) with Kubuntu 7.04 and a Dell Latitude D630.
Massive, massive problems. Took 3 days to get it installed and working, with the help of the local linux guy. Just to get it to boot and have a terminal console visible, we had to install from the alternate disc, and then go edit the grub console to remove the
I had to blacklist several drivers and do a bunch of things in config files and on the command line that were very much not-obvious (to me at least).
And even then, once we finally got it up, got the wifi working, got the nvidia drivers downloaded, got the broadcom drivers fixed so it wouldnt spam the command line every 30 seconds with the driver problem message. Even then it was flaky.
Forget about standby/hibernate working. Gaim/Pidgin was buggy as hell. Evolution wouldnt even install, it would just 'poof' disappear during the install. None of the laptop buttons would work. Couldnt config the touchpad (in any way that we could find at least).
So yeah, for the few things that work, after days of pain getting the system setup, it works okay. And yes, it probably will require less reboots (windows systems dont randomly crash anymore either, havent for 5+ years).
But what about the randomly duplicating windows, the silently poofing/crashing applications, the default x-style mouse behavior which drove me crazy.
I'm sure if you have an entire IT department to customize these setups and train people how to configure them, then this might work in some situations. But for the home user? No way. On windows, all you do is set the patching to auto-update, set the anti-virus to auto-update, and make sure the person is working as non-admin. Then the thing will 'just work' and will chug along for years, with the only reboots once or twice a month at 3am.
Using the allofmp3.com client, it takes me ~5 minutes to find the song, pay for it, and start the download. Then I'm done, I walk away. Thats it. The files are automatically filled out with ID3 tags, automatically named right, and automatically stuck in the right folder.
So in a comparison, the 5 minutes is the same, your way is $11 vs my $3-4, and I didnt have to drive to the damn store to buy a CD.
Even if you declare that the time value of the cost to acquire the CD is zero (which it isnt even close for me), you're still spending at least another $7-8 extra. And out of all three, at least in my world, the time spent driving to the CD store (which never happens), is by far the most expensive component. You quite clearly hugely overestimate how much your time is worth. Actually no, I dont. The figure I quoted is just about right for salary, but even if that wasnt an accurate figure
So my time is worth exactly how much I say it is, modified by what I'm willing to pay in money-time exchanges.
I am a big fan of pink floyd, but I've been listening to them for a _lot_ of years, so they have to come in moderation at this point.
:)
For example, the only real pink floyd song I like listening to right now (ie, this year) is 'Lost for Words', from the Division Bell. The rest of their songs, when they come up in rotation, unless I'm really cranking on the code and not really listening, I'll just hit FF and skip them.
Right now, and for most of my life, a whole album at a time, in sequence, of Pink Floyd would just drive me up the wall. It's too much of the same kind of music at once.
I'll also give you a maybe on the dj/club situation. If the DJ keeps the variety high, and its not just a series of the same kind of songs, then I can enjoy them in the sequence they setup, and there is some kind of contextual meaningfulness. But that works when its a real 'mix' of music, so even though its by one 'artist', its the variety that I need, that you can get in that situation.
Not to mention you're usually not sober in a DJ situation, which alters the chemistry a bit.
My original point is just that its outrageously absurd for an artist to try to force me to buy an entire album to get the one or two songs I want. Art, in general, just doesnt work like that. The experience and value that people can get out of a piece of art, or music, is entirely subjective, and can be completely different from anything the artist anticipated. The best art taps into something deep in the human psyche, and a high percentage of the population can 'relate' to it in some fashion. But the artist doesnt get to choose how the person relates to it, all they can do is throw it on the wall and see if it sticks.
You understand that this has nothing to do with Amazon, right?
Amazon can only sell what labels/distributors are willing to let them sell, and in whatever format they want them sold.
So some labels say 'album only, no single-track downloads'. Some dont.
Amazon has nothing to do with it, other than being legally obligated to comply with the owners terms.
Errors? I've seen some minor bugs on the website, but I've never had anything fail to download through the client, and end up on my machine, named exactly what I want, with exactly the encoding I want, with exactly the ID3 tags I want.
I've tried alot of music systems, from streaming to downloads, to the ultra craptacular iTunes. AllOfMp3.com is bar none the easiest and most convenient. I get exactly what I want, for a price I can stomach, and nothing else.
But that has nothing to do with what I enjoy. They dont get to tell me how I have to enjoy their music.
And I cant think of a single album, ever, where I've ever wanted to listen to it all, end-to-end, or even give a rat's hairy butt about listening to them in context with each other.
In every cases, I'd prefer to listen to 1, maybe 2 (in exceptional cases) songs from an artist, then I want something different. Listening to the same singer/artist over and over again just bores me.
.. if you can only find one or two songs off an album that you like, then maybe you need to find some artists that make music better suited to your tastes. See thats the thing. You dont get to tell me how I have to enjoy music. I can enjoy it in whatever dynamic or process I like. I like what I like, and thats all that matters. It's not like listening to music has some net societal effect that matters, its just something that makes you feel good when listening to it.How do you figure? A full album of mp3 encoded with lame preset 'insane' runs about $4. This produces 6-10MB mp3 files of excellent quality. A CD costs about $12, plus half an hour or so to rip it. Figure a minimum of $50/hr my time is worth, to buy a CD and rip it costs well over $20.
Even if CD's were free, I'd pay $3-4 to allofmp3.com, just for the convenience of having THEM rip it, having their software do the ID3 tags, etc. It's worth my time just to have guaranteed high quality rips at the rate I want, set with the filenames I want, and ID3 tags filled.
Except for the hours or days you need to now spend tracking down drivers and arcane workarounds for all the things that dont work.
And what do you do when the graphics dont work, at all, not even in terminal mode?
Not to mention the touchpad, wifi, 3-d video, laptop-buttons.
And dont even get me started on hibernate/standby.
In both cases (windows & linux) you're going to have to track down drivers. But with Linux, the things you have to do go far, far beyond just double-clicking on a driver installer. Blacklisting other drivers, modifying various system files in ways that make no sense unless you're a pro, etc.
I'm not going to link you, because I've done it several times in this thread so far, and I'm sick of doing people's research for them.
Dell sells nearly every one of their business class machines with the 'free-dos' silliness (ie, no OS), and they sell a handful of machines pre-baked with Ubuntu.
Build a combo disc with the sp and all patches built into it, with the answer file setup, and the common 3rd party app installs scripted. Takes ~1 hour to build the machine, and only about 10 minutes of that does anyone have to be at the keyboard.
This is basic, entry-level stuff for a tech, and a massive loss of profit for a business owner.