People are concerned that when running an unsigned kernel-mode driver, one can't play protected HD-DVDs and BR discs (this is to prevent an "unscrupulous" unsigned driver from compromising the protection of the discs, so it is DRM in this case). Of course, Linux can't play them *at all*, regardless of what drivers are used, but whatever...
You have to have admin rights (going through the "horrible" UAC process) to install your own root certificate (the certificate "authority" that validates certificates). Sytems come with well-known root certs (e.g. verisign) already installed. But if you want to sign your own certificate, you'll have to install your own root cert, which requires admin rights. So it's not like malware can install a root certificate on its own, and therefore any non-root certs that it installs on the system won't be validated.
As was pointed out above, OSX is regularly patched with "Security Updates", and last month's Security Update fixed 24 holes and was 200MB in size. Not much different than the 26 holes that MS is patching this month (except the MS patch is much smaller, and included patches for Office). In 2005 OSX received security patches nearly every month (there were two months it didn't , but there were two other months that had 2 security updates, so it evens out). OSX security updates for 2006 haven't been as frequent, but there have been months with multiple Security Updates: See Apple Security Updates
Apple releases 0.1 releases every year and charges $130 for each of them. But of course, they name each one after a wild feline of some sort, "to disguise the fact that they're charging every year for minor updates".
This is something that Microsoft likes to do a lot. Wait to fix things after it is out.
You accuse MS of this but go on to praise Apple. Are you forgetting that Apple released what was essentially betaware as the RTM build of OSX 10.0?
And how about a more recent example: iTunes 7.0 was so buggy when it was released that Apple had to release iTunes 7.0.1 within a week. And it's still buggy as hell.
yeah, because *every* OS must be unix-based because it's perfect in every way, can't be improved. The peak of OS tech was achieved 30 years ago. [face_rollseyes]
As for Apple, I wish that they had succeeded with Copeland, so there would still be at least one mainstream OS that wasn't Unix or NT based. Apple chose NexT (the BSD version (there was also an NT version)) out of desperation, not because they so loved BSD or Unix.
Yeah, I sent in a crash report a few years ago and immediately got a response saying that the problem had been previously reported, and told me how to fix it (updating a driver).
Plus, if I were running a beta, then I would definitely send in crash reports; that's what betas are for, after all.
There is some 'news' in the article
on
IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
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· Score: 3, Informative
One thing that the author encountered in his tests was that once a user says OK to a UAC dialog in IE, then IE turns off "protected mode" and that mode remains off until IE is shutdown and restarted. "Protected mode" prevents IE from writing anywhere in the filesystem except the cache (without explicit implicit user permission, such as the File-Save dlg), so malware installed on top of IE can't do any harm. But if "Protected mode" is off, then the IE process can write to any place allowed by the permissions of the user, meaning that malware running within IE's process can do the same. This might be a legit bug in IE7 (which hasn't reached RTM yet, so there's still time to fix it, if it is indeed a bug).
So some publishers like Google's "scan" plan while some others don't. Seems to me it's up to Google to get permission from the publishers. Those that like it, (e.g. those cited in the article) will give them the OK; those that don't, won't. Google forcing themselves on publishers that don't like the plan is heavy-handed; typical Google M.O. of late.
Anyone who tried RC1 can tell you that it was most certainly NOT ready to release without change.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, considering that Apple released what was essentially betaware as OSX 10.0. If OSX 10.0 was "releasable without change" as judged by Apple, then Vista RC1 certainly qualifies as such as it blows OSX 10.0 away in terms of "releaseworthiness".
This tatic (buying out competitor) sounds a lot like something MS would do, is this a sign that google is finally in a stage of major corporation like MS?
Maybe, but when has Microsoft aquired a defacto monopoly in a particular area by simply buying out its biggest rival in that area? I can't think of any example off the top of my head (one could argue that they tried to with the MS/Intuit deal that the DOJ nixed).
I have over 30GB of 192kbps AAC audio files I'll need to re-rip to 128-164kbps WMA audio files but with Apple's responce to the iPod deaths due to the 7.0 update I'll gladly get a Zune.
Zune supports (non-DRM'ed) AAC natively (as well as WMA and mp3), so you won't have to re-rip your AAC files to WMA.
Who modded your drivel as "5, Informative"? The first paragraph was informative, but the second was typical slashdot MS bashing, and the third was paranoid/delusional nonsense.
That Apple pre-emptively lowered the price of their 30GB iPod in the wake of Zune's announcement indicates that Apple is concerned, if not "scared".
Whether Apple is "scared" or not, iPod fanboys certainly are, for how much the post FUD about Zune in a pathetic effort to discredit the product before it's released. If they were really as confident as they claim to be, they would ignore Zune rather than spending so much time bashing it.
if anybody's doing the price squeezing, it's Apple, whose lowered iPod prices caught Microsoft off guard.
Then again, it could be argued that Zune is what prompted Apple to lower its price in the first place. Apple's already getting it's prices squeezed and Zune hasn't even been released yet.
Apple has the established relationships with manufacturers and the cheaper contracts as a result, and they're not selling each iPod at a loss.
If the Zune was really that great, they wouldn't have had to adjust the price. This clearly demonstrates Apple's influence in the marketplace...even over MS.
Contradicting my earlier comment that the above is "obvious", now that I think of it, how do we know that it wasn't Zune that caused Apple to pre-emptively lower its own price to $250 in the first place? In which case, your question would be, "If iPod is so great, why did Apple have to adjust its price to compete with the upcoming Zune?"
The sequence of events: Microsoft announces Zune, but does not disclose a price. It's speculated that the price will be $300. Apple then lowers the price of its 30GB iPod to $250. It's speculated that this is done to mess with Microsoft's planned price for Zune. Meaning that it was done as a reaction to the announcement of Zune's impending release. Microsoft then officially announces a $250 price. It's speculated that this is lowered from the initial speculated price of $300 as a reaction to Apple's lowering the price of iPod, which was done in reaction to the announcement of Zune's impending release.
It seems to me that they're influencing each other, as it should be for a competitive marketplace.
You must have severe lack of imagination if you can't imagine why someone would want radio functionality with a player. Back in the 80's, my Toshiba Walkman (whatever it was called) had radio; all walkmen did. Nobody said, "OMG, Why would you want radio on a WalkMan, isn't the whole point of a Walkman to listen to your own music????!!!?!?!?!?!?!?"
It's only guys who think that, "Apple doesn't have radio in its iPod, so radio must suck" think that leaving FM functionality out is GOOD. Zune has FM and yet costs no more than a 30GB iPod. Zune is the same price for more functionality, and you say that's BAD. Something isn't bad just because Apple says it is, or wants you to believe that it is.
I'd actually like AM as well as FM, since that's the band that sports broadcasts use.
Walmart.com already offers its songs for 88 cents (the songs play on PlayForSure devices), so someone is already undercutting iTMS's prices, but it hasn't made any difference.
I wouldn't say that widgets are an intentional return to Desktop Accessories. Desktop Accessories were a hack to get around that fact that pre-System 7, Mac OS was a single-tasking system. With OS 7, Mac OS because a true multi-tasking system (albeit, cooperatively), so they could do away with Desktop Accessories.
That being said, DOS had TSRs (terminate and stay resident) programs that acted like accessories. One could argue that Desktop Accessories were merely the GUI version of TSRs (I don't know which came first).
Anyway, Deskop Accessories and TSRs are so long ago, that who cares? In the modern era, Startdock and Konfabulator had desktop widgets long before Apple did. Hell, Win9x had them with Active desktop (dynamic HTML gadgets that ran on the desktop; there was a pretty popular one that provided realtime news, weather, and stock quotes, but I forget the name of it).
Yawn - Another Mac fanboy claiming Apple invented
on
A Mac Fan's Take On Vista
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This would've been an interesting article is this guy didn't spend so much of it whining about Microsoft supposedly copying Apple (taking a cue from Steve Jobs' pathetic performance at the recent WWDC, where he spent a full 10 minutes whining about MS copying Apple, and continued the idiotic snide remarks throughout his "keynote", then proceeded to demo features that were ripped off from others, including Microsoft, without even blushing).
And the "evidence" cited to prove that MS copied Apple is so minor and trivial. I mean things like "Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm." What, does Apple have a trademark on four letter words beginning with 'A' now? And it's not like the user gives a damn what the UI is called anyway. The other things this guy cites are that close/resize buttons glow when the mouse hovers over them and Aero has photorealistic icons that scale nicely, etc. Oh really? Well, whoop-de-doo!! I guess any OS that incorporates good looking icons is stepping on Apple's toes, right? *yawn*
And what's all this talk that Aero copies from Aqua anyway? I've been using OSX since 10.0, and I've seen Aero. Regardless of whetehr a few things are similar, the overall look and feel are not alike at all.
And this is where this guy's arrogance really kicks in:
Note to Microsoft GUI gurus: Take a look at the latest version of Apple's iTunes software, the recently released Version 7. Gloss and shine are out, the 3-D sandblasted look is in.
Huh? Why, just because and Jobs says so? Give me a break.
it's not 42% of PC's being dubbed non-genuine, it's 42% of all PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine
Actually, the 42% is even less than that. It's 42% of "all PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine" and for which the user reported the problem to Microsoft. As someone stated above, those that think they're running legit copies of Windows are much more likely to report the problem to Microsoft than those that know that they aren't running legit copies. Meaning, it could be that 99% of PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine are indeed not genuine, but they aren't reported because the user knows that he's running a pirated copy. The other 1% of WGA "positives" are reported because the user thinks WGA flagged his system as illegit wrongly, and 42% of that subset are false positives. (The numbers are made up, but you get the point.)
Apple doesn't yet have a trademark for "POD", they've merely applied for such. And even if granted, it (should) will only apply to portable media players, not for everything, and not for things related to "podcasting", which is not specific to iPods.
Like Microsoft has a trademark for "Windows" but only for OSes (or maybe software in general, I'm not sure), but not for every use of the word. "Excel" is trademarked by MS for spreadsheets, but is trademarked by Hyundai for cars (for the Hyundai Excel compact car of the 90s).
So Apple might get the trademark for "POD" but will that trademark extend beyond portable media players to companies that deal with "podcasting"? We'll see.
At any rate, that Apple is doing this at all means that a new term is needed to refer to "podcasting", hopefully a term that doesn't promote a specific brand of portable media player.
Slashdot Mirror
People are concerned that when running an unsigned kernel-mode driver, one can't play protected HD-DVDs and BR discs (this is to prevent an "unscrupulous" unsigned driver from compromising the protection of the discs, so it is DRM in this case). Of course, Linux can't play them *at all*, regardless of what drivers are used, but whatever...
You have to have admin rights (going through the "horrible" UAC process) to install your own root certificate (the certificate "authority" that validates certificates). Sytems come with well-known root certs (e.g. verisign) already installed. But if you want to sign your own certificate, you'll have to install your own root cert, which requires admin rights. So it's not like malware can install a root certificate on its own, and therefore any non-root certs that it installs on the system won't be validated.
As was pointed out above, OSX is regularly patched with "Security Updates", and last month's Security Update fixed 24 holes and was 200MB in size. Not much different than the 26 holes that MS is patching this month (except the MS patch is much smaller, and included patches for Office).
In 2005 OSX received security patches nearly every month (there were two months it didn't , but there were two other months that had 2 security updates, so it evens out). OSX security updates for 2006 haven't been as frequent, but there have been months with multiple Security Updates:
See Apple Security Updates
Why not a "recall" for OSX?
Apple releases 0.1 releases every year and charges $130 for each of them. But of course, they name each one after a wild feline of some sort, "to disguise the fact that they're charging every year for minor updates".
This is something that Microsoft likes to do a lot. Wait to fix things after it is out.
You accuse MS of this but go on to praise Apple. Are you forgetting that Apple released what was essentially betaware as the RTM build of OSX 10.0?
And how about a more recent example: iTunes 7.0 was so buggy when it was released that Apple had to release iTunes 7.0.1 within a week. And it's still buggy as hell.
yeah, because *every* OS must be unix-based because it's perfect in every way, can't be improved. The peak of OS tech was achieved 30 years ago. [face_rollseyes]
As for Apple, I wish that they had succeeded with Copeland, so there would still be at least one mainstream OS that wasn't Unix or NT based. Apple chose NexT (the BSD version (there was also an NT version)) out of desperation, not because they so loved BSD or Unix.
Yeah, I sent in a crash report a few years ago and immediately got a response saying that the problem had been previously reported, and told me how to fix it (updating a driver).
Plus, if I were running a beta, then I would definitely send in crash reports; that's what betas are for, after all.
One thing that the author encountered in his tests was that once a user says OK to a UAC dialog in IE, then IE turns off "protected mode" and that mode remains off until IE is shutdown and restarted. "Protected mode" prevents IE from writing anywhere in the filesystem except the cache (without explicit implicit user permission, such as the File-Save dlg), so malware installed on top of IE can't do any harm. But if "Protected mode" is off, then the IE process can write to any place allowed by the permissions of the user, meaning that malware running within IE's process can do the same. This might be a legit bug in IE7 (which hasn't reached RTM yet, so there's still time to fix it, if it is indeed a bug).
So some publishers like Google's "scan" plan while some others don't. Seems to me it's up to Google to get permission from the publishers. Those that like it, (e.g. those cited in the article) will give them the OK; those that don't, won't. Google forcing themselves on publishers that don't like the plan is heavy-handed; typical Google M.O. of late.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, considering that Apple released what was essentially betaware as OSX 10.0. If OSX 10.0 was "releasable without change" as judged by Apple, then Vista RC1 certainly qualifies as such as it blows OSX 10.0 away in terms of "releaseworthiness".
Maybe, but when has Microsoft aquired a defacto monopoly in a particular area by simply buying out its biggest rival in that area? I can't think of any example off the top of my head (one could argue that they tried to with the MS/Intuit deal that the DOJ nixed).
Can someone translate the summary into English?
Who modded your drivel as "5, Informative"?
The first paragraph was informative, but the second was typical slashdot MS bashing, and the third was paranoid/delusional nonsense.
That Apple pre-emptively lowered the price of their 30GB iPod in the wake of Zune's announcement indicates that Apple is concerned, if not "scared".
Whether Apple is "scared" or not, iPod fanboys certainly are, for how much the post FUD about Zune in a pathetic effort to discredit the product before it's released. If they were really as confident as they claim to be, they would ignore Zune rather than spending so much time bashing it.
Then again, it could be argued that Zune is what prompted Apple to lower its price in the first place. Apple's already getting it's prices squeezed and Zune hasn't even been released yet.
Microsoft is establishing those same relationships for Zune (in case you haven't noticed). Here's just one example:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/28/vaf-researchs-
Contradicting my earlier comment that the above is "obvious", now that I think of it, how do we know that it wasn't Zune that caused Apple to pre-emptively lower its own price to $250 in the first place? In which case, your question would be, "If iPod is so great, why did Apple have to adjust its price to compete with the upcoming Zune?"
The sequence of events:
Microsoft announces Zune, but does not disclose a price. It's speculated that the price will be $300.
Apple then lowers the price of its 30GB iPod to $250. It's speculated that this is done to mess with Microsoft's planned price for Zune. Meaning that it was done as a reaction to the announcement of Zune's impending release.
Microsoft then officially announces a $250 price. It's speculated that this is lowered from the initial speculated price of $300 as a reaction to Apple's lowering the price of iPod, which was done in reaction to the announcement of Zune's impending release.
It seems to me that they're influencing each other, as it should be for a competitive marketplace.
Captain Obvious to the rescue!!
And some mod had the nerve to mod your not so "insightful" comment as "insightful". LOL
You must have severe lack of imagination if you can't imagine why someone would want radio functionality with a player. Back in the 80's, my Toshiba Walkman (whatever it was called) had radio; all walkmen did. Nobody said, "OMG, Why would you want radio on a WalkMan, isn't the whole point of a Walkman to listen to your own music????!!!?!?!?!?!?!?"
It's only guys who think that, "Apple doesn't have radio in its iPod, so radio must suck" think that leaving FM functionality out is GOOD. Zune has FM and yet costs no more than a 30GB iPod. Zune is the same price for more functionality, and you say that's BAD. Something isn't bad just because Apple says it is, or wants you to believe that it is.
I'd actually like AM as well as FM, since that's the band that sports broadcasts use.
Walmart.com already offers its songs for 88 cents (the songs play on PlayForSure devices), so someone is already undercutting iTMS's prices, but it hasn't made any difference.
Of course, if Microsoft had followed OSX's example, guys like you and the author of this article would've ripped them to shreds for copying Apple.
I wouldn't say that widgets are an intentional return to Desktop Accessories.
Desktop Accessories were a hack to get around that fact that pre-System 7, Mac OS was a single-tasking system. With OS 7, Mac OS because a true multi-tasking system (albeit, cooperatively), so they could do away with Desktop Accessories.
That being said, DOS had TSRs (terminate and stay resident) programs that acted like accessories. One could argue that Desktop Accessories were merely the GUI version of TSRs (I don't know which came first).
Anyway, Deskop Accessories and TSRs are so long ago, that who cares? In the modern era, Startdock and Konfabulator had desktop widgets long before Apple did. Hell, Win9x had them with Active desktop (dynamic HTML gadgets that ran on the desktop; there was a pretty popular one that provided realtime news, weather, and stock quotes, but I forget the name of it).
And the "evidence" cited to prove that MS copied Apple is so minor and trivial. I mean things like "Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm." What, does Apple have a trademark on four letter words beginning with 'A' now? And it's not like the user gives a damn what the UI is called anyway. The other things this guy cites are that close/resize buttons glow when the mouse hovers over them and Aero has photorealistic icons that scale nicely, etc. Oh really? Well, whoop-de-doo!! I guess any OS that incorporates good looking icons is stepping on Apple's toes, right? *yawn*
And what's all this talk that Aero copies from Aqua anyway? I've been using OSX since 10.0, and I've seen Aero. Regardless of whetehr a few things are similar, the overall look and feel are not alike at all.
And this is where this guy's arrogance really kicks in: Huh? Why, just because and Jobs says so? Give me a break.
Actually, the 42% is even less than that. It's 42% of "all PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine" and for which the user reported the problem to Microsoft. As someone stated above, those that think they're running legit copies of Windows are much more likely to report the problem to Microsoft than those that know that they aren't running legit copies. Meaning, it could be that 99% of PCs that WGA thinks aren't genuine are indeed not genuine, but they aren't reported because the user knows that he's running a pirated copy. The other 1% of WGA "positives" are reported because the user thinks WGA flagged his system as illegit wrongly, and 42% of that subset are false positives. (The numbers are made up, but you get the point.)
Apple doesn't yet have a trademark for "POD", they've merely applied for such. And even if granted, it (should) will only apply to portable media players, not for everything, and not for things related to "podcasting", which is not specific to iPods.
Like Microsoft has a trademark for "Windows" but only for OSes (or maybe software in general, I'm not sure), but not for every use of the word. "Excel" is trademarked by MS for spreadsheets, but is trademarked by Hyundai for cars (for the Hyundai Excel compact car of the 90s).
So Apple might get the trademark for "POD" but will that trademark extend beyond portable media players to companies that deal with "podcasting"? We'll see.
At any rate, that Apple is doing this at all means that a new term is needed to refer to "podcasting", hopefully a term that doesn't promote a specific brand of portable media player.