"Isn't it a *good thing* that we provide some context, rather than just saying "x million" with no backup?"
Actually I would agree. It's a good thing. Disclosure is ALWAYS a good thing. But I do say that the statistics and conclusions seem highly suspect to me as a result. Regardless, I was mostly responding to the RTFA comment. I always try to RTFA.
"It is trivial for any malware to finagle with the HOSTS file on a Windows system, which is hidden in such a dumb obscure place (C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc), a far cry from the self-explanatory/etc/hosts of every other goddamned OS on the planet."
Exactly why is this something that bothers you? If you're savvy enough to know what the HOSTS file is, then you'll know how to go about finding it. Like, say, a search on google or wikipedia. Or bringing up the XP help and support centre and typing "hosts file" in the search box. Name resolution comes up as the second of two topics, right after "glossary".
Why is/etc/hosts self-explanatory? It only makes sense to people who already know *nix. Everybody else would have to look it up, just like they'd have to look up the windows one.
With the wonderful array of problems that Microsoft presents you have many opportunities to nitpick about valid issues. This complaint is silly.
I did. Unlike you, apparently, I really read it. They kind of get a feeling from things and stuff they hear that maybe multiple people behind single IP's outnumber single people behind multiple IP's, but they don't really know and haven't really counted. They've just chosen to believe. Doesn't that sum it up?
If Microsoft made a claim on such a basis they'd be lambasted.
"The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations suggests that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1)"
"Since all my machines are behind a NAT gateway...Make that 2,000,004..."
My cousin's FC6 isn't perpetually on, and he gets a dynamically assigned IP every time he connects. So we'll drop that down to... gee... I don't even know. I don't know how many times he has received updates.
Counting installs by unique IP's isn't very accurate.
How do you suppose they found the website? After all, I would have thought that people opposed to mining would have avoided products that were built using mined materials. You know, like computers.
Throughout this thread there are comments that the authentication mechanism is evil, unnecessary and hurts users.
Just to play devil's advocate, it's not like Microsoft just arbitrarily decided for no particular reason that the authentication tool was a good idea. They make a for-profit commercial product. Lots and lots and LOTS of people are using it without paying. Whether it's copyright infringement or theft, they are faced with a problem - besides obtaining this product for free, all of these "users" will place a drain on Microsoft's support systems (such as bandwidth).
Historically they've simply sucked it up, and let these people continue to leech away, but they've put their foot down. What exactly are their options? Dongles? Cracked almost instantly. Serial number alone? Don't make me laugh. I'm not sure how else they would do this, other than to require that they validate the customers serial number against white and black lists.
If people weren't working so very hard to make this commercial, for-profit product available for free, there would be no need at all for this system. It wouldn't exist.
Microsoft almost certainly sees this system as a necessary evil. If there were a better way, I'll bet they'd at least listen to it.
"Well, who can argue with that kind of research? Why would I trust an official study when I could just believe what "seems" to be true to Petersko of Slashdot?"
Modded -1 Unable to Comprehend What is Clear
Where did I say that my experience was the one to trust? I simply said that my anecdotal evidence runs counter to their reported result, and that I would need to know more details on how they arrived at their conclusion. I said that their conclusion is suspect without these details.
I didn't ask for your belief, or even your acceptance. Yet somehow you arrived at the conclusion that I did. How exactly did you do that?
"I would venture a guess that these "loyal" employees you are hiring are far less productive and motivated than the ones you are missing out on."
You would guess wrong. There are plenty of productive, motivated people with ten years of experience and only two or three employers. Why throw the dice on somebody who hasn't proven themselves stable, when we can hedge our bets a bit? We need consistent, well-trained staff. Stability is one of several criteria that we value.
"The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP -- which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X."
All of the OSX machines I have access to seem more sluggish and less responsive than my 3 year old PC running XP.
Without more details, this "it-enquirer" is no better than the print Enquirer in the checkout line.
"My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me."
We had to get through about 100 resumes for two positions that are currently open, and job-hoppers did not make the short list.
The positions are important ones in our company and the learning curve is too high to keep retraining, so we just don't hire people with resumes such as yours.
"They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time."
Explain to me why this is any more of a waste of time than making linux run on all sorts of inappropriate hardware. Seems to me there is LOTS of competition for the award. Don't just give it to these guys because it's Windows - let them earn it in earnest competition.
"And yes, most adults shy away from things they are certain to fail at on their first try. There's SO many other things to do that don't involve failure that it's not a big surprise to me."
"The biggest issue for my company is that many of our machines are 2000, so we had to create our own patch, since Microsoft is only patching 2000 for people who pay their extortion fees."
I knew it. All this smokescreen around energy savings is just a cover story.
Naturally Microsoft is behind the change. It's all part of their master plan to move people off of legacy OS's, or bleed dry everybody else.
How did I not see this before? Their tentacles are spreading ever further.
Some we do, some we don't. We've paid for ongoing support in the past, although I don't think we have active commercial agreements with anybody for the OS products we use.
I work in a fairly large IT shop in an industrial company. Today was our annual "IT Town Hall". During the question and answer portion of the proceedings, the question came up:
"Have we thought about what our policy is regarding Open Source software?"
The answer was short and simple. "Our policy is to use the software that works. If we have an area that you believe can benefit from Open Source, make a case for it."
Simple enough. The truth is that we licence software from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, and many other companies, and nearly all of it is closed source. We have some OS stuff around, but we don't pick software because it's free. Our direction must always be to solve business problems. And if the closed source product is better at that task, we're fine with paying for it.
The quasi-religious attitude towards open source that you find in many places isn't present here. If it works, we use it.
We don't see a halo. Just tools that we might or might not be able to use.
"When we feel like whoring out our franchise for a bunch of cash, we'll give you a PC version."
"Whoring out our franchise" implies they were doing something for some noble higher purchase and are now succumbing to the call of cash, and giving up their moral stance. It implies that there's something seedy about writing games for the PC. I don't think it applies here.
"Gears of War" was written to make money. Expanding to the PC market allows them to make MORE money. No change in position, goals, or morals.
"A result in her field of study: that would be determined methodology. But this was luck. Any scientist would admit that, but you are probably and engineer or lawyer, correct?"
Neither. Merely an ordinary fellow with strong leanings towards science AND engineering. I know little or nothing about law, except where I have broken it.
As others have pointed out, she wasn't doing cancer research. However, I would point out that whatever she WAS doing, she was working with cancerous cells.
Regardless, I maintain it was much less luck than determined methodology that brought this forward. A fortunate event happened at the tip of decades of buildup.
"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries."
Oh please. You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. Like it was the scientific equivalent of "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"
The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery. If any of it was blind luck it was perhaps a tiny little sliver at the end. Really not even that was luck. After all, even though the results were unexpected, clearly she was on the track to something. No luck required.
I think it's insulting to her dismiss the roles that logic and deductive reasoning played in arranging these circumstances.
Microsoft cannot begin to dream of reaching the level of evil that lawyers as a group have attained. You think the cost of having a Microsoft monopoly is high? Lawyers and legal organizations increase the cost of every single thing you ever bought in your life, from penny candy to auto insurance. They take a portion of every bit of money that changes hands for legal reasons, they siphon money off of broken families and child support settlements, and from birth death they get their cut every step of the way.
"Bet the states are licking their chops now... with Vista Ultimate pegged at 399.99. talk about overcharging."
I doubt it would qualify. After all, there are three editions below it, each of which will successfully run the vast majority of Vista-compatible products. In no way are you forced to buy the top of the line. You'd have to argue they are overcharging for the "core" or basic product. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. That's a different question.
Slashdot Mirror
"Isn't it a *good thing* that we provide some context, rather than just saying "x million" with no backup?"
Actually I would agree. It's a good thing. Disclosure is ALWAYS a good thing. But I do say that the statistics and conclusions seem highly suspect to me as a result. Regardless, I was mostly responding to the RTFA comment. I always try to RTFA.
"It is trivial for any malware to finagle with the HOSTS file on a Windows system, which is hidden in such a dumb obscure place (C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc), a far cry from the self-explanatory /etc/hosts of every other goddamned OS on the planet."
/etc/hosts self-explanatory? It only makes sense to people who already know *nix. Everybody else would have to look it up, just like they'd have to look up the windows one.
Exactly why is this something that bothers you? If you're savvy enough to know what the HOSTS file is, then you'll know how to go about finding it. Like, say, a search on google or wikipedia. Or bringing up the XP help and support centre and typing "hosts file" in the search box. Name resolution comes up as the second of two topics, right after "glossary".
Why is
With the wonderful array of problems that Microsoft presents you have many opportunities to nitpick about valid issues. This complaint is silly.
"You should probably RTFA."
I did. Unlike you, apparently, I really read it. They kind of get a feeling from things and stuff they hear that maybe multiple people behind single IP's outnumber single people behind multiple IP's, but they don't really know and haven't really counted. They've just chosen to believe. Doesn't that sum it up?
If Microsoft made a claim on such a basis they'd be lambasted.
"The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations suggests that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1)"
That's pretty dodgy.
"Since all my machines are behind a NAT gateway...Make that 2,000,004..."
My cousin's FC6 isn't perpetually on, and he gets a dynamically assigned IP every time he connects. So we'll drop that down to... gee... I don't even know. I don't know how many times he has received updates.
Counting installs by unique IP's isn't very accurate.
Computer aren't built of coal, dumbass.
Perhaps not... but I believe in Australia they are, in fact, powered by coal.
How do you suppose they found the website? After all, I would have thought that people opposed to mining would have avoided products that were built using mined materials. You know, like computers.
Throughout this thread there are comments that the authentication mechanism is evil, unnecessary and hurts users.
Just to play devil's advocate, it's not like Microsoft just arbitrarily decided for no particular reason that the authentication tool was a good idea. They make a for-profit commercial product. Lots and lots and LOTS of people are using it without paying. Whether it's copyright infringement or theft, they are faced with a problem - besides obtaining this product for free, all of these "users" will place a drain on Microsoft's support systems (such as bandwidth).
Historically they've simply sucked it up, and let these people continue to leech away, but they've put their foot down. What exactly are their options? Dongles? Cracked almost instantly. Serial number alone? Don't make me laugh. I'm not sure how else they would do this, other than to require that they validate the customers serial number against white and black lists.
If people weren't working so very hard to make this commercial, for-profit product available for free, there would be no need at all for this system. It wouldn't exist.
Microsoft almost certainly sees this system as a necessary evil. If there were a better way, I'll bet they'd at least listen to it.
"Well, who can argue with that kind of research? Why would I trust an official study when I could just believe what "seems" to be true to Petersko of Slashdot?"
Modded -1 Unable to Comprehend What is Clear
Where did I say that my experience was the one to trust? I simply said that my anecdotal evidence runs counter to their reported result, and that I would need to know more details on how they arrived at their conclusion. I said that their conclusion is suspect without these details.
I didn't ask for your belief, or even your acceptance. Yet somehow you arrived at the conclusion that I did. How exactly did you do that?
"I would venture a guess that these "loyal" employees you are hiring are far less productive and motivated than the ones you are missing out on."
You would guess wrong. There are plenty of productive, motivated people with ten years of experience and only two or three employers. Why throw the dice on somebody who hasn't proven themselves stable, when we can hedge our bets a bit? We need consistent, well-trained staff. Stability is one of several criteria that we value.
"Let me guess, they're all 6 year old G3s?"
One is. I didn't count it. The most recent is 18 months of age.
"The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP -- which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X."
All of the OSX machines I have access to seem more sluggish and less responsive than my 3 year old PC running XP.
Without more details, this "it-enquirer" is no better than the print Enquirer in the checkout line.
"My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me."
We had to get through about 100 resumes for two positions that are currently open, and job-hoppers did not make the short list.
The positions are important ones in our company and the learning curve is too high to keep retraining, so we just don't hire people with resumes such as yours.
"They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time."
Explain to me why this is any more of a waste of time than making linux run on all sorts of inappropriate hardware. Seems to me there is LOTS of competition for the award. Don't just give it to these guys because it's Windows - let them earn it in earnest competition.
"And yes, most adults shy away from things they are certain to fail at on their first try. There's SO many other things to do that don't involve failure that it's not a big surprise to me."
Clearly you've never golfed.
"The biggest issue for my company is that many of our machines are 2000, so we had to create our own patch, since Microsoft is only patching 2000 for people who pay their extortion fees."
I knew it. All this smokescreen around energy savings is just a cover story.
Naturally Microsoft is behind the change. It's all part of their master plan to move people off of legacy OS's, or bleed dry everybody else.
How did I not see this before? Their tentacles are spreading ever further.
"And do you pay for the FOSS products?"
Some we do, some we don't. We've paid for ongoing support in the past, although I don't think we have active commercial agreements with anybody for the OS products we use.
I work in a fairly large IT shop in an industrial company. Today was our annual "IT Town Hall". During the question and answer portion of the proceedings, the question came up:
"Have we thought about what our policy is regarding Open Source software?"
The answer was short and simple. "Our policy is to use the software that works. If we have an area that you believe can benefit from Open Source, make a case for it."
Simple enough. The truth is that we licence software from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, and many other companies, and nearly all of it is closed source. We have some OS stuff around, but we don't pick software because it's free. Our direction must always be to solve business problems. And if the closed source product is better at that task, we're fine with paying for it.
The quasi-religious attitude towards open source that you find in many places isn't present here. If it works, we use it.
We don't see a halo. Just tools that we might or might not be able to use.
"When we feel like whoring out our franchise for a bunch of cash, we'll give you a PC version."
"Whoring out our franchise" implies they were doing something for some noble higher purchase and are now succumbing to the call of cash, and giving up their moral stance. It implies that there's something seedy about writing games for the PC. I don't think it applies here.
"Gears of War" was written to make money. Expanding to the PC market allows them to make MORE money. No change in position, goals, or morals.
"A result in her field of study: that would be determined methodology. But this was luck. Any scientist would admit that, but you are probably and engineer or lawyer, correct?"
Neither. Merely an ordinary fellow with strong leanings towards science AND engineering. I know little or nothing about law, except where I have broken it.
As others have pointed out, she wasn't doing cancer research. However, I would point out that whatever she WAS doing, she was working with cancerous cells.
Regardless, I maintain it was much less luck than determined methodology that brought this forward. A fortunate event happened at the tip of decades of buildup.
"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries."
Oh please. You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. Like it was the scientific equivalent of "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"
The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery. If any of it was blind luck it was perhaps a tiny little sliver at the end. Really not even that was luck. After all, even though the results were unexpected, clearly she was on the track to something. No luck required.
I think it's insulting to her dismiss the roles that logic and deductive reasoning played in arranging these circumstances.
Microsoft cannot begin to dream of reaching the level of evil that lawyers as a group have attained. You think the cost of having a Microsoft monopoly is high? Lawyers and legal organizations increase the cost of every single thing you ever bought in your life, from penny candy to auto insurance. They take a portion of every bit of money that changes hands for legal reasons, they siphon money off of broken families and child support settlements, and from birth death they get their cut every step of the way.
"Bet the states are licking their chops now... with Vista Ultimate pegged at 399.99. talk about overcharging."
I doubt it would qualify. After all, there are three editions below it, each of which will successfully run the vast majority of Vista-compatible products. In no way are you forced to buy the top of the line. You'd have to argue they are overcharging for the "core" or basic product. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. That's a different question.
Every review I've read of Sony's online experience carried some variation of "tacked-on and unpolished".
Have the suddenly patched it into glorious perfection?