You really don't know how address space works, do you?
If you run a 32-bit operating system (regardless of whether it is Windows, Linux, BSD, etc), without extensions like PAE, you are only able to address 4GB of memory. Thats 2^32 (because you're using a 32 bit system). Due to the way the x86 hardware is designed, all hardware devices that require memory to be mapped to them must also consume some of this 4GB of addressible space. So, if you have a 256MB video card, that means that 256MB of your maximum possible 4GB of address space now belongs to your video card. I believe most BIOSes start mapping hardware devices around the 3.5GB area, which is why in general, Windows will only let you see 3.5GB or whatever it is.
This "goofiness" has nothing to do with Vista whatsoever. It is specifically how x86 hardware works.
Yeah, except Vista already does aggressive caching and makes full use of RAM that isn't currently being used by applications, but slashdot keeps going on about how its a bloated piece of crap that uses 2GB of RAM when idle. Yet they don't complain that their system runs a lot smoother thanks to prefetching which analyses program usage and preloads (in the background) data that it anticipates being loaded from disk in the future.
Here's a question... if you actually had a system that had 1TB of RAM, wouldn't you like to see a lot of your hard drive contents being loaded into RAM in the background because you have the RAM to store it, and you know that it can be discarded at any time because its just cache memory and not committed memory? I mean, you've gone to all the trouble and cost of getting yourself that much RAM... do you ONLY want to ever make use of it all on the rare occasion you need to edit a 500megapixel picture in photoshop? Do you want your ram to sit idle the rest of the time, and have your hard drive grind away because/. would rather see the OS use 100mb of ram at idle and have the rest doing nothing?
Sometimes I really hate slashdot. Its posters claim to keep themselves informed about technical issues, yet they constantly post untruth after untruth, and spread the very same FUD that they despise.
Please, please, PLEASE stop spreading the utter trash about the "dos aint done till lotus won't run" as if it is some sort of truth. It is not. Repeating it just makes you appear to be either a troll, or someone who unfortunately believed the misinformation trolls that post this crap on this site.
And please, spare me the comments about being a M$$$ $hill. I have no affiliation with microsoft, I just really hate it when people spread misinformation on this site, which then gets repeated infinitely as if it were truth. The less FUD coming from, and aimed at microsoft, the better.
As a commenter above posted, each of those companies with top-level blocks actually owns 16,777,216 IP addresses. These companies include IBM, MIT, Ford, DEC, AT&T, Apple and Xerox.
As big as IBM and MIT may be, do you really think they need almost 17 million IP addresses?
Because 3.0 is still in beta. So the latest version is still 2.0. Besides, Firefox 2.0 is still WAY more popular than 3.0 (probably because 3.0 is still beta). Shouldn't Google test their interface amongst the popular browsers that their customers are using, and not just against the latest (still in beta) browsers?
Wait, what?
It's damning of Microsoft's testing department??? And it's not damning of the facebook admin who assigned the IPv6 record in the first place that he didn't check afterwards to make sure that his new IPv6 address actually pointed at the right place???
The responsibility of checking that sites display properly falls with the IE team. The responsibility of ensuring that IE can connect to webservers falls with the networking team. The responsibility of ensuring that your server can be reached by any client wanting to connect to it falls with the admin of the server.
Yes, most home users are checking email and surfing the web. And they do so just fine for websites that are configured correctly.
I shudder to think how much tin-foil some people must have around their heads and homes, to actually believe that microsoft would deliberately single out facebook, and prevent it from loading especially since Slashdot widely reported and speculated upon Microsoft's multi-million dollar investment in facebook last year. I guess in the average slashdotter's mind, it went something like 'Hey Steve, put that chair down and listen for a moment... you know how we just spent a huge pile of cash buying shares in facebook? You know what would be a great idea? If we set vista up so that it can't connect to facebook! Wouldn't that be great for our investment?'
Switch statements are more efficient than nested if/then/else, at least in C/C++ (I dont use perl so I'm not sure if the same applies).
C/C++ only allows constants to be used as case values in a switch statement, you can't use a variable as a case label. This allows the compiler to optimise the comparisons based on the numerical value of each constant case label. Performing the case evaluations in different orders, using subtraction and addition and testing against zero can be more efficient than comparison to each value in turn.
So, a switch statement can be more efficient than nested if/then/else.
You can make the start menu higher by increasing the number of entries in the 'frequently-used' list. The menu will make itself higher to accommodate the extra entries it will have to display in the most-frequently-used list, which means less scrolling through the all programs list.
I dont have vista at work, but the setting is probably under Customize Start Menu->Number of programs on Start menu or something similar (that's where it is on XP).
Because there are loads of +5 Insightful posts here which are quite simply misinformed. After the first 5 people post replies pointing out why the item is misinformed, what is left to do? The only other option really is to mod the offending post Redundant, which isn't entirely true. The other problem is that unless a post is explicitly marked as Misinformed, the uneducated masses who believe every positively rated comment is accurate will go on repeating that misinformed content as if it were the gospel truth.
I'm not sure exactly how toll plazas in the states work, with EZPass and other things, but there was a (slightly famous) case in South Africa where a toll plaza helped solve a murder.
This happened at least ten years ago, so I'm not sure if video surveillance was the norm back then. I know now that all toll plazas here have cameras that record licence plates, but payment is still entirely manual - you pay with cash or credit card... the most automated means of passing is by swiping your credit card yourself in an express lane. But anyways. Because some toll plazas are on roads that are used daily for people to get to work and back, some of them offer concession cards to people living in the area to get a discounted rate. So, you pull up at the toll booth, hand in your concession card, the attendant swipes it, it registers the discounted fare, you pay, get your card back, and leave. What not many people knew, was that since you had to apply for these cards, and the cards were issued on a per vehicle basis (the card has to match the license plate to prevent fraud), the card has the vehicle details and registered owner details stored in its magnetic strip, and when the operator swipes your card to register your concession, the card details are logged in a database somewhere.
What happened was, this guy decided to murder his employee to cash in on a life policy that he had taken out in the employees name. He took his family 3-4 hours away to a casino resort for the weekend, and asked the employee to check on the house while he was away. While the family was asleep, he got in his car, drove back home, killed the employee and made it look like a break-in, drove back to the resort, and appeared very surprised and upset at the break-in and murder in his house when he returned. Although it was very suspicious and lots of evidence pointed to him, he did have the alibi of having checked in in person at the resort for the weekend. Except that he used his concession card when he drove through the toll each time, which recorded his car details and the date and time that he passed through.
These days, the discount you get for having a concession card is the equivalent of less than US$1... back then it would have been closer to around 10-20c US each trip. So, if he hadn't tried to save himself around 50c and paid the full toll price, he could have gotten away with murder.
I'm not trying to justify data recording at toll booths nor put them down. Just thought it was an interesting, somewhat related story.
What's to stop someone getting paid big bucks by microsoft for vulnerabilities, and then reselling the same exploits to the next highest bidder as well? I'd imagine that the people in the business of selling exploits to the highest bidder aren't the most ethical types to begin with.
Exactly! This is precisely why MS wanted to prevent antivirus products (amongst others) from running in kernel mode in vista in the first place. I believe Symantec was one of the most vocal opponents of this decision, even though there is no technical reason for allowing antivirus software into the kernel in the first place, as Trend Micro and others all had vista-compatible solutions that worked without requiring kernel access.
Back when that story was making news, there was a lot of commentry here on/. saying that MS shouldn't be restricting access to the kernel, but this just goes to show that the people who demand access to it often shouldn't have access to it. I know that the problem in the article relates to XPSP2 but the fact remains - Symantec shouldnt be installing kernel mode drivers in the first place.
Re:My predictions for Wndows over the next year...
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
1. 512MB RAM is simply NOT ENOUGH for Vista.... unless you're running Home Basic. According to Dell, it says on it's official website that "512MB RAM is good enough for just booting, but without running any applications or games". Are you implying that Dell is spreading FUD to boost RAM sales? Most people who've used Vista agree that 1GB is minimum, 2GB is recommended to get the same performance as on XP for all tasks.
Huh? Have you actually tried running vista on 512mb ram? I do, every single day, on my 3 year old notebook at home. Thats vista ultimate, by the way, not home basic. Office 2007 ultimate and Visual studio 2005 are also used daily.
There is absolutely no performance impact that I have noticed. I also have a 64mb geforce fx5200 go on this notebook. Sure, I dont get aero, but my computer is 100% functional and usable.
I think the only fearmongering and FUD is coming from you, because my personal experience seems to contradict the lies you're trying to spread.
Why on earth is this absolute rubbish modded insightful, when it is complete and utter bullshit? If you're so sure of the accuracy of your post, please back it up with some proof. I have some proof that shows that your post is a load of crap:
Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the main reasons people were buying MS-DOS based computers. Lotus was _the_ killer app for the PC back in the day. A more accurate quote would rather be: 'DOS aint done until Lotus 1-2-3 runs 100%'. Microsoft developers worked closely with Lotus developers to get incompatibilities and bugs fixed.
Hopefully the mods will read the link as well, so that bullshit like this doesnt get modded up in future.
God, when will people stop reciting this absolute rubbish as if it were true?
Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the main reasons people were buying MS-DOS based computers. Lotus was _the_ killer app for the PC back in the day. A more accurate quote would rather be: 'DOS aint done until Lotus 1-2-3 runs 100%'. Microsoft developers worked closely with Lotus developers to get incompatibilities and bugs fixed.
Apache is a web server, ISA is a gateway server. The proper comparison would be apache to IIS, which has also done this for half a decade, if not longer.
Yes, that is what consumers want. In fact, I'd guess that if Microsoft did indeed ignore backwards compatibility with each new version of Windows, you'd be one of the first people complaining about how much they suck because all your programs dont work and you have to go and buy new versions of all your games and software along with your new OS.
Would you upgrade to a new version of Windows if it meant you having to repurchase or reinstall *all* your existing software? Consumers want the software they purchased to continue working on their computers once they've upgraded something, be it hardware, software, or the OS.
It's an OS *upgrade*. That means it takes what it already had and adds to it. It is not a *new operating system*. This is why backwards compatibility is important.
Also, you keep on talking about this "16-bit API" as if you know much about it. The functions still exist with their 16bit names, but apart from the ones that specifically remain 16bit due to their very nature, all of the "legacy 16bit api" is either fully 32bit or just maps as an alias to the 32bit equivalent. Which part of the "16bit API" offends you so much? Just because the OS provides backwards compatibility with 16bit programs doesnt mean that your system is suffering in any way due to the presence of that compatibility. The 16bit subsystem only kicks in when you launch a 16bit process. If a 16bit application works 100% without modification, why should the application developers rewrite it just to make you happy?
Fair enough, I see your point. Although, since you bring up DirectX - to me, that seems to be another example of what happened in Korea - there was a need for a multimedia library, and MS implemented one. Sure, opengl is more of a standard, but (and I stand to be corrected here) from what I understand, DX is miles ahead of opengl in terms of functionality and capability. While the opengl committees are sitting around killing time instead of defining a new version of the specification to bring it up to speed, MS is actually going out and doing stuff right now. And I do agree with you that since it is not an open spec, then people locking themselves into it might end up shooting themselves in the foot if MS decided to break/drop functionality. But in the case of DX, game developers and game consumers want the fancy graphics NOW. They don't want to wait for the opengl committee to ponder the universe and argue and agree and disagree and eventually come up with a spec that makes the whole world happy. Developers want to make pretty games now, and users want to play pretty games now. MS is giving them the tools to achieve that now. Sure its instant gratification, but no matter what your feelings towards MS, they do have some incredibly smart people and their products are being designed better and better - sure the older products like the core of windows is still a mess because of all the bad decisions of the past they have to live with, but they most definitely have learned a lot from those bad decisions, and are improving in their design process with each new product. I think you'll see less of the broken-in-future-versions that we experience now, with their newer products, because they've already had the experiences of having to work with/break/work around limitations in their software due to not having a crystal ball to know how their software will be used 10 years later.
Did you happen to miss the part in the summary where they made this decision _before_ a standard was available? How do they make use of a standard that does not exist? Microsoft gets constantly flamed for 'deviating from the standards' or whatever, yet most of the time, they have had to implement some sort of solution before a standard actually existed. Then someone else goes and implements a standard, and everyone points and laughs at Microsoft for not adhering to it.
Everyone goes on about how ActiveX is the worst thing designed ever, yet it was helping Koreans make secure web transactions before SSL was standardised.
Sometimes the MS-haters here need to stop and consider the big picture. It's 1998, and there is no standard for SSL. Microsoft has a feature which allows secure transactions to take place. Korea wants a system for secure transactions NOW. They make use of what is available at the time. Sure they could go and design a standard, but then they would not be able to provide their service NOW. And it's not as if Microsoft sat with a gun to their heads and told them that they are never allowed to change their transaction security to do away with activex - they've been free to purely rely on SSL since 1999. But lets point fingers at big bad Microsoft because some webmasters in Korea are too lazy to redesign their sites.
Ordinarily, this would be a no-brainer. But on slashdot it earns a 'haha' tag.
First, there is an 'energy' definition of life. That is to say, alien life may not be carbon-based, may not use water, may not be composed of cells, and may not have DNA inside of it. However, one of the defining characteristics of life is that it uses energy. It metabolizes, grows, and reproduces. It eats something, somehow. It makes a waste product.
This is something that's always puzzled me - by this definition, wouldn't Fire be considered a life-form?
It uses energy, in the form of wood/gasoline/other fuel It grows You could argue that it reproduces, when sparks leave the flame and land on something that it can use as fuel, creating a new flame It makes a waste product in the form of ash/smoke/whatever If you cut off its energy supply it dies
It all depends on where the research is being done I guess - if the research was done by a medicine company, then yeah, but this was done by an academic team at a university. Pharmaceutical companies will focus their research efforts on treatments, but academic researchers will look straight for the cure.
I seriously doubt that the pharmaceutical companies would be able to block this if it's proven to work - if their trials prove successful then they'll make that info public immediately, and once the public knows that there's a working cure for cancer, there's no way the corporations will be able to block it, no matter how corrupt the system is.
Windows' OS updates already assume lowest priority, via BITS. BITS is available to be used by any application that wants to use it, so if antivirus/firewall vendors decided to make use of it, rather than rolling their own solutions, all those updates can happen at lowest priority also. It's QOS requesting lowest priority, rather than highest priority.
I'm not sure if you can specify individual priority levels, but the OS already allows applications to download using the lowest priority.
Slashdot Mirror
You really don't know how address space works, do you?
If you run a 32-bit operating system (regardless of whether it is Windows, Linux, BSD, etc), without extensions like PAE, you are only able to address 4GB of memory. Thats 2^32 (because you're using a 32 bit system). Due to the way the x86 hardware is designed, all hardware devices that require memory to be mapped to them must also consume some of this 4GB of addressible space. So, if you have a 256MB video card, that means that 256MB of your maximum possible 4GB of address space now belongs to your video card. I believe most BIOSes start mapping hardware devices around the 3.5GB area, which is why in general, Windows will only let you see 3.5GB or whatever it is.
This "goofiness" has nothing to do with Vista whatsoever. It is specifically how x86 hardware works.
Yeah, except Vista already does aggressive caching and makes full use of RAM that isn't currently being used by applications, but slashdot keeps going on about how its a bloated piece of crap that uses 2GB of RAM when idle. Yet they don't complain that their system runs a lot smoother thanks to prefetching which analyses program usage and preloads (in the background) data that it anticipates being loaded from disk in the future.
/. would rather see the OS use 100mb of ram at idle and have the rest doing nothing?
Here's a question... if you actually had a system that had 1TB of RAM, wouldn't you like to see a lot of your hard drive contents being loaded into RAM in the background because you have the RAM to store it, and you know that it can be discarded at any time because its just cache memory and not committed memory? I mean, you've gone to all the trouble and cost of getting yourself that much RAM... do you ONLY want to ever make use of it all on the rare occasion you need to edit a 500megapixel picture in photoshop? Do you want your ram to sit idle the rest of the time, and have your hard drive grind away because
Please, please, PLEASE stop spreading the utter trash about the "dos aint done till lotus won't run" as if it is some sort of truth. It is not. Repeating it just makes you appear to be either a troll, or someone who unfortunately believed the misinformation trolls that post this crap on this site.
Please read the first few links on this search result and stop yourself spreading FUD in the future
And please, spare me the comments about being a M$$$ $hill. I have no affiliation with microsoft, I just really hate it when people spread misinformation on this site, which then gets repeated infinitely as if it were truth. The less FUD coming from, and aimed at microsoft, the better.
As a commenter above posted, each of those companies with top-level blocks actually owns 16,777,216 IP addresses. These companies include IBM, MIT, Ford, DEC, AT&T, Apple and Xerox.
As big as IBM and MIT may be, do you really think they need almost 17 million IP addresses?
Because 3.0 is still in beta. So the latest version is still 2.0. Besides, Firefox 2.0 is still WAY more popular than 3.0 (probably because 3.0 is still beta). Shouldn't Google test their interface amongst the popular browsers that their customers are using, and not just against the latest (still in beta) browsers?
The responsibility of checking that sites display properly falls with the IE team. The responsibility of ensuring that IE can connect to webservers falls with the networking team. The responsibility of ensuring that your server can be reached by any client wanting to connect to it falls with the admin of the server.
Yes, most home users are checking email and surfing the web. And they do so just fine for websites that are configured correctly.
I shudder to think how much tin-foil some people must have around their heads and homes, to actually believe that microsoft would deliberately single out facebook, and prevent it from loading especially since Slashdot widely reported and speculated upon Microsoft's multi-million dollar investment in facebook last year. I guess in the average slashdotter's mind, it went something like 'Hey Steve, put that chair down and listen for a moment... you know how we just spent a huge pile of cash buying shares in facebook? You know what would be a great idea? If we set vista up so that it can't connect to facebook! Wouldn't that be great for our investment?'
Switch statements are more efficient than nested if/then/else, at least in C/C++ (I dont use perl so I'm not sure if the same applies).
C/C++ only allows constants to be used as case values in a switch statement, you can't use a variable as a case label. This allows the compiler to optimise the comparisons based on the numerical value of each constant case label. Performing the case evaluations in different orders, using subtraction and addition and testing against zero can be more efficient than comparison to each value in turn.
So, a switch statement can be more efficient than nested if/then/else.
You can make the start menu higher by increasing the number of entries in the 'frequently-used' list. The menu will make itself higher to accommodate the extra entries it will have to display in the most-frequently-used list, which means less scrolling through the all programs list.
I dont have vista at work, but the setting is probably under Customize Start Menu->Number of programs on Start menu or something similar (that's where it is on XP).
Because there are loads of +5 Insightful posts here which are quite simply misinformed. After the first 5 people post replies pointing out why the item is misinformed, what is left to do? The only other option really is to mod the offending post Redundant, which isn't entirely true. The other problem is that unless a post is explicitly marked as Misinformed, the uneducated masses who believe every positively rated comment is accurate will go on repeating that misinformed content as if it were the gospel truth.
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/08/28/windows-vista-sound-causes-network-throughput-slowdowns.aspx
Straight from a senior developer at MS who worked mostly on the audio system in Vista.
Summary version: they ARE fixing it, because it IS a bug and NOT an intentional hack.
I'm not sure exactly how toll plazas in the states work, with EZPass and other things, but there was a (slightly famous) case in South Africa where a toll plaza helped solve a murder.
This happened at least ten years ago, so I'm not sure if video surveillance was the norm back then. I know now that all toll plazas here have cameras that record licence plates, but payment is still entirely manual - you pay with cash or credit card... the most automated means of passing is by swiping your credit card yourself in an express lane. But anyways. Because some toll plazas are on roads that are used daily for people to get to work and back, some of them offer concession cards to people living in the area to get a discounted rate. So, you pull up at the toll booth, hand in your concession card, the attendant swipes it, it registers the discounted fare, you pay, get your card back, and leave. What not many people knew, was that since you had to apply for these cards, and the cards were issued on a per vehicle basis (the card has to match the license plate to prevent fraud), the card has the vehicle details and registered owner details stored in its magnetic strip, and when the operator swipes your card to register your concession, the card details are logged in a database somewhere.
What happened was, this guy decided to murder his employee to cash in on a life policy that he had taken out in the employees name. He took his family 3-4 hours away to a casino resort for the weekend, and asked the employee to check on the house while he was away. While the family was asleep, he got in his car, drove back home, killed the employee and made it look like a break-in, drove back to the resort, and appeared very surprised and upset at the break-in and murder in his house when he returned. Although it was very suspicious and lots of evidence pointed to him, he did have the alibi of having checked in in person at the resort for the weekend. Except that he used his concession card when he drove through the toll each time, which recorded his car details and the date and time that he passed through.
These days, the discount you get for having a concession card is the equivalent of less than US$1... back then it would have been closer to around 10-20c US each trip. So, if he hadn't tried to save himself around 50c and paid the full toll price, he could have gotten away with murder.
I'm not trying to justify data recording at toll booths nor put them down. Just thought it was an interesting, somewhat related story.
What's to stop someone getting paid big bucks by microsoft for vulnerabilities, and then reselling the same exploits to the next highest bidder as well? I'd imagine that the people in the business of selling exploits to the highest bidder aren't the most ethical types to begin with.
A commenter pointed out much higher up in the thread that there are no requirements that the software used should come from microsoft:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=240629&cid=19
Did i just do something completely different then?
Exactly! This is precisely why MS wanted to prevent antivirus products (amongst others) from running in kernel mode in vista in the first place. I believe Symantec was one of the most vocal opponents of this decision, even though there is no technical reason for allowing antivirus software into the kernel in the first place, as Trend Micro and others all had vista-compatible solutions that worked without requiring kernel access.
/. saying that MS shouldn't be restricting access to the kernel, but this just goes to show that the people who demand access to it often shouldn't have access to it. I know that the problem in the article relates to XPSP2 but the fact remains - Symantec shouldnt be installing kernel mode drivers in the first place.
Back when that story was making news, there was a lot of commentry here on
Huh? Have you actually tried running vista on 512mb ram? I do, every single day, on my 3 year old notebook at home. Thats vista ultimate, by the way, not home basic. Office 2007 ultimate and Visual studio 2005 are also used daily.
There is absolutely no performance impact that I have noticed. I also have a 64mb geforce fx5200 go on this notebook. Sure, I dont get aero, but my computer is 100% functional and usable.
I think the only fearmongering and FUD is coming from you, because my personal experience seems to contradict the lies you're trying to spread.
Why on earth is this absolute rubbish modded insightful, when it is complete and utter bullshit? If you're so sure of the accuracy of your post, please back it up with some proof. I have some proof that shows that your post is a load of crap:
s _aint_done_t.html
Please read this link: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/do
Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the main reasons people were buying MS-DOS based computers. Lotus was _the_ killer app for the PC back in the day. A more accurate quote would rather be: 'DOS aint done until Lotus 1-2-3 runs 100%'. Microsoft developers worked closely with Lotus developers to get incompatibilities and bugs fixed.
Hopefully the mods will read the link as well, so that bullshit like this doesnt get modded up in future.
God, when will people stop reciting this absolute rubbish as if it were true?
s _aint_done_t.html
0 8/12/213681.aspx0 8/13/214338.aspx
Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the main reasons people were buying MS-DOS based computers. Lotus was _the_ killer app for the PC back in the day. A more accurate quote would rather be: 'DOS aint done until Lotus 1-2-3 runs 100%'. Microsoft developers worked closely with Lotus developers to get incompatibilities and bugs fixed.
Please read this link: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/do
And for a more detailed explaination of the AARD code, you can read these links:
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/
Apache is a web server, ISA is a gateway server. The proper comparison would be apache to IIS, which has also done this for half a decade, if not longer.
Yes, that is what consumers want. In fact, I'd guess that if Microsoft did indeed ignore backwards compatibility with each new version of Windows, you'd be one of the first people complaining about how much they suck because all your programs dont work and you have to go and buy new versions of all your games and software along with your new OS.
Would you upgrade to a new version of Windows if it meant you having to repurchase or reinstall *all* your existing software? Consumers want the software they purchased to continue working on their computers once they've upgraded something, be it hardware, software, or the OS.
It's an OS *upgrade*. That means it takes what it already had and adds to it. It is not a *new operating system*. This is why backwards compatibility is important.
Also, you keep on talking about this "16-bit API" as if you know much about it. The functions still exist with their 16bit names, but apart from the ones that specifically remain 16bit due to their very nature, all of the "legacy 16bit api" is either fully 32bit or just maps as an alias to the 32bit equivalent. Which part of the "16bit API" offends you so much? Just because the OS provides backwards compatibility with 16bit programs doesnt mean that your system is suffering in any way due to the presence of that compatibility. The 16bit subsystem only kicks in when you launch a 16bit process. If a 16bit application works 100% without modification, why should the application developers rewrite it just to make you happy?
Fair enough, I see your point. Although, since you bring up DirectX - to me, that seems to be another example of what happened in Korea - there was a need for a multimedia library, and MS implemented one. Sure, opengl is more of a standard, but (and I stand to be corrected here) from what I understand, DX is miles ahead of opengl in terms of functionality and capability. While the opengl committees are sitting around killing time instead of defining a new version of the specification to bring it up to speed, MS is actually going out and doing stuff right now. And I do agree with you that since it is not an open spec, then people locking themselves into it might end up shooting themselves in the foot if MS decided to break/drop functionality. But in the case of DX, game developers and game consumers want the fancy graphics NOW. They don't want to wait for the opengl committee to ponder the universe and argue and agree and disagree and eventually come up with a spec that makes the whole world happy. Developers want to make pretty games now, and users want to play pretty games now. MS is giving them the tools to achieve that now. Sure its instant gratification, but no matter what your feelings towards MS, they do have some incredibly smart people and their products are being designed better and better - sure the older products like the core of windows is still a mess because of all the bad decisions of the past they have to live with, but they most definitely have learned a lot from those bad decisions, and are improving in their design process with each new product. I think you'll see less of the broken-in-future-versions that we experience now, with their newer products, because they've already had the experiences of having to work with/break/work around limitations in their software due to not having a crystal ball to know how their software will be used 10 years later.
:)
Sorry for the ramble, its 3:10am here
Did you happen to miss the part in the summary where they made this decision _before_ a standard was available? How do they make use of a standard that does not exist? Microsoft gets constantly flamed for 'deviating from the standards' or whatever, yet most of the time, they have had to implement some sort of solution before a standard actually existed. Then someone else goes and implements a standard, and everyone points and laughs at Microsoft for not adhering to it.
Everyone goes on about how ActiveX is the worst thing designed ever, yet it was helping Koreans make secure web transactions before SSL was standardised.
Sometimes the MS-haters here need to stop and consider the big picture. It's 1998, and there is no standard for SSL. Microsoft has a feature which allows secure transactions to take place. Korea wants a system for secure transactions NOW. They make use of what is available at the time. Sure they could go and design a standard, but then they would not be able to provide their service NOW. And it's not as if Microsoft sat with a gun to their heads and told them that they are never allowed to change their transaction security to do away with activex - they've been free to purely rely on SSL since 1999. But lets point fingers at big bad Microsoft because some webmasters in Korea are too lazy to redesign their sites.
Ordinarily, this would be a no-brainer. But on slashdot it earns a 'haha' tag.
This is something that's always puzzled me - by this definition, wouldn't Fire be considered a life-form?
It uses energy, in the form of wood/gasoline/other fuel
It grows
You could argue that it reproduces, when sparks leave the flame and land on something that it can use as fuel, creating a new flame
It makes a waste product in the form of ash/smoke/whatever
If you cut off its energy supply it dies
It all depends on where the research is being done I guess - if the research was done by a medicine company, then yeah, but this was done by an academic team at a university. Pharmaceutical companies will focus their research efforts on treatments, but academic researchers will look straight for the cure.
I seriously doubt that the pharmaceutical companies would be able to block this if it's proven to work - if their trials prove successful then they'll make that info public immediately, and once the public knows that there's a working cure for cancer, there's no way the corporations will be able to block it, no matter how corrupt the system is.
Windows' OS updates already assume lowest priority, via BITS. BITS is available to be used by any application that wants to use it, so if antivirus/firewall vendors decided to make use of it, rather than rolling their own solutions, all those updates can happen at lowest priority also. It's QOS requesting lowest priority, rather than highest priority.
I'm not sure if you can specify individual priority levels, but the OS already allows applications to download using the lowest priority.