Could someone tell me why one type of drive wouldn't work with a specific version of Windows? Shouldn't they be able to write drivers for that?
As others have pointed out, they are standard connectors and would work with any OS basically.
Why 'Vista' is singled out, is Vista will recognize that it is a solid state drive, and use a 'different' set of cache and pre-cache techniques to get even more performance out of it than a regular OS would, by utilizing the drives random r/w speed over conventional HDs.
The Vista ReadBoost technology goes into play on this type of drive 'so to speak', even though it would be the primary HD, and this is why Vista would get even more of a boost from the solid state technology than other OSes currently.
Even coming up from a standby or hibernate, the drivers have to re initialize (depending on the OS) to some extent.
Another thing that creates long boot times, especially in the windows world is crap. Low level anti-virus crap, and things that software should not be doing. This is one area Vista helps.
Also remember we were paging out systems with 32/64/128mb of RAM in the past, and now we are dumping Gigs of data. Vista and Xp have optimizations that compress and reference pagefile info, but this is still a lot of RAM even with the speed of the Hard Drives today.
Another area that kills performance is extra low level driver and hardware, especially in relation to BIOS. For example I have a legacy free Toshiba from 2002 that can resume from hibernate in less than 4 secs, including bios time. The extra legacy hardware not being in the systems BIOS makes a big difference on the pre-OS boot.
Another area that doesn't' get enough attention is device pairing. When I was active in OEM building, we would not only test components, but performance/driver related issues to the device in relation to each other. A system with super specifications, and one bad pair of hardware/drivers can retard boot performance tremendously, it also will slow over all system responsiveness.
The device pairing is something that doesn't get a lot of focus, but is extremely important, and it is sad when I see high end Alienware or even Dell systems that have poor pairs (even integrated chipsets can be poor pairs).
As an example, my Theatre computer is an AMD +2800 with a normal 7200RPM drive and dual pair 400/800mhz RAM. Its specs are not impressive, but because I paired every piece of the system, it can boot(not resume from hibernate) to a Vista desktop in under 15secs, and an XP desktop in under 10seconds, including BIOS time. This is in pairing low level components, as it has a ton of USB devices and TV Capture, etc.
So for pairing, for whatever reasons, the main board and chipset are very important, as well as the HD controller, Video card, and even the brand/model of HD itself.
As for pairing, it helps if you have access to several brands of components when building your own system. Although there are exceptions in the past, ASUS boards usually have the best stability and work the best in pairing with other components. However, your results will vary.
We could get into paging and hibernation and how ACPI works and advantages to legacy free and EFI, but if you can pair well and not have bunch of software in the lower levels that just shouldn't be there.
A final note, there are a lot of myths on boot times, especially in the Windows world. One I hear all the time is having too many fonts will reduce boot time. This is not true in Win2k/WinXP or Vista. The sample AMD +2800 theatre system I referenced above, has over 5000 fonts installed, and still boots just as fast as having only the base fonts installed.
20 seconds of watching a washed out image of the last screen
In terms of resume from hibernation, this is sadly, very slow.
Vista is slower than WindowsXP on some machine in waking from hibernate, but even on my 2002 Toshiba Laptop, a resume from hibernate is about 5 secs, including bios time.
On my main laptop as another example, that is more of a desktop laptop with a true desktop processor and 2GB of RAM, the resume from hibernate on Vista is around 11 secs, including both BIOS and RAID initialization time.
It truly scares me that the original post/article is taken with any credibility. We have a lot of test machines and environments, and yet we have NO systems that fail to resume from hibernate with Vista, and one laptop that does fail to resume from standby, but we have traced this back to a conflict with the NVidia Video driver, which is not RTMed yet.
Windows and *nixes were hibernating years before Mac even had the option of hibernate, and they still do it quite well. I would not put OSX or Apple as the 'good' standard in performing this task, nor considering the 'small' sample of hardware they deal with as realistic in a comparison to Linux, xxxBSD, or Windows...
Sony actually has good hardware with the PS3, despite all the FUD. But if they don't pull their heads out of the sand and overhaul the software, they're going to lose a lot of customers
I agree, their hardware usually is top notch. (except for a few flaming PS2s.) Even in the Home Audio/Video market they do a great job.
However when it comes to software, they either fired or screwed over all the talent the company had.
Look at some the Epic crap of the last couple of years.
- Root Kit CDs, it don't get much worse
- SOE - They had the best and the brightest. Instead of keeping them or even keeping on track, they fired or lost them. SOE is now a shell of what the mighty EverQuest empire created. Their biggest sin in this area includes SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) Not only did they destroy a brilliant game, but pissed off every customer they had and let the developers that actually understood the game and the code leave. All over an attempt to get the 12yr market away from WoW. Then there is Matrix Online. A great game, within owning it for 4 months, they pushed out a 'combat upgrade' that also destroyed the game, making hand to hand combat as was 'highlighted' in the movies the worse class of player in the game. And they KEEP making these stupid and insane decisions.
Then you look at the PS3, even their own development kits don't take full advantage nor translate well the power of a Cell processor. Add to that, that they originally intended to use a Cell for GPU, and in the end threw in an NVidia GPU that is on par with a Geforce 6800Ultra - Laptops actually have stronger GPUs already than the new PS3.
I have lost so much faith in Sony it is scary.
Sony is like the HP of the entertainment world though, hardware is usally pretty good stuff, but the drivers and software for it is somewhere between bad and scary.
So, one question, How in the hell could the PS3 be so screwed up that it can't properly scale video resolutions. Something even a common year circa 2000 PC running WindowsCrap can do successfully at HD resolutions and properly sample up or down?
Maybe they expect us to boot into a *nix to play video and while we are at it, why don't we just get the PS3 game developers to design the games for the *nix as well? Geesh....
So, you think that Microsoft provides computing nirvana? Please. Microsoft's control of IT has placed us at least ten years behind where we should be.
Your Opinion...
You obviously know little of computing history.
A really bad assumption...
As for ODF, Microsoft choose *NOT* to participate in it's creation. Microsoft is a member of Oasis and actually had observers on the technical committee but choose not to participate. If ODF is deficient in supporting Microsoft technologies they have only themselves to blame.
True, they pulled out of OpenDocument, when the feature set was not going to be robust enough for even advanced formatted documents produced by either Wordperfect or MS Word. The standard was so closely tied to the 'available' features set of the 'lowest' common demoninator 'OpenOffice', If I was MS, I would have told them to go pound sand also.
The part you seem to not realize, instead of taking their toys and going home, MS took all their Office file formats and fully opened them up to give the industry a robust alternative to OpenDocument, so if companies want a standard they can choice something that will at least include the text and basic math, or a format that includes everything a MS or Wordperfect product can compose.
They are actually helping the industry here. They could have kept the Office format closed not played nice, instead they went out of their way to make it 'standard' and then give out the specifications to the world for free usage.
I think it is much more logical that Microsoft preferred to implement a format that they alone controlled as opposed to working with others to define something everyone could use. After all, by their own admission, Microsoft has stated that OOXML was designed *specifically* to support only Microsoft products and indeed the charter for TC45 at ECMA specified that they were to create a "standard" that was fully compatible with the formats used in Microsoft Office 2007. Since Microsoft solely controls Office 2007, guess who controls this "standard"?
There is some truth in that the standard has a bias towards MS Office product offerings; however, they are by far the most complex and robust formats in the industry, so why wouldn't you start with the products that have the most features packed into a file format?
And even though they do start with the MS Office base of features, the specification is NOT locked in any way to just what MS provides, it is very extensible and open, specifically designed for new featuers no matter what company they come from.
I'm sorry, but you've just used my two BIGGEST grammar bugbears in the same goddamn post. Let me correct you:
I apologize; when I typed this in OpenOffice it didn't flag any grammar problems. (j/k)
I take no credit or responsibility for my spelling or grammar in 99% of my posts, sometimes it is late and I'm tired; I also don't take the time to use an external editor or spell check.
You are aware of the size of the companies that worked together to create that specification?
Ok, going to ignore all the insane ramblings...
However, this comment deserves a response. Go look up the companies involved in OpenXML. Not only MS, the biggest name in documents, but other little companies you might recognize like Apple.
Of course OpenDocument can do that. That's basic OLE. Go troll somewhere else
#1) Actually it isn't... If you think that a stored image, sound, or Ink in a MS Word or Excel document is OLE you are borderline scary and should be kept away from people's computers.
#2) OLE has been dead for almost 6 years. The original concept moved to ActiveX technologies, but even they are not widely used, although they technically still exist if you want to embed a Corel Graphic in Word in native format.
Do some homework before you pretend you freaking know what you are talking about, and don't call names unless someone steals your crayons.
In other words I don't really know but don't want to admit it.
Actually I have a job and a life and don't have time to teach grade school technology to newbs that are too lazy to type MS OpenXML OpenDocument into Google.
Ink and graphics can be integrated without problems into a ODF-document
Actually they cannot. Many people simply do not understand Ink technologies. They are not just 'images of handwriting' they are data stores that reference stroke pressure, direction, speed of the stroke and even angle of the stroke. This makes Ink more than just an image of handwriting.
The reason these characteristics are important is not only for preservation of the author's intent, but by using the stroke direction, pressure etc, it increases the recognition of the handwriting into 'text' and also creates signatures that are virtually impossible to forge, even by experts.
This is also just one small aspect, there is a lot to what is store in OpenXML that simply does not have a 'standard' way to be stored in OpenDocument. Sure the content could be attached to the OpenDocument content but because there is no standard for these media types or how they are handled or displayed in the 'context' of the original document, it severly FRAGMENTS the whole purpose of having a unified standard.
Here is the bottom line: Would you prefer a standard that 'knows' how to handle all the context and data that a user may put into a document, or a standard that only supports 70% of the features of what a person would put in a document, with the extra data being added to the file in ways that OTHER APPLICATIONS would NOT know how to read?
This was MS's argument against OpenDocument, as they clearly stated if one is going to be created it should support 'every' technology of today and have a standard for how it is stored and referenced in the document as well as providing a clear path for future versions so compatibility will not be lost going into the future or even the past.
So, I've always wondered when you print out an Word document or an Excel spreeasheet with music in it, how does it sound when you read it. How 'bout the video quality, resolution...? As a writer and as someone who uses lots of spreadsheets for data anayysis to guide and back up that writing, the point of fluff like videos or music in documents (particularly spreadsheets) completely eludes me
It actually sounds great...
All kidding aside, it is nice to be able to hit record when you are in a meeting, take notes and then weeks later do a search for something that was SAID during the meaning and not only have it locate those words or phrases in the recording, but also take me to the notes I was writing when it was said.
People also still think like this is 1990 and servers are for files and printers and anything beyond words and calcuations are just fluff.
Earth to KwKSilver, this is the 21st century - CONTENT is more than just words.
For a spreadsheet example, my accountant has put voice annotations in a spreadsheet for several years now to explain information. Some people do use fancy things like sound, even when sharing financial data.
As for your printer example, imagine in a couple of years when you are holding a piece of paper that uses electronic ink, and the Word document with the animated chart you printed to it is also animated on the paper. The MS formats already support this, so they are not only providing for what is common today, but what will probably be common tomorrow as well.
OpenDocument would have been grand if they HAD NOT limited the feature set to be bascially what Office Documents produced back in 1997, which by today's standards are rapidly becoming dated.
Until you define "robust feature", i will consider you a fud-spewing troll. Which feature in OpenXML is ODF lacking?
Considering it is the DEFAULT file format for Office 2007 applications, it can contain anything a Microsoft Office Application can produce. Which includes things like I mention in my post, Ink, robust media, graphics, object interactions, etc. It is also highly extensible paving the way for future concepts to easily be added in a STANDARD form that all companies can use, not just MS.
I however won't do the homework for you if you are too lazy, go look this stuff up, it is easily available with a search.
Well, for example OpenXML takes much more space than the binary ODF format
"Smaller file sizes and improved recovery of corrupted documents enable Microsoft Office users to operate efficiently and confidently and reduces the risk of lost information. Office XML Formats use ZIP compression technology to store documents offering potential cost savings as it reduces the disk space required to store files and decreases the bandwidth needed to transport files by e-mail, over networks, and across the Web."
It basically comes down to what is in the document, and sure OpenDocument could potentially be smaller since they don't support half the features of OpenXML.
This actually gives OpenOffice a real chance - not only to be competitive but to offer a document format that has some power in its abilities.
Like I argued before with the whole OpenDocument controversy, the file formats and standards in play in the OSS world are just not robust enough to handle the current generation of documents, let alone even try to handle future concepts of what document storage could entail.
Whether OpenOffice takes advantage of it or not, the potential to maintain and use technologies that are standard in the MS world of documents like Ink and extended media content are now possible.
This is actually a win win for both sides of the fence. MS doesn't have to spend development money on a version of Office for the growing OSS OS world, and the OSS OS world can now freely be just as strong of a competitor in the business world. Basically, companies that can afford MS software will continue to do so, and smaller entities that cannot afford the price to buy into MS technology can go Open Source and not have to worry about document compatibility.
With Wordperfect also adding the MS Open format, the market once again has a choice in quality and price of the production product and won't have to worry about losing features based on the solution they choose.
If OpenDocument would have just been more 'open' about robust features that are covered in the MS OpenXML document specifications, we would see it be the standard everyone would be happily using.
However with OpenDocument it was quite unreasonable to expect MS to move to a document format that would stripe away 30% of the features that their products provide. I don't know why this was so hard for the OpenDocument crowd to understand, especially when MS was already in the process of creating an open standard that DID include more advanced document capabilities.
If we are lucky, now we might even see OpenOffice and Wordperfect move to add more feature rich concepts into their products to take advantage of the information they now easily read and store in the MS OpenXML format. Imagine everything from Ink to Sound and Video that are all even text searchable(via recognition), as you can already do with Microsoft Office products.
If it's not visible in the browser how on earth is the end user going to be able to give feedback to the developer that their website is broken?
#1 Most users will NEVER report a problem, they will just go to another website. #2 If you are relying on users 'testing' your work, you already have problems.
mostly develop under Firefox, and I develop with XHTML. This is because if I forget a closing tag, Firefox will tell me about it. It won't just make the page look uglier, it'll tell me I have a problem. I also use the Web Development Toolbar, which tells me when I've enabled "quirks mode" -- if I haven't, then I know I'm not relying on any Firefox-specific intelligence.
I don't totally disagree with you, but here is where we are all focusing on the wrong end of this situation.
It should NOT be the browser's responsibility to debug our sites. Browsers are END USER tools that are to display the page the best it can with what crap the site provides. So, intelligence in the browser DOES screw the developer, but it HELPS the end users and that is what it should do, as they are the customers of the sites, the base.
We should instead focus on development tools that are smarter about compliance and force developers to adhere. Using MS as an example, a little intellisense wouldn't hurt a lot of the site developers. (Self closing tags, proper tags, redline bad tags, object preditction, etc.)
We shouldn't be developing major sites in notepad anymore, those days should be as far gone as developing Halo3 in notepad and compiling from the command prompt.
The development tools are where we should focus our anger about allowing crap they shouldn't or at least warning developers about crap tags. As I pointed out in another post, MS has finally 'gotten' this through their head, and the new replacement for frontpage is more of a site development environment. As far as web development tools, it is by far the most complete our developers have seen for keeping strict compliance, and is quite refreshing for them that they had some assistance that they are not using outdated tags or breaking the rules.
This is where the focus needs to be right now, espeically with so many standards and so few people understanding them well.
The only bridge between your concept of using a browser for debugging would be to ask for debugging versions of IE and Firefox (true debugging versions, not just one that displays crap wrong.) However, the focus right now STILL needs to be on the site development tools to do their job, expecially when there is software out there that generates HTML for novices and the generated HTML is horribly wrong when it comes to standards or compliance.
Windows geeks or anyone with a VM should check out the new Frontpage replacement software - it is in two versions, Sharepoint Designer as a part of Office and Web Designer as a part of the Expression projects. I think the betas are still available for download, and if not trial versions should be before long. They are not perfect, but a MAJOR step in the right direction considering these are from MS...
Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.
This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility. We are past the days of people using notepad for major sites, so we also should be past the days of relying on the browser to tell us what we messed up.
Sadly, one of the companies that FINALLY has seemed to get this is MS, their new Web Designer/Sharepoint (Frontpage replacement) is very good about forcing the developer to adhere to the page rules they select. If they choose XHTML Strict, CSS xx, then the application will scold them if any tag is messed up and even explain why.
Sadly the old Frontpage really failed here, as well as dreamweaver and other tools. For example, just opening a site that the old Frontpage 2003 thought was perfect will show 100s of errors on the page and even explains that this tag will work but is not compliant and should be changed. Also incorporating the VS style of intellisense and redlining it might push a lot of developers to start making compliant sites.
I just hope the rest of the industry follows suit and not only builds better compliant making tools, but also forces the developers to adhere. Right now there are so many site development tools that try to make things easy for the developers, but in generating the code (like dreamweaver for example) the software generated code fails compliance miserably. Not everyone is a tag guru and can't then fix the software generated html that is messed up.
I think we all should put more pressure on site development tools and hosting sites that use really crappy standards, rather than complain about something that should be for end users, the browser.
but used invalid CSS that Firefox and IE handled gracefully, but incorrectly.
See here is again is what people don't get...
One of the reasons IE became as popular as it did is that it didn't 'fail' when pages were formatted improperly or 'downloaded' improperly (remember dial up?)
In the 4.x browser war days there were a couple of things that MADE people prefer IE or Netscape. One of them was the fact that a missing tag at the end of a table wouldn't cause the page to not display AT ALL as it did in Netscape, so even if the page was messed up, IE would try to render it based on the information it had.
Now a lot of people see this as a flaw, but if you look at the technology it is actually a 'smart' feature that the browser would at the very least display a page even if it wasn't formed properly. Call it a form of programming 'intelligence'.
This is NO different than the CSS failures of IE and Firefox of today. They support 'legacy' tags that both browsers used and are not 'compliant', and they also will try to render page parts even if the tags and improperly formed. THIS IS WHY neither will ever fully pass all the CSS page tests on the web like ACID2, as they don't test for ability, but they MAINLY test for a browser's INABILITY to handle bad data and the developers expect the browser to NOT display the improperly formed tags.
This is really an argument that can go either way, as I see benefits in 'forcing' compliance, but I also understand that some sites are old and their data would be inaccessible or lost if every browser only conformed to strict CSS and ignored legacy tags or malformed tags. This is where I go, well it isn't hurting anyone for the browsers to be a bit smarter than the site developers.
Also everyone applauds Safari for being strict CSS, but the side note in this story is Safari also doesn't have to have any intelligence built in, nor does it worry about or handle old tags or malformed pages, they all become 'unworthy' and Safari isn't 'smart' enough to render them.
As for the browser wars of 4.x, there were a couple of other reasons IE was prefered over Netscape. Like the page refreshing when it was resized on Netscape or raw display performance.
In the end, I would pick Firefox or IE7 and their 'flaws', legacy support, and ability to render malformed pages over Safari any day. Web developers tend to suck in general and I would rather have some intelligence in my browser to help counteract crap pages, even if it means the browser will fail CSS standards.
However if you are web developer, just design the page with proper standards, watch for IE7 and not assume it renders like IE6 which sucked on several CSS abilities. Then just go for standards. PS the above posts are correct - TEST IN EVERY browser you can get your hands on, there are like 5 major browser players, it is not hard to do.
Are people really this out of touch with news?
on
Windows Live and Privacy
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Are people really this out of touch with news?
Microsoft started taking street and air shapshots of cities over a year ago, it was part of their demonstration even over a year ago.
And now this Mac user is surprised? WTF. This isn't an 'answer' to Google BTW, MS was working on this technology before Google was even a glimmer in the eye of the geeks that created it. Go look up terra server, and when MS first put this up as a demonstration of how MS-SQL could easily handle terrabytes of data.
As for the street and air level snapshots, these TOO are ALREADY in use. Microsoft 3D earth uses the 'textures' of the buildings in the 3D models they have of several major cities already.
Additionally, the 'angle' view was introduced on MS Virtual Earth over a year ago, with multi-angle views of cities from airplane shots that complimented the satelitte images.
Is everyone this out of touch with technology and news, and if so, are the editors of Slashdot becoming out of date old timers as well? No wonder people are shocked to find out that Windows doesn't run on a DOS architecture nor crash every 5 mins if this is their idea of breaking news.
55 and up? You think that ads targeted toward "Young, hip people" are more effective toward actual young hip people, or older people who are desperately craving to be young and hip?
Couple that with the fact that that demographic has a hell of a lot of disposable cash, and Apple looks fricking brilliant
No, it is part of the intellectual evolutionary process. Each generation becomes smarter than the previous generation through genetics and passing of knowledge.
The poor old people just don't know any better, so they buy the cute computer.
"Why do you want the power off? If you're concerned about power usage, let the power management software worry about that."
Everyone should really step back from the article and realize either he is trying really hard to pretend to be stupid, or is stupid.
(In the wisdom of Mencia) Dee Dee Dee, I can think of one reason I would want to worry about power usage, like a laptop.
I am also concerned that he is instructing his uncle to use the 'advanced' menu to turn off the computer. MS Made it scary easy, there are TWO BUTTONS on the screen that either lock the computer or lock it and power it off. (The menu he details should not be something average users ever touch.)
Additionally, am I not like most people, because I actually use the provided sleep and Power buttons on the keyboard/physical computer anymore?
Working as intended, sorry Joel isn't able to keep up with the two button interface and is playing with the advanced menu, since it seems out of his understanding.
Vista doesn't support dragging the quicklaunch bar off of the stat menu and off to one side because it was "confusing to end users." No one seems to have found a registry override as yet.
Right Click on Quick Launch bar, select open, drag the folder to the side of the screen, just like you can do with any folder.
Oh, and the support calls I have seen our techs field because users 'misplace' the quick launch bar is actually scary, MS made the right choice to prevent it from easily being ripped off the bar.
After reading several posts, more people are standing up to defend Google and their control of their IP. That is fine, but if the article was about MS or another 'evil' corporate company doing this, we would see 1000 posts by now telling the world how evil they are.
What surprises me, is when I see the same people decry Microsoft or IBM and then in related issues stick up for companies like Google and Apple. These companies are all out for their own interest, give back only what 'little' they 'have' to give back and don't give a crap about OSS.
If you look back at tons of articles, where Apple stops giving back source, closes Darwin, or straps on tons of DRM and closes their entire media business to just themselves; or articles where Google admits to data mining email and has some 'unknown-unholy' alliance to firefox that controls the development of the browser and people just roll over like these are all ok things and people still think these companies are good and all about being Open.
Google is not any better than any other corporate machine, and as they get bigger their weight will be felt more and more by the entire industry.
Google is not about cute kittens any more than MS is about cute kittens.
If you're running any OS in a VM, then isn't it by definition NOT your "main OS"?
People run VMs all the time so they can run applications that their OS cannot run. For example a Linux installation running WindowsXP in a VM so they can run MS Office natively for work.
Maybe 'main' isn't the best term, but the point is that it is being used under virtualization for doing work along side the default OS install and not just used for testing or devleopment.
Slashdot Mirror
Could someone tell me why one type of drive wouldn't work with a specific version of Windows? Shouldn't they be able to write drivers for that?
As others have pointed out, they are standard connectors and would work with any OS basically.
Why 'Vista' is singled out, is Vista will recognize that it is a solid state drive, and use a 'different' set of cache and pre-cache techniques to get even more performance out of it than a regular OS would, by utilizing the drives random r/w speed over conventional HDs.
The Vista ReadBoost technology goes into play on this type of drive 'so to speak', even though it would be the primary HD, and this is why Vista would get even more of a boost from the solid state technology than other OSes currently.
Even coming up from a standby or hibernate, the drivers have to re initialize (depending on the OS) to some extent.
Another thing that creates long boot times, especially in the windows world is crap. Low level anti-virus crap, and things that software should not be doing. This is one area Vista helps.
Also remember we were paging out systems with 32/64/128mb of RAM in the past, and now we are dumping Gigs of data. Vista and Xp have optimizations that compress and reference pagefile info, but this is still a lot of RAM even with the speed of the Hard Drives today.
Another area that kills performance is extra low level driver and hardware, especially in relation to BIOS. For example I have a legacy free Toshiba from 2002 that can resume from hibernate in less than 4 secs, including bios time. The extra legacy hardware not being in the systems BIOS makes a big difference on the pre-OS boot.
Another area that doesn't' get enough attention is device pairing. When I was active in OEM building, we would not only test components, but performance/driver related issues to the device in relation to each other. A system with super specifications, and one bad pair of hardware/drivers can retard boot performance tremendously, it also will slow over all system responsiveness.
The device pairing is something that doesn't get a lot of focus, but is extremely important, and it is sad when I see high end Alienware or even Dell systems that have poor pairs (even integrated chipsets can be poor pairs).
As an example, my Theatre computer is an AMD +2800 with a normal 7200RPM drive and dual pair 400/800mhz RAM. Its specs are not impressive, but because I paired every piece of the system, it can boot(not resume from hibernate) to a Vista desktop in under 15secs, and an XP desktop in under 10seconds, including BIOS time. This is in pairing low level components, as it has a ton of USB devices and TV Capture, etc.
So for pairing, for whatever reasons, the main board and chipset are very important, as well as the HD controller, Video card, and even the brand/model of HD itself.
As for pairing, it helps if you have access to several brands of components when building your own system. Although there are exceptions in the past, ASUS boards usually have the best stability and work the best in pairing with other components. However, your results will vary.
We could get into paging and hibernation and how ACPI works and advantages to legacy free and EFI, but if you can pair well and not have bunch of software in the lower levels that just shouldn't be there.
A final note, there are a lot of myths on boot times, especially in the Windows world. One I hear all the time is having too many fonts will reduce boot time. This is not true in Win2k/WinXP or Vista. The sample AMD +2800 theatre system I referenced above, has over 5000 fonts installed, and still boots just as fast as having only the base fonts installed.
20 seconds of watching a washed out image of the last screen
In terms of resume from hibernation, this is sadly, very slow.
Vista is slower than WindowsXP on some machine in waking from hibernate, but even on my 2002 Toshiba Laptop, a resume from hibernate is about 5 secs, including bios time.
On my main laptop as another example, that is more of a desktop laptop with a true desktop processor and 2GB of RAM, the resume from hibernate on Vista is around 11 secs, including both BIOS and RAID initialization time.
It truly scares me that the original post/article is taken with any credibility. We have a lot of test machines and environments, and yet we have NO systems that fail to resume from hibernate with Vista, and one laptop that does fail to resume from standby, but we have traced this back to a conflict with the NVidia Video driver, which is not RTMed yet.
Windows and *nixes were hibernating years before Mac even had the option of hibernate, and they still do it quite well. I would not put OSX or Apple as the 'good' standard in performing this task, nor considering the 'small' sample of hardware they deal with as realistic in a comparison to Linux, xxxBSD, or Windows...
Sony actually has good hardware with the PS3, despite all the FUD. But if they don't pull their heads out of the sand and overhaul the software, they're going to lose a lot of customers
I agree, their hardware usually is top notch. (except for a few flaming PS2s.)
Even in the Home Audio/Video market they do a great job.
However when it comes to software, they either fired or screwed over all the talent the company had.
Look at some the Epic crap of the last couple of years.
- Root Kit CDs, it don't get much worse
- SOE - They had the best and the brightest.
Instead of keeping them or even keeping on track, they fired or lost them.
SOE is now a shell of what the mighty EverQuest empire created.
Their biggest sin in this area includes SWG (Star Wars Galaxies)
Not only did they destroy a brilliant game, but pissed off every customer they had and let the developers that actually understood the game and the code leave. All over an attempt to get the 12yr market away from WoW.
Then there is Matrix Online. A great game, within owning it for 4 months, they pushed out a 'combat upgrade' that also destroyed the game, making hand to hand combat as was 'highlighted' in the movies the worse class of player in the game.
And they KEEP making these stupid and insane decisions.
Then you look at the PS3, even their own development kits don't take full advantage nor translate well the power of a Cell processor. Add to that, that they originally intended to use a Cell for GPU, and in the end threw in an NVidia GPU that is on par with a Geforce 6800Ultra - Laptops actually have stronger GPUs already than the new PS3.
I have lost so much faith in Sony it is scary.
Sony is like the HP of the entertainment world though, hardware is usally pretty good stuff, but the drivers and software for it is somewhere between bad and scary.
So, one question, How in the hell could the PS3 be so screwed up that it can't properly scale video resolutions. Something even a common year circa 2000 PC running WindowsCrap can do successfully at HD resolutions and properly sample up or down?
Maybe they expect us to boot into a *nix to play video and while we are at it, why don't we just get the PS3 game developers to design the games for the *nix as well? Geesh....
So, you think that Microsoft provides computing nirvana? Please. Microsoft's control of IT has placed us at least ten years behind where we should be.
Your Opinion...
You obviously know little of computing history.
A really bad assumption...
As for ODF, Microsoft choose *NOT* to participate in it's creation. Microsoft is a member of Oasis and actually had observers on the technical committee but choose not to participate. If ODF is deficient in supporting Microsoft technologies they have only themselves to blame.
True, they pulled out of OpenDocument, when the feature set was not going to be robust enough for even advanced formatted documents produced by either Wordperfect or MS Word. The standard was so closely tied to the 'available' features set of the 'lowest' common demoninator 'OpenOffice', If I was MS, I would have told them to go pound sand also.
The part you seem to not realize, instead of taking their toys and going home, MS took all their Office file formats and fully opened them up to give the industry a robust alternative to OpenDocument, so if companies want a standard they can choice something that will at least include the text and basic math, or a format that includes everything a MS or Wordperfect product can compose.
They are actually helping the industry here. They could have kept the Office format closed not played nice, instead they went out of their way to make it 'standard' and then give out the specifications to the world for free usage.
I think it is much more logical that Microsoft preferred to implement a format that they alone controlled as opposed to working with others to define something everyone could use. After all, by their own admission, Microsoft has stated that OOXML was designed *specifically* to support only Microsoft products and indeed the charter for TC45 at ECMA specified that they were to create a "standard" that was fully compatible with the formats used in Microsoft Office 2007. Since Microsoft solely controls Office 2007, guess who controls this "standard"?
There is some truth in that the standard has a bias towards MS Office product offerings; however, they are by far the most complex and robust formats in the industry, so why wouldn't you start with the products that have the most features packed into a file format?
And even though they do start with the MS Office base of features, the specification is NOT locked in any way to just what MS provides, it is very extensible and open, specifically designed for new featuers no matter what company they come from.
I'm sorry, but you've just used my two BIGGEST grammar bugbears in the same goddamn post. Let me correct you:
I apologize; when I typed this in OpenOffice it didn't flag any grammar problems. (j/k)
I take no credit or responsibility for my spelling or grammar in 99% of my posts, sometimes it is late and I'm tired; I also don't take the time to use an external editor or spell check.
You are aware of the size of the companies that worked together to create that specification?
Ok, going to ignore all the insane ramblings...
However, this comment deserves a response. Go look up the companies involved in OpenXML. Not only MS, the biggest name in documents, but other little companies you might recognize like Apple.
Of course OpenDocument can do that. That's basic OLE. Go troll somewhere else
#1) Actually it isn't...
If you think that a stored image, sound, or Ink in a MS Word or Excel document is OLE you are borderline scary and should be kept away from people's computers.
#2) OLE has been dead for almost 6 years. The original concept moved to ActiveX technologies, but even they are not widely used, although they technically still exist if you want to embed a Corel Graphic in Word in native format.
Do some homework before you pretend you freaking know what you are talking about, and don't call names unless someone steals your crayons.
In other words I don't really know but don't want to admit it.
Actually I have a job and a life and don't have time to teach grade school technology to newbs that are too lazy to type MS OpenXML OpenDocument into Google.
Ink and graphics can be integrated without problems into a ODF-document
Actually they cannot. Many people simply do not understand Ink technologies. They are not just 'images of handwriting' they are data stores that reference stroke pressure, direction, speed of the stroke and even angle of the stroke. This makes Ink more than just an image of handwriting.
The reason these characteristics are important is not only for preservation of the author's intent, but by using the stroke direction, pressure etc, it increases the recognition of the handwriting into 'text' and also creates signatures that are virtually impossible to forge, even by experts.
This is also just one small aspect, there is a lot to what is store in OpenXML that simply does not have a 'standard' way to be stored in OpenDocument. Sure the content could be attached to the OpenDocument content but because there is no standard for these media types or how they are handled or displayed in the 'context' of the original document, it severly FRAGMENTS the whole purpose of having a unified standard.
Here is the bottom line: Would you prefer a standard that 'knows' how to handle all the context and data that a user may put into a document, or a standard that only supports 70% of the features of what a person would put in a document, with the extra data being added to the file in ways that OTHER APPLICATIONS would NOT know how to read?
This was MS's argument against OpenDocument, as they clearly stated if one is going to be created it should support 'every' technology of today and have a standard for how it is stored and referenced in the document as well as providing a clear path for future versions so compatibility will not be lost going into the future or even the past.
So, I've always wondered when you print out an Word document or an Excel spreeasheet with music in it, how does it sound when you read it. How 'bout the video quality, resolution...? As a writer and as someone who uses lots of spreadsheets for data anayysis to guide and back up that writing, the point of fluff like videos or music in documents (particularly spreadsheets) completely eludes me
It actually sounds great...
All kidding aside, it is nice to be able to hit record when you are in a meeting, take notes and then weeks later do a search for something that was SAID during the meaning and not only have it locate those words or phrases in the recording, but also take me to the notes I was writing when it was said.
People also still think like this is 1990 and servers are for files and printers and anything beyond words and calcuations are just fluff.
Earth to KwKSilver, this is the 21st century - CONTENT is more than just words.
For a spreadsheet example, my accountant has put voice annotations in a spreadsheet for several years now to explain information. Some people do use fancy things like sound, even when sharing financial data.
As for your printer example, imagine in a couple of years when you are holding a piece of paper that uses electronic ink, and the Word document with the animated chart you printed to it is also animated on the paper. The MS formats already support this, so they are not only providing for what is common today, but what will probably be common tomorrow as well.
OpenDocument would have been grand if they HAD NOT limited the feature set to be bascially what Office Documents produced back in 1997, which by today's standards are rapidly becoming dated.
Until you define "robust feature", i will consider you a fud-spewing troll. Which feature in OpenXML is ODF lacking?
Considering it is the DEFAULT file format for Office 2007 applications, it can contain anything a Microsoft Office Application can produce. Which includes things like I mention in my post, Ink, robust media, graphics, object interactions, etc. It is also highly extensible paving the way for future concepts to easily be added in a STANDARD form that all companies can use, not just MS.
I however won't do the homework for you if you are too lazy, go look this stuff up, it is easily available with a search.
Well, for example OpenXML takes much more space than the binary ODF format
"Smaller file sizes and improved recovery of corrupted documents enable Microsoft Office users to operate efficiently and confidently and reduces the risk of lost information. Office XML Formats use ZIP compression technology to store documents offering potential cost savings as it reduces the disk space required to store files and decreases the bandwidth needed to transport files by e-mail, over networks, and across the Web."
It basically comes down to what is in the document, and sure OpenDocument could potentially be smaller since they don't support half the features of OpenXML.
Go troll in another playground...
Finally, thank goodness...
This actually gives OpenOffice a real chance - not only to be competitive but to offer a document format that has some power in its abilities.
Like I argued before with the whole OpenDocument controversy, the file formats and standards in play in the OSS world are just not robust enough to handle the current generation of documents, let alone even try to handle future concepts of what document storage could entail.
Whether OpenOffice takes advantage of it or not, the potential to maintain and use technologies that are standard in the MS world of documents like Ink and extended media content are now possible.
This is actually a win win for both sides of the fence. MS doesn't have to spend development money on a version of Office for the growing OSS OS world, and the OSS OS world can now freely be just as strong of a competitor in the business world. Basically, companies that can afford MS software will continue to do so, and smaller entities that cannot afford the price to buy into MS technology can go Open Source and not have to worry about document compatibility.
With Wordperfect also adding the MS Open format, the market once again has a choice in quality and price of the production product and won't have to worry about losing features based on the solution they choose.
If OpenDocument would have just been more 'open' about robust features that are covered in the MS OpenXML document specifications, we would see it be the standard everyone would be happily using.
However with OpenDocument it was quite unreasonable to expect MS to move to a document format that would stripe away 30% of the features that their products provide. I don't know why this was so hard for the OpenDocument crowd to understand, especially when MS was already in the process of creating an open standard that DID include more advanced document capabilities.
If we are lucky, now we might even see OpenOffice and Wordperfect move to add more feature rich concepts into their products to take advantage of the information they now easily read and store in the MS OpenXML format. Imagine everything from Ink to Sound and Video that are all even text searchable(via recognition), as you can already do with Microsoft Office products.
If it's not visible in the browser how on earth is the end user going to be able to give feedback to the developer that their website is broken?
#1 Most users will NEVER report a problem, they will just go to another website.
#2 If you are relying on users 'testing' your work, you already have problems.
mostly develop under Firefox, and I develop with XHTML. This is because if I forget a closing tag, Firefox will tell me about it. It won't just make the page look uglier, it'll tell me I have a problem. I also use the Web Development Toolbar, which tells me when I've enabled "quirks mode" -- if I haven't, then I know I'm not relying on any Firefox-specific intelligence.
I don't totally disagree with you, but here is where we are all focusing on the wrong end of this situation.
It should NOT be the browser's responsibility to debug our sites. Browsers are END USER tools that are to display the page the best it can with what crap the site provides. So, intelligence in the browser DOES screw the developer, but it HELPS the end users and that is what it should do, as they are the customers of the sites, the base.
We should instead focus on development tools that are smarter about compliance and force developers to adhere. Using MS as an example, a little intellisense wouldn't hurt a lot of the site developers. (Self closing tags, proper tags, redline bad tags, object preditction, etc.)
We shouldn't be developing major sites in notepad anymore, those days should be as far gone as developing Halo3 in notepad and compiling from the command prompt.
The development tools are where we should focus our anger about allowing crap they shouldn't or at least warning developers about crap tags. As I pointed out in another post, MS has finally 'gotten' this through their head, and the new replacement for frontpage is more of a site development environment. As far as web development tools, it is by far the most complete our developers have seen for keeping strict compliance, and is quite refreshing for them that they had some assistance that they are not using outdated tags or breaking the rules.
This is where the focus needs to be right now, espeically with so many standards and so few people understanding them well.
The only bridge between your concept of using a browser for debugging would be to ask for debugging versions of IE and Firefox (true debugging versions, not just one that displays crap wrong.) However, the focus right now STILL needs to be on the site development tools to do their job, expecially when there is software out there that generates HTML for novices and the generated HTML is horribly wrong when it comes to standards or compliance.
Windows geeks or anyone with a VM should check out the new Frontpage replacement software - it is in two versions, Sharepoint Designer as a part of Office and Web Designer as a part of the Expression projects. I think the betas are still available for download, and if not trial versions should be before long. They are not perfect, but a MAJOR step in the right direction considering these are from MS...
Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.
This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility. We are past the days of people using notepad for major sites, so we also should be past the days of relying on the browser to tell us what we messed up.
Sadly, one of the companies that FINALLY has seemed to get this is MS, their new Web Designer/Sharepoint (Frontpage replacement) is very good about forcing the developer to adhere to the page rules they select. If they choose XHTML Strict, CSS xx, then the application will scold them if any tag is messed up and even explain why.
Sadly the old Frontpage really failed here, as well as dreamweaver and other tools. For example, just opening a site that the old Frontpage 2003 thought was perfect will show 100s of errors on the page and even explains that this tag will work but is not compliant and should be changed. Also incorporating the VS style of intellisense and redlining it might push a lot of developers to start making compliant sites.
I just hope the rest of the industry follows suit and not only builds better compliant making tools, but also forces the developers to adhere. Right now there are so many site development tools that try to make things easy for the developers, but in generating the code (like dreamweaver for example) the software generated code fails compliance miserably. Not everyone is a tag guru and can't then fix the software generated html that is messed up.
I think we all should put more pressure on site development tools and hosting sites that use really crappy standards, rather than complain about something that should be for end users, the browser.
but used invalid CSS that Firefox and IE handled gracefully, but incorrectly.
See here is again is what people don't get...
One of the reasons IE became as popular as it did is that it didn't 'fail' when pages were formatted improperly or 'downloaded' improperly (remember dial up?)
In the 4.x browser war days there were a couple of things that MADE people prefer IE or Netscape. One of them was the fact that a missing tag at the end of a table wouldn't cause the page to not display AT ALL as it did in Netscape, so even if the page was messed up, IE would try to render it based on the information it had.
Now a lot of people see this as a flaw, but if you look at the technology it is actually a 'smart' feature that the browser would at the very least display a page even if it wasn't formed properly. Call it a form of programming 'intelligence'.
This is NO different than the CSS failures of IE and Firefox of today. They support 'legacy' tags that both browsers used and are not 'compliant', and they also will try to render page parts even if the tags and improperly formed. THIS IS WHY neither will ever fully pass all the CSS page tests on the web like ACID2, as they don't test for ability, but they MAINLY test for a browser's INABILITY to handle bad data and the developers expect the browser to NOT display the improperly formed tags.
This is really an argument that can go either way, as I see benefits in 'forcing' compliance, but I also understand that some sites are old and their data would be inaccessible or lost if every browser only conformed to strict CSS and ignored legacy tags or malformed tags. This is where I go, well it isn't hurting anyone for the browsers to be a bit smarter than the site developers.
Also everyone applauds Safari for being strict CSS, but the side note in this story is Safari also doesn't have to have any intelligence built in, nor does it worry about or handle old tags or malformed pages, they all become 'unworthy' and Safari isn't 'smart' enough to render them.
As for the browser wars of 4.x, there were a couple of other reasons IE was prefered over Netscape. Like the page refreshing when it was resized on Netscape or raw display performance.
In the end, I would pick Firefox or IE7 and their 'flaws', legacy support, and ability to render malformed pages over Safari any day. Web developers tend to suck in general and I would rather have some intelligence in my browser to help counteract crap pages, even if it means the browser will fail CSS standards.
However if you are web developer, just design the page with proper standards, watch for IE7 and not assume it renders like IE6 which sucked on several CSS abilities. Then just go for standards. PS the above posts are correct - TEST IN EVERY browser you can get your hands on, there are like 5 major browser players, it is not hard to do.
Are people really this out of touch with news?
Microsoft started taking street and air shapshots of cities over a year ago, it was part of their demonstration even over a year ago.
And now this Mac user is surprised? WTF. This isn't an 'answer' to Google BTW, MS was working on this technology before Google was even a glimmer in the eye of the geeks that created it. Go look up terra server, and when MS first put this up as a demonstration of how MS-SQL could easily handle terrabytes of data.
As for the street and air level snapshots, these TOO are ALREADY in use. Microsoft 3D earth uses the 'textures' of the buildings in the 3D models they have of several major cities already.
Additionally, the 'angle' view was introduced on MS Virtual Earth over a year ago, with multi-angle views of cities from airplane shots that complimented the satelitte images.
Is everyone this out of touch with technology and news, and if so, are the editors of Slashdot becoming out of date old timers as well? No wonder people are shocked to find out that Windows doesn't run on a DOS architecture nor crash every 5 mins if this is their idea of breaking news.
Talk about slow news day... OMFG.
55 and up? You think that ads targeted toward "Young, hip people" are more effective toward actual young hip people, or older people who are desperately craving to be young and hip?
Couple that with the fact that that demographic has a hell of a lot of disposable cash, and Apple looks fricking brilliant
No, it is part of the intellectual evolutionary process. Each generation becomes smarter than the previous generation through genetics and passing of knowledge.
The poor old people just don't know any better, so they buy the cute computer.
When a person makes a comment like:
"Why do you want the power off? If you're concerned about power usage, let the power management software worry about that."
Everyone should really step back from the article and realize either he is trying really hard to pretend to be stupid, or is stupid.
(In the wisdom of Mencia)
Dee Dee Dee, I can think of one reason I would want to worry about power usage, like a laptop.
I am also concerned that he is instructing his uncle to use the 'advanced' menu to turn off the computer. MS Made it scary easy, there are TWO BUTTONS on the screen that either lock the computer or lock it and power it off. (The menu he details should not be something average users ever touch.)
Additionally, am I not like most people, because I actually use the provided sleep and Power buttons on the keyboard/physical computer anymore?
Working as intended, sorry Joel isn't able to keep up with the two button interface and is playing with the advanced menu, since it seems out of his understanding.
Vista doesn't support dragging the quicklaunch bar off of the stat menu and off to one side because it was "confusing to end users." No one seems to have found a registry override as yet.
Right Click on Quick Launch bar, select open, drag the folder to the side of the screen, just like you can do with any folder.
Oh, and the support calls I have seen our techs field because users 'misplace' the quick launch bar is actually scary, MS made the right choice to prevent it from easily being ripped off the bar.
You might as well act surprised that people vote for the guy running for office instead of the cranky guy who shoots at neighborhood cats...
But isn't the cranky cat shooter now vice president?
Google apologists? WTF
After reading several posts, more people are standing up to defend Google and their control of their IP. That is fine, but if the article was about MS or another 'evil' corporate company doing this, we would see 1000 posts by now telling the world how evil they are.
What surprises me, is when I see the same people decry Microsoft or IBM and then in related issues stick up for companies like Google and Apple. These companies are all out for their own interest, give back only what 'little' they 'have' to give back and don't give a crap about OSS.
If you look back at tons of articles, where Apple stops giving back source, closes Darwin, or straps on tons of DRM and closes their entire media business to just themselves; or articles where Google admits to data mining email and has some 'unknown-unholy' alliance to firefox that controls the development of the browser and people just roll over like these are all ok things and people still think these companies are good and all about being Open.
Google is not any better than any other corporate machine, and as they get bigger their weight will be felt more and more by the entire industry.
Google is not about cute kittens any more than MS is about cute kittens.
Ok?
If you're running any OS in a VM, then isn't it by definition NOT your "main OS"?
People run VMs all the time so they can run applications that their OS cannot run. For example a Linux installation running WindowsXP in a VM so they can run MS Office natively for work.
Maybe 'main' isn't the best term, but the point is that it is being used under virtualization for doing work along side the default OS install and not just used for testing or devleopment.