I am pushing the terms of the license, but it isn't outright pirated. (Well, according to that recent Blizzard ruling, it is actually pirated, but I'm hoping that ruling is overturned.)
Despite what/.-think would lead you to believe, there are a lot of upgrades from XP to Vista, and Server 2K8 gives you an avenue to skip some of the stuff that sucks about Vista. (There aren't enough improvements to XP to justify 5 years IMHO, but Vista *is* a better OS I think.) You've got stuff like a better volume shadow copy service (which gives Vista's "previous versions" feature), true symbolic links, transactional NTFS (can you tell I like FS features?), UAC (funny how a lot of the people who denigrate this don't mind typing "sudo" on their OS of choice*), DirectX 10, and a few others.
* There are differences between UAC and sudo, and sudo is better designed. However, it's better designed in such a way that doesn't particularly matter for home users (specifically, UAC is closer to su in that you need to know the password of the target account rather than your account), and in practice it works out to be about the same. UAC prompts basically appear at the same times you would need sudo on a *nix. Beyond that, there are a couple minor points that go in Vista's favor and a couple points that go in *nix's.
The sound system is screwy. Priorities are setup for different workloads, resulting in pops and hisses when you play music. This is fixable, but took me a while to figure out how and I still never seemed to get it perfect.
I'm running Server 2008 as my main box, and I haven't seen this problem.
I did see the first one though (the incompatibilities) with both AVG and Avast! anti-virus; both seem to assume that since I'm installing it on the server OS it's not being used on a home, non-commercial desktop and tell you to buy the full version.
There's the occasional program that uses IE (technically: the MSHTML component) to render HTML, and you can still face this problem. For instance, if you don't install the MSDN docs locally, help in Visual Studio goes out to MSDN's site, and the security settings in IE apply to this connection. I've hit it a couple other places too, but more esoteric.
What? No. They're anonymizing the logs Google is giving Viacom. So instead of seeing "10.147.95.128 watched a skateboarding dog at 12:45 5-13-2008" they'll see "visitor #129833 watched a skateboard dog at12:45 5-13-2008."
Oh, I agree. I still have a box that first had XP from 2002 running, and it's only within the last year that XP has come to no longer live on it. But we're talking numbers here, which you started by saying that "most people only have ancient versions to install their system with". I think the majority swings the other way.
I agree that it's a reasonable thing to test and report on, but/. did it very disingenuously IMO by not saying that it's an old version being tested. It's like me going around the comment areas posting saying that "Linux doesn't support my sound card, doesn't support RAID, has crappy desktop environments" etc. but not saying that I'm referring to the state when I first installed Linux in 2002 rather than what's going on now.
It'd be behind a NAT, so you'd basically be safe. (Of course you're never completely safe, but you have to pound hard to get through a NAT that doesn't have ports opened administratively.) The fact that it's VMWare providing the NAT doesn't matter; you'd see the same if you were to plug in a cable modem router.
Which is pretty much what most people do. They don't know how to "roll your own" system, with SP2 installed and all.... The problem is just that, that most people only have ancient versions to install
I agree to some extent, but MS has been pressing XP+SP2 discs for close to 4 years now. Considering it was less than that from initial release to SP2, probably around half of the XP discs (and hard drive restore partitions) that went out have SP2. Take into account that a lot of people would consider a 4-year-old computer pretty old and so would replace it, take into account that computer adoption increases over time, and I bet that at *least* 2/3 of XP installations today, not even counting new computers selling with it, are off of media that has SP2 and was not set up by the user to do so.
So I think it's a substantial problem, but at the same time, I think "most" people are SP2-safe.
Because that's the version of Windows that (just about, I think, for now) Microsoft still sell.
As I've said a few times, in the absence of information I would expect to see (the article is deficient in actual information about what it is they are measuring), I suspect this is pre-SP2 XP. You haven't been able to buy that for years. (Or at least MS hasn't printed it for years.)
right let's install a 5 year old linux distro and see how long it takes to get owned. it's the same thing they are putting forward here with an unpatch winXP system.
No it isn't. That Linux distro wouldn't be old enough... it should be 7 years old, not 5.
(Not that XP would stand a chance even in that comparison, but the failure to mention that it sounds like these numbers are for XP without SP2 in the summary, making it sound like Vista or even XP with SP2 is as vulnerable is very disingenuous.)
Which is exactly my point. We know those machines get pwned quickly, so why is this news? The/. summary presents it as if it's a current measurement of a current OS and not one that was superseded almost four years ago? (Assuming they are using a pre-SP2 install. Which, since the site doesn't give any actual information, I don't know.)
The fact that the time-to-pwn has not fallen over the past four years...
Pray tell what has happened to the base Windows installation over the past for years? Those security fixes you mention aren't counted in this time, so you can't claim that they aren't contributing to overall security. From the article (sort of ) it sounds like this is still the time for XP and not Vista (though since neither the summary nor either linked article actually says or anything, so I'm not sure). So why, exactly, should we have expected the time to decrease?
I've always assumed it's how the telecom companies help pay for selling you a blackberry or, in this case, an iPhone at a reasonable price.
But it's more than that... according to both the online rep I talked to and the guy in the store, you can't even sign up for a non-data plan if you get the iPhone from someone else and AT&T isn't subsidizing it.
You don't have to get a data plan do you? It is possible to get the phone for $200 and then use one of the bacis phone service plans, correct?
No, you can't.
Not even if you are buying a used iPhone from someone; you have to get the iPhone package. In fact I *just* closed the window I had with an AT&T support chat asking this question.
Actually, this is true with ANY drivers for Windows.
It's particularly true of video card drivers though, because they are complex beasts (fortunately though most of it lives in user space) and because video card manufacturers want to make it fast even at the expense of stability so Mr. Gamer can get 300 fps instead of Mrs. Gamer's 270.
I remember Microsoft said they weren't going to allow any unsigned drivers to be installed on Vista. I guess after much debate Microsoft changed their minds.
They aren't allowed, however, on the 64-bit edition of Vista. (I don't know if they were on x64 XP.) Actually I'm running into that now because VMWare Server's service isn't signed apparently, so Server 2008 won't start it. I have to explicitly disable driver signing each boot from the F8 menu.
I've seen screen of death on most platforms from Windows 3.11 all the way through Vista. And some flavors of Linux.
Yep, same here. Only one I haven't seen it on is Server 2008, but that's because it's been installed all of two weeks now. My point is not that they don't happen, but that they are rare -- just like kernel panics in *nixs.
Except that a BSOD on both WinXP and Win2000 are not that hard to cause
If you stay away from flakey video card drivers, I would dispute this fact. I use Windows as my primary OS and have seen very few BSODs. This is from XP, Vista, or Server 2008. The NT line has always been as stable as any Linux setup I've put together.
Even the most basic cameras generally offer support for uncompressed images (usually in some sort of TIFF encapsulation), and if this is what you need, then use it.
TIFF != RAW!
Figure out a way to losslessly change the white balance your TIFF file was shot at and we'll start discussing again.
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Windows should build in a encryption program like on Mac OS X
You mean like Bitlocker?
I am pushing the terms of the license, but it isn't outright pirated. (Well, according to that recent Blizzard ruling, it is actually pirated, but I'm hoping that ruling is overturned.)
Despite what /.-think would lead you to believe, there are a lot of upgrades from XP to Vista, and Server 2K8 gives you an avenue to skip some of the stuff that sucks about Vista. (There aren't enough improvements to XP to justify 5 years IMHO, but Vista *is* a better OS I think.) You've got stuff like a better volume shadow copy service (which gives Vista's "previous versions" feature), true symbolic links, transactional NTFS (can you tell I like FS features?), UAC (funny how a lot of the people who denigrate this don't mind typing "sudo" on their OS of choice*), DirectX 10, and a few others.
* There are differences between UAC and sudo, and sudo is better designed. However, it's better designed in such a way that doesn't particularly matter for home users (specifically, UAC is closer to su in that you need to know the password of the target account rather than your account), and in practice it works out to be about the same. UAC prompts basically appear at the same times you would need sudo on a *nix. Beyond that, there are a couple minor points that go in Vista's favor and a couple points that go in *nix's.
Agreed here. I'm running the "Vista 64" drivers for both my video card (Nvidia 8800) and sound card (Audigy 2), and haven't had problems with either.
The sound system is screwy. Priorities are setup for different workloads, resulting in pops and hisses when you play music. This is fixable, but took me a while to figure out how and I still never seemed to get it perfect.
I'm running Server 2008 as my main box, and I haven't seen this problem.
I did see the first one though (the incompatibilities) with both AVG and Avast! anti-virus; both seem to assume that since I'm installing it on the server OS it's not being used on a home, non-commercial desktop and tell you to buy the full version.
There's the occasional program that uses IE (technically: the MSHTML component) to render HTML, and you can still face this problem. For instance, if you don't install the MSDN docs locally, help in Visual Studio goes out to MSDN's site, and the security settings in IE apply to this connection. I've hit it a couple other places too, but more esoteric.
What? No. They're anonymizing the logs Google is giving Viacom. So instead of seeing "10.147.95.128 watched a skateboarding dog at 12:45 5-13-2008" they'll see "visitor #129833 watched a skateboard dog at12:45 5-13-2008."
Oh, I agree. I still have a box that first had XP from 2002 running, and it's only within the last year that XP has come to no longer live on it. But we're talking numbers here, which you started by saying that "most people only have ancient versions to install their system with". I think the majority swings the other way.
I agree that it's a reasonable thing to test and report on, but /. did it very disingenuously IMO by not saying that it's an old version being tested. It's like me going around the comment areas posting saying that "Linux doesn't support my sound card, doesn't support RAID, has crappy desktop environments" etc. but not saying that I'm referring to the state when I first installed Linux in 2002 rather than what's going on now.
It'd be behind a NAT, so you'd basically be safe. (Of course you're never completely safe, but you have to pound hard to get through a NAT that doesn't have ports opened administratively.) The fact that it's VMWare providing the NAT doesn't matter; you'd see the same if you were to plug in a cable modem router.
No, I'm not, but if you're looking for someone to, you might have some greater success if you get some Viagra.
Which is pretty much what most people do. They don't know how to "roll your own" system, with SP2 installed and all. ... The problem is just that, that most people only have ancient versions to install
I agree to some extent, but MS has been pressing XP+SP2 discs for close to 4 years now. Considering it was less than that from initial release to SP2, probably around half of the XP discs (and hard drive restore partitions) that went out have SP2. Take into account that a lot of people would consider a 4-year-old computer pretty old and so would replace it, take into account that computer adoption increases over time, and I bet that at *least* 2/3 of XP installations today, not even counting new computers selling with it, are off of media that has SP2 and was not set up by the user to do so.
So I think it's a substantial problem, but at the same time, I think "most" people are SP2-safe.
Because that's the version of Windows that (just about, I think, for now) Microsoft still sell.
As I've said a few times, in the absence of information I would expect to see (the article is deficient in actual information about what it is they are measuring), I suspect this is pre-SP2 XP. You haven't been able to buy that for years. (Or at least MS hasn't printed it for years.)
Oops, sorry about that. I selected the wrong post in my post->IP reverser and hit you instead of Exitar. My bad.
right let's install a 5 year old linux distro and see how long it takes to get owned. it's the same thing they are putting forward here with an unpatch winXP system.
No it isn't. That Linux distro wouldn't be old enough... it should be 7 years old, not 5.
(Not that XP would stand a chance even in that comparison, but the failure to mention that it sounds like these numbers are for XP without SP2 in the summary, making it sound like Vista or even XP with SP2 is as vulnerable is very disingenuous.)
Which is exactly my point. We know those machines get pwned quickly, so why is this news? The /. summary presents it as if it's a current measurement of a current OS and not one that was superseded almost four years ago? (Assuming they are using a pre-SP2 install. Which, since the site doesn't give any actual information, I don't know.)
The fact that the time-to-pwn has not fallen over the past four years...
Pray tell what has happened to the base Windows installation over the past for years? Those security fixes you mention aren't counted in this time, so you can't claim that they aren't contributing to overall security. From the article (sort of ) it sounds like this is still the time for XP and not Vista (though since neither the summary nor either linked article actually says or anything, so I'm not sure). So why, exactly, should we have expected the time to decrease?
You think either the summary or the linked article would have been kind enough to say what version of Windows.
From the link that goes here (linked from the first linked page) it looks like Windows XP. Would be interesting to compare with Vista.
1. I would get a smaller data plan, probably $5 or $10 instead of $20.
2. It still has wi-fi, and is an ipod.
I've always assumed it's how the telecom companies help pay for selling you a blackberry or, in this case, an iPhone at a reasonable price.
But it's more than that... according to both the online rep I talked to and the guy in the store, you can't even sign up for a non-data plan if you get the iPhone from someone else and AT&T isn't subsidizing it.
You don't have to get a data plan do you? It is possible to get the phone for $200 and then use one of the bacis phone service plans, correct?
No, you can't.
Not even if you are buying a used iPhone from someone; you have to get the iPhone package. In fact I *just* closed the window I had with an AT&T support chat asking this question.
Actually, this is true with ANY drivers for Windows.
It's particularly true of video card drivers though, because they are complex beasts (fortunately though most of it lives in user space) and because video card manufacturers want to make it fast even at the expense of stability so Mr. Gamer can get 300 fps instead of Mrs. Gamer's 270.
I remember Microsoft said they weren't going to allow any unsigned drivers to be installed on Vista. I guess after much debate Microsoft changed their minds.
They aren't allowed, however, on the 64-bit edition of Vista. (I don't know if they were on x64 XP.) Actually I'm running into that now because VMWare Server's service isn't signed apparently, so Server 2008 won't start it. I have to explicitly disable driver signing each boot from the F8 menu.
I've seen screen of death on most platforms from Windows 3.11 all the way through Vista. And some flavors of Linux.
Yep, same here. Only one I haven't seen it on is Server 2008, but that's because it's been installed all of two weeks now. My point is not that they don't happen, but that they are rare -- just like kernel panics in *nixs.
Except that a BSOD on both WinXP and Win2000 are not that hard to cause
If you stay away from flakey video card drivers, I would dispute this fact. I use Windows as my primary OS and have seen very few BSODs. This is from XP, Vista, or Server 2008. The NT line has always been as stable as any Linux setup I've put together.
UFRaw, while a fine program, isn't really a photo management program, "just" an editor.
Even the most basic cameras generally offer support for uncompressed images (usually in some sort of TIFF encapsulation), and if this is what you need, then use it.
TIFF != RAW!
Figure out a way to losslessly change the white balance your TIFF file was shot at and we'll start discussing again.