Never heard about Ming, haven't you? Ok there is no fancy GUI but you can create some SWF contents with your notepad...
Awesome, an 'experimental', non-standard hack to enable a back road way to create Flash content that gets crunched into their format.
Actually, I have head of Ming and a couple of other attempts, but can you do EVERY feature in Ming? Is Flash designed to be a textual based content (XML/XAML)? Cart before the horse just doesn't work as well, no matter how efficient the cart or horse is.
Then add in the fact that SilverLight is scripting and language agnostic, Open, a submitted Open Specification, and you can literally make code adjustments on the server via telnet.
Open source, but the patent liability is really ugly.
And Flash is better?
MS Actually starts splitting technology and starts dropping content into the OSS world where we can read the freaking code, and yet people still bitch it isn't enough and defend freaking Flash of all things?
Holy crap, just rename this site "Anything but Microsoft"...
Just because it is free does not mean it is full feature or non-proprietary, how that eludes people scares me.
PS Don't forget the link to download the free 'trial' of Flex Builder 2, and also don't forget the WPF/.NET and Silverlight SDKs are all free since that seems important in your argument.
It looks like Microsoft is getting desperate about the dismal rates of Silverlight adoption by consumers and developers since its release earlier this year
This is just about as ridiculous as it gets. Let's at least get 'facts' out of the way.
Face #1, The final version of Silverlight 1.0 was released just a couple of months ago. Even the designers (Blend, etc) haven't had full final version native support for over a month. Do you really think MS is 'desperate' that in a month or two every web site in the world hasn't converted?
Fact #2, MS already has a large following of providers preparing and starting stream and video based web video content sites based on Silverlight. Since it can do things like flip channels as fast a TV, etc companies looking to provide multi-stream content are going with Silverlight as it is the only viable solution - let alone the only multi-platform solution.
Fact #3, a majority of Video pushed over the web is already in VC1/WMV format, yes this sounds strange with all the flash/Tube sites, but Windows Media is still either at the very top or close. Silverlight natively uses the same content, so for any site using WMV content already, they will flip to silverlight, as it will increase their user base.
Fact #4, Silverlight is about a 2mb download, I see posts where people seem to think this is a big issue, are these people still using 2400baud modems?
Fact #5, The major version of SilverLight is Version 1.1, and can be downloaded by developers/end users. Version 1.1 is the major version as 1.0 is only the graphical and video portion of the technology with limited UI abilities. (1.0 is the basic drawing and compatibility layers, and MS doesn't expect most people to consider Silverlight until 1.1, that is why the 'standard developer version they offer is 1.1, not 1.0) Silverlight 1.1 adds in the UI basic interface technologies like simple control events, additional hit testing, etc. Without 1.1.
The Microsoft Download site has been Silverlight based for a few weeks, but it is a conceptual site, and it is demonstrated to developers of multiple page content areas can interact beyond a single SilverLight Control.
Fact #6, a Silverlight based Website does not mean the entire page is based on Silverlight or the page is shown in only one Silverlight control like Flash based web design is. Silverlight is light enough that each Image element can be replaced with a Silverlight Object instead, and when needed, Silverlight Objects can use standard client/server scripting for communication and functionality between the Objects.
It would be easier to think of Silverlight like a 'fancy' image object that can be scripted, take events, and talk to the client/server and other image objects on the page. This is what makes silverlight ahead of Flash, even before v1.1 is released.
Now with facts out of the way, this makes a freaking difference in the OSS world how? One proprietary company/product is competing against another that is just as nefarious, and they are BOTH winning against ALL OSS solutions.
Maybe OSS should actually be pushing for Silvelight to win, as you can at least create Silverlight content in notepad for free, and aren't forced to buy a massive Adobe illustration package just to put a few pretty buttons or videos on your site.
Even for movies it would be a poor proposition for me, although it may be appealing to a larger group of consumers than music subscription services
I truly do get the initial hesitation most people have, as I also was like, na i'll pass until I spent $30 one month on music online and purchased 5 additional CDs. That was more than have a year of subscription service I could of had and instead of the few songs I got, I would have access to virtually any song made.
As for the movie comparison, the same things were said about HBO when it arrived in the cable market, people never thought it would make it, as it was expensive, limited presentations, easier to go to a movie theater in bigger cities, etc.
Vongo is an extension of Starz, and with the monthly Vongo subscription, you get a live access to the Vongo channel inside Media Center on Vista over the internet, in addition to several thousand movies you can pick to watch at any time at DVD or better quality. So for people that would normally pay the $10 a month to the cable company to get Starz, it would me a better deal for the ones with a Media Computer to pay the money to Vongo and get the channel in addition to on demand free video rentals.
Also remember that none of the subscription services prevent people from buying the tracks or albums, so you can still purchase music if you want to retain rights to it forever and burn it to a CD.
The other thing that is important in this whole debate is HD. Cable companies suck when it comes to HD in general with very little unrestricted QAM broadcasts and pushing consumers into more expensive packages to get TV quality that will be mandated by the Fed Govt in a year anyway.
Then there is the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and a lot of people aren't willing to 'invest' in either media or start a library until things level out and get better established. Until then, people will be more apt to rent movies, and online is a great way to access HD content, already surpassing what you can find in most Blockbuster or Hollywood stores. People talk about the PS3 and how popular it has made Blu-RAY in terms of movie purchases, but the missed topic is XBox Live and the amount of TV and Movie content that is purchased or rented and downloaded in HD format, which far surpassess the entire Blu-RAY and HD-DVD market combined.
As for device features, sure that is a subjective topic, and what is important to one person is not important to another. The point being though, is that the 'VAST' majority of the iPod market is people that don't realize that there are other devices from companies doing MP3 players long before Apple, and have features a lot of people would choose over the iPod if they were aware they existed.
Here is an example: My spouse has a 4GB non-iPod MP3, it does virtually every format of music from WMA to OGG, and also does full MPeg4 Video. It has a slick interface, with both wheel and direction access, is easy to transfer music to, no conversion usually needed unlike the iPod, it also has full V2.0 stereo bluetooth support so it beams music to the car or headset wirelessly, and has a miniSD explansion slot that will take at least 8GB chips when widely available. It also has a higher resolution than the 1st Gen iPod Nano, brighter display, faster display response, and has higher color capabilities making movies watchable on the rather small unit.
It was also half the price of the iPod nano, has the option of using any online store...
So in every aspect in terms of function and features it is superior to the iPod Nano, with several featues far beyond not only the Nano but other iPods as well.
Now the bad part, if you want iPod accessories (cases, adapters, stereo hookups, etc) you are screwed because the market belongs to the iPod.
The point of this is, 99.9% of people that run into my spouse and happen to see or ask about her 'iPod' as they call it, wish they would have gotten one like hers instead of their iPod, and all because they just didn't know
Windows XP was and is a security nightmare. Plain and simple
This kind of discounts your entire post. WindowsXP is based on NT, and even though the admin account was used by default, NT itself and the underlying OS and network environment it ran on were designed to be very secure, even though it was not enforced for home users. (The reason XP was a security problem was everyone was running the equivalent of ROOT, not because the OS or design was inherently flawed. In fact the Security model in NT, is an Object Token based system and is a better design than most *nix implementations when enforced, hence Vista.)
As for WinXP and Win98 performance? You really need to go grab some numbers. If the Computer had 64mb of RAM or more Windows 2000 was 20% faster than Win98, and WindowsXP was 25% faster than Win98.
Yes even XP was faster than both Win98 and Win2k overall, as the granularity changes in the kernel and caching system improved application load times and data access times considerably over Win2k and Win98 couldn't keep up with XPs multi-tasking, thus slowing applications when several processes would bottleneck the OS, also making Win98 less smooth.
The whole WinXP was slow, blah blah blah was nothing but crap and myths of the time, just like what you can read about Vista. People still think Vista is slower than XP, yet as of September the Video Drivers from both ATI and NVidia put Vista ahead of XP in gaming and application performance across the board by 5%. But you don't see that talked about cause it doesn't make the anti-Vista crowd happy. (Go look up performance reviews from June-Sept on Gaming Vista vs XP.)
Vista's Aero being slower is also a myth, as it even pushes FPS up in games running in a Window by 10-20% over Basic (turning off Aero), and applications like Coreldraw to photoshop redraw 5-10x faster due to the GPU usage for some GDI/GDI+ functions and the non-double buffered composer.
There is also the Vista eats the battery faster myth, which is the only one that has a hint of truth, as Vista with 'Aero On using the GPU', does drain the battery faster than XP by about 5min on a 3hr battery life notebook. (Again these reviews are out there, go look them up.)
Yep you are correct on the dates of WinME and WIn2k.
I agree WinMe was the worest Windows version MS ever put out. It just tried to do too much on the fragile Win9x OS. Things like System Restore, etc just didn't work well with a lower performing multitasking OS, especially on a FS that didn't support the transparent copy on write features like NTFS and XP used to implement the features without overhead.
It was also slower than Win2k, which was the final nail in the Win9X generation, as it was an assembly optimized OS, with no Object based security or process structure overhead, and yet was running slower than a portable C OS with significantly more kernel level overhead.
Business is also waiting for Windows 2008 Server for a combined deployment strategy, as Vista's functionality in the business environment increases considerably when paired with 2008 Server.
Windows 2008 also takes advantage of the new deployment mechanisms in Vista, and rolling out Windows 2008 first and then creating the automated VIsta rollouts will be significantly easier than moving the desktops to Vista before 2008 Server arrives. It is also something business is looking forward to, as the ease of automated deployment that is designed into Windows 2008 server and Vista is virtually effortless in comparison to XP, and that is saying something as XP and Win2k were designed for automated deployment.
They all were great within the time the lived. XP was NEVER a decendant of ME. Learn your OS history, please.
Although you are 'technically' correct that Windows 2000 was released between WinME and XP, what is being missed in this argument is that WindowsXP was the FIRST version of the NT based OS that was focused on and designed to specifically replace the consumer level DOS/Win9x OSes.
You are correct that XP is not descended from Win9x or WinME in any way, it is an NT based OS with NO code used from the Win9x era of OSes. (It is was as much of a jump from Win9X/WinME as System 9 was to OS X).
In regard to the article, this is also why the uptake of WinXP was faster than even Windows 2000, as Windows 2000 was the successor to NT4 and was not pushed to home or mainstream consumer users. XP being the first NT version that was designed for and pushed into the mainstream consumer markets had quite an advantage even though Win2K users ignorantly thumbed their noses at it. In contrast to the generation of consumer OSes it was replacing, it was a massive difference in terms of performance and stability. XP not only ran faster than Win98 (the fastest of the DOS/Win9x generation), but it also was significantly more stable and secure than the previous OSes that had no knowledge of any type of security.
So for consumers and home users, XP was good jump, and even just upgrading Win98 or WinME to XP would not only increase the lifetime of the computer, but would fix technical problems in the installation wihtout having to wipe settings, and gave the users a virtually crash free experience.
In the non-iTunes reality, people have been renting Videos online for over 6 years more. Look up Vongo, Cinemanow, Movielink, as well as some of the subscription based music services that also allow limited video and music video downloads.
I like most people in the non iTunes wrapped world have been clicking my media center remote to grab the latest movie online from my chair for a long time now. Yes Media Center 2005 and Vista work great with online Video rental services, it is one of the reasons to pick up a remote for your computer even if you don't use the tuner and DVR functions of media center. (Let alone the online content access to stuff normally found on the old TVLinks sites automatically available inside Media Center)
The only news here is the Fox deal, not the 'renting' of freaking movies, even though it is a new model to Apple.
I know that 'owning' the rights to music is a great plan or getting access to stuff the Windows world has had for years is always exciting to Apple users and they think Jobs invents it everytime, but come on...
As for renting media, I pay my $15bucks a month to Napster or Rhapsody and have access to virtually every song ever made and reload my Creative Zen on a weekly basis with about 1000-2000 new songs. THis also includes loading my Theater computer, and the rest of my family's MP3 players with everything they could even want. How much would that cost in iTunes world?
I guess the part that kills me, is that I have avid iPod and iTunes friends that won't pay for subscription based music, but yet they pay for the deluxe TV/Cable package everymonth or have several XM devices they pay 20-30 bucks a month for, when they oculd be be podcasting and paying a music subscription service cheaper and getting instant access to literally millions of songs as faster as your connection can grab them.
I'm not a personal fan of the Zune, as MS's plans got screwed over by the wireless restrictions, but the model works better. Buy if you want and burn it to CD just like iTunes, or don't and just pay the subscription fee and get access to all their content on a monthly basis.
Consumers are finally taking notice of the 'cable bill' subscription concept and this is driving users to Zunes and non-Apple WMA based devices. Think of it this way, give your kids the option, I can buy you 4Gb Ipod that is cool, but you can only buy 10 songs a month, or I can buy a Windows PlaysforSure or Zune device and for the same money you can download everysong you ever wanted to fill the device.
Kids get the difference here, even if the Apple drones don't. Ipod is cool, but there is the high school and campus crowd of non iPod users that are considered in 'the know' that become more trendy with access to a larger selection of music and videos and movies and TV Shows without having to buy them.
Besides the geeks in the crowds that like the Zens and even cheaper Insigna 4gb players that have better audio support and better video quaility that even the most expensive iPod. Pick up a old Zen M or newer device and not only does the internal screen kill even the new iPods, but the A/V out is DVD resolution giving you a portable Movie jukebox to hook up at any friends house to watch movies on the fly.
I guess the whole iPod thing has left some of us geeks a bit bitter, as we have seen better devices doing what the iPod started years before the iPod, and continue to seen better sounding and more capapble MP3 devices from other companies, but once again Apple's marketing can turn average into spectacular. Maybe instead of bitter, we should just be in awe of Apple's marketing machine and go on our way and buy better quality devices cheaper than iPod with the horrible iTunes lock in 99% of the average users get sucked into.
The Republican Party was one of the inventors of the made for news clips and it has been very big for the past 15 years, and the Bush administration has a whole department that does nothing but make propaganda pieces promoting their policies that are distributed to local news. (Even though highly illegal in the US because it is 'propaganda')
This actually goes back to the Nixon administration, and was part of the bigger Media scandal behind Nixon being taken down. In the constructs of things, it was his information agency that was never reported on much because most news stations and papers were guilty of using their information that was a bigger crime than the Watergate break in.
Do a quick search on topics covered by Noam Chomsky for this story and others in the current media that use these practices.
There are so many canned news reports and 'scripts' written for reporters now it is more common that actual reporting. If you have access to local news stations from several areas of the county, most of the time, high profile and political 'world' or 'national' subject coverage will be word for word or close to word for word from the script that was written for them.
Both sides of the political sides in the US use this, but the Republicans have been the masters of it and don't mind mixing in lies or going for the throat, where the Democratic toned scripts don't cross those lines.
From the people who actually know something about computer security
You 'so' have no idea who I am, or you would just have shit yourself realizing who you responded to with this crap retort.
Your argument was somewhat true several years ago. This is the age of communications and the Internet. Your argument is pursing a tangent because it makes assumptions...
Assumptions like Software and OSes don't automatically report breaches, report back findings of trojans, etc.
Windows is the PRIME example of how your argument fails, as Windows Error reporting in XP has identified TONS of vulnerbilities, attempted exploits, etc. Adding in Defender and Vista's enhanced experience reporting, if a trojan, or spyware or exploit is found or used it is usually in Microsoft's hands long before it has a chance to hit the wild.
Not only have "LESS" vulnerabilities been reported in Windows in the past year, it has also had LESS exploited systems in its history, with a perfect Zero exploits if the user's systems have been patched. This is in the league of OS X, and is not a 1 in a million chance of finding a computer running OS X, this is 90% of the computers on the internet.
If you want to poke at OSes that have had MORE vulnerabilities, AND Exploits, you can look no further than Linux or even the sacred cow BSD. Go look up the records and data breaches over the past year at many government and Universities where data was sitting on secure BSD or Linux servers and 'magically' was taken...
Even the freaking Berkley University themselves had their servers hacked in the past year.
Why haven't you heard about these stories? Well apparently you are not someone in the security 'know'... Go look them up.
These headlines also usually don't make it to SlashDot, remember this is the Faux News of the internet, even though the site's original concept had more honorable intentions of bringing light to the OSS news world, the intential bias of bringing news to OSS has turned into attack tactics of everything that doesn't fit the nice neat OSS ideal, even if it means smacking Linus or other strong OSS advocates around to do so.
PS: My original post was a joke, get a life or sense of humor...
From the Mac-Fans... - If a bank leaves the vault open and doesn't lock the front door, but only has 10 banks located randomly around the country, it is still the best and most secure bank, especially if they have pretty iMarble on the floors.
From the OSS-Fans... - OS X sucks as much as Vista and everyone is evil.
From the Win-Fans... - Holy Shit, we thought our crap sucked more than this.
If true, do you really think Microsoft would 'want' to do this? They have been pretty strong privacy advocates, especially Gates, denying even backdoor access for Bitlocker in a fight several years ago when bitlocker was demonstrated to the FBI.
If the government is FORCING MS to do this, then we should be calling our representatives and not sitting around speculating or smacking on Microsoft.
The whole big brother NSA thing is very much a Republican/Bush/Neo-con era mechanism, and Gates and lots of others at Microsoft vote democrat, even when it was NOT in their best interest as during the DOJ trials of the 90s.
(Look up contributions, MS by far gives to Democratic canidates, and ironically companies that we think are on the side of the little people are ones shoving money toward pro-corporate/authoritarian canidates.)
A) WMA does have better audio quality than MP3, by a factor of 1.5 to 2 times. And this is a good thing as all decoding chips in portable music players all have WMA support, unless it is crippled like the iPod. So you can throw your songs in WMA at 64 or 128 and have almost twice the fidelity of an MP3, especially when you add in better variable bit rate support, etc.
B) WMA does not inherently use or need DRM, and MS themselves don't push DRM, so it is just as free to copy and decode as MP3. The only hitch with WMA is the binary dependancy like many other codecs have, but that is easily wrapped, and MS has provided non x86 WMA formats before as well, just not with DRM that providers have kept asking for with the exception of I64 and AMD/EMT64 that have DRM WMA support. (Besides how many of us are really using non x86/64 architectures?)
Remember Gates said that DRM should be taken off audio downloads in Dec last year before Jobs did in January. He said specifically until the providers stop limiting access to downloaded music that people should just buy CDs if possible to force them to move to a DRM free online model. (And this is right after Zune 1.0 came out.)
1) AVI is not a format, but a wrapper, and the video could be xvid, mpeg or anything else.
2) Vista's DRM only turns on when it encounters a HD Content Protection flag, just like any HD-DVD or Blu-RAY DVD Player does. Broadcast protections are also upheld, just like Media Center XP 2005.
THERE IS NO ADDITIONAL DRM IN VISTA that doesn't exist in XP or OS X, unless you count the fact that XP or OS X can't record TV Shows and can't play HDCP - HD Content.
Your problem is in the codec itself, not with Vista. Go pick up one of the Vista codec packs that people assemble to cover all the free and open codecs.
This Vista DRM Myth crap is beyond ridiculous, especially in the long posts on here that 'actually' believe it and are debating its morality. Why not debate the easter bunny next, it is just as real...
Trick with this, even if they get the libraries to run on XP, the behind the scenes aspects of the WDDM in Vista will be missing for DX10 and Games.
Many DX10 games assume that the OS (WDDM/Vista) is managing GPU Scheduling, handling GPU RAM Virtualization, multi-tasking calls from a single game between scene rendering and GPU Physics, etc.
So there is no doubt you can get DX10 libraries to probably run on XP, but the games will run really horribly if the Game designer is targeting DX10 specifically and expecting the WDDM and Vista to be picking up aspects of GPU management that XP has no clue about.
This is right there in the summary: "The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut." As for what you say about 1Gb being a sweet spot; it is misleading. Vista is unbearably slow on 512Mb. 1Gb is not a "sweet spot" - it's just enough for it to actually run and not crawl. But it still feels slow.
Ok, Vista on 512mb is not ideal, neither is XP on 128mb, but both can run. If you read enough performance reviews, you will find the difference between 512mb and 1GB on Vista is about the same difference as 512mb on XP and 1GB on XP. So Vista is not out of the ballpark in the jump 1GB gives.
Vista can be made to run effectively in 512mb, you just have to know what you are doing. In theory you can disable many of the 'fluff' Vista features and even with 512mb of RAM get Vista to a XP performance level. One of our techs is working on some instructional articles for people that have been moved to Vista or want some of the features like DX10 but don't have a need for some of the non-XP features.
As for the article, this is only 'one' point I mentioned and it was a blanket statement as there are a lot of tech impressions and performance reviews that did not use an upatch RTM version when doing the comparison.
Besides, isn't this a OSS news site, why would people here care if Vista SP1 is faster or not? Why would they care if it is faster than XP?
If it is to mock Vista for needing 1GB to best XP in performance, then why aren't we seeing articles that show Leopard is JUST AS MUCH of a RAM pig in comparison to Tiger, and unless you have 1GB of RAM, Leopard, like Vista will be slower than the previous version.
PS Has anyone paid attention to Vista and performance past the January reviews when the Video drivers for Vista sucked?
Here is a good article that lays out some of the Vista information and lays to rest some of the Vista Myths that everyone here seems to have memorized.
If you are referencing daemons, then No they should not have un-restricted root access either, even if they are running as root, and most daemons certainly do not need to be running at a root level.
Even a daemon that runs at root, if it extends its abilities to 'additional' processes/content then it should be checked for permission or restricted.
You are correct that part of it is cobbled in terms it wasn't designed specifically from the ground up. However for encompassing all the technologies from the Office platform for over 15 years, it is cleaner than most people would have imagined.
Again, it will be easier to refine OOXML than it will to be bring ODF up to the same level of functionality.
Yes OOXML is more complete and has more functionality. As OOXML has standards for and understands everything from audio streams in documents to inherent ink support in place of text. It is also designed to be extensible in a structured format, not just adding a new type and using a zip file like ODF does. Microsoft's design several years ago when Word 2000 was designed was to create a document format that they could keep adding technology too without backtracking, and that is what they did and OOXML and Office 2007 are a result of this.
If the industry closes the books on OOXML, non-Microsoft influence will be once again removed, and they will still dominate more than we probably realize. So even if it becomes a 'competing' standard, it is better to let MS open it up more and standardize it, as the future will have input from people outside Microsoft, where right now even the 3500 complaints would have never made it to Microsoft or the developers, and now it will get to them and be addressed.
Slashdot Mirror
True I forgot this was SlashDot and wasn't a negative MS post.
:)
I will have the editorial copy finalized with sources and even notorized before resubmitting it.
Never heard about Ming, haven't you?
Ok there is no fancy GUI but you can create some SWF contents with your notepad...
Awesome, an 'experimental', non-standard hack to enable a back road way to create Flash content that gets crunched into their format.
Actually, I have head of Ming and a couple of other attempts, but can you do EVERY feature in Ming? Is Flash designed to be a textual based content (XML/XAML)? Cart before the horse just doesn't work as well, no matter how efficient the cart or horse is.
Then add in the fact that SilverLight is scripting and language agnostic, Open, a submitted Open Specification, and you can literally make code adjustments on the server via telnet.
Open source, but the patent liability is really ugly.
And Flash is better?
MS Actually starts splitting technology and starts dropping content into the OSS world where we can read the freaking code, and yet people still bitch it isn't enough and defend freaking Flash of all things?
Holy crap, just rename this site "Anything but Microsoft"...
Flex SDK is free
Your fluffing of the functionality or viability of flex is highly overrated.
Get back to me when you can build Flex or Flash in notepad as easy as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyrN_Ky3HWc
Just because it is free does not mean it is full feature or non-proprietary, how that eludes people scares me.
PS Don't forget the link to download the free 'trial' of Flex Builder 2, and also don't forget the WPF/.NET and Silverlight SDKs are all free since that seems important in your argument.
It looks like Microsoft is getting desperate about the dismal rates of Silverlight adoption by consumers and developers since its release earlier this year
This is just about as ridiculous as it gets. Let's at least get 'facts' out of the way.
Face #1, The final version of Silverlight 1.0 was released just a couple of months ago. Even the designers (Blend, etc) haven't had full final version native support for over a month. Do you really think MS is 'desperate' that in a month or two every web site in the world hasn't converted?
Fact #2, MS already has a large following of providers preparing and starting stream and video based web video content sites based on Silverlight. Since it can do things like flip channels as fast a TV, etc companies looking to provide multi-stream content are going with Silverlight as it is the only viable solution - let alone the only multi-platform solution.
Fact #3, a majority of Video pushed over the web is already in VC1/WMV format, yes this sounds strange with all the flash/Tube sites, but Windows Media is still either at the very top or close. Silverlight natively uses the same content, so for any site using WMV content already, they will flip to silverlight, as it will increase their user base.
Fact #4, Silverlight is about a 2mb download, I see posts where people seem to think this is a big issue, are these people still using 2400baud modems?
Fact #5, The major version of SilverLight is Version 1.1, and can be downloaded by developers/end users. Version 1.1 is the major version as 1.0 is only the graphical and video portion of the technology with limited UI abilities. (1.0 is the basic drawing and compatibility layers, and MS doesn't expect most people to consider Silverlight until 1.1, that is why the 'standard developer version they offer is 1.1, not 1.0) Silverlight 1.1 adds in the UI basic interface technologies like simple control events, additional hit testing, etc. Without 1.1.
The Microsoft Download site has been Silverlight based for a few weeks, but it is a conceptual site, and it is demonstrated to developers of multiple page content areas can interact beyond a single SilverLight Control.
Fact #6, a Silverlight based Website does not mean the entire page is based on Silverlight or the page is shown in only one Silverlight control like Flash based web design is. Silverlight is light enough that each Image element can be replaced with a Silverlight Object instead, and when needed, Silverlight Objects can use standard client/server scripting for communication and functionality between the Objects.
It would be easier to think of Silverlight like a 'fancy' image object that can be scripted, take events, and talk to the client/server and other image objects on the page. This is what makes silverlight ahead of Flash, even before v1.1 is released.
Now with facts out of the way, this makes a freaking difference in the OSS world how? One proprietary company/product is competing against another that is just as nefarious, and they are BOTH winning against ALL OSS solutions.
Maybe OSS should actually be pushing for Silvelight to win, as you can at least create Silverlight content in notepad for free, and aren't forced to buy a massive Adobe illustration package just to put a few pretty buttons or videos on your site.
Back to the anti-Microsoft goose-stepping...
Even for movies it would be a poor proposition for me, although it may be appealing to a larger group of consumers than music subscription services
I truly do get the initial hesitation most people have, as I also was like, na i'll pass until I spent $30 one month on music online and purchased 5 additional CDs. That was more than have a year of subscription service I could of had and instead of the few songs I got, I would have access to virtually any song made.
As for the movie comparison, the same things were said about HBO when it arrived in the cable market, people never thought it would make it, as it was expensive, limited presentations, easier to go to a movie theater in bigger cities, etc.
Vongo is an extension of Starz, and with the monthly Vongo subscription, you get a live access to the Vongo channel inside Media Center on Vista over the internet, in addition to several thousand movies you can pick to watch at any time at DVD or better quality. So for people that would normally pay the $10 a month to the cable company to get Starz, it would me a better deal for the ones with a Media Computer to pay the money to Vongo and get the channel in addition to on demand free video rentals.
Also remember that none of the subscription services prevent people from buying the tracks or albums, so you can still purchase music if you want to retain rights to it forever and burn it to a CD.
The other thing that is important in this whole debate is HD. Cable companies suck when it comes to HD in general with very little unrestricted QAM broadcasts and pushing consumers into more expensive packages to get TV quality that will be mandated by the Fed Govt in a year anyway.
Then there is the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and a lot of people aren't willing to 'invest' in either media or start a library until things level out and get better established. Until then, people will be more apt to rent movies, and online is a great way to access HD content, already surpassing what you can find in most Blockbuster or Hollywood stores. People talk about the PS3 and how popular it has made Blu-RAY in terms of movie purchases, but the missed topic is XBox Live and the amount of TV and Movie content that is purchased or rented and downloaded in HD format, which far surpassess the entire Blu-RAY and HD-DVD market combined.
As for device features, sure that is a subjective topic, and what is important to one person is not important to another. The point being though, is that the 'VAST' majority of the iPod market is people that don't realize that there are other devices from companies doing MP3 players long before Apple, and have features a lot of people would choose over the iPod if they were aware they existed.
Here is an example: My spouse has a 4GB non-iPod MP3, it does virtually every format of music from WMA to OGG, and also does full MPeg4 Video. It has a slick interface, with both wheel and direction access, is easy to transfer music to, no conversion usually needed unlike the iPod, it also has full V2.0 stereo bluetooth support so it beams music to the car or headset wirelessly, and has a miniSD explansion slot that will take at least 8GB chips when widely available. It also has a higher resolution than the 1st Gen iPod Nano, brighter display, faster display response, and has higher color capabilities making movies watchable on the rather small unit.
It was also half the price of the iPod nano, has the option of using any online store...
So in every aspect in terms of function and features it is superior to the iPod Nano, with several featues far beyond not only the Nano but other iPods as well.
Now the bad part, if you want iPod accessories (cases, adapters, stereo hookups, etc) you are screwed because the market belongs to the iPod.
The point of this is, 99.9% of people that run into my spouse and happen to see or ask about her 'iPod' as they call it, wish they would have gotten one like hers instead of their iPod, and all because they just didn't know
Windows XP was and is a security nightmare. Plain and simple
This kind of discounts your entire post. WindowsXP is based on NT, and even though the admin account was used by default, NT itself and the underlying OS and network environment it ran on were designed to be very secure, even though it was not enforced for home users.
(The reason XP was a security problem was everyone was running the equivalent of ROOT, not because the OS or design was inherently flawed. In fact the Security model in NT, is an Object Token based system and is a better design than most *nix implementations when enforced, hence Vista.)
As for WinXP and Win98 performance? You really need to go grab some numbers. If the Computer had 64mb of RAM or more Windows 2000 was 20% faster than Win98, and WindowsXP was 25% faster than Win98.
Yes even XP was faster than both Win98 and Win2k overall, as the granularity changes in the kernel and caching system improved application load times and data access times considerably over Win2k and Win98 couldn't keep up with XPs multi-tasking, thus slowing applications when several processes would bottleneck the OS, also making Win98 less smooth.
The whole WinXP was slow, blah blah blah was nothing but crap and myths of the time, just like what you can read about Vista. People still think Vista is slower than XP, yet as of September the Video Drivers from both ATI and NVidia put Vista ahead of XP in gaming and application performance across the board by 5%. But you don't see that talked about cause it doesn't make the anti-Vista crowd happy. (Go look up performance reviews from June-Sept on Gaming Vista vs XP.)
Vista's Aero being slower is also a myth, as it even pushes FPS up in games running in a Window by 10-20% over Basic (turning off Aero), and applications like Coreldraw to photoshop redraw 5-10x faster due to the GPU usage for some GDI/GDI+ functions and the non-double buffered composer.
There is also the Vista eats the battery faster myth, which is the only one that has a hint of truth, as Vista with 'Aero On using the GPU', does drain the battery faster than XP by about 5min on a 3hr battery life notebook. (Again these reviews are out there, go look them up.)
Yep you are correct on the dates of WinME and WIn2k.
I agree WinMe was the worest Windows version MS ever put out. It just tried to do too much on the fragile Win9x OS. Things like System Restore, etc just didn't work well with a lower performing multitasking OS, especially on a FS that didn't support the transparent copy on write features like NTFS and XP used to implement the features without overhead.
It was also slower than Win2k, which was the final nail in the Win9X generation, as it was an assembly optimized OS, with no Object based security or process structure overhead, and yet was running slower than a portable C OS with significantly more kernel level overhead.
Business is also waiting for Windows 2008 Server for a combined deployment strategy, as Vista's functionality in the business environment increases considerably when paired with 2008 Server.
Windows 2008 also takes advantage of the new deployment mechanisms in Vista, and rolling out Windows 2008 first and then creating the automated VIsta rollouts will be significantly easier than moving the desktops to Vista before 2008 Server arrives. It is also something business is looking forward to, as the ease of automated deployment that is designed into Windows 2008 server and Vista is virtually effortless in comparison to XP, and that is saying something as XP and Win2k were designed for automated deployment.
They all were great within the time the lived. XP was NEVER a decendant of ME. Learn your OS history, please.
Although you are 'technically' correct that Windows 2000 was released between WinME and XP, what is being missed in this argument is that WindowsXP was the FIRST version of the NT based OS that was focused on and designed to specifically replace the consumer level DOS/Win9x OSes.
You are correct that XP is not descended from Win9x or WinME in any way, it is an NT based OS with NO code used from the Win9x era of OSes. (It is was as much of a jump from Win9X/WinME as System 9 was to OS X).
In regard to the article, this is also why the uptake of WinXP was faster than even Windows 2000, as Windows 2000 was the successor to NT4 and was not pushed to home or mainstream consumer users. XP being the first NT version that was designed for and pushed into the mainstream consumer markets had quite an advantage even though Win2K users ignorantly thumbed their noses at it. In contrast to the generation of consumer OSes it was replacing, it was a massive difference in terms of performance and stability. XP not only ran faster than Win98 (the fastest of the DOS/Win9x generation), but it also was significantly more stable and secure than the previous OSes that had no knowledge of any type of security.
So for consumers and home users, XP was good jump, and even just upgrading Win98 or WinME to XP would not only increase the lifetime of the computer, but would fix technical problems in the installation wihtout having to wipe settings, and gave the users a virtually crash free experience.
Why is this exciting or news even?
In the non-iTunes reality, people have been renting Videos online for over 6 years more. Look up Vongo, Cinemanow, Movielink, as well as some of the subscription based music services that also allow limited video and music video downloads.
I like most people in the non iTunes wrapped world have been clicking my media center remote to grab the latest movie online from my chair for a long time now. Yes Media Center 2005 and Vista work great with online Video rental services, it is one of the reasons to pick up a remote for your computer even if you don't use the tuner and DVR functions of media center. (Let alone the online content access to stuff normally found on the old TVLinks sites automatically available inside Media Center)
The only news here is the Fox deal, not the 'renting' of freaking movies, even though it is a new model to Apple.
I know that 'owning' the rights to music is a great plan or getting access to stuff the Windows world has had for years is always exciting to Apple users and they think Jobs invents it everytime, but come on...
As for renting media, I pay my $15bucks a month to Napster or Rhapsody and have access to virtually every song ever made and reload my Creative Zen on a weekly basis with about 1000-2000 new songs. THis also includes loading my Theater computer, and the rest of my family's MP3 players with everything they could even want. How much would that cost in iTunes world?
I guess the part that kills me, is that I have avid iPod and iTunes friends that won't pay for subscription based music, but yet they pay for the deluxe TV/Cable package everymonth or have several XM devices they pay 20-30 bucks a month for, when they oculd be be podcasting and paying a music subscription service cheaper and getting instant access to literally millions of songs as faster as your connection can grab them.
I'm not a personal fan of the Zune, as MS's plans got screwed over by the wireless restrictions, but the model works better. Buy if you want and burn it to CD just like iTunes, or don't and just pay the subscription fee and get access to all their content on a monthly basis.
Consumers are finally taking notice of the 'cable bill' subscription concept and this is driving users to Zunes and non-Apple WMA based devices. Think of it this way, give your kids the option, I can buy you 4Gb Ipod that is cool, but you can only buy 10 songs a month, or I can buy a Windows PlaysforSure or Zune device and for the same money you can download everysong you ever wanted to fill the device.
Kids get the difference here, even if the Apple drones don't. Ipod is cool, but there is the high school and campus crowd of non iPod users that are considered in 'the know' that become more trendy with access to a larger selection of music and videos and movies and TV Shows without having to buy them.
Besides the geeks in the crowds that like the Zens and even cheaper Insigna 4gb players that have better audio support and better video quaility that even the most expensive iPod. Pick up a old Zen M or newer device and not only does the internal screen kill even the new iPods, but the A/V out is DVD resolution giving you a portable Movie jukebox to hook up at any friends house to watch movies on the fly.
I guess the whole iPod thing has left some of us geeks a bit bitter, as we have seen better devices doing what the iPod started years before the iPod, and continue to seen better sounding and more capapble MP3 devices from other companies, but once again Apple's marketing can turn average into spectacular. Maybe instead of bitter, we should just be in awe of Apple's marketing machine and go on our way and buy better quality devices cheaper than iPod with the horrible iTunes lock in 99% of the average users get sucked into.
This surely doesn't surprise anyone - Right?
The Republican Party was one of the inventors of the made for news clips and it has been very big for the past 15 years, and the Bush administration has a whole department that does nothing but make propaganda pieces promoting their policies that are distributed to local news. (Even though highly illegal in the US because it is 'propaganda')
This actually goes back to the Nixon administration, and was part of the bigger Media scandal behind Nixon being taken down. In the constructs of things, it was his information agency that was never reported on much because most news stations and papers were guilty of using their information that was a bigger crime than the Watergate break in.
Do a quick search on topics covered by Noam Chomsky for this story and others in the current media that use these practices.
There are so many canned news reports and 'scripts' written for reporters now it is more common that actual reporting. If you have access to local news stations from several areas of the county, most of the time, high profile and political 'world' or 'national' subject coverage will be word for word or close to word for word from the script that was written for them.
Both sides of the political sides in the US use this, but the Republicans have been the masters of it and don't mind mixing in lies or going for the throat, where the Democratic toned scripts don't cross those lines.
The media loves this crap, cheap news segments...
From the people who actually know something about computer security
You 'so' have no idea who I am, or you would just have shit yourself realizing who you responded to with this crap retort.
Your argument was somewhat true several years ago. This is the age of communications and the Internet. Your argument is pursing a tangent because it makes assumptions...
Assumptions like Software and OSes don't automatically report breaches, report back findings of trojans, etc.
Windows is the PRIME example of how your argument fails, as Windows Error reporting in XP has identified TONS of vulnerbilities, attempted exploits, etc. Adding in Defender and Vista's enhanced experience reporting, if a trojan, or spyware or exploit is found or used it is usually in Microsoft's hands long before it has a chance to hit the wild.
Not only have "LESS" vulnerabilities been reported in Windows in the past year, it has also had LESS exploited systems in its history, with a perfect Zero exploits if the user's systems have been patched. This is in the league of OS X, and is not a 1 in a million chance of finding a computer running OS X, this is 90% of the computers on the internet.
If you want to poke at OSes that have had MORE vulnerabilities, AND Exploits, you can look no further than Linux or even the sacred cow BSD. Go look up the records and data breaches over the past year at many government and Universities where data was sitting on secure BSD or Linux servers and 'magically' was taken...
Even the freaking Berkley University themselves had their servers hacked in the past year.
Why haven't you heard about these stories? Well apparently you are not someone in the security 'know'... Go look them up.
These headlines also usually don't make it to SlashDot, remember this is the Faux News of the internet, even though the site's original concept had more honorable intentions of bringing light to the OSS news world, the intential bias of bringing news to OSS has turned into attack tactics of everything that doesn't fit the nice neat OSS ideal, even if it means smacking Linus or other strong OSS advocates around to do so.
PS: My original post was a joke, get a life or sense of humor...
The New Apple, making Microsoft look less evil everyday...
From the Mac-Fans...
- If a bank leaves the vault open and doesn't lock the front door, but only has 10 banks located randomly around the country, it is still the best and most secure bank, especially if they have pretty iMarble on the floors.
From the OSS-Fans...
- OS X sucks as much as Vista and everyone is evil.
From the Win-Fans...
- Holy Shit, we thought our crap sucked more than this.
If true, do you really think Microsoft would 'want' to do this? They have been pretty strong privacy advocates, especially Gates, denying even backdoor access for Bitlocker in a fight several years ago when bitlocker was demonstrated to the FBI.
If the government is FORCING MS to do this, then we should be calling our representatives and not sitting around speculating or smacking on Microsoft.
The whole big brother NSA thing is very much a Republican/Bush/Neo-con era mechanism, and Gates and lots of others at Microsoft vote democrat, even when it was NOT in their best interest as during the DOJ trials of the 90s.
(Look up contributions, MS by far gives to Democratic canidates, and ironically companies that we think are on the side of the little people are ones shoving money toward pro-corporate/authoritarian canidates.)
Fact Check: More audio is available on the Internet via WMA than any other format, in fact all other formats combined...
Ok, how?
A) WMA does have better audio quality than MP3, by a factor of 1.5 to 2 times. And this is a good thing as all decoding chips in portable music players all have WMA support, unless it is crippled like the iPod. So you can throw your songs in WMA at 64 or 128 and have almost twice the fidelity of an MP3, especially when you add in better variable bit rate support, etc.
B) WMA does not inherently use or need DRM, and MS themselves don't push DRM, so it is just as free to copy and decode as MP3. The only hitch with WMA is the binary dependancy like many other codecs have, but that is easily wrapped, and MS has provided non x86 WMA formats before as well, just not with DRM that providers have kept asking for with the exception of I64 and AMD/EMT64 that have DRM WMA support. (Besides how many of us are really using non x86/64 architectures?)
Remember Gates said that DRM should be taken off audio downloads in Dec last year before Jobs did in January. He said specifically until the providers stop limiting access to downloaded music that people should just buy CDs if possible to force them to move to a DRM free online model. (And this is right after Zune 1.0 came out.)
Adobe is actually handing the market to Microsoft.
XPS and Silverlight will become the choice because they are lighter, more featured, and now no freaking ads.
They are in .avi format
1) AVI is not a format, but a wrapper, and the video could be xvid, mpeg or anything else.
2) Vista's DRM only turns on when it encounters a HD Content Protection flag, just like any HD-DVD or Blu-RAY DVD Player does. Broadcast protections are also upheld, just like Media Center XP 2005.
THERE IS NO ADDITIONAL DRM IN VISTA that doesn't exist in XP or OS X, unless you count the fact that XP or OS X can't record TV Shows and can't play HDCP - HD Content.
Your problem is in the codec itself, not with Vista. Go pick up one of the Vista codec packs that people assemble to cover all the free and open codecs.
This Vista DRM Myth crap is beyond ridiculous, especially in the long posts on here that 'actually' believe it and are debating its morality. Why not debate the easter bunny next, it is just as real...
Trick with this, even if they get the libraries to run on XP, the behind the scenes aspects of the WDDM in Vista will be missing for DX10 and Games.
Many DX10 games assume that the OS (WDDM/Vista) is managing GPU Scheduling, handling GPU RAM Virtualization, multi-tasking calls from a single game between scene rendering and GPU Physics, etc.
So there is no doubt you can get DX10 libraries to probably run on XP, but the games will run really horribly if the Game designer is targeting DX10 specifically and expecting the WDDM and Vista to be picking up aspects of GPU management that XP has no clue about.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/02/14/why-dx10-wasnt-created-on-xp-and-why-it-isnt-in-xp.aspx
This is right there in the summary:
"The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut." As for what you say about 1Gb being a sweet spot; it is misleading. Vista is unbearably slow on 512Mb. 1Gb is not a "sweet spot" - it's just enough for it to actually run and not crawl. But it still feels slow.
Ok, Vista on 512mb is not ideal, neither is XP on 128mb, but both can run. If you read enough performance reviews, you will find the difference between 512mb and 1GB on Vista is about the same difference as 512mb on XP and 1GB on XP. So Vista is not out of the ballpark in the jump 1GB gives.
Vista can be made to run effectively in 512mb, you just have to know what you are doing. In theory you can disable many of the 'fluff' Vista features and even with 512mb of RAM get Vista to a XP performance level. One of our techs is working on some instructional articles for people that have been moved to Vista or want some of the features like DX10 but don't have a need for some of the non-XP features.
As for the article, this is only 'one' point I mentioned and it was a blanket statement as there are a lot of tech impressions and performance reviews that did not use an upatch RTM version when doing the comparison.
Besides, isn't this a OSS news site, why would people here care if Vista SP1 is faster or not? Why would they care if it is faster than XP?
If it is to mock Vista for needing 1GB to best XP in performance, then why aren't we seeing articles that show Leopard is JUST AS MUCH of a RAM pig in comparison to Tiger, and unless you have 1GB of RAM, Leopard, like Vista will be slower than the previous version.
PS Has anyone paid attention to Vista and performance past the January reviews when the Video drivers for Vista sucked?
Here is a good article that lays out some of the Vista information and lays to rest some of the Vista Myths that everyone here seems to have memorized.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1999401&enterthread=y
Hence why my comments included this, because it has been overlooked by some reviews, even though the one referenced here didn't.
And about deamons? Should they?
Deamons or Daemons?
If you are referencing daemons, then No they should not have un-restricted root access either, even if they are running as root, and most daemons certainly do not need to be running at a root level.
Even a daemon that runs at root, if it extends its abilities to 'additional' processes/content then it should be checked for permission or restricted.
You are correct that part of it is cobbled in terms it wasn't designed specifically from the ground up. However for encompassing all the technologies from the Office platform for over 15 years, it is cleaner than most people would have imagined.
Again, it will be easier to refine OOXML than it will to be bring ODF up to the same level of functionality.
Yes OOXML is more complete and has more functionality. As OOXML has standards for and understands everything from audio streams in documents to inherent ink support in place of text. It is also designed to be extensible in a structured format, not just adding a new type and using a zip file like ODF does. Microsoft's design several years ago when Word 2000 was designed was to create a document format that they could keep adding technology too without backtracking, and that is what they did and OOXML and Office 2007 are a result of this.
If the industry closes the books on OOXML, non-Microsoft influence will be once again removed, and they will still dominate more than we probably realize. So even if it becomes a 'competing' standard, it is better to let MS open it up more and standardize it, as the future will have input from people outside Microsoft, where right now even the 3500 complaints would have never made it to Microsoft or the developers, and now it will get to them and be addressed.