The fact is that DirectX runs in other environments, like Xbox and Xbox360. If all you're doing is gaming, then you shouldn't be surprised if your box is 'rock solid.'
1) Environments would not be the correct term. 2) XBox and XBox360 both run Windows- XBox is Win2K, XBox360 is XP x64.
This whole thread is based on the premise that Windows crashes, and reliability studies continue to show that since Win2k and XP, crashes are as rare on Windows as they are on any other OS. Vista so far is reporting to be even more stable than any OS, which is a bit surprising.
Windows stability issues is an old tale that needs to finally stop. People stopped bitching about Apple OS 9 when it was replaced with OS X, yet people still make fun of Windows based on the Win9x era.
Windows users don't see crashes, this is not the Win9x kernel era, the 'Windows crashes all the time' myth crap needs to stop once and for all...
don't see that this is true, you can open multiple OpenGL apps at the same time with no problems at all. OpenGL already enables sharing 3D GPU resources between multiple apps.
In your example, DirectX also does this...
However you are arguing that cooperative multi-tasking (applicaiton controlled locking) is just as good as pre-emptive multi-tasking (OS controlled scheduling/locking)...
I think most would agree that Applications 'self' managing themselves in a cooperative multi-tasking method is a horrible solution when compared to an OS controlled multi-tasking solution (ie. pre-emptive, etc.)
When you have EVERY application using 3D aspects or using GPU functions for the UI, for physics, to simple 2D acceleration through the 3D GPU side, which happens every second in Vista, then depending on Application yeilding like OpenGL and DirectX already provide would be a nightmare.
When you have every application dipping into the GPU, you need the OS handling the scheduling or things get ugly really quick.
Your article, however, looks to me like FUD. They picked three of the worst sites on the Internet to test
I did say it wasn't the best 'test'; however, no matter what site is used, there is no reason FF3 should have issues with ANY sites picked.
The plugins are virtually the same, and the 'end user' experience is what is the focus. And FF3 can suck at times for the 'generic' user.
Power users that turn off ads, turn off Flash, etc will possibly not have the same issues and will do fine with FF3 most of the time.
To win the market, they need to do better at covering everyone, not just the power users, as Grandma won't know why some sites are slow or why it keeps crashing/closing.
Besides, why are the arguments that FF3 is a business browser and visiting kids sites is not fair? When did FF become a business only browser?
This is including a dozen or so extensions. I'm a little bit confused by what you mean when you say IE8 outperforms FF3. Is it memory usage? (IE under-reports because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it loading speed? (IE is faster because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it rendering speed? I haven't seen anything to suggest that IE8 is any faster than other IEs, and it still has some nicely broken CSS issues
Interesting you ask, as I just read an article that came away with an initial impression not unlike our own testing.
As for IE8 performance... I mean (Load Time, Page Load Times. high content performance on the page, RAM usage, responsiviness, etc.) The difference between IE7 and IE8 is significant, and IE7 wasn't so bad... (IE8 has rewritten everything from script handling, to page composition, etc.) If it wasn't from MS, it would be a browser people would be proud of in terms of performance gains.
You once again falsely state that IE rides on the coat tails of explorer.exe, this myth needs to die, as this has not been the case since IE6, especially on Vista, where explorer.exe and iexplorer.exe share NOTHING, so it doesn't get a footprint break as many assume because of IE4 Win98's shared process model where Explorer.exe and IE literally shared processes.
In fact even IE6 only marginally shared DLLs with Explorer.exe on XP, and still kept them in their own memory space, consuming just as much RAM as if explorer.exe was involved. (Test yourself, kill explorer.exe, iexplorer.exe doesn't die, and RAM for IE don't change and hasn't since Win98.) (NT doesn't even technically allow for what Win98/IE4/IE5 was doing.)
IE7/IE8 run are not tied to anything, and get no 'shared' benefits. Even in Vista, HTML rendering in folders is not an option, nor Active Desktop (the original desktop WIdgets from Win98). The HTML rendering frameworkis a 'callable' part of Windows, but if these threads/process call it, they get the RAM load, etc, and this not shared, just as if another application used the Mozilla engine, it would still have to load it in its own application space.
So people still claiming that 'IE has advantages' because of 'shared' resources/RAM with Explorer.exe/OS are just spreading a very old myth that needs to finally die, starting here.
Check out the link above, even though it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive test, it hits were are initial reactions are too.
how many applications will state "Designed for Windows XP, Vista, and Wine 1.0" as a supported platform. That will be the metre stick for success IMHO
Quite a few in the non-commerical areana already do list Wine/XP/Vista etc...
However,Wine may be a little late to the game. Virtualization will give us all the features we once needed Wine for if done properly.
The other problem with Wine is the evolution of the Win32/64 API, and how it is slowly being replaced. Vista API technologies are not even on the radar, and have the potential to shake up the next generation of application development. (Search Channel9 on WPF.NET 3.5 SP1 for some interesting demos of how far WPF has already gone in just a year.)
Microsoft sees a movement away from Win32 before too long, and even current applciations a lot of developers are working on projects that stretch from generic Win32 to fully hybrind Win32/WPF/DirectX all in one application.
If Virtualiation doesn't solve the divide, we still have Wine and Mono, and for any future, some of the backend of the current Linux kernel will need to extend to handle hardware with the same levels of abstraction, or shoving DX to OpenGL will not be enough when some of the core aspects of WPF is based around 3D UI that uses aspects of the OS to schedule and manage the 3D aspects so that two applications don't fight for 3D GPU resources, and currently only Vista's design allows for this.
(Didn't mean for this post to go negative, as there is a congrats to the Wine peeps in order, and even if Wine translation doesn't last forever is meeting a lot of people's needs now.)
Our internel tests show FF3 has some holes in terms of performance and stability.
From sluggish behavior on some sites, to full crashes, to DEP violations - it just doesn't feel like a release product.
There is no reason a vanilla install without flash should flip a DEP consistently on some sites, no matterhow badly the sites are coded. (Testing occured across several test machines, and hard core FF fanbois in our tech team. DHTML ads seemed to be at the heart of some crashes, as when a specific ad was loaded, the browser would pop Vista/XP's DEP protection.)
Performance also did hold up to Opera or even IE8 Beta1, which is a bit alarming.
The performance and stability differences got a lot worse with flash, but that is almost expected in the FF world, although flash doesn't have the same level of causing instability or loss of performance on IE7/IE8 for whatever reason.
FF3 is faster and more reliable than FF2, and it is faster than IE7, but not more reliable. IE8 for an early beta outperforming FF3 is sad and a bit scary, and may be the return of MS picking up marketshare, especially with the extra protected modes on Vista.
If you are running IE7 or FF2, I say go grab FF3, the speed is worth it, even with the occasional crashes.
Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I don't think we're even getting that.
Texture size and number of objects in a scene on Crysis would be the best examples, there is a difference. Games are moving to levels (especially for HD or 1920x1200&up players) that the texture limitations of DX9.0c can't bring the detail needed, and this is just one 'tiny' aspect of DX10.
Bundling it into Vista is bad, for a slew of reasons, and the shit they've pulled with several 'Vista only' titles,
DX10 has specific reasons why it only runs on Vista. Go ask the people hacking the libraries for XP. They will run, but it expects the OS to be handling aspects of the GPU that XP isn't doing.
DX10 is designed around Vista because it expects GPU RAM Virtualization to be available from the OS. (Only Vista can do this) DX10 expects even 'in-game' threads/processes to be prioritized and handled by the OS, and only Vista can do this because it has a pre-emptive scheduler for the GPU, XP don't (in fact no other OS has one). To put these things in XP would be to make a full WDDM for XP, and that is not quite so easy.
The DX10 stuff like this is a tie over from the XBox360 development team, and DX10 is what MS and Robbie learned to take gaming forward on the PC.
As for the 'Vista Only' titles, there were reasons for them at the time. For example Halo 2, as its online play is Games for Windows Live, and at the time used Vista's communication framework, and Live for Windows (the Gaming connection) was a Vista only technology. So the Halo 2 development went forward with these considerations, and other internal optimizations in the game just exepcted the Vista WDDM to be there, etc. Microsoft went back and wrote Live Games for Windows for XP from the ground up. (Hence some of the new networking features in XP SP3, just to support it.)
So it may have seemed nefarious, but was not a con, just a platform specific feature and optimization design, pure and simple... Sadly MS was counting on NVidia and ATI to have their WDDM drivers at XP levels at release of VIsta, and this didn't happen. When MS jumped in with NVidia and ATI and 'helped' their driver development the fruit of this was seen around June 07, as Vista was catching to XP in gaming performance, and by Sept 07, had equaled it.
I see absolutely nothing to recommend Vista over XP, at this time or in the near future. This is where Microsoft's marketing sucks. They should do like Apple and list every tiny feature.(Remember the 300 list about Leopard?) If Microsoft did a list like this for Vista, it would be around 10,000 items in their list.
If I had time this morning, I could take your circumstances and make a very credible case for Vista. I also understand where you are coming from as Vista is a plumbing and architecture shift, they burned their time to build more features based on these changes with the iniitial dump of Longhorn. Windows 7 is basically going to be a showcase of what is already in Vista, since it doesn't have any major architecture changes planned.
Hardly a year out of date. The figures you post are one month old, and involve Vista SP1 final, vs SP3 of XP. I admit I am impressed by the evening out that Vista has managed to achieve, in those tests.
Ok, year was a bit of tongue in cheek.
A lot of people didn't realize that NVidia and ATI had to write the Vista WDDM drivers from scratch, as it is a dramatic different model than XPDM. From letting Vista do scheduling to RAM virtualization and handing over more to the OS from core driver level to even Aero Composer.
And even though I think NVidia and ATI could have done better at launch, as they didn't provide drivers to beta testers
DirectX 10 as a selling point is a joke, with the accompanying baggage that is Vista all it does is slow games down, and none of them look any better for it yet
1) There hasn't been a real DX10 released to date. All DX10 games are hybrid DX9 games with DX10 features like larger textures strapped on. When you see a title that is DX10 ONLY, then the performance DX10 offers will be noticeable, until then, all we are getting is eye candy.
2) If you are going to argue DX10 is bad, then explain to everyone how larger texture sizes for more detail is a 'bad thing'... (I know this is just one example, but semi-important.)
3) With NVidia pushing Physics, after Microsoft begging them to adopt to an open Physics model almost 4 years ago, it is down right ironic watching NVidia today. (This was part of the pissing match of the XBox to XBox 360 timeframe, and why MS designed their own GPU with early DX10 concepts, like Physics available on the GPU.)
4) With games implementing 'fragmented' physics implementations, it will hurt ATI and NVidia more than help them, and NVidia is the donkey pushing the cart here. DirectX10 specficially provides a common framework for doing physics and supplying the interface to games so that people don't have to look for CUDA-NVidia, Aegis, etc...
DX10 can do GPU physics and opens this world to developers because of the Vista WDDM, that multi-tasking the processes to the GPU - 3D is no longer cooperative multi-tasking like XP, and surprisingly you would think tech geeks at SlashDot even would, go, oh that is cool, pre-emptive GPU at the OS level. (No OpenGL or DirectX yielding needed.) Vista also provides SMP GPU processing. (Hopefully SLI and Crossfire will die a slow horrible death once XP is dead.)
NVidia is still making their GPU technology based on pre-Vista world technology, because they don't want to break with the XP market. Once the XP break is designed into the GPU, and Vista is required for the multi-core, blah, blah features, we will see some really nice GPU technologies that will spin heads.
As for your comments about Vista being slower than XP in gaming, you are a year behind.
About Sept of 07, the drivers caught up and passed XP on a lot of games (SLI is the exception, as they can be equal or XP has an edge). This is why when you look at reviews at Tom's and other sites they are all using Vista for baseline profiling GPUS/Video cards.
The only 'bad' thing about a lot of the review sites, they don't respect the whitepaper on how to test a 'new' Vista install, and are running benchmarks while Vista is doing background I/O or other really stupid stuff.
1) Verizon is only dropping content from THEIR servers. (People act like the govt or evil Democrats want to police everyone, yet if Verizon was FORCED to carry content on their servers, the argument would be the evil govt making them do it.) Pick a side of the fence before you stand up and start yelling.
2) Anyone else think Newsgroups are a bit dated, and should probably go away? Reading above someone described Newsgroups as a bulletin board to share files. WTF? The NNTP goes back far before people were sharing anything but conversations. Additions to drop text based binaries into the system was a hack originally.
We have too many technologies that replace the original USENET, and in all honesty, do people not realize the bandwidth DOES COST by propagating copies all over the place? Shall we just say, it isn't very efficient or effective as it now exists in comparison to other technologies that have grown up on the internet.
Verizon can do what they want with their servers, and the people bitching apparently don't even realize 90% of the ISPs out there don't provide any NNTP servers.
Back to the govt and Democrat argumetns I have read above, are people insane? The Republicans are tapping 100% of the backbone of the internet and archiving as much as possible, and yet people want to call out Democrats for suggesting a company like Verzion that is HOSTING the illegal content, should probably self regulate themselves. (Sounds more like what a freaking libertaring would say, not a social democrat).
I guess when something is bad or goes wrong, whatever you don't like, your mind finds a way to blame it.
South Park should do a 'Blame Microsoft' or 'Blame Democrats' song, so this type of mentality gets made fun of a bit more and people will stop this crazy shit.
Really? When, exactly, did we break any of the laws of physics?
I should restate 'known laws of physics' so you don't try to make this a wording argument...
Newtonian physics were grand and unbreakable from a science point of view until a little man named Einstein showed up and, and every since, Netwon's laws were being broken all the time.
We assume we know, but always have to leave room for what we don't know. This is why science is living and breathing, and not a dead set of principles to never be challenged again.
If you want static laws, pick a religion, not science...
1) Physics laws are broken all the time as science moves forward. Science is accurate and obsolute, until it is proven wrong, this is how sciences work.
2) Separating hydrogen from water is NOT breaking any form of phsyics. The question would be the chemical/energy cost to do it.
For something to think getting hydrogen out of water is UBER crazy talk, doesn't realize that the laser printer on their desk is creating ozone by the electrical charges bouncing oxygen atoms around.
Using water as energy is not hard, converting it to a 'useful' form of energy that is more than the energy required to convert it or break it apart it is the trick, but wouldn't break any Physics Laws...
The main reason I'll never get a 360 is because I've seen how much Microsoft cares about supporting their customers
And I would argue the same, but against Sony... I have seen how they treat their SOE customers, and my spouse was directing manager (and store manager) at GameStop for several years.
Sony treated customers like crap from my spouse's point of view, and would slap me if I brought home a Sony product. From 'still smoking' PS2's being returned that burst into flames, to features removed from consoles without even telling the retail market. The return rate on PS2 compared to Xbox was over 10 to 1, and 30% of PS2 returns were due to fire or smoke.
Sony buried these stories and would often even say it was the user's fault and just deny any recourse for repair. This is why GameStop and GameCrazy were selling the hell out of replacment warranties.
Also look at crap they do, like the PS3 and the software emulation they slipped into the PS3 after touting full hardware level emotion engine compatibilty with PS2. (Some units have it, some don't, nice...)
Microsoft screwed up on the 360 replacement of the 3 rings of death. It was a design error, but the techs handling the calls at the call center level were the first level of problems with this, as upper level people at Microsoft had assumed the customers were being taken care of, no matter what.
With the original XBox, even out of warranty, if your system died (usually HD or DVD failure), all you had to do was call them. There was an unspoken policy to get working units back in customers hands as soon as possible, warranty or not.
When the upper brass (like Robbie) got word the tech response team for XBox was not doing this for 360 customers, shit hit the fan on several levels in the company. This is when the 3yr warranty was turned on and all previous jilted customers were not only compensate but also given everything but a hand job.
Sony to this day will still not fix PS2s that are still exploding, less than a month old. (Go talk to a Game store manager, they will have stories for you that will make Sony seem a lot less nice to the user than you could ever imagine Microsoft to have been.)
Sony oversold the capabilities of the PS3, and still try to do that, instead of being honest and explaining the extra cost is for blu-ray, and it may or may not meet the 360 in graphics or performance.
Their whole TWO HDMI ports and dual 1080p displays at the run up to their release was nothing but massive lies, and people still think the PS3 can do this stuff, and it can't.
Microsoft never lied about the 360, the project manager of the 360 team is someone that has a lot of street and professional credibility, so the 360 marketing was cautious to not even imply something out of the range of the product. (Even the XBox emulation was down played, as only being a few titles, and don't expect less popular games to ever run, yet their emulation is transparent to the player 99% of the time, and keeps adding tons of OBSCURE even game titles all the time. I was playing a couple of games last week on a 360 that are not even on the official list, so it better than adverstised even.)
(My personal preference is based on the games I play, and from the original Buffy (ya corny) to Halo and MechAssualt on Live, the PS2/PS3 doesn't offer the same quality of gaming experience, especially for the $5 a month Live fees. Live is top notch, and the 360 features and Blade/Dashboard are simple, but powerful, being everything from a media extender for media center pcs to a great online video store for HD movies.
PS3 Home looks interesting, but after having been burned by SOE from SWG, to EQII, to Matrix, (and the list goes on.), I would like to see a social MMO experience on consoles outside of GamePlay, I just no longer have faith in SOE/Sony doing the concept any justice. (Especially since the Home features keep getting reduced the longer it is delayed. (Smaller environments, less people in shared areas, more instancing of social areas, etc etc.)
Their ongoing commitment to open source can only help too. If there really has to be another monopoly, sorry but I'd much prefer Google to MS
I prefer neither, and if I had to pick one, it wouldn't be Google, as they have too many fingers in your email, searches, and every ad you have clicked on. They know more about you than you do, and far more than the average user realizes. (Even using Firefox kicks extra user information to Google because of their deal. Microsoft don't even allow MSN or Live to obtain information from IE uers like this.)
Microosft also doesn't allow hotmail or live mail to be data mined and paired up with MSN or Live search, or the end user's PCs. (They are very strict about this type of stuff, having worked with the MSN data centers, you would be surprised how much of a no no this type of crap is.)
Yet it is something Google does, admits to doing, and users don't find concern with it, but will scream about Windows update asking for driver information based on what hardware you have installed that isn't used or stored outside your computer.
Google's online advertising is the evil that needs to be feared, as it has become their big monster, and revenue giant. So it will demand feeding from every portion of Google and google technologies.
Even Google Earth reports places you look at to the Google advertising monster.
They claim the email data mining, search monitoring, firefox monitoring, and every other freaking feature that reports back ot the Google advertising monster is so their ads are more accurate, but wtf business is it of theirs if you are looking at Paris? Do you really need better ads with 'Trips to Paris' on the sites you vist?
1) This is really none of their business, and is invasive. (Especailly since it is very fine print or hidden for most users.)
2) Aquiring massive user data is never a good thing, especailly when we have seen ATT & Verizon hand over information like this to governments without legal standing.
3) It is an under-handed form of censorship based on the ads you see from them alone, in addition to how it restricts your usage of their services.
4) From adversting influence alone, Google is becoming the voice of the internet. If Google doesn't like A, B, or C, sites that depend on Google advertising revenue can't say anything good about A, B, or C. (And this is happening in limited forms already, what if the Google advertising Monster wants even more?) I have already seen strong IT based publications and sites pull and 'REDO' stories based on pressure from Google.
If Microsoft was doing what Google does, they would have been yanked into court by now and beat like a dirty rug for doing this stuff to users. Yet Google pretends they are the 'do no evil' company and everyone belives them. Oh well, Apple has called Macs the first 64bit computer, and still calls OS X and Mac's 64bit to this day, and yet OS X is still 32bit. So maybe marketing is reality...
What is NTFS? Is that that primitive file system that needs defragging all the time and takes forever to format a HD with that file system?
Ok, this misinformed Bumpersticker logic has to stop, and now...
NTFS may be a bit long in the tooth, but it has taken 15 years and ZFS to catch up to NTFS on a number of features. And even with that said, ZFS, still lacks several important features that is just expected to be there by people using NTFS.
If you want 'technical' information, go freaking read the NTFS whitepapers, or even get a academic code release version of how and why it works WITH SOURCE code. There are important reasoning to the technology of NTFS, especially in terms of performance and features just not currently found in ANY OTHER File System made, and this even includes ZFS, that gets close.
Back to the myth. Does the poster know why NTFS will fragment a bit more than older File System technologies? Apparently No...
NTFS has copy of write and snapshot features, this adds to the fragmentation on a volume by the nature of the way snapshots and copy on write operations are handled.
This feature (snapshots/copy on write) is a MAIN FEATURE of ZFS, so if OS X moves to ZFS, it will have the same inherent added fragmentation as NTFS. Whoops, guess you should be making fun of something you are getting as an UPGRADE in terms of features.
1) Microsoft never said NTFS didn't fragment, they said it was less prone to fragmenting that DOS's FAT/FAT32, which is TRUE.
2) Microsoft did state NTFS's fragmentation was not as great of a performance issue compared to FAT/FAT32 because of how NTFS's lookup behavior works, making no additional fragmentatin lookup seeks, like FAT does. This means it can get the file locations and read it in a swipe, even if it is in 1000 fragments.
3) Microsoft has always stated snapshot and copy on write features of NTFS would mean it will always have a bit more fragmentation than 'simpilier' file systems, like OS X and most default Linux installs use today.
Just to recap: When/if Apple adds ZFS to OS X, its inherent level of fragmentation will be equal to NTFS, because it is the nature of the File System design features of both that prevent this trade off for more advanced features.
Also, people do realize that NO FS is fragmentation free, even the current mainstream file systems in OS X, right?
OS X runs a background defragmentation utility, just like Vista does. There is nothing hard or special about this. (Vista has a low I/O priority added to the inherent NTFS priority abilities, making backgroun operations like defragmenting seamless in terms of performance to the user.)
ZFS is good and finally steps up to the plate on some important and modern File System features long needed. It still is young and lacks inherent encryption, file level quota management, and other little features, but with some good support will be a good alternative to NTFS in the UNIX world. NTFS is far from primative or old in terms of features, as it has been the File System to live up to or beat outside of Microsoft.
However, NTFS is MS Intellectual property and MS probably won't be giving up the code to it anytime soon. I actually wish Sun and Microsoft had a better relationship, as it would be nice to see a unified File System technology across all platforms, and a combination of Sun's ZFS work and NTFS would be a freaking awesome mix of technology in terms of File System features, and performance.
NTFS is nothing to mock, especially when you are responding to an article talking about Snow Leopard getting ZFS which will present the same issue for OS X you are making fun of NTFS for...
Google is by nature of progression being too big and no matter how 'good' the leaders want the company to be, the competitive nature is shoving them to the very dark side. (Especially when Google is essentially a marketing company that makes money off of ads and market manipulation.)
It is like taking the the industry's two biggest's evils and putting them in one company model.
Take Apple's (less than truthful and borderline brainwashing) marketing team, and combine this with a company out growing its footprint with so many internal groups and people working with 'competitive' emerging technologies (like Microsoft of the early 90s) and you will get one of the biggest and evil company models in history.
Google digging through GMail years ago should of been the first 'heads-up', but their recent 'embrace, extend, use for the gain, not the consumers' mentaility has taken over tons of OSS projects that originally had no 'questionable' back doors, like Firefox does now with its search monitoring and Google ties that it easily hands the data to at any request.
As for Yahoo, they took a phone book model, moved to a real search engine (finally) and then was able to survive with gaming and IM (online gaming communities being the key for them). Yahoo has market share, not technology that anyone wants. Yahoo doesn't have internal development that is more advanced than Google or Microsoft when it comes to community, development, or search technologies. It would be more of a win for Google, as Google would get a solid IM technology, where MS doesn't need IM or any of the other services.
So I think it is good that Google will eat up Yahoo, so it will go away, but the warning on the label, it is giving more power to ONE company, and sadly this company (Google) is no longer by nature alone a 'do no evil' company, any more than Microsoft of the 90s was.
People act like Microsoft tried to use Windows around 1995 to kill off other companies, but people forget during this whole timeframe and Internet movement, Microsoft was heavily investing in MSN and online technologies, but the Win95 and Win98 OS CDs installed icons and installatino software for everything from AOL to Compuserve, as well as Java and other crap that Microsoft did not produce, most of which being competitive software outside the Windows division.
Google needs a big reign in, or a self check, if not as they doing now, will be bigger and far more evil than Microsoft... And be manipulating the online media with their ad control, like they have already done with their anti-MS shoves to tech journalists.
And in the fragile online world, all it sometimes takes is a mild threat or offering a free venue and some hardware...
Chris P. and his free Macs, just all of sudden deciding he hates Vista because HP wouldn't update their driver for his ancient scanner/printer, and this leading him to love Macs based on usage and 'technical' reasons. And the printer/scanner didn't work any better under OS X, but he failed to admit this part of 'his' story.
However having some contact with him, he admitted he really didn't understand the technology and his defense was that he was not a journalist or a tech person and was just in the entertainment business.
Yet he did 'technical' videos and blogs about OS X and Vista during this time that was information he 'obtained' from both Apple and anti-MS companies of interest, and was using their material because it was easier for him. And yet he made news off all this, and mislead a lot of people in the process for a couple of free computers and guaranteed venues for his 'show'.
Anyone that doens't keep one eye open on Google will find history repeating itself. Even the firefox ties should be enough to scare the crap out of users. Add in Yahoo IM, and their moving 'mobile' presence with a bit of 'borderline' Apple type marketing, and everyone will be racing to screw themselves when Google says, boo, let alone the amount of IT information they already control in the onlin
The optical drive speed dropped 14% from 42 Mbit (PS2 4X DVD) to 36 Mbit (PS3 1x BD), but the system gained a harddrive for caching. Sorry, it's not "significantly slower".
Ya that is so cool of them to make a kludge for their design error, so it only affect 90% of the games, hoping the caching will do it part for the 10% designed to deal with it.
>>in addition the 'cell' processor that 'didn't need' a GPU Are you a fucking retard?
Why are you looking for a date in your league?
Here are a couple links, since Google might be too hard for you. Next time just google it yourself, especialy before you post and make yourself look like an ass by being an ass.
The Sony CELL/PS3 plans were all around the web, no GPU needed, etc. It is mentioned in virtually every technical article from before the PS3, during its development, and even is noted when Sony gave up on PS3's CELL doing graphical rendering and called in NVidia late in the game.
The GPU in the PS3 (RSX) is actually slower than a vanilla off the shelf NVidia 7800 GPU, as it doesnt have the 7800 full bandwidth, and performance is between a 7600 GPU and a 7800 GPU.
But this is better than Sony sticking with trying to cut corners and suck marginal GPU performance out of the CELL as they planned all along.
The reason GTA4 runs at a lower resolution on the PS3 is because they can do all kinds of nifty effects with the card that aren't all geometry, textures, and shading. They can do a slight motion blur, for example, and have almost everything 100% bump-mapped. In reality, you don't notice that the resolution is slightly lower.
Um, this is what PS3 owners like to tell themselves before they start crying at bed time maybe...
However, the PS3 is using a virtually off the shelf core Geforce 7800 GPU. The XBox 360 is using a variant of an off the shelf ATI 2600 (prior to the 2600 GPU ever existing.)
The XBox 360 GPU is a unified GPU and handles all DX10 features and effects, the 7800 GPU DOES NOT. (See DX10 and the specifications for Vista came from the XBox 360 team, this is why Vista can kick some serious FrameRates for games and still be a general consumer OS.)
Sure the PS3 could run in the XBox 360 resolution. However, it would lose FPS, and also increase load times.
Don't forget your precious blu-ray that is so freaking slow the game has to be copied to the PS3 Hard Drive to keep up with the XBox 360 DVD player. (Mircrosoft even kindly gave Sony a heads up the slow nature of both HD-DV and Blu-Ray would be a serious issue for fast playing games that load large worlds virtually. (Most games have 'load screens' which are just hell longer on PS3, GTAIV doesn't have that luxury)
The 'blur' effect you are referring to is what they used on the PS3 title to help 'reduce' how noticeable it was there was no anti-aliasing. (See the XBox 360 is not only doing HD resolutions, but anti-aliasing the scene as well.)
The same 'blur' effect has been used in many other games for a long time when Video cards couldn't handle anti-aliasing, especially PC games. Take City of Heroes even on the PC, nice game, has two direct blur settings for distant objects, as they artifact REALLY BAD when there is no anti-aliasing. So if your card can't do it the right way, you flip on the distance blur and the non-aliased distance artifacts are smudged on the screen. Almost anti-aliased quality, but only works well on distant scenes or where detail can be smudged away.
Now if you really want to try to argue the 'blur' effects are something the XBox 360 can't do, I suggest you go grab a whitepaper on the GPU differences between the 360 and the PS3, and even pick up the whitepapers on the consumer counterparts, the NVidia 7800 and ATI 2600 - trust me when I say there are more than a 'few' features the XBox 360 GPU will do that the older NVidia chip just can't handle.
PS I'm a fan of NVidia, run them in every laptop and most desktops I own, even my old beat around traveling laptop is from 2005 simple early dual-core P4 w/HT and has a 7950GTX mobile GPU... Oh, the funny thing is, that 2005 laptop can run games at a higher FPS than the PS3, and even do it at full 1920x1200. Since even though it is a Mobile GPU, the 7950GTX w/512mb is FASTER THAN THE GPU in the PS3. Hope this makes you sleep better at night...:)
However, if I sue you for $10,000.00 because I think you wronged me. You may go down to the court house and submit a cashiers check for $10,000.00 thereby settling the lawsuit.
At that point there will never be one word of deposition ever given. Clinton (a lawyer) could have done this.
And you just assume he had this kind of money? Even now he don't have this kind of money, and has been making good money with speeches, etc.
So if I sue for 1 billion and alledge that you molested my children, causing permanent harm, you will just pay it?
Ok, 50 million, but your job is at stake if you conceal any information? Hmm. What if the courts ruled you had to answer all my questions, even the ones about the secret bondage/slave room? Hmmm? Or even just made you describe in detail every aspect of your sex life, and if you even 'left out' a part of the story, you will lose and also lose your job?
Sound fun yet? There's more...
Maybe if you did more than watch Fox news and maybe picked up a book like:
(No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton - The Supreme Court on Trial (1998) - Vincent Bugliosi)
-You know, the Manson Dude...
You would find that the supreme court set things into motion that made the whole Clinton impeachment inevitable. Just one tiny mis-statement during ANY OFFICIAL sworn testimony and congress could have shoved impeachment through like they did. The definition of Sex as given by the Judge, was answered correctly by Clinton, he technically never lied.
However, because he was hiding the Monica thing, he was messing with intent and deception, and that is how they got it shoved through. So he didn't even have to mis-speak to get impeached, just not be fully candid about the subject.
I do suggest you find the book I mentioned above, he wrote about and predicted virtually everything that happened before it happened from a legal standpoint, except the book was a 'worst case' senerio when it was published, only to be outdone by the Republicans...
Speaking of 90s impreachment hearings, anyone catch Bob Barr on the talk shows? Rejecting everything he basically did in the 90s and early 00s, and hating what Bush has done to the country and constitution as much as any educated person, like a left winger? From a Clinton hater to being on the same side of most of the issues and policies - talk about a flip flop uh? Maybe he is getting old and scared about selling his soul to the Devil/Republicans. Maybe he sees the international war crimes meetings (which will happen) and is doing a save my ass like Scott or maybe he is like Brooke that finally just got sick of the toe-the-line mentality and told the GOP to go fuck themselves in the RIGHT ear.
1) ATI is NOT in the United States. (Yes I know AMD/ATI blah blah) The main point to this is the fab plant and who owns it?
2) Microsoft did design the GPU in concept, but worked with some bright people from ATI and other GPU gurus for the specifics. People can make fun of MS design a GPU, but this isn't their first time around the block, and also gave them the intimate change of pairing GPU hardware and OS technologies.
Look at the PS3, in addition the 'cell' processor that 'didn't need' a GPU to the shipping PS3 with the 'cell' and full Geforce 7800 in it, and yet between the two technologies it still can't hold framerates or do anti-aliasing like the Microsoft designed XBox 360. (See recent games like GTAIV where it runs at lower resolutions on the PS3.) (And I won't even go into how slow Blu-Ray makes the device for a game player being significantly slower than DVD and why MS refused to put HD-DVD or Blu-ray in the console as the primary drive. Gamers hate load times and crap framerates.)
3) The 3 Rings of Death is about the Thermal sensor plate and flexing due to high heat. 99.9% of the time. (Also the 3 Rings does not always mean death, most units continue to work once they cool down, etc.) (Google It)
4) As for MS Saving Money for using a non US fab plant and then having to move back to one, sure this is possible, but technically there would be little to no difference UNLESS Microsoft also changed the specification of the chip between the move process. I don't care if the fab plat has Donkeys and a Mule pulling carts out front, the silicon is created according to specification, and you don't get much more exact than this level of specificatinos.
The real story here would more likely be the plastic/plate fab company that was creating the inner X plate/case holder that was warping and causing the 3 Ring problem, a) it was the real problem not the chip and b) would more likely fail specs easier than silicon.
I'm not an iPhone fanboi by far, but I do friends and clients that like them. (Yes I prefer Windows Mobile because of the massive feature differences, like remoting into my desktop or servers.)
However, does v2 have Voice recognition and digit dialing? This has been one of the biggest hang ups of people I know, most being bluetooth users and have been clicking their ear piece or stereo headset and saying "Dial Auntie Mame Mobile" or "Dial 555-1212" or other Start Camera and Lookup Contact commands Newer multimedia phones even let you do "Play Madonna" from your stereo headset.(My 80+ grandma uses bluetooth, and wouldn't drag a phone of out her purse just to look at the screen and find a contact to dial by hand anymore.)
I can't find it mentioned anywhere, if anyone has a heads up or tip on this must have feature, post a link...
Oh, this was all because I was too general in my statement about what UAC is capable of doing.
So I should say, UAC CAN AND DOES ON SOME APPLICATIONS enable security problems to self elevate, but there are ALWAYS exceptions, like with software that is using LOW LEVEL DRIVERS AND MODIFYING freaking volumes.
I get it.....you are a fucking whack job.
You bring up (DeviceIoControl) as an example? You have no fucking idea what you are even typing let alone talking about. Next time search for something you understand that could possibly back your point up.
Opening a USER-MODE DRIVER VOLUME on Windows via Win32 really has nothing to do with utilties like TrueCrypt or PGP that can handle boot time drive encryption that has to COMMUNICATE directly with NT at the same FREAKING LEVEL NTFS DOES.
Do you not understand how retarded this sounds at this point...
"should know that Vista Home and Vista Business do not have disk encryption (BitLocker)
Vista Business DOES HAVE BITLOCKER, you could have at least looked it up, especially when you are using this as a general fact to establish your reason behind why bitlocker sucks.
-Let me guess because I know little details like this off the top of my head because I'm not insane, it makes me a MS fanboi in your MS hating eyes?
As for the way Bitlocker works, you understand about 2 out 100 apparently, I feel sorry if you do any IT professionally, your clients would be sad people.
I am completely finished with you and your idiot posts, you are dismissed...
TrueCrypt is a standard application fully compatible with Windows XP. You can keep saying it isn't, but it's not going to help you.
http://www.truecrypt.org/ Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux
Most people know wtf TrueCrypt is, maybe YOU don't. IT is a DISK ENCRYPTION utility. Therefore, it more than a simple WIN32 applicaiton.
Look, freaking look...
Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
You are either insane or retarded to think that something that is modifying a volume would NOT NEED more than Win32 ACCESS on NT.
Which means it is NOT JUST WIN32. (Just like it also wouldn't be ONLY Cocoa or KDE on OSX or Linux)
The same is also true of PGP encryption software, which a lot of our clients use in the Insurance industry, and yes the application had to be rewritten to support Vista because of the 'pre-boot' and 'low level (NT) access' it needs to freaking work.
What is really sad is you keep mentioning this like it is a STANDARD Win32 level application, and IT IS NOT. A standard Win32 application would ONLY BE USING Win32 APIs. (Maybe I should give you a lesson on APIs too?)
These applications and their compatibility from XP to Vista HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UAC in Vista. (The Security system in NT has NOT changed since 1993, it always has been very robust with ACLs and is a token/object based security model. Vista just FORCES it on, and no longer allows applications to run without regard for system security; hence, the freaking need for a UAC system.)
The irony to this conversation is that tools like TrueCrypt and even PGP are becoming obsolete in the Windows world as people move to Vista. NT has had file level encryption for 10 years, and Vista itself added full volume level encryption(called BitLocker), and these two basic aspects of Vista replace the need for tools like TrueCrypt or PGP volume software.
How on earth did you get to SlashDot and a point where you can type by yourself, and NOT REALIZE software that is managing volume encryption would actually use lower level OS functions?
Again, a Win32 application written for XP that requires administrator rights anytime during its execution will NOT run on Vista. The function of the program will fail. For example, TrueCrypt. Before it was Vista-ready it did not work, because it required admin privileges. The developers had to IMPLEMENT requests for elevation to invoke the UAC prompts. So what you wrote (that legacy apps will run) is false.
You can keep saying this, but it is not true.
As for simply NOT BEING ABLE TO RUN because of UAC, NO... Any application can obtain elevation or even via compatibility tab be forced to launch with elevation. Also Manifest or internal Vista Application compatibility check can also mark this application and allow what is needed or virtualize as needed. (See Vista Application Compatibility Service, WHICH IS A PART of the UAC system.)
TrueCrypt? OMG... Additionally, you are citing an application that tries to access areas of the OS that are protected. TrueCrypt was NOT A STANDARD Win32 application if it was elevating itself to access device and non-user driver level features. PERIOD. See (Windows Resource Protection) or (Services Hardening) that are also a part of UAC and Vista.
You are bitching cause an application driver or process that wants full control of the OS doesn't just automatically work. You are arguing something completely different...
It would be easier for to freaking read up on UAC and what and why Vista handles security than to keep repeating crap information because you have nothing better to do.
I excluded any 'technical' links, but feel free to search for more 'technical' references to UAC if you still don't understand all the mechanism that it employs.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is that DirectX runs in other environments, like Xbox and Xbox360. If all you're doing is gaming, then you shouldn't be surprised if your box is 'rock solid.'
1) Environments would not be the correct term.
2) XBox and XBox360 both run Windows- XBox is Win2K, XBox360 is XP x64.
This whole thread is based on the premise that Windows crashes, and reliability studies continue to show that since Win2k and XP, crashes are as rare on Windows as they are on any other OS. Vista so far is reporting to be even more stable than any OS, which is a bit surprising.
Windows stability issues is an old tale that needs to finally stop. People stopped bitching about Apple OS 9 when it was replaced with OS X, yet people still make fun of Windows based on the Win9x era.
Windows users don't see crashes, this is not the Win9x kernel era, the 'Windows crashes all the time' myth crap needs to stop once and for all...
don't see that this is true, you can open multiple OpenGL apps at the same time with no problems at all. OpenGL already enables sharing 3D GPU resources between multiple apps.
In your example, DirectX also does this...
However you are arguing that cooperative multi-tasking (applicaiton controlled locking) is just as good as pre-emptive multi-tasking (OS controlled scheduling/locking)...
I think most would agree that Applications 'self' managing themselves in a cooperative multi-tasking method is a horrible solution when compared to an OS controlled multi-tasking solution (ie. pre-emptive, etc.)
When you have EVERY application using 3D aspects or using GPU functions for the UI, for physics, to simple 2D acceleration through the 3D GPU side, which happens every second in Vista, then depending on Application yeilding like OpenGL and DirectX already provide would be a nightmare.
When you have every application dipping into the GPU, you need the OS handling the scheduling or things get ugly really quick.
Your article, however, looks to me like FUD. They picked three of the worst sites on the Internet to test
I did say it wasn't the best 'test'; however, no matter what site is used, there is no reason FF3 should have issues with ANY sites picked.
The plugins are virtually the same, and the 'end user' experience is what is the focus. And FF3 can suck at times for the 'generic' user.
Power users that turn off ads, turn off Flash, etc will possibly not have the same issues and will do fine with FF3 most of the time.
To win the market, they need to do better at covering everyone, not just the power users, as Grandma won't know why some sites are slow or why it keeps crashing/closing.
Besides, why are the arguments that FF3 is a business browser and visiting kids sites is not fair? When did FF become a business only browser?
This is including a dozen or so extensions. I'm a little bit confused by what you mean when you say IE8 outperforms FF3. Is it memory usage? (IE under-reports because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it loading speed? (IE is faster because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it rendering speed? I haven't seen anything to suggest that IE8 is any faster than other IEs, and it still has some nicely broken CSS issues
Interesting you ask, as I just read an article that came away with an initial impression not unlike our own testing.
http://www.crn.com/software/208403208?cid=microsoftFeed
As for IE8 performance... I mean (Load Time, Page Load Times. high content performance on the page, RAM usage, responsiviness, etc.) The difference between IE7 and IE8 is significant, and IE7 wasn't so bad... (IE8 has rewritten everything from script handling, to page composition, etc.) If it wasn't from MS, it would be a browser people would be proud of in terms of performance gains.
You once again falsely state that IE rides on the coat tails of explorer.exe, this myth needs to die, as this has not been the case since IE6, especially on Vista, where explorer.exe and iexplorer.exe share NOTHING, so it doesn't get a footprint break as many assume because of IE4 Win98's shared process model where Explorer.exe and IE literally shared processes.
In fact even IE6 only marginally shared DLLs with Explorer.exe on XP, and still kept them in their own memory space, consuming just as much RAM as if explorer.exe was involved. (Test yourself, kill explorer.exe, iexplorer.exe doesn't die, and RAM for IE don't change and hasn't since Win98.) (NT doesn't even technically allow for what Win98/IE4/IE5 was doing.)
IE7/IE8 run are not tied to anything, and get no 'shared' benefits. Even in Vista, HTML rendering in folders is not an option, nor Active Desktop (the original desktop WIdgets from Win98). The HTML rendering frameworkis a 'callable' part of Windows, but if these threads/process call it, they get the RAM load, etc, and this not shared, just as if another application used the Mozilla engine, it would still have to load it in its own application space.
So people still claiming that 'IE has advantages' because of 'shared' resources/RAM with Explorer.exe/OS are just spreading a very old myth that needs to finally die, starting here.
Check out the link above, even though it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive test, it hits were are initial reactions are too.
how many applications will state "Designed for Windows XP, Vista, and Wine 1.0" as a supported platform. That will be the metre stick for success IMHO
.NET 3.5 SP1 for some interesting demos of how far WPF has already gone in just a year.)
Quite a few in the non-commerical areana already do list Wine/XP/Vista etc...
However,Wine may be a little late to the game. Virtualization will give us all the features we once needed Wine for if done properly.
The other problem with Wine is the evolution of the Win32/64 API, and how it is slowly being replaced. Vista API technologies are not even on the radar, and have the potential to shake up the next generation of application development. (Search Channel9 on WPF
Microsoft sees a movement away from Win32 before too long, and even current applciations a lot of developers are working on projects that stretch from generic Win32 to fully hybrind Win32/WPF/DirectX all in one application.
If Virtualiation doesn't solve the divide, we still have Wine and Mono, and for any future, some of the backend of the current Linux kernel will need to extend to handle hardware with the same levels of abstraction, or shoving DX to OpenGL will not be enough when some of the core aspects of WPF is based around 3D UI that uses aspects of the OS to schedule and manage the 3D aspects so that two applications don't fight for 3D GPU resources, and currently only Vista's design allows for this.
(Didn't mean for this post to go negative, as there is a congrats to the Wine peeps in order, and even if Wine translation doesn't last forever is meeting a lot of people's needs now.)
Our internel tests show FF3 has some holes in terms of performance and stability.
From sluggish behavior on some sites, to full crashes, to DEP violations - it just doesn't feel like a release product.
There is no reason a vanilla install without flash should flip a DEP consistently on some sites, no matterhow badly the sites are coded. (Testing occured across several test machines, and hard core FF fanbois in our tech team. DHTML ads seemed to be at the heart of some crashes, as when a specific ad was loaded, the browser would pop Vista/XP's DEP protection.)
Performance also did hold up to Opera or even IE8 Beta1, which is a bit alarming.
The performance and stability differences got a lot worse with flash, but that is almost expected in the FF world, although flash doesn't have the same level of causing instability or loss of performance on IE7/IE8 for whatever reason.
FF3 is faster and more reliable than FF2, and it is faster than IE7, but not more reliable. IE8 for an early beta outperforming FF3 is sad and a bit scary, and may be the return of MS picking up marketshare, especially with the extra protected modes on Vista.
If you are running IE7 or FF2, I say go grab FF3, the speed is worth it, even with the occasional crashes.
Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I don't think we're even getting that.
Texture size and number of objects in a scene on Crysis would be the best examples, there is a difference. Games are moving to levels (especially for HD or 1920x1200&up players) that the texture limitations of DX9.0c can't bring the detail needed, and this is just one 'tiny' aspect of DX10.
http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2007/09/18/dx10_part3/page3.html
Bundling it into Vista is bad, for a slew of reasons, and the shit they've pulled with several 'Vista only' titles,
DX10 has specific reasons why it only runs on Vista. Go ask the people hacking the libraries for XP. They will run, but it expects the OS to be handling aspects of the GPU that XP isn't doing.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/2/14/7060
DX10 is designed around Vista because it expects GPU RAM Virtualization to be available from the OS. (Only Vista can do this) DX10 expects even 'in-game' threads/processes to be prioritized and handled by the OS, and only Vista can do this because it has a pre-emptive scheduler for the GPU, XP don't (in fact no other OS has one). To put these things in XP would be to make a full WDDM for XP, and that is not quite so easy.
The DX10 stuff like this is a tie over from the XBox360 development team, and DX10 is what MS and Robbie learned to take gaming forward on the PC.
As for the 'Vista Only' titles, there were reasons for them at the time. For example Halo 2, as its online play is Games for Windows Live, and at the time used Vista's communication framework, and Live for Windows (the Gaming connection) was a Vista only technology. So the Halo 2 development went forward with these considerations, and other internal optimizations in the game just exepcted the Vista WDDM to be there, etc. Microsoft went back and wrote Live Games for Windows for XP from the ground up. (Hence some of the new networking features in XP SP3, just to support it.)
So it may have seemed nefarious, but was not a con, just a platform specific feature and optimization design, pure and simple... Sadly MS was counting on NVidia and ATI to have their WDDM drivers at XP levels at release of VIsta, and this didn't happen. When MS jumped in with NVidia and ATI and 'helped' their driver development the fruit of this was seen around June 07, as Vista was catching to XP in gaming performance, and by Sept 07, had equaled it.
I see absolutely nothing to recommend Vista over XP, at this time or in the near future.
This is where Microsoft's marketing sucks. They should do like Apple and list every tiny feature.(Remember the 300 list about Leopard?) If Microsoft did a list like this for Vista, it would be around 10,000 items in their list.
If I had time this morning, I could take your circumstances and make a very credible case for Vista. I also understand where you are coming from as Vista is a plumbing and architecture shift, they burned their time to build more features based on these changes with the iniitial dump of Longhorn. Windows 7 is basically going to be a showcase of what is already in Vista, since it doesn't have any major architecture changes planned.
Hardly a year out of date. The figures you post are one month old, and involve Vista SP1 final, vs SP3 of XP. I admit I am impressed by the evening out that Vista has managed to achieve, in those tests.
Ok, year was a bit of tongue in cheek.
A lot of people didn't realize that NVidia and ATI had to write the Vista WDDM drivers from scratch, as it is a dramatic different model than XPDM. From letting Vista do scheduling to RAM virtualization and handing over more to the OS from core driver level to even Aero Composer.
And even though I think NVidia and ATI could have done better at launch, as they didn't provide drivers to beta testers
These are spot on target, mod up...
(I don't have any points left)
DirectX 10 as a selling point is a joke, with the accompanying baggage that is Vista all it does is slow games down, and none of them look any better for it yet
1) There hasn't been a real DX10 released to date. All DX10 games are hybrid DX9 games with DX10 features like larger textures strapped on. When you see a title that is DX10 ONLY, then the performance DX10 offers will be noticeable, until then, all we are getting is eye candy.
2) If you are going to argue DX10 is bad, then explain to everyone how larger texture sizes for more detail is a 'bad thing'... (I know this is just one example, but semi-important.)
3) With NVidia pushing Physics, after Microsoft begging them to adopt to an open Physics model almost 4 years ago, it is down right ironic watching NVidia today. (This was part of the pissing match of the XBox to XBox 360 timeframe, and why MS designed their own GPU with early DX10 concepts, like Physics available on the GPU.)
4) With games implementing 'fragmented' physics implementations, it will hurt ATI and NVidia more than help them, and NVidia is the donkey pushing the cart here. DirectX10 specficially provides a common framework for doing physics and supplying the interface to games so that people don't have to look for CUDA-NVidia, Aegis, etc...
DX10 can do GPU physics and opens this world to developers because of the Vista WDDM, that multi-tasking the processes to the GPU - 3D is no longer cooperative multi-tasking like XP, and surprisingly you would think tech geeks at SlashDot even would, go, oh that is cool, pre-emptive GPU at the OS level. (No OpenGL or DirectX yielding needed.) Vista also provides SMP GPU processing. (Hopefully SLI and Crossfire will die a slow horrible death once XP is dead.)
NVidia is still making their GPU technology based on pre-Vista world technology, because they don't want to break with the XP market. Once the XP break is designed into the GPU, and Vista is required for the multi-core, blah, blah features, we will see some really nice GPU technologies that will spin heads.
As for your comments about Vista being slower than XP in gaming, you are a year behind.
Here read a few pages:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302499,00.asp
About Sept of 07, the drivers caught up and passed XP on a lot of games (SLI is the exception, as they can be equal or XP has an edge). This is why when you look at reviews at Tom's and other sites they are all using Vista for baseline profiling GPUS/Video cards.
The only 'bad' thing about a lot of the review sites, they don't respect the whitepaper on how to test a 'new' Vista install, and are running benchmarks while Vista is doing background I/O or other really stupid stuff.
1) Verizon is only dropping content from THEIR servers. (People act like the govt or evil Democrats want to police everyone, yet if Verizon was FORCED to carry content on their servers, the argument would be the evil govt making them do it.) Pick a side of the fence before you stand up and start yelling.
2) Anyone else think Newsgroups are a bit dated, and should probably go away? Reading above someone described Newsgroups as a bulletin board to share files. WTF? The NNTP goes back far before people were sharing anything but conversations. Additions to drop text based binaries into the system was a hack originally.
We have too many technologies that replace the original USENET, and in all honesty, do people not realize the bandwidth DOES COST by propagating copies all over the place? Shall we just say, it isn't very efficient or effective as it now exists in comparison to other technologies that have grown up on the internet.
Verizon can do what they want with their servers, and the people bitching apparently don't even realize 90% of the ISPs out there don't provide any NNTP servers.
Back to the govt and Democrat argumetns I have read above, are people insane? The Republicans are tapping 100% of the backbone of the internet and archiving as much as possible, and yet people want to call out Democrats for suggesting a company like Verzion that is HOSTING the illegal content, should probably self regulate themselves. (Sounds more like what a freaking libertaring would say, not a social democrat).
I guess when something is bad or goes wrong, whatever you don't like, your mind finds a way to blame it.
South Park should do a 'Blame Microsoft' or 'Blame Democrats' song, so this type of mentality gets made fun of a bit more and people will stop this crazy shit.
Really? When, exactly, did we break any of the laws of physics?
I should restate 'known laws of physics' so you don't try to make this a wording argument...
Newtonian physics were grand and unbreakable from a science point of view until a little man named Einstein showed up and, and every since, Netwon's laws were being broken all the time.
We assume we know, but always have to leave room for what we don't know. This is why science is living and breathing, and not a dead set of principles to never be challenged again.
If you want static laws, pick a religion, not science...
Powered by hydrogen means they are converting Hydrogen with oxygen to water
Um, no...
Powered by hydrogen means BURNING hydrogen. Think BIG TANK OF SPACE SHUTTLE...
It does NOT MEAN converting it back to water. (Exhaust is water because of unburnt hydrogen and oxygen recombining, but that is a small percentage)
1) Physics laws are broken all the time as science moves forward. Science is accurate and obsolute, until it is proven wrong, this is how sciences work.
2) Separating hydrogen from water is NOT breaking any form of phsyics. The question would be the chemical/energy cost to do it.
For something to think getting hydrogen out of water is UBER crazy talk, doesn't realize that the laser printer on their desk is creating ozone by the electrical charges bouncing oxygen atoms around.
Using water as energy is not hard, converting it to a 'useful' form of energy that is more than the energy required to convert it or break it apart it is the trick, but wouldn't break any Physics Laws...
The main reason I'll never get a 360 is because I've seen how much Microsoft cares about supporting their customers
And I would argue the same, but against Sony... I have seen how they treat their SOE customers, and my spouse was directing manager (and store manager) at GameStop for several years.
Sony treated customers like crap from my spouse's point of view, and would slap me if I brought home a Sony product. From 'still smoking' PS2's being returned that burst into flames, to features removed from consoles without even telling the retail market. The return rate on PS2 compared to Xbox was over 10 to 1, and 30% of PS2 returns were due to fire or smoke.
Sony buried these stories and would often even say it was the user's fault and just deny any recourse for repair. This is why GameStop and GameCrazy were selling the hell out of replacment warranties.
Also look at crap they do, like the PS3 and the software emulation they slipped into the PS3 after touting full hardware level emotion engine compatibilty with PS2. (Some units have it, some don't, nice...)
Microsoft screwed up on the 360 replacement of the 3 rings of death. It was a design error, but the techs handling the calls at the call center level were the first level of problems with this, as upper level people at Microsoft had assumed the customers were being taken care of, no matter what.
With the original XBox, even out of warranty, if your system died (usually HD or DVD failure), all you had to do was call them. There was an unspoken policy to get working units back in customers hands as soon as possible, warranty or not.
When the upper brass (like Robbie) got word the tech response team for XBox was not doing this for 360 customers, shit hit the fan on several levels in the company. This is when the 3yr warranty was turned on and all previous jilted customers were not only compensate but also given everything but a hand job.
Sony to this day will still not fix PS2s that are still exploding, less than a month old. (Go talk to a Game store manager, they will have stories for you that will make Sony seem a lot less nice to the user than you could ever imagine Microsoft to have been.)
Sony oversold the capabilities of the PS3, and still try to do that, instead of being honest and explaining the extra cost is for blu-ray, and it may or may not meet the 360 in graphics or performance.
Their whole TWO HDMI ports and dual 1080p displays at the run up to their release was nothing but massive lies, and people still think the PS3 can do this stuff, and it can't.
Microsoft never lied about the 360, the project manager of the 360 team is someone that has a lot of street and professional credibility, so the 360 marketing was cautious to not even imply something out of the range of the product. (Even the XBox emulation was down played, as only being a few titles, and don't expect less popular games to ever run, yet their emulation is transparent to the player 99% of the time, and keeps adding tons of OBSCURE even game titles all the time. I was playing a couple of games last week on a 360 that are not even on the official list, so it better than adverstised even.)
(My personal preference is based on the games I play, and from the original Buffy (ya corny) to Halo and MechAssualt on Live, the PS2/PS3 doesn't offer the same quality of gaming experience, especially for the $5 a month Live fees. Live is top notch, and the 360 features and Blade/Dashboard are simple, but powerful, being everything from a media extender for media center pcs to a great online video store for HD movies.
PS3 Home looks interesting, but after having been burned by SOE from SWG, to EQII, to Matrix, (and the list goes on.), I would like to see a social MMO experience on consoles outside of GamePlay, I just no longer have faith in SOE/Sony doing the concept any justice. (Especially since the Home features keep getting reduced the longer it is delayed. (Smaller environments, less people in shared areas, more instancing of social areas, etc etc.)
Their ongoing commitment to open source can only help too. If there really has to be another monopoly, sorry but I'd much prefer Google to MS
I prefer neither, and if I had to pick one, it wouldn't be Google, as they have too many fingers in your email, searches, and every ad you have clicked on. They know more about you than you do, and far more than the average user realizes. (Even using Firefox kicks extra user information to Google because of their deal. Microsoft don't even allow MSN or Live to obtain information from IE uers like this.)
Microosft also doesn't allow hotmail or live mail to be data mined and paired up with MSN or Live search, or the end user's PCs. (They are very strict about this type of stuff, having worked with the MSN data centers, you would be surprised how much of a no no this type of crap is.)
Yet it is something Google does, admits to doing, and users don't find concern with it, but will scream about Windows update asking for driver information based on what hardware you have installed that isn't used or stored outside your computer.
Google's online advertising is the evil that needs to be feared, as it has become their big monster, and revenue giant. So it will demand feeding from every portion of Google and google technologies.
Even Google Earth reports places you look at to the Google advertising monster.
They claim the email data mining, search monitoring, firefox monitoring, and every other freaking feature that reports back ot the Google advertising monster is so their ads are more accurate, but wtf business is it of theirs if you are looking at Paris? Do you really need better ads with 'Trips to Paris' on the sites you vist?
1) This is really none of their business, and is invasive. (Especailly since it is very fine print or hidden for most users.)
2) Aquiring massive user data is never a good thing, especailly when we have seen ATT & Verizon hand over information like this to governments without legal standing.
3) It is an under-handed form of censorship based on the ads you see from them alone, in addition to how it restricts your usage of their services.
4) From adversting influence alone, Google is becoming the voice of the internet. If Google doesn't like A, B, or C, sites that depend on Google advertising revenue can't say anything good about A, B, or C. (And this is happening in limited forms already, what if the Google advertising Monster wants even more?) I have already seen strong IT based publications and sites pull and 'REDO' stories based on pressure from Google.
If Microsoft was doing what Google does, they would have been yanked into court by now and beat like a dirty rug for doing this stuff to users. Yet Google pretends they are the 'do no evil' company and everyone belives them. Oh well, Apple has called Macs the first 64bit computer, and still calls OS X and Mac's 64bit to this day, and yet OS X is still 32bit. So maybe marketing is reality...
What is NTFS? Is that that primitive file system that needs defragging all the time and takes forever to format a HD with that file system?
Ok, this misinformed Bumpersticker logic has to stop, and now...
NTFS may be a bit long in the tooth, but it has taken 15 years and ZFS to catch up to NTFS on a number of features. And even with that said, ZFS, still lacks several important features that is just expected to be there by people using NTFS.
Can't believe I'm going to use quick Wiki here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs
If you want 'technical' information, go freaking read the NTFS whitepapers, or even get a academic code release version of how and why it works WITH SOURCE code. There are important reasoning to the technology of NTFS, especially in terms of performance and features just not currently found in ANY OTHER File System made, and this even includes ZFS, that gets close.
Back to the myth. Does the poster know why NTFS will fragment a bit more than older File System technologies? Apparently No...
NTFS has copy of write and snapshot features, this adds to the fragmentation on a volume by the nature of the way snapshots and copy on write operations are handled.
This feature (snapshots/copy on write) is a MAIN FEATURE of ZFS, so if OS X moves to ZFS, it will have the same inherent added fragmentation as NTFS. Whoops, guess you should be making fun of something you are getting as an UPGRADE in terms of features.
1) Microsoft never said NTFS didn't fragment, they said it was less prone to fragmenting that DOS's FAT/FAT32, which is TRUE.
2) Microsoft did state NTFS's fragmentation was not as great of a performance issue compared to FAT/FAT32 because of how NTFS's lookup behavior works, making no additional fragmentatin lookup seeks, like FAT does. This means it can get the file locations and read it in a swipe, even if it is in 1000 fragments.
3) Microsoft has always stated snapshot and copy on write features of NTFS would mean it will always have a bit more fragmentation than 'simpilier' file systems, like OS X and most default Linux installs use today.
Just to recap:
When/if Apple adds ZFS to OS X, its inherent level of fragmentation will be equal to NTFS, because it is the nature of the File System design features of both that prevent this trade off for more advanced features.
Also, people do realize that NO FS is fragmentation free, even the current mainstream file systems in OS X, right?
OS X runs a background defragmentation utility, just like Vista does. There is nothing hard or special about this. (Vista has a low I/O priority added to the inherent NTFS priority abilities, making backgroun operations like defragmenting seamless in terms of performance to the user.)
ZFS is good and finally steps up to the plate on some important and modern File System features long needed. It still is young and lacks inherent encryption, file level quota management, and other little features, but with some good support will be a good alternative to NTFS in the UNIX world. NTFS is far from primative or old in terms of features, as it has been the File System to live up to or beat outside of Microsoft.
However, NTFS is MS Intellectual property and MS probably won't be giving up the code to it anytime soon. I actually wish Sun and Microsoft had a better relationship, as it would be nice to see a unified File System technology across all platforms, and a combination of Sun's ZFS work and NTFS would be a freaking awesome mix of technology in terms of File System features, and performance.
NTFS is nothing to mock, especially when you are responding to an article talking about Snow Leopard getting ZFS which will present the same issue for OS X you are making fun of NTFS for...
Google is by nature of progression being too big and no matter how 'good' the leaders want the company to be, the competitive nature is shoving them to the very dark side. (Especially when Google is essentially a marketing company that makes money off of ads and market manipulation.)
It is like taking the the industry's two biggest's evils and putting them in one company model.
Take Apple's (less than truthful and borderline brainwashing) marketing team, and combine this with a company out growing its footprint with so many internal groups and people working with 'competitive' emerging technologies (like Microsoft of the early 90s) and you will get one of the biggest and evil company models in history.
Google digging through GMail years ago should of been the first 'heads-up', but their recent 'embrace, extend, use for the gain, not the consumers' mentaility has taken over tons of OSS projects that originally had no 'questionable' back doors, like Firefox does now with its search monitoring and Google ties that it easily hands the data to at any request.
As for Yahoo, they took a phone book model, moved to a real search engine (finally) and then was able to survive with gaming and IM (online gaming communities being the key for them). Yahoo has market share, not technology that anyone wants. Yahoo doesn't have internal development that is more advanced than Google or Microsoft when it comes to community, development, or search technologies. It would be more of a win for Google, as Google would get a solid IM technology, where MS doesn't need IM or any of the other services.
So I think it is good that Google will eat up Yahoo, so it will go away, but the warning on the label, it is giving more power to ONE company, and sadly this company (Google) is no longer by nature alone a 'do no evil' company, any more than Microsoft of the 90s was.
People act like Microsoft tried to use Windows around 1995 to kill off other companies, but people forget during this whole timeframe and Internet movement, Microsoft was heavily investing in MSN and online technologies, but the Win95 and Win98 OS CDs installed icons and installatino software for everything from AOL to Compuserve, as well as Java and other crap that Microsoft did not produce, most of which being competitive software outside the Windows division.
Google needs a big reign in, or a self check, if not as they doing now, will be bigger and far more evil than Microsoft... And be manipulating the online media with their ad control, like they have already done with their anti-MS shoves to tech journalists.
And in the fragile online world, all it sometimes takes is a mild threat or offering a free venue and some hardware...
Chris P. and his free Macs, just all of sudden deciding he hates Vista because HP wouldn't update their driver for his ancient scanner/printer, and this leading him to love Macs based on usage and 'technical' reasons. And the printer/scanner didn't work any better under OS X, but he failed to admit this part of 'his' story.
However having some contact with him, he admitted he really didn't understand the technology and his defense was that he was not a journalist or a tech person and was just in the entertainment business.
Yet he did 'technical' videos and blogs about OS X and Vista during this time that was information he 'obtained' from both Apple and anti-MS companies of interest, and was using their material because it was easier for him. And yet he made news off all this, and mislead a lot of people in the process for a couple of free computers and guaranteed venues for his 'show'.
Anyone that doens't keep one eye open on Google will find history repeating itself. Even the firefox ties should be enough to scare the crap out of users. Add in Yahoo IM, and their moving 'mobile' presence with a bit of 'borderline' Apple type marketing, and everyone will be racing to screw themselves when Google says, boo, let alone the amount of IT information they already control in the onlin
The optical drive speed dropped 14% from 42 Mbit (PS2 4X DVD) to 36 Mbit (PS3 1x BD), but the system gained a harddrive for caching. Sorry, it's not "significantly slower".
Ya that is so cool of them to make a kludge for their design error, so it only affect 90% of the games, hoping the caching will do it part for the 10% designed to deal with it.
>>in addition the 'cell' processor that 'didn't need' a GPU
Are you a fucking retard?
Why are you looking for a date in your league?
Here are a couple links, since Google might be too hard for you. Next time just google it yourself, especialy before you post and make yourself look like an ass by being an ass.
The Sony CELL/PS3 plans were all around the web, no GPU needed, etc. It is mentioned in virtually every technical article from before the PS3, during its development, and even is noted when Sony gave up on PS3's CELL doing graphical rendering and called in NVidia late in the game.
The GPU in the PS3 (RSX) is actually slower than a vanilla off the shelf NVidia 7800 GPU, as it doesnt have the 7800 full bandwidth, and performance is between a 7600 GPU and a 7800 GPU.
But this is better than Sony sticking with trying to cut corners and suck marginal GPU performance out of the CELL as they planned all along.
http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/01/11/gates-ps3-will-never-have-graphics-advantage/
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/playstation3.ars
The reason GTA4 runs at a lower resolution on the PS3 is because they can do all kinds of nifty effects with the card that aren't all geometry, textures, and shading. They can do a slight motion blur, for example, and have almost everything 100% bump-mapped. In reality, you don't notice that the resolution is slightly lower.
:)
Um, this is what PS3 owners like to tell themselves before they start crying at bed time maybe...
However, the PS3 is using a virtually off the shelf core Geforce 7800 GPU. The XBox 360 is using a variant of an off the shelf ATI 2600 (prior to the 2600 GPU ever existing.)
The XBox 360 GPU is a unified GPU and handles all DX10 features and effects, the 7800 GPU DOES NOT. (See DX10 and the specifications for Vista came from the XBox 360 team, this is why Vista can kick some serious FrameRates for games and still be a general consumer OS.)
Sure the PS3 could run in the XBox 360 resolution. However, it would lose FPS, and also increase load times.
Don't forget your precious blu-ray that is so freaking slow the game has to be copied to the PS3 Hard Drive to keep up with the XBox 360 DVD player. (Mircrosoft even kindly gave Sony a heads up the slow nature of both HD-DV and Blu-Ray would be a serious issue for fast playing games that load large worlds virtually. (Most games have 'load screens' which are just hell longer on PS3, GTAIV doesn't have that luxury)
The 'blur' effect you are referring to is what they used on the PS3 title to help 'reduce' how noticeable it was there was no anti-aliasing. (See the XBox 360 is not only doing HD resolutions, but anti-aliasing the scene as well.)
The same 'blur' effect has been used in many other games for a long time when Video cards couldn't handle anti-aliasing, especially PC games. Take City of Heroes even on the PC, nice game, has two direct blur settings for distant objects, as they artifact REALLY BAD when there is no anti-aliasing. So if your card can't do it the right way, you flip on the distance blur and the non-aliased distance artifacts are smudged on the screen. Almost anti-aliased quality, but only works well on distant scenes or where detail can be smudged away.
Now if you really want to try to argue the 'blur' effects are something the XBox 360 can't do, I suggest you go grab a whitepaper on the GPU differences between the 360 and the PS3, and even pick up the whitepapers on the consumer counterparts, the NVidia 7800 and ATI 2600 - trust me when I say there are more than a 'few' features the XBox 360 GPU will do that the older NVidia chip just can't handle.
PS I'm a fan of NVidia, run them in every laptop and most desktops I own, even my old beat around traveling laptop is from 2005 simple early dual-core P4 w/HT and has a 7950GTX mobile GPU... Oh, the funny thing is, that 2005 laptop can run games at a higher FPS than the PS3, and even do it at full 1920x1200. Since even though it is a Mobile GPU, the 7950GTX w/512mb is FASTER THAN THE GPU in the PS3. Hope this makes you sleep better at night...
However, if I sue you for $10,000.00 because I think you wronged me. You may go down to the court house and submit a cashiers check for $10,000.00 thereby settling the lawsuit.
At that point there will never be one word of deposition ever given. Clinton (a lawyer) could have done this.
And you just assume he had this kind of money? Even now he don't have this kind of money, and has been making good money with speeches, etc.
So if I sue for 1 billion and alledge that you molested my children, causing permanent harm, you will just pay it?
Ok, 50 million, but your job is at stake if you conceal any information? Hmm. What if the courts ruled you had to answer all my questions, even the ones about the secret bondage/slave room? Hmmm? Or even just made you describe in detail every aspect of your sex life, and if you even 'left out' a part of the story, you will lose and also lose your job?
Sound fun yet? There's more...
Maybe if you did more than watch Fox news and maybe picked up a book like:
(No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton - The Supreme Court on Trial (1998)
- Vincent Bugliosi)
-You know, the Manson Dude...
You would find that the supreme court set things into motion that made the whole Clinton impeachment inevitable. Just one tiny mis-statement during ANY OFFICIAL sworn testimony and congress could have shoved impeachment through like they did. The definition of Sex as given by the Judge, was answered correctly by Clinton, he technically never lied.
However, because he was hiding the Monica thing, he was messing with intent and deception, and that is how they got it shoved through. So he didn't even have to mis-speak to get impeached, just not be fully candid about the subject.
I do suggest you find the book I mentioned above, he wrote about and predicted virtually everything that happened before it happened from a legal standpoint, except the book was a 'worst case' senerio when it was published, only to be outdone by the Republicans...
Speaking of 90s impreachment hearings, anyone catch Bob Barr on the talk shows? Rejecting everything he basically did in the 90s and early 00s, and hating what Bush has done to the country and constitution as much as any educated person, like a left winger? From a Clinton hater to being on the same side of most of the issues and policies - talk about a flip flop uh? Maybe he is getting old and scared about selling his soul to the Devil/Republicans. Maybe he sees the international war crimes meetings (which will happen) and is doing a save my ass like Scott or maybe he is like Brooke that finally just got sick of the toe-the-line mentality and told the GOP to go fuck themselves in the RIGHT ear.
1) ATI is NOT in the United States. (Yes I know AMD/ATI blah blah) The main point to this is the fab plant and who owns it?
2) Microsoft did design the GPU in concept, but worked with some bright people from ATI and other GPU gurus for the specifics. People can make fun of MS design a GPU, but this isn't their first time around the block, and also gave them the intimate change of pairing GPU hardware and OS technologies.
Look at the PS3, in addition the 'cell' processor that 'didn't need' a GPU to the shipping PS3 with the 'cell' and full Geforce 7800 in it, and yet between the two technologies it still can't hold framerates or do anti-aliasing like the Microsoft designed XBox 360. (See recent games like GTAIV where it runs at lower resolutions on the PS3.) (And I won't even go into how slow Blu-Ray makes the device for a game player being significantly slower than DVD and why MS refused to put HD-DVD or Blu-ray in the console as the primary drive. Gamers hate load times and crap framerates.)
3) The 3 Rings of Death is about the Thermal sensor plate and flexing due to high heat. 99.9% of the time. (Also the 3 Rings does not always mean death, most units continue to work once they cool down, etc.) (Google It)
4) As for MS Saving Money for using a non US fab plant and then having to move back to one, sure this is possible, but technically there would be little to no difference UNLESS Microsoft also changed the specification of the chip between the move process. I don't care if the fab plat has Donkeys and a Mule pulling carts out front, the silicon is created according to specification, and you don't get much more exact than this level of specificatinos.
The real story here would more likely be the plastic/plate fab company that was creating the inner X plate/case holder that was warping and causing the 3 Ring problem, a) it was the real problem not the chip and b) would more likely fail specs easier than silicon.
Trying to find quick feature anwser...
I'm not an iPhone fanboi by far, but I do friends and clients that like them. (Yes I prefer Windows Mobile because of the massive feature differences, like remoting into my desktop or servers.)
However, does v2 have Voice recognition and digit dialing? This has been one of the biggest hang ups of people I know, most being bluetooth users and have been clicking their ear piece or stereo headset and saying "Dial Auntie Mame Mobile" or "Dial 555-1212" or other Start Camera and Lookup Contact commands Newer multimedia phones even let you do "Play Madonna" from your stereo headset.(My 80+ grandma uses bluetooth, and wouldn't drag a phone of out her purse just to look at the screen and find a contact to dial by hand anymore.)
I can't find it mentioned anywhere, if anyone has a heads up or tip on this must have feature, post a link...
Oh, this was all because I was too general in my statement about what UAC is capable of doing.
...you are a fucking whack job.
So I should say, UAC CAN AND DOES ON SOME APPLICATIONS enable security problems to self elevate, but there are ALWAYS exceptions, like with software that is using LOW LEVEL DRIVERS AND MODIFYING freaking volumes.
I get it..
You bring up (DeviceIoControl) as an example? You have no fucking idea what you are even typing let alone talking about. Next time search for something you understand that could possibly back your point up.
Opening a USER-MODE DRIVER VOLUME on Windows via Win32 really has nothing to do with utilties like TrueCrypt or PGP that can handle boot time drive encryption that has to COMMUNICATE directly with NT at the same FREAKING LEVEL NTFS DOES.
Do you not understand how retarded this sounds at this point...
"should know that Vista Home and Vista Business do not have disk encryption (BitLocker)
Vista Business DOES HAVE BITLOCKER, you could have at least looked it up, especially when you are using this as a general fact to establish your reason behind why bitlocker sucks.
-Let me guess because I know little details like this off the top of my head because I'm not insane, it makes me a MS fanboi in your MS hating eyes?
As for the way Bitlocker works, you understand about 2 out 100 apparently, I feel sorry if you do any IT professionally, your clients would be sad people.
I am completely finished with you and your idiot posts, you are dismissed...
TrueCrypt is a standard application fully compatible with Windows XP. You can keep saying it isn't, but it's not going to help you.
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux
Most people know wtf TrueCrypt is, maybe YOU don't. IT is a DISK ENCRYPTION utility. Therefore, it more than a simple WIN32 applicaiton.
Look, freaking look...
Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
You are either insane or retarded to think that something that is modifying a volume would NOT NEED more than Win32 ACCESS on NT.
Which means it is NOT JUST WIN32. (Just like it also wouldn't be ONLY Cocoa or KDE on OSX or Linux)
The same is also true of PGP encryption software, which a lot of our clients use in the Insurance industry, and yes the application had to be rewritten to support Vista because of the 'pre-boot' and 'low level (NT) access' it needs to freaking work.
What is really sad is you keep mentioning this like it is a STANDARD Win32 level application, and IT IS NOT. A standard Win32 application would ONLY BE USING Win32 APIs. (Maybe I should give you a lesson on APIs too?)
These applications and their compatibility from XP to Vista HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UAC in Vista. (The Security system in NT has NOT changed since 1993, it always has been very robust with ACLs and is a token/object based security model. Vista just FORCES it on, and no longer allows applications to run without regard for system security; hence, the freaking need for a UAC system.)
The irony to this conversation is that tools like TrueCrypt and even PGP are becoming obsolete in the Windows world as people move to Vista. NT has had file level encryption for 10 years, and Vista itself added full volume level encryption(called BitLocker), and these two basic aspects of Vista replace the need for tools like TrueCrypt or PGP volume software.
How on earth did you get to SlashDot and a point where you can type by yourself, and NOT REALIZE software that is managing volume encryption would actually use lower level OS functions?
Holy freaking batman crap crazy...
Again, a Win32 application written for XP that requires administrator rights anytime during its execution will NOT run on Vista. The function of the program will fail. For example, TrueCrypt. Before it was Vista-ready it did not work, because it required admin privileges. The developers had to IMPLEMENT requests for elevation to invoke the UAC prompts. So what you wrote (that legacy apps will run) is false.
You can keep saying this, but it is not true.
As for simply NOT BEING ABLE TO RUN because of UAC, NO... Any application can obtain elevation or even via compatibility tab be forced to launch with elevation. Also Manifest or internal Vista Application compatibility check can also mark this application and allow what is needed or virtualize as needed. (See Vista Application Compatibility Service, WHICH IS A PART of the UAC system.)
TrueCrypt? OMG...
Additionally, you are citing an application that tries to access areas of the OS that are protected. TrueCrypt was NOT A STANDARD Win32 application if it was elevating itself to access device and non-user driver level features. PERIOD. See (Windows Resource Protection) or (Services Hardening) that are also a part of UAC and Vista.
You are bitching cause an application driver or process that wants full control of the OS doesn't just automatically work. You are arguing something completely different...
It would be easier for to freaking read up on UAC and what and why Vista handles security than to keep repeating crap information because you have nothing better to do.
http://edge.technet.com/Media/Vista-UAC-PM-Interview/
(Silverlight Video explaining UAC - Silverlight runs on Linux, OS X, Windows)
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/00d04415-2b2f-422c-b70e-b18ff918c2811033.mspx?mfr=true
(IT Whitepaper with basic descriptions that explain part of what you are not getting)
http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/05/27/windows-vista-30-rootkits-0.aspx
(Screencast of UAC for freaking idiots)
I excluded any 'technical' links, but feel free to search for more 'technical' references to UAC if you still don't understand all the mechanism that it employs.
Happy reading/watching...