I usually look at the comments beforehand. I make sure to not download torrents with only a few seeds and such (easy if it's something big like Windows 7) and that have a bunch of comments telling me it's a virus.
That is still absolutely no indication that there's not a nasty rootkit built into the ISO. The *ONLY* way of assuring that is checksumming the image against an already trusted & proven provider of that image. If you believe otherwise, I pity you.
This matters little to me.
Accepted - your personal morality doesn't matter to me.
If a free alternative that works just as well or slightly worse exists, I will use that instead. I don't pirate unless there's a point in doing so.
I cannot argue with the statement but I suspect a lot of people find it easier to download a pirated copy than go and assess an alternative for themselves.
The graph shows Vista peaking at close to 20% around September 2009 and dropping to around 12% now. When I did maths at school, that would have been seen as about a 40% decline, not staying constant.
Like I said, swearing doesn't bother me but it affects my opinion of you. Since I have now proven my argument, my opinion of you about being able to argue coherently was correct.
I am not the uneducated corporate shill that you assume I am.
With respect, I think you have a persecution complex. I merely countered your demonstration that OS X is cheaper than Windows by demonstrating Linux is cheaper than both of them.
If you've read more than that into it, then that's your choice - deal with it.
Please read my original post properly. I stated in there that I don't claim to be a DirectX expert, I made some informed assumptions that I am more than happy to argue over with someone else - or even learn something from their greater knowledge.
But informed assumptions are *NOT* the same as spreading misinformation.
Actually, I was running Shattered Horizon, which is a DX10 only game on a DX9 graphics card on Windows Vista.
Clearly you are no expert either. If you have a GPU that only supports DX9 then that is what it will use. Presumably Shattered Horizon detects the present of DirectX 10 and the whole purpose of DX10 as an API is to obfuscate the graphics driver from the game (and therefore the need for games programmers to worry too much about the graphics card's capabilities). So DirectX will run it in DX9 mode.
If anything, you giving that example serves to help my argument - as there is no reason why Shattered Horizon could not work on XP as clearly it happily works with DX9 cards.
I do not understand how this has become a matter of 'peer pressure' for you.
Like I said, it doesn't.
I have taken fire from people who are very similar to yourself it seems, since I first got a mac for myself. If I conformed to what you think of me then I should be using windows 7 if I was going for 'peer approval' that is. Using macs for my family makes my life easier(and my family's).
I don't care what you use, you know best what fits your needs best. But pressurising others to use what you use *JUST* because it makes *YOUR* life easier smacks of zealotry.
Now I'll add to the fire, I use and iphone(big surprise, I know) have an iPad and use an airport extreme. In many respect Apple products make my life easier, but I'm not so naive as to not recognize their limitations.
Again, your money and your choice. But I'd argue that a truly informed person looking for the best value for their money won't automatically gravitate towards one single vendor for everything they use.
My router to the internet is a wrt54g with ddwrt, I only use the aebs as an access point and to use time machine wirelessly.
Sorry, why's this relevant? I'm not aware that Apple makes routers (or router firmware) such that the above statement would serve to help disprove Apple zealotry.
I did not force anyone to purchase a mac, I moved them to what was an easier to use system for them and easier to maintain for me
So therefore it doesn't matter that they were probably used to running Windows & had all their PCs set up just the way they wanted - and probably just wanted your help fixing their PCs. If anything, the statement above makes you sound worse as a person because you don't even understand how selfish your attitude is.
This is not a perfect system, there isn't one but this is the best I have come up with for my family.
Good luck to you, whatever works. But this still gets back to the difference between fixing something for friends or family & getting them to change what they do & how they do it just because it makes life more comfortable for you.
Seems to me the way to eradicate cancer is to allow natural selection to run its course and remove faulty DNA from the gene pool.
Actually, can we start with eradicating insensitive people with faulty DNA that clearly leaves them bereft of any concern for those who are either suffering from cancer at this moment or have lost people dear to them due to cancer?
The list of games that actually support DirectX 10 are here.
It's a fairly small list and it doesn't say if any of those games *DON'T* support DirectX 9 on XP. Bearing in mind I'm these days more of a casual than serious gamer (so not an expert on newer games), the only one in that list that I can remember did *NOT* support DirectX 9 was Shadowrun, and I assume that game did pretty badly because it started appearing in bargain bins fairly soon after release.
The piece you also failed to mention is that even if Vista and Windows 7 support DirectX 10 and 11 respectively, to make use of either the graphics card also needs to support them.
I am sure there are lots of gamers out there who bought new PCs with the latest graphics cards and Windows 7 included in order to play some of those games with the latest graphics technology - but by the time you've *UPGRADED* a gaming PC by buying a boxed copy of Windows 7 and a new GPU with DirectX 10/11 support, the cost difference of doing that over buying a completely new PC just don't make sense.
It's basically a "chicken and egg" situation because with so many people still using XP (and therefore limited to DirectX 9), games companies will commit commercial suicide if they release games that don't support it... and if they're not releasing games that don't support it, why upgrade?
And in my particular case as an example, I classify myself as a casual gamer but have played STALKER Call Of Pripyat to death recently - and whilst I can think of game mechanics improvements that could make the game more immersive or better, I don't believe the cost of upgrading from XP and my DirectX9 graphics card for slightly prettier graphics under DirectX 10 is justifiable.
I'm prepared to be proved wrong here because I've only ever done Linux virtualisation (on Linux) with VirtualBox.
But to say VMWare is the ultimate solution for XP virtualisation is misleading - as much as I know about it, it's a great product for virtualising instances of desktops or servers but it doesn't handle complicated stuff like 3D graphics particularly well (if at all). Consequently, people on here who think they can use VMWare in order to continue playing games that run okay in XP but not in Vista or Windows 7 are going to be disappointed.
Over the past year it looks like XP has lost an absolute share of 20% of the market, Windows 7 has gained an absolute share of 20% of the market, and Vista has remained fairly steady state.
Swearing doesn't offend me at all but people who need to use it start sounding like fanbois, so think about that in future.
I'd also love to know where you are getting your facts from with the above statement. I'm prepared to accept that Windows 7 has 20% of market share at the moment but I don't accept Vista has remained steady.
If you buy a new PC now, you're going to have real problems finding one pre-installed with Vista (or XP for that matter). So people who are buying new PCs now probably missed Vista entirely & went straight from XP to 7.
The people who originally went from XP to Vista are those people who will always upgrade to a new OS when it's available (and for reasons which are irrelevant to this discussion) and so it's safe to assume that they also went from Vista to 7 when Windows 7 also became available.
This would therefore lead to the inescapable conclusion that Vista is in decline and that the increase in Windows 7 marketshare is mainly due to that, and not so much about XP declining.
DIrectX 10 was more than just an updated 3D API (or "basically a driver standard" as you said). It went hand-in-glove with a redesign of how drivers interface with the kernel.
I'm more than prepared to bow to your possible better knowledge of DirectX than me but this statement doesn't make any sense to me. I thought the whole *CONCEPT* of DirectX was to apply an abstraction layer for 3D graphics so that programmers' don't need to bother themselves with what drivers are being loaded.
Why? Can't say I didn't see that coming, but, why?
Firstly, because you have absolutely no way of ensuring that the pirated Windows you download has not been tampered with to the point where you're installing malware or a root kit when you do install it.
Secondly, because using a pirated version of Windows (or any software) is utter hypocrisy when legally free alternatives exist - sorry, but if you don't want to pay good money for Microsoft products then have the strength of character to try out an alternative.
Thirdly, free software cannot be pirated and pirated commercial software (and software cracks) are probably the main reason for the spread of malware across Windows PC & therefore serve to give Microsoft a much worse security reputation than they deserve.
Can we stop with the FUD & look at the *REALITY* of the situation?
The methods I listed cover about 99% of protecting XP from security issues & malware, throw in things like NAT-ing and firewalling & there's a bit more protection for you.
As a home user of XP, there is nobody sat there on the big bad Internet waiting to pounce on me the moment I connect my PC up.
I run mainly Linux and I have a Linux server at home running SSH to the Internet and based on what I see in my system logs, that server generates far more interest from bot script trying their luck than my Windows PC ever will be (and since I only use RSA key authentication rather than passwords, even that is near enough 0% chance).
Big corporations are much bigger & juicier targets for malware, otherwise if you use the methods I describe, then as an insignificant home user amongst billions of home users, the only time you will be at any risk is if you do something stupid that draws attention to your XP PC or downloads malware onto it. Yes, I'm sure UAC & whatever other security technologies are in Windows 7 protect newbie users, but what they're doing is protecting them mainly from their own stupidity.
So, in other words, if you don't act stupid then XP is probably just as secure as Vista or 7.
Myself and my cousin told our families that we would not support them if they used windows, so now all of our family members use macs and the only issues I have are helping them figure out how to use MS office.
That doesn't actually say very much for OS X if a couple of self-indulgent religious zealots need to essentially blackmail their families into using it!
I use Linux pretty much exclusively but there's rarely a day goes buy when I don't have a family or friend PC here that I'm fixing for them - and remarkably, if it comes into me with a busted version of Windows then it goes back out with a fixed version of the same version of Windows and not a replacement installation of Ubuntu, Fedora or some other Linux iteration.
I put that down to the fact that I'm confident enough with my own decision making process that I neither need peer approval nor need to use gangster tactics to get acceptance for my OS of choice.
But I'm still compassionate & nice enough to fix Windows PCs of friends & family when they need it - I've even gladly helped friends & family choose their next PC and sat with them muddling through how to set up Vista or Windows 7 even though I myself have never used either.
Given the choice of being seen as a helpful considerate person who treats an OS as a tool, rather than a self-indulgent prick who treats their OS as a religion, I will always choose the former.
If you mean that there are more Windows 7 users now than there were Vista users when it was the same age, then that is to be expected.
Let's be honest here - the people who want the latest OS when it comes out moved from XP to Vista at the earliest opportunity; and when Windows 7 came out, they immediately went from Vista to it.
Add to that the people who have bought new PCs and went straight from XP to Windows 7, then naturally the numbers for Windows 7 will be higher than for Vista, but without actually proving very much.
The only way to prove this definitively would be to remove the instances of Vista and 7 that come pre-installed on new PCs (because most people just use what's on the PC) and just look at physical shrinkwrapped box sales of both.
Even then, Vista got bad press from the outset whereas 7 got good press - so if less people bought boxed copies of Vista than they did 7, then that may just be because Vista didn't achieve its expected sales rather than 7 overachieving its expected sales.
I haven't used Vista or 7 so I've no reason to deny both have better security controls in place with that UAC stuff everyone keeps talking about.
But it's perfectly possible to run XP and keep it virus free by having some common sense - keep virus checkers & anti-malware programs updated, install the latest security patches when they appear, where possible get rid of Microsoft's own applications like Internet Explorer & Outlook that have very deep security hooks & permissions within Windows XP, don't open attachments from untrusted sources & double check links before you click on them. Plus if you like commercial software then have the guts to buy it rather than torrenting a virus-packed cracked version.
I actually use Linux mostly but still keep XP around & have always quite liked it. If I still need a Windows PC after 2014 when XP goes out of support, then I may have to buy the latest MS Windows iteration - but I'll worry about that then.
Vista got a lot of bad press and that put a lot of XP users off of upgrading. And having not upgraded, those same people have realised that they have a perfectly good OS in XP that continues to do what they need it to do & is still supported by just about anyone who makes hardware or software.
Consequently, despite the positive press for Windows 7, Windows XP still does what they need to whilst Vista has pretty much died a death now.
Incidentally, I'm not qualified to argue about the good or bad points of Vista or Windows 7 since I've used neither to this date - Linux & XP are what I use, the two of them combined do all I need a computer to do & I can see no reason to upgrade myself.
Please provide a link to this "hype" because I cannot find it anywhere.
There are a minority of people in this world who need some of the complex macro functionality of MS Office or who need Photoshop for complex graphics or video editing - clearly for those people, Linux, OpenOffice.org and GIMP are probably not adequate replacements. There are more than likely a few more high-end Windows-only software packages that some people need to use where they could not move to Linux.
However, for the average home user who wants to surf the net, do a few emails, tinker with some photos, rip and play music or movies, play a few games, Linux is now mature enough to cope with this very well. And the fact that you don't realise this tells me you're simply just a fanboi yourself and/or out of your depth talking about a topic you clearly know nothing about.
Even though I'm mostly a Linux user, I still keep XP around for gaming & some killer apps that I use - I actually quite like it as an OS once you strip down the kindergarten default theme & go to a slimmer Windows 2000 look. But that's because I've got enough balls to admit that I treat operating systems as tools to get things done in, and I just use the best tools for the job I need to do.
As a "more OSS than Microsoft" person, I agree & cannot argue with the business logic.
Moving stuff to the cloud probably means the local IT department can be fired, thus making an additional cost saving - no, I'm not saying it's right or I agree with it, but that's the fact of life.
if anything I'd say the elitist people who believe you only have any demonstrable skill if you spend grinding out drops are the egotistical ones, since they care so much about losing some illusory advantage.
I actually do quite a bit of gaming but very little of it online, for precisely the reasons that I hold down a full-time job, have a family & therefore want to maximise the fun part of the gaming time that I do have.
Ultimately, the online games I do play are ones like UT2004, Quake, World Of Padman and Warsow where there's no player advantages other than the players' own skills. Yep, a lot of times there can be people sat on servers spending their times picking off the newbies, but then it's just a case of trying other servers to find fun games.
I have no problem with buying a single-player game, playing it in my own time but having to spend a considerable amount of time learning it well in order to master it.
But not having the ability of going onto a server where there are players who are about my standard defeats the object of multiplayer - it's no different to me, as someone who merely understands how to play chess without being a master of it, having no fun be thrashed over-and-over again by a grand master chess player. Much better to learn from the challenge of playing against other players of similar skill.
I suppose people who buy better sports equipment are cheating, because real atheltes craft it themselves?
In a nutshell, yes. It's just a matter of how much they are allowed to cheat - e.g. what sport shoes they can and cannot wear, restrictions on size and weight of javelins, etc. etc.
Also, if you believe these purchases give a game-altering advantage (and clearly you do, if you thought they were balanced or purely cosmetic then there'd be no "cheating" after all, since cheating implies gaining an unfair advantage) then how does your world view accommodate brand new players?
I'd much rather see adoption of more servers that only allow players of certain abilities on them - that, in itself, could be a means for advancement - i.e. being moved to a certain new server when reaching a certain ability level.
Surely people who have been playing for years and have earned all the equipment through grinding are going to have a massive advantage over new players, and even if the new players spend the next three years catching up, the old players will have six years of grinding at that point - shouldn't the game be fun for those new players too?
As above.
If being able to buy the equipment creates a level playing field, surely that moves us closer to your ideal of a game where no one player has an unfair advantage, because even players who have full time jobs and can't spend the time "honing their skill" can still jump on and play and have fun.
Yes, but that's kind of like saying "Mind if I join you elite poker players who do nothing more with your time and play poker. But because I have to hold down a full time job and cannot practice as much as you guys, I've bought my own four aces with me."
In reality, these upgrades don't really confer any competitive advantage (maybe they will in the future but for now they don't) so it's all moot because someone who buys every piece of equipment can still be thrashed by someone with more skill using a clean vanilla install/account.
Let's get one thing clear - the whole idea of charging for upgrades is *JUST* so the games company can make more money from you. I don't have a problem with how people choose to spend their money, but I don't see small print on any games packaging that says "Note: in order to stand a good chance of winning in multiplayer games online, you will need to purchase additional game content." So, potentially, that can mean my fun is reduced because in order to stand a good chance of winning online, I have to spend more money.
The whole point of spam is that it is free to send - that explains why sending out 100,000 spam emails & getting as few as 100 (0.1%) responses can still make a profit.
If you start charging for spam messages, it would go away because the cost couldn't justify the returns.
This merely gives people who don't like grind a means to skip over it.
I believe the term you are looking for is called "cheating", even though the cheating is legitimised because you've parted with some money in order to cheat.
Sorry, but if you're not prepared to grind at a game to become better at it, then the game is not entertaining enough for you (a perfectly legitimate reason) - in which case go play a game that is more entertaining for you.
People cheat at games for *TWO* reasons only - winning lots of money or to feed their egos at showing everyone else how wonderful they are.
Slashdot Mirror
The graph clearly shows the trend - that is where I get the figures from.
If you don't accept it, your choice.
I usually look at the comments beforehand. I make sure to not download torrents with only a few seeds and such (easy if it's something big like Windows 7) and that have a bunch of comments telling me it's a virus.
That is still absolutely no indication that there's not a nasty rootkit built into the ISO. The *ONLY* way of assuring that is checksumming the image against an already trusted & proven provider of that image. If you believe otherwise, I pity you.
This matters little to me.
Accepted - your personal morality doesn't matter to me.
If a free alternative that works just as well or slightly worse exists, I will use that instead. I don't pirate unless there's a point in doing so.
I cannot argue with the statement but I suspect a lot of people find it easier to download a pirated copy than go and assess an alternative for themselves.
The graph shows Vista peaking at close to 20% around September 2009 and dropping to around 12% now. When I did maths at school, that would have been seen as about a 40% decline, not staying constant.
Like I said, swearing doesn't bother me but it affects my opinion of you. Since I have now proven my argument, my opinion of you about being able to argue coherently was correct.
Have a nice life, fanboi.
I am not the uneducated corporate shill that you assume I am.
With respect, I think you have a persecution complex. I merely countered your demonstration that OS X is cheaper than Windows by demonstrating Linux is cheaper than both of them.
If you've read more than that into it, then that's your choice - deal with it.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
Please read my original post properly. I stated in there that I don't claim to be a DirectX expert, I made some informed assumptions that I am more than happy to argue over with someone else - or even learn something from their greater knowledge.
But informed assumptions are *NOT* the same as spreading misinformation.
Actually, I was running Shattered Horizon, which is a DX10 only game on a DX9 graphics card on Windows Vista.
Clearly you are no expert either. If you have a GPU that only supports DX9 then that is what it will use. Presumably Shattered Horizon detects the present of DirectX 10 and the whole purpose of DX10 as an API is to obfuscate the graphics driver from the game (and therefore the need for games programmers to worry too much about the graphics card's capabilities). So DirectX will run it in DX9 mode.
If anything, you giving that example serves to help my argument - as there is no reason why Shattered Horizon could not work on XP as clearly it happily works with DX9 cards.
I do not understand how this has become a matter of 'peer pressure' for you.
Like I said, it doesn't.
I have taken fire from people who are very similar to yourself it seems, since I first got a mac for myself. If I conformed to what you think of me then I should be using windows 7 if I was going for 'peer approval' that is. Using macs for my family makes my life easier(and my family's).
I don't care what you use, you know best what fits your needs best. But pressurising others to use what you use *JUST* because it makes *YOUR* life easier smacks of zealotry.
Now I'll add to the fire, I use and iphone(big surprise, I know) have an iPad and use an airport extreme. In many respect Apple products make my life easier, but I'm not so naive as to not recognize their limitations.
Again, your money and your choice. But I'd argue that a truly informed person looking for the best value for their money won't automatically gravitate towards one single vendor for everything they use.
My router to the internet is a wrt54g with ddwrt, I only use the aebs as an access point and to use time machine wirelessly.
Sorry, why's this relevant? I'm not aware that Apple makes routers (or router firmware) such that the above statement would serve to help disprove Apple zealotry.
I did not force anyone to purchase a mac, I moved them to what was an easier to use system for them and easier to maintain for me
So therefore it doesn't matter that they were probably used to running Windows & had all their PCs set up just the way they wanted - and probably just wanted your help fixing their PCs. If anything, the statement above makes you sound worse as a person because you don't even understand how selfish your attitude is.
This is not a perfect system, there isn't one but this is the best I have come up with for my family.
Good luck to you, whatever works. But this still gets back to the difference between fixing something for friends or family & getting them to change what they do & how they do it just because it makes life more comfortable for you.
Seems to me the way to eradicate cancer is to allow natural selection to run its course and remove faulty DNA from the gene pool.
Actually, can we start with eradicating insensitive people with faulty DNA that clearly leaves them bereft of any concern for those who are either suffering from cancer at this moment or have lost people dear to them due to cancer?
The list of games that actually support DirectX 10 are here.
It's a fairly small list and it doesn't say if any of those games *DON'T* support DirectX 9 on XP. Bearing in mind I'm these days more of a casual than serious gamer (so not an expert on newer games), the only one in that list that I can remember did *NOT* support DirectX 9 was Shadowrun, and I assume that game did pretty badly because it started appearing in bargain bins fairly soon after release.
The piece you also failed to mention is that even if Vista and Windows 7 support DirectX 10 and 11 respectively, to make use of either the graphics card also needs to support them.
I am sure there are lots of gamers out there who bought new PCs with the latest graphics cards and Windows 7 included in order to play some of those games with the latest graphics technology - but by the time you've *UPGRADED* a gaming PC by buying a boxed copy of Windows 7 and a new GPU with DirectX 10/11 support, the cost difference of doing that over buying a completely new PC just don't make sense.
It's basically a "chicken and egg" situation because with so many people still using XP (and therefore limited to DirectX 9), games companies will commit commercial suicide if they release games that don't support it... and if they're not releasing games that don't support it, why upgrade?
And in my particular case as an example, I classify myself as a casual gamer but have played STALKER Call Of Pripyat to death recently - and whilst I can think of game mechanics improvements that could make the game more immersive or better, I don't believe the cost of upgrading from XP and my DirectX9 graphics card for slightly prettier graphics under DirectX 10 is justifiable.
When a new OS version comes out its around $160 for 5 licenses.
Try this or this - both are $0 for as many instances as your corporately locked-in mind can imagine.
I'm prepared to be proved wrong here because I've only ever done Linux virtualisation (on Linux) with VirtualBox.
But to say VMWare is the ultimate solution for XP virtualisation is misleading - as much as I know about it, it's a great product for virtualising instances of desktops or servers but it doesn't handle complicated stuff like 3D graphics particularly well (if at all). Consequently, people on here who think they can use VMWare in order to continue playing games that run okay in XP but not in Vista or Windows 7 are going to be disappointed.
Over the past year it looks like XP has lost an absolute share of 20% of the market, Windows 7 has gained an absolute share of 20% of the market, and Vista has remained fairly steady state.
Swearing doesn't offend me at all but people who need to use it start sounding like fanbois, so think about that in future.
I'd also love to know where you are getting your facts from with the above statement. I'm prepared to accept that Windows 7 has 20% of market share at the moment but I don't accept Vista has remained steady.
If you buy a new PC now, you're going to have real problems finding one pre-installed with Vista (or XP for that matter). So people who are buying new PCs now probably missed Vista entirely & went straight from XP to 7.
The people who originally went from XP to Vista are those people who will always upgrade to a new OS when it's available (and for reasons which are irrelevant to this discussion) and so it's safe to assume that they also went from Vista to 7 when Windows 7 also became available.
This would therefore lead to the inescapable conclusion that Vista is in decline and that the increase in Windows 7 marketshare is mainly due to that, and not so much about XP declining.
DIrectX 10 was more than just an updated 3D API (or "basically a driver standard" as you said). It went hand-in-glove with a redesign of how drivers interface with the kernel.
I'm more than prepared to bow to your possible better knowledge of DirectX than me but this statement doesn't make any sense to me. I thought the whole *CONCEPT* of DirectX was to apply an abstraction layer for 3D graphics so that programmers' don't need to bother themselves with what drivers are being loaded.
Why? Can't say I didn't see that coming, but, why?
Firstly, because you have absolutely no way of ensuring that the pirated Windows you download has not been tampered with to the point where you're installing malware or a root kit when you do install it.
Secondly, because using a pirated version of Windows (or any software) is utter hypocrisy when legally free alternatives exist - sorry, but if you don't want to pay good money for Microsoft products then have the strength of character to try out an alternative.
Thirdly, free software cannot be pirated and pirated commercial software (and software cracks) are probably the main reason for the spread of malware across Windows PC & therefore serve to give Microsoft a much worse security reputation than they deserve.
Can we stop with the FUD & look at the *REALITY* of the situation?
The methods I listed cover about 99% of protecting XP from security issues & malware, throw in things like NAT-ing and firewalling & there's a bit more protection for you.
As a home user of XP, there is nobody sat there on the big bad Internet waiting to pounce on me the moment I connect my PC up.
I run mainly Linux and I have a Linux server at home running SSH to the Internet and based on what I see in my system logs, that server generates far more interest from bot script trying their luck than my Windows PC ever will be (and since I only use RSA key authentication rather than passwords, even that is near enough 0% chance).
Big corporations are much bigger & juicier targets for malware, otherwise if you use the methods I describe, then as an insignificant home user amongst billions of home users, the only time you will be at any risk is if you do something stupid that draws attention to your XP PC or downloads malware onto it. Yes, I'm sure UAC & whatever other security technologies are in Windows 7 protect newbie users, but what they're doing is protecting them mainly from their own stupidity.
So, in other words, if you don't act stupid then XP is probably just as secure as Vista or 7.
Myself and my cousin told our families that we would not support them if they used windows, so now all of our family members use macs and the only issues I have are helping them figure out how to use MS office.
That doesn't actually say very much for OS X if a couple of self-indulgent religious zealots need to essentially blackmail their families into using it!
I use Linux pretty much exclusively but there's rarely a day goes buy when I don't have a family or friend PC here that I'm fixing for them - and remarkably, if it comes into me with a busted version of Windows then it goes back out with a fixed version of the same version of Windows and not a replacement installation of Ubuntu, Fedora or some other Linux iteration.
I put that down to the fact that I'm confident enough with my own decision making process that I neither need peer approval nor need to use gangster tactics to get acceptance for my OS of choice.
I'm glad I'm a (mostly) Linux guy.
But I'm still compassionate & nice enough to fix Windows PCs of friends & family when they need it - I've even gladly helped friends & family choose their next PC and sat with them muddling through how to set up Vista or Windows 7 even though I myself have never used either.
Given the choice of being seen as a helpful considerate person who treats an OS as a tool, rather than a self-indulgent prick who treats their OS as a religion, I will always choose the former.
In what way has is surpassed Vista?
If you mean that there are more Windows 7 users now than there were Vista users when it was the same age, then that is to be expected.
Let's be honest here - the people who want the latest OS when it comes out moved from XP to Vista at the earliest opportunity; and when Windows 7 came out, they immediately went from Vista to it.
Add to that the people who have bought new PCs and went straight from XP to Windows 7, then naturally the numbers for Windows 7 will be higher than for Vista, but without actually proving very much.
The only way to prove this definitively would be to remove the instances of Vista and 7 that come pre-installed on new PCs (because most people just use what's on the PC) and just look at physical shrinkwrapped box sales of both.
Even then, Vista got bad press from the outset whereas 7 got good press - so if less people bought boxed copies of Vista than they did 7, then that may just be because Vista didn't achieve its expected sales rather than 7 overachieving its expected sales.
Rubbish.
I haven't used Vista or 7 so I've no reason to deny both have better security controls in place with that UAC stuff everyone keeps talking about.
But it's perfectly possible to run XP and keep it virus free by having some common sense - keep virus checkers & anti-malware programs updated, install the latest security patches when they appear, where possible get rid of Microsoft's own applications like Internet Explorer & Outlook that have very deep security hooks & permissions within Windows XP, don't open attachments from untrusted sources & double check links before you click on them. Plus if you like commercial software then have the guts to buy it rather than torrenting a virus-packed cracked version.
I actually use Linux mostly but still keep XP around & have always quite liked it. If I still need a Windows PC after 2014 when XP goes out of support, then I may have to buy the latest MS Windows iteration - but I'll worry about that then.
Vista got a lot of bad press and that put a lot of XP users off of upgrading. And having not upgraded, those same people have realised that they have a perfectly good OS in XP that continues to do what they need it to do & is still supported by just about anyone who makes hardware or software.
Consequently, despite the positive press for Windows 7, Windows XP still does what they need to whilst Vista has pretty much died a death now.
Incidentally, I'm not qualified to argue about the good or bad points of Vista or Windows 7 since I've used neither to this date - Linux & XP are what I use, the two of them combined do all I need a computer to do & I can see no reason to upgrade myself.
Please provide a link to this "hype" because I cannot find it anywhere.
There are a minority of people in this world who need some of the complex macro functionality of MS Office or who need Photoshop for complex graphics or video editing - clearly for those people, Linux, OpenOffice.org and GIMP are probably not adequate replacements. There are more than likely a few more high-end Windows-only software packages that some people need to use where they could not move to Linux.
However, for the average home user who wants to surf the net, do a few emails, tinker with some photos, rip and play music or movies, play a few games, Linux is now mature enough to cope with this very well. And the fact that you don't realise this tells me you're simply just a fanboi yourself and/or out of your depth talking about a topic you clearly know nothing about.
Even though I'm mostly a Linux user, I still keep XP around for gaming & some killer apps that I use - I actually quite like it as an OS once you strip down the kindergarten default theme & go to a slimmer Windows 2000 look. But that's because I've got enough balls to admit that I treat operating systems as tools to get things done in, and I just use the best tools for the job I need to do.
As a "more OSS than Microsoft" person, I agree & cannot argue with the business logic.
Moving stuff to the cloud probably means the local IT department can be fired, thus making an additional cost saving - no, I'm not saying it's right or I agree with it, but that's the fact of life.
if anything I'd say the elitist people who believe you only have any demonstrable skill if you spend grinding out drops are the egotistical ones, since they care so much about losing some illusory advantage.
I actually do quite a bit of gaming but very little of it online, for precisely the reasons that I hold down a full-time job, have a family & therefore want to maximise the fun part of the gaming time that I do have.
Ultimately, the online games I do play are ones like UT2004, Quake, World Of Padman and Warsow where there's no player advantages other than the players' own skills. Yep, a lot of times there can be people sat on servers spending their times picking off the newbies, but then it's just a case of trying other servers to find fun games.
I have no problem with buying a single-player game, playing it in my own time but having to spend a considerable amount of time learning it well in order to master it.
But not having the ability of going onto a server where there are players who are about my standard defeats the object of multiplayer - it's no different to me, as someone who merely understands how to play chess without being a master of it, having no fun be thrashed over-and-over again by a grand master chess player. Much better to learn from the challenge of playing against other players of similar skill.
I suppose people who buy better sports equipment are cheating, because real atheltes craft it themselves?
In a nutshell, yes. It's just a matter of how much they are allowed to cheat - e.g. what sport shoes they can and cannot wear, restrictions on size and weight of javelins, etc. etc.
Also, if you believe these purchases give a game-altering advantage (and clearly you do, if you thought they were balanced or purely cosmetic then there'd be no "cheating" after all, since cheating implies gaining an unfair advantage) then how does your world view accommodate brand new players?
I'd much rather see adoption of more servers that only allow players of certain abilities on them - that, in itself, could be a means for advancement - i.e. being moved to a certain new server when reaching a certain ability level.
Surely people who have been playing for years and have earned all the equipment through grinding are going to have a massive advantage over new players, and even if the new players spend the next three years catching up, the old players will have six years of grinding at that point - shouldn't the game be fun for those new players too?
As above.
If being able to buy the equipment creates a level playing field, surely that moves us closer to your ideal of a game where no one player has an unfair advantage, because even players who have full time jobs and can't spend the time "honing their skill" can still jump on and play and have fun.
Yes, but that's kind of like saying "Mind if I join you elite poker players who do nothing more with your time and play poker. But because I have to hold down a full time job and cannot practice as much as you guys, I've bought my own four aces with me."
In reality, these upgrades don't really confer any competitive advantage (maybe they will in the future but for now they don't) so it's all moot because someone who buys every piece of equipment can still be thrashed by someone with more skill using a clean vanilla install/account.
Let's get one thing clear - the whole idea of charging for upgrades is *JUST* so the games company can make more money from you. I don't have a problem with how people choose to spend their money, but I don't see small print on any games packaging that says "Note: in order to stand a good chance of winning in multiplayer games online, you will need to purchase additional game content." So, potentially, that can mean my fun is reduced because in order to stand a good chance of winning online, I have to spend more money.
The whole point of spam is that it is free to send - that explains why sending out 100,000 spam emails & getting as few as 100 (0.1%) responses can still make a profit.
If you start charging for spam messages, it would go away because the cost couldn't justify the returns.
This merely gives people who don't like grind a means to skip over it.
I believe the term you are looking for is called "cheating", even though the cheating is legitimised because you've parted with some money in order to cheat.
Sorry, but if you're not prepared to grind at a game to become better at it, then the game is not entertaining enough for you (a perfectly legitimate reason) - in which case go play a game that is more entertaining for you.
People cheat at games for *TWO* reasons only - winning lots of money or to feed their egos at showing everyone else how wonderful they are.