It's been a *long* time since I've used an RPM-based distro. Do RPMs still have a confusing dependancy circle hell? It was perhaps the most frustrating and poorly handled thing about installing software on really any OS I've tried.
What is to stop email harvesters from grabbing emails of these people and spamming them with promises of kiddie porn? The last thing we want is to tempt people who are trying to get back on the right track.
Downloads page still stupid
on
Java SE 6 Released
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Kudos on the new release. I'm running Vista, so the support will be nice.
But as a user, it always amazes me how hard it is to navigate Java's downloads. Assuming non-techies know that "Java Runtime Environment" is what they need to run Java apps, you still have to dig past a JDK and NetBeans link to get to it. I tried walking a relative through downloading the JRE a week ago and it took way longer than it should have.
The Compound TCP talked about in TFA is disabled in Vista by default. If you want to turn it on, you can open a console with admin privs (right click Command Prompt -> Run as Administrator) and enter:
netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp
This was one of the first commands I ran after Vista installed, and the difference is noticable.
As a win32 programmer, the quicker the general populace moves to XP or above, the happier I'll be. It may not seem like it from a user perspective, but there *are* good API changes that 2k has no equivalent of.
Is there a reason these aren't built on standard parts and operating systems? If they ran their shuttles on something like Debian stable it would be a rock solid platform and probably end up saving them lots of money. Or am I missing something here.
My guess is their intent is to keep you from installing on one PC, then another, then another, and keeping the other PCs active and on the same license. You need to call them up to tell them the other PCs are no longer using the license.
So while it certainly is intrusive and does suck, especially for enthusiasts who upgrade their mobo/cpu often, it is probably not the end of the world everyone is making it out to be.
Funny you mention that. There is a rating system called RSACi that does just this - and it is as easy as a few checkboxes. Internet Explorer supports filtering based on it, since 6.0 at least.
While not perfect, it would certainly filter better than just having "13 or older" and "less than 13" links to sign up for a forum!
How much you want to bet this guy found the vuln weeks ago, but held off on releasing it so he could brag that he discovered the first IE7 vuln, and it only took him less than 24hr!
Microsoft and all the other MP3 player companies combined don't come close to the amount of marketing that goes into the iPod. They can't compete with iTunes because 90% of people get iPods and iTunes is the only thing that works with it.
I really think it would be easier to just modify Wikipedia to do what he wants.
Give every modification a "verified" bit. Give viewers the option of looking at either "latest" or "verified" pages. Put any modified pages into a queue to be re-verified. That way you don't have to waste time rewriting everything when most of Wikipedia is dead-on already.
Okay, I didn't rtfa, but it probably wouldn't have mattered (and it's not the/. way, after all). Will this mean there will be no unsigned drivers, or that unsigned drivers will have to work through the kernel like WinNT 3.5? Aside from all the DRM lock-down, bend-the-consumer-over-a-rail implications, this would also prevent home hacking and diy projects, and could have all sorts of implications for hobbiests.
So, is this a way to prevent crashes (a la 3.5, no Ring 0 access) or is it a way to tighten the noose for the content industry?
It means that 64-bit versions of Vista won't support installing unsigned drivers, under normal operation. In the betas you can hit F8 on startup to turn it off for a single session (there is no way to disable it permanently) - after you install the driver, you can reboot into normal mode and they still work. It's unclear if this behavior will be there after the beta is over. You can also create "test" certificates for development but I haven't looked at seeing if these work when distributed.
It doesn't prevent crashes at all - I've had a few already from using Creative's buggy old XP drivers for sound. Though I'm sure plenty of users will misunderstand "signed" as "stable and secure" which makes me wonder if forcing this will cause more harm than good, considering anyone can get a cert provided they have $500. As a driver developer myself, you can imagine I'm not too happy about having to fork over money for a cert that could easily be free.
I had waited with much anticipation for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I went out and bought it the day it came out, so you can imagine my surprise when it refused to run! Why? Because I'm on XP x64. The copy protection wanted to install a low level driver and it didn't come with an x64 version, so it wouldn't let me play. So I went through all the fun of returning an opened game. A little over a year later a crack was released for it and I finally got to play the game. Thank you, RELOADED, for letting me play the franchise I love. And shame on Ubisoft, which I held in very high regards before that experience, for tainting their software with such crap.
I tend to immediately rip any software I buy to HDD, and mount it with Daemon Tools when I need it. This created an extra problem for many other games, which will refuse to run if it detects any virtual drives. Thankfully Daemon Tools tends to keep ahead of them.
Microsoft uses RC when the APIs are in RC, to let developers know they can start developing stuff for it without worrying about future API changes.
They call the real release candidates you are refering to "escrow" builds.
I have to agree - I never watched the old series (hey, I'm only 20!). Well, I did happen to catch an episode of it a few years back. I really got the impression that Eccleston nailed the role fantastically. I watched the last season too, and I can't explain what it is - Tennant just doesn't make me feel that.
Beyond the initial cost, a WoW subscription is over $150/year. Do they add the equivalent content for 3 full $50 games in that whole year? Is the new gameplay innovative or just copying old stuff with a different treasure at the end? Are the graphics getting any better? So many people are playing it.
I'm not saying WoW is bad, just that a great many players are happy to throw down tons of cash on a game as long as they find it fun. I don't know how well this will work for a racing game, but the business plan has worked before. I definately don't like the idea of paying individually for all the initial levels but I think it would be pretty cool if I could download an expansion every month with a new car and a few new maps, if the price was kept low.
The second is that this document carries a severe undertone of "make sure your app only works on Vista, and looks out of place on anything other than Aero". The entire document keeps saying "use Vista only API whenever you can" and "visually design the application to look out of place when not using the Vista UI" (with a few exceptions).
In all fairness it's called the "Vista User Interface Guidelines" for a reason, not the "Backwards Compatible 2000/XP/Vista User Interface Guidelines".
A lot of the new better APIs (such as making message boxes that have sensible descriptive buttons) have no functional equivalent on XP. Building backwards compatible UIs that still fit in with the Vista model will be a very hard task for programmers, but it's a usability change that had to happen sooner or later unless you wanted to be stuck with XP's unintuitive stuff for as long as Microsoft is in the lead.
I havn't used Gentoo since its early days, when there where no big binary downloads for it. My question is, if you aren't going to compile from source to get that extra level of customizability, what's the difference between Gentoo and say, Debian testing/unstable?
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It's been a *long* time since I've used an RPM-based distro. Do RPMs still have a confusing dependancy circle hell? It was perhaps the most frustrating and poorly handled thing about installing software on really any OS I've tried.
TFA doesn't mention what the "hack" was. My guess, the software (probably a website) is more of a hack than anything that was done to access the data.
It's scary how much information is being reported as leaked every couple months.
What is to stop email harvesters from grabbing emails of these people and spamming them with promises of kiddie porn? The last thing we want is to tempt people who are trying to get back on the right track.
Kudos on the new release. I'm running Vista, so the support will be nice.
But as a user, it always amazes me how hard it is to navigate Java's downloads. Assuming non-techies know that "Java Runtime Environment" is what they need to run Java apps, you still have to dig past a JDK and NetBeans link to get to it. I tried walking a relative through downloading the JRE a week ago and it took way longer than it should have.
The Compound TCP talked about in TFA is disabled in Vista by default. If you want to turn it on, you can open a console with admin privs (right click Command Prompt -> Run as Administrator) and enter:
This was one of the first commands I ran after Vista installed, and the difference is noticable.
Don't forget, the System Idle Process is out to get him.
As a win32 programmer, the quicker the general populace moves to XP or above, the happier I'll be. It may not seem like it from a user perspective, but there *are* good API changes that 2k has no equivalent of.
Is there a reason these aren't built on standard parts and operating systems? If they ran their shuttles on something like Debian stable it would be a rock solid platform and probably end up saving them lots of money. Or am I missing something here.
Strange, I've had no issues getting a HP printer working in both XP x64 and Vista x64.
My guess is their intent is to keep you from installing on one PC, then another, then another, and keeping the other PCs active and on the same license. You need to call them up to tell them the other PCs are no longer using the license.
So while it certainly is intrusive and does suck, especially for enthusiasts who upgrade their mobo/cpu often, it is probably not the end of the world everyone is making it out to be.
Funny you mention that. There is a rating system called RSACi that does just this - and it is as easy as a few checkboxes. Internet Explorer supports filtering based on it, since 6.0 at least.
While not perfect, it would certainly filter better than just having "13 or older" and "less than 13" links to sign up for a forum!
How much you want to bet this guy found the vuln weeks ago, but held off on releasing it so he could brag that he discovered the first IE7 vuln, and it only took him less than 24hr!
Microsoft and all the other MP3 player companies combined don't come close to the amount of marketing that goes into the iPod. They can't compete with iTunes because 90% of people get iPods and iTunes is the only thing that works with it.
I really think it would be easier to just modify Wikipedia to do what he wants.
Give every modification a "verified" bit. Give viewers the option of looking at either "latest" or "verified" pages. Put any modified pages into a queue to be re-verified. That way you don't have to waste time rewriting everything when most of Wikipedia is dead-on already.
It means that 64-bit versions of Vista won't support installing unsigned drivers, under normal operation. In the betas you can hit F8 on startup to turn it off for a single session (there is no way to disable it permanently) - after you install the driver, you can reboot into normal mode and they still work. It's unclear if this behavior will be there after the beta is over. You can also create "test" certificates for development but I haven't looked at seeing if these work when distributed.
It doesn't prevent crashes at all - I've had a few already from using Creative's buggy old XP drivers for sound. Though I'm sure plenty of users will misunderstand "signed" as "stable and secure" which makes me wonder if forcing this will cause more harm than good, considering anyone can get a cert provided they have $500. As a driver developer myself, you can imagine I'm not too happy about having to fork over money for a cert that could easily be free.
Wouldn't a Creative Commons license be better for this? Correct me if I'm wrong but GPL was made for code, not audio.
My point was that portability was thrown out the window solely because of the copy protection. Worse yet, Ubisoft never released a patch to fix it.
(btw, I was a beta tester for XP x64. Chaos Theory came out a month before XP x64 went gold, when the OS was in final RC testing.)
I noticed the random Vista-ish styled tabs in it. Now it looks totally out of place with the rest of the browser, which looks built for XP.
I had waited with much anticipation for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I went out and bought it the day it came out, so you can imagine my surprise when it refused to run! Why? Because I'm on XP x64. The copy protection wanted to install a low level driver and it didn't come with an x64 version, so it wouldn't let me play. So I went through all the fun of returning an opened game. A little over a year later a crack was released for it and I finally got to play the game. Thank you, RELOADED, for letting me play the franchise I love. And shame on Ubisoft, which I held in very high regards before that experience, for tainting their software with such crap.
I tend to immediately rip any software I buy to HDD, and mount it with Daemon Tools when I need it. This created an extra problem for many other games, which will refuse to run if it detects any virtual drives. Thankfully Daemon Tools tends to keep ahead of them.
Microsoft uses RC when the APIs are in RC, to let developers know they can start developing stuff for it without worrying about future API changes. They call the real release candidates you are refering to "escrow" builds.
I have to agree - I never watched the old series (hey, I'm only 20!). Well, I did happen to catch an episode of it a few years back. I really got the impression that Eccleston nailed the role fantastically. I watched the last season too, and I can't explain what it is - Tennant just doesn't make me feel that.
Beyond the initial cost, a WoW subscription is over $150/year. Do they add the equivalent content for 3 full $50 games in that whole year? Is the new gameplay innovative or just copying old stuff with a different treasure at the end? Are the graphics getting any better? So many people are playing it.
I'm not saying WoW is bad, just that a great many players are happy to throw down tons of cash on a game as long as they find it fun. I don't know how well this will work for a racing game, but the business plan has worked before. I definately don't like the idea of paying individually for all the initial levels but I think it would be pretty cool if I could download an expansion every month with a new car and a few new maps, if the price was kept low.
A lot of the new better APIs (such as making message boxes that have sensible descriptive buttons) have no functional equivalent on XP. Building backwards compatible UIs that still fit in with the Vista model will be a very hard task for programmers, but it's a usability change that had to happen sooner or later unless you wanted to be stuck with XP's unintuitive stuff for as long as Microsoft is in the lead.
I havn't used Gentoo since its early days, when there where no big binary downloads for it. My question is, if you aren't going to compile from source to get that extra level of customizability, what's the difference between Gentoo and say, Debian testing/unstable?
I get to wear an eye patch and call myself an internet pirate? It's the RIAA's dream! Think of all the lawsuit revenue!