Which is it? Do you need expert skill and knowledge to run windows properly and safely or not?
Yes. No doubt at all.
And, if you do need the experts, who should the administrator be for the average home user?
At best, a geeky friend who can fix the problems. If not, the local computer store. Though many people still throw away XP computers with perfect hardware because the shop would charge them more than the computer's worth to de-infest it.
People seem to want theirs to be flawless before allowing it to be an ISO standard--a requirement no one else has been subject to.
Microsoft's covenants only cover this version of MSOOXML. Once the competing format is extinguished, MS will exercise it's patents and lock computer users back into their monopoly.
Making this version flawless means the format won't need to be revised as soon and consumers will be able to delay the inevitable shafting a little longer.
you run the risk of someone doing more with your code (and getting paid for it) than you did, without getting anything out of it.
The main danger with BSD is someone forking your project and extending it with proprietary but obvious additions. The original project then suffocates because it can't implement the now-protected IP.
An attacker who took that turkey down would get a pat on the back and free beers in every bar across the United States. Any sensible enemy of the US will make damn sure that's the last bird still in the air.
Forcing early adopters who guess wrong to buy two versions of the same generation's hardware and content can be profitable for manufacturers and media producers alike.
The design had a flaw, but that doesn't mean the design overall is bad, nor does it indicate "horrible project management."
It does indicate "horrible project management" when errors like this jeopardise a multi-billion dollar, 5 year project.
Besides, there's plenty of other evidence of horrible project management of Vista.
So that nets us an estimate of 24 people involved in this feature. Also each team was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let's add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. The feature? Vista's shutdown menu...
This comment is -1 Overrated?? It's a direct, ontopic factual response to a wrong claim.
No it's not. It's just more Microsoft marketing-speak. For example:
The new video and audio drivers have nothing to do with DRM.
Reasons include moving as much software out of kernel mode as possible thereby minimizing bug checks (in layman's terms "BSODs"), developing an architecture to make debugging audio problems in applications easier, and supporting a whole new generation of Digital Rights Management (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx) Vista is not 10%-50% slower.
Of course, none of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than 2x slower than the most current builds of its older sibling. Either Microsoft supports it, or Microsoft can kiss all high-def media good-bye.
No, if Microsoft doesn't support it, we can ALL kiss DRM'd high-def media good-bye, and good riddance. Microsoft had been a key supporter and booster of computer DRM despite their customers' distaste for it. Don't try to pretend they are anything but complicit partners with the studios in this.
Can someone tell us the result of the following test.
I don't have Vista any more, but I tried it for a few months on a video editing machine.
I don't think it would be possible to run the sort of test you've suggested because Vista performance is so variable. At any time, it'll stutter, slow down or appear to hang for no reason that's apparent from the usage pattern. You'd need to shut down a heap of stuff to get consistency, and if you do that you won't be getting typical results.
Ballmer: Should we do something different Do you agree scanners are particularly bad Thanks
Sinofsky: This is the same across the whole ecosystem
Ballmer: Thanks much Will get after Nikon
He's so far out of touch with the discussion it's almost embarrassing to read.
Wow, a lot of that list was written by MBA jerks jealous over what IT staff does.
No, as an MBA jerk, I can assure you I have no jealousy of IT whatsoever.
That list was written by a hack journo with no intent to reflect anyone's real world attitudes and every intent of boosting ad impressions by getting it posted to Slashdot and Reddit.
It's a shallow swipe at some IT stereotypes, nothing more. It should be in some internet scrapheap, not the front page.
What would really set off an enormous fiasco is if a law was passed that was basically "you must follow the intent of the law, not just the letter", but I think no country is ready for such a debate (plus it'd be immeasurably hard to balance).
Actually, laws like that have been used successfully in Australia for OHS.
Before the current laws were introduced, workplace safety was based around the same proscriptive model most statute laws still have. Basically, they were a list of things you either had to do or couldn't do. Whenever there was a serious accident, statutes forbidding whatever caused the accident were enacted, ad infinitum.
This resulted in a climate of dependence on state regulation and because the nature of workplaces changed rapidly throughout the 50's to 70's, didn't reduce accidents much. Companies, and the mining industry in particular, continued to kill a large number of employees every year. They were frequently in full compliance with statute laws when they did so, because the laws hadn't caught up with technology.
The British Robens Report in 1972 changed that. Since then, Australian OSH laws have moved towards a set of general duties, where employers have a duty to assess risks and provide a safe workplace, and employees have similar duties to themselves and their workmates. There's a good description here, including a link to the original report.
That change has been very successful, and I believe a similar model could be adopted for internet regulation, where service providers (ISPs) would have a set of duties to their users, including provision of a "clean" feed if that customer requires it.
It's a more flexible approach which would allow competition amongst ISPs to reduce costs to customers.
Puppy's like lightning on my Core 2 laptop. If the mouse is lagging, I'd suspect the graphics card/driver. Try selecting a different Vesa mode next time you boot and see what happens.
The Amiga one of the same era was very good. You had a recoverable RAM disk, which functioned the same as a standard RAM disk, but would maintain its contents on restart. That meant reboots were lightning quick, and any data you stored in the RRAM disk was still there.
Shame we haven't got back to that level of functionality.
Let's take human-readable text and turn it into XML, thus destroying its readability.
There's no such thing as human-readable text on computers, just different tools for representing sets of 1s and 0s.
I know you're referring to ascii or equivalent text editors, but the point of XML is that you can represent hierarchical data in a way that can be parsed by an app which is aware of the conventions, no matter what platform or provider it's from.
There are plenty of XML editing modes for Emacs, for example, that would allow you to conveniently edit these MS config files.
We already have Javascript, Flash and Java - what do AIR and Silverlight offer that is better than those?
Mostly more control and better programming. OpenLaszlo, which is briefly mentioned in TFA, is an XML/javacript based programming language which compiles to Flash and/or DHTML. It includes a bunch of APIs for things like layout, data binding and server communication, and is one of the easiest prototyping tools I've ever used.
The slogan is "write once, run everywhere", which may be familiar to some older Slashdotters, but it's not too far off the truth. I'm using it now to develop auditing apps for the Nokia N800/810 internet tablets, and it's impressively simple.
If you're interested, I'd suggest you download it and try it, or check out the tutorial. It's very easy to get started, and the tutorial compiles and runs your code online.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you've just accidentally switched to Firefox on Slashdot.
Wait a few moments, the cognitive dissonance will pass and you'll be up and trolling like a champ again.
Yes. No doubt at all.
And, if you do need the experts, who should the administrator be for the average home user?
At best, a geeky friend who can fix the problems. If not, the local computer store. Though many people still throw away XP computers with perfect hardware because the shop would charge them more than the computer's worth to de-infest it.
Microsoft's covenants only cover this version of MSOOXML. Once the competing format is extinguished, MS will exercise it's patents and lock computer users back into their monopoly.
Making this version flawless means the format won't need to be revised as soon and consumers will be able to delay the inevitable shafting a little longer.
OpenLaszlo's cool, and one of my favourite tools, but it doesn't do Silverlight, and I suspect it's unlikely to, given SL's dependence on .NET.
Wouldn't it have been easier just to uninstall Windows?
The main danger with BSD is someone forking your project and extending it with proprietary but obvious additions. The original project then suffocates because it can't implement the now-protected IP.
How IS the view from under that bridge?
Are you kidding?
An attacker who took that turkey down would get a pat on the back and free beers in every bar across the United States. Any sensible enemy of the US will make damn sure that's the last bird still in the air.
Forcing early adopters who guess wrong to buy two versions of the same generation's hardware and content can be profitable for manufacturers and media producers alike.
That's why they'll keep doing it.
No, just a Gieger counter, a particle of strontium 90 and a flask of hydrocyanic acid.
Most of them have already been employed.
They're all over in this discussion explaining how Vista isn't really slow and annoying.
It does indicate "horrible project management" when errors like this jeopardise a multi-billion dollar, 5 year project.
Besides, there's plenty of other evidence of horrible project management of Vista.
So that nets us an estimate of 24 people involved in this feature. Also each team was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let's add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. The feature? Vista's shutdown menu...No it's not. It's just more Microsoft marketing-speak. For example:
The new video and audio drivers have nothing to do with DRM.
Reasons include moving as much software out of kernel mode as possible thereby minimizing bug checks (in layman's terms "BSODs"), developing an architecture to make debugging audio problems in applications easier, and supporting a whole new generation of Digital Rights Management (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx) Vista is not 10%-50% slower. Of course, none of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than 2x slower than the most current builds of its older sibling. Either Microsoft supports it, or Microsoft can kiss all high-def media good-bye.No, if Microsoft doesn't support it, we can ALL kiss DRM'd high-def media good-bye, and good riddance. Microsoft had been a key supporter and booster of computer DRM despite their customers' distaste for it. Don't try to pretend they are anything but complicit partners with the studios in this.
I don't have Vista any more, but I tried it for a few months on a video editing machine.
I don't think it would be possible to run the sort of test you've suggested because Vista performance is so variable. At any time, it'll stutter, slow down or appear to hang for no reason that's apparent from the usage pattern. You'd need to shut down a heap of stuff to get consistency, and if you do that you won't be getting typical results.
Which would you rather control, a $2.8b company or a $13 trillion economy?
Not for Allchin maybe, but what about Ballmer?
Ballmer: Should we do something different Do you agree scanners are particularly bad Thanks Sinofsky: This is the same across the whole ecosystem Ballmer: Thanks much Will get after NikonHe's so far out of touch with the discussion it's almost embarrassing to read.
No, as an MBA jerk, I can assure you I have no jealousy of IT whatsoever.
That list was written by a hack journo with no intent to reflect anyone's real world attitudes and every intent of boosting ad impressions by getting it posted to Slashdot and Reddit.
It's a shallow swipe at some IT stereotypes, nothing more. It should be in some internet scrapheap, not the front page.
Actually, laws like that have been used successfully in Australia for OHS.
Before the current laws were introduced, workplace safety was based around the same proscriptive model most statute laws still have. Basically, they were a list of things you either had to do or couldn't do. Whenever there was a serious accident, statutes forbidding whatever caused the accident were enacted, ad infinitum.
This resulted in a climate of dependence on state regulation and because the nature of workplaces changed rapidly throughout the 50's to 70's, didn't reduce accidents much. Companies, and the mining industry in particular, continued to kill a large number of employees every year. They were frequently in full compliance with statute laws when they did so, because the laws hadn't caught up with technology.
The British Robens Report in 1972 changed that. Since then, Australian OSH laws have moved towards a set of general duties, where employers have a duty to assess risks and provide a safe workplace, and employees have similar duties to themselves and their workmates. There's a good description here, including a link to the original report.
That change has been very successful, and I believe a similar model could be adopted for internet regulation, where service providers (ISPs) would have a set of duties to their users, including provision of a "clean" feed if that customer requires it.
It's a more flexible approach which would allow competition amongst ISPs to reduce costs to customers.
Puppy's like lightning on my Core 2 laptop. If the mouse is lagging, I'd suspect the graphics card/driver. Try selecting a different Vesa mode next time you boot and see what happens.
The Amiga one of the same era was very good. You had a recoverable RAM disk, which functioned the same as a standard RAM disk, but would maintain its contents on restart. That meant reboots were lightning quick, and any data you stored in the RRAM disk was still there.
Shame we haven't got back to that level of functionality.
It felt like I was running XP on a machine with the minimum specs and running bloated software. Even the mouse was jerky.
Something's not right there. Puppy's normally responsive on machines that'd be slow with 98SE.
5,999,999,998, not counting you and me.
There's no such thing as human-readable text on computers, just different tools for representing sets of 1s and 0s.
I know you're referring to ascii or equivalent text editors, but the point of XML is that you can represent hierarchical data in a way that can be parsed by an app which is aware of the conventions, no matter what platform or provider it's from.
There are plenty of XML editing modes for Emacs, for example, that would allow you to conveniently edit these MS config files.
Um, I'm an anglo-aussie and I love kimchi, but there's no way I'd pay for imported stuff.
Kimchi's astonishingly easy to make.
Mostly more control and better programming. OpenLaszlo, which is briefly mentioned in TFA, is an XML/javacript based programming language which compiles to Flash and/or DHTML. It includes a bunch of APIs for things like layout, data binding and server communication, and is one of the easiest prototyping tools I've ever used.
The slogan is "write once, run everywhere", which may be familiar to some older Slashdotters, but it's not too far off the truth. I'm using it now to develop auditing apps for the Nokia N800/810 internet tablets, and it's impressively simple.
If you're interested, I'd suggest you download it and try it, or check out the tutorial. It's very easy to get started, and the tutorial compiles and runs your code online.