The problem is that if you allow such metadata, that opens the door for Microsoft to do their normal trick of perverting the standard
This is crap...
The entire point of 'creating structuredized extensibility' is that Microsoft won't add crap that breaks the method of adding it and 'requiring' it to be published.
If you don't put in mechanisms for extensibility, then every tom, joe, and MS will add crap to it as needed, and the standard will have serious problems.
Even HTML, as great as it was, the mechanisms for adding features and ways to extend it were not so well defined in the beginning, so what did we have Netscape and MS breaking the standards, adding in crap, etc etc...
Now we have W3C standards that control changes and new features, so we see things like DHTML/XHTML/CSS and all can give us what we need today, but yet offer standards for adding in future technologies, through a 'standardized process'. Now that W3C has these standards of 'extensibility' you will notice that even Microsoft is becoming a proponent of these standards, as they DO NOT LIMIT creativity or features.
Ok, in who's eyes? From the Open Office people's point of view it is non-discriminatory, but from Microsoft and companies that offer more features it is very discriminatory.
How about from the user's persepective? I imagine they would say, "Oh, I would love to write this on my TablePC, or I would love to drop in Voice Notes with this letter or include an animation or a video or slideshow, but I have to 'publish' in ODF and it doesn't support any of these features." (Talk about dis-empowering people with software 'constraints')
I thought this was an Open advocacy site, how in the 'fek' do people think that just because they slap 'Open' on the front of something, then 'force' people to use it that this is about openness or empowering people?
If it was truly non-discriminatory then ODF would look at Microsoft's proposals and work with them instead of trying to TELL Microsoft and OTHER companies how the ODF people think it should be done. They are NOT the sole experts here, PERIOD.
Open should be truly open, not a just a standard FORCED on the industry with the word OPEN slapped on the front of it.
I could make a new 'open' Image format, call it OpenTNAImage, and then tell the industry that this is the only true 'open' image standard, sell it to some politicians that don't know a pixel from a light bulb. Then tell the rest of the world that they cannot have any say in my 'open standard' format.
Sound good? How about when I tell you that my new OpenTNAImage format is only 256pixels by 500pixels maximum and is only black and white, but HECK, it is OPEN so the entire world should just use it and convert all their images to my 'open' format even if it means the loss of image quaility. As long as I can sell it to non-tech politicians, then it must be the 'best'. Geesh.
How can people truly not get that ODF needs to be truly 'open' and 'extendible'? Not just a standard by people with 'agendas' with the word Open on the front of it?
The issue with ODF as it's come up (and Massachussetts in particular) is that they wanted to be able to publish information for the public in a format that they could use regardless of several factors, the big two of which are choice of representation and futureproofing.
Ok, future proofing is about 90% of what I was talking about in my post and something Microsoft has also stressed. But future proofing does not mean just accessibility in the 'future' it also means 'extendibility' something that ODF has crap support for.
I don't even want to touch the accessibility/ADA aspects
This line demonstrates there are a lot of things you do not get.
ODF has almost no provisions for accessibility, yet MS Office documents have numerous accesibility features that are 'embedded' in the document formats.
So you would rather have NO ADA aspects rather than have one that has ADA and can support 'sound' for the blind, and video the hearing impaired?
Do yourself a favor, go www.microsoft.com and look up accessibility before you post something this stupid again.
BTW One of my software companies specializes in software specifically for disabled individuals, so THIS is something I know a bit about.
ODF is TOO Basic. Even if want to make the argument that it should 'initially' be basic, there needs to be a standardized method for including non-standard structures that are put into a standard that all applications and readers can use.
These are emerging technologies and even though it seems people like you see the peak of features already here, this is flat wrong. Your arguments would be just as stupid as saying that ODF should not support Pictures or Font Styles, and 15 years ago, there were people that said these exact same stupid things.
We need Microsoft to work together on this. Microosft has joined in on the ODF project and also has been opening up Word and Excel formats slowly, and these formats have standardization, just not a published one.
MS Office formats can already do full HTML/XML storage without feature loss, and have support for adding features in a standardized structure. Who gives a crap if the ODF ends up looking more like a MS Word document, as long as it is published and does what IS NEEDED?
Think of a magazine. Magazines are commonly laid out in Quark XPress (as a common example). Quark has features like revision control, graphics control, text kerning and leading and flow-control. Myriad tweakable parameters that allow the people who work on the magazine to make it look and read the way they feel is best
Public document formats are more than just 'published ones' these are also internal use company and government documents that will be referenced in the future, so if people are publishing in ODF but usind MS Word or WordPerfect internally, half of the functionality and reasoning for ODF is rendered worthless, as these internal documents 'could' become unaccessible, and in our life time.
How many times have you encountered trying to read a PageMaker 1.0 file, or a WordStar file, or some other file format that is so outdated, even the current version of the product WILL NOT READ THEM. This again is an example of internal use formats being a problem that ODF is supposed to and would address.
We CANNOT just hold ODF to be a 'published' format, because then it become worthless if there is no round tripping. Based on your Magazine analogy, why don't we just render all the documents in a 1200dpi Image format then, heck print them to microfilm? There is no difference if it is just to be a published format only. See how important that round-tripping is to ODF yet?
If you want ODF dumbed down to the point PEOPLE WILL NOT USE IT, you are defeating the WHOLE purpose of ODF.
The two examples that you provide are probably used by 0.01% of Microsoft Word documents. I would not call them "real world" examples.
Ok, in your world maybe, there are millions of TabletPCs, and guess what they use these features. Both Ink and annotative voice are used by these people EVERYDAY.
This is not only about what is NOW, but the future as well. Vista and the next OSX have extensive INK support throughout the OSes.
So you think all this technology should just be IGNORED in ODF because you don't use it?
And if you don't think future technologies are important, how about other stuff like this...
Embedded OLE or OpenDoc objects Audio Video Animations Interactive Animations & Controls Redaction features Markup-Revision features
And the list of what IS in use today and NOT in ODF could go on and on.
How about even advanced handing of font kerning, that Open Office doesn't support, or how about 'character' justification, that is in use, and even MS Word doesn't support.
Should MS Word just throw away all the information then also when editing an ODF document?
It amazes me that people in the ODF camp would rather HURT users rather than try to make it something that has true support and longevity.
I am only asking for more serious thought, and not just a specification that is essentially ONLY support base technologies in Open Office.
The sad part is even though my post seems a bit 'harsh' with regard to calling Bush King, the information I posted is factual.
(I encourage everyone to research this a bit.)
This could have long term reprocussions with future administrations, so even if you are a Bush supporter, what happens when another Clinton is in the WhiteHouse? Bush and the Republican congress have extended the powers of the President to a alarming Monarchal level.
And even if I am a bit 'tinfoil' on this, it isn't going to hurt anyone that cares about the US and its future to actually look at some of this and how it truly could hurt our republic.
This is 'exactly' what Microsoft has been saying all along about ODF.
ODF does not support advanced features, nor provides a 'standard' or uniform implementation for advanced features, which makes the adoption of this document format very premature.
Basically, even a product like Microsoft Word uses and stores information that there is NO way to store this information in ODF. At least not with any standardization.
Microsoft made it clear that an open format should be adopted, just NOT this specification, as it is limited and its feature set is targeted at lower end document structures.
ODF takes non-standard data and splits this off from the ODF Document itself. How can this help interoperability?
Lets use a real world example. Microsoft Word uses technologies like 'Ink' and as well as even voice structure, in addition to rich media formats that there is no STANDARD way of storing this in an ODF.
So if Open Office doesn't support concepts like Ink, if the document is saved using ODF the 'ink' being non-standard would not be put in a format that Open Office could understand and this information would not MATCH changes to the document even if Open Office preserved the 'ink' data. Rendering this information and data useless.
Ink may not seem important, but there are companies that do use ink technology in Word Processor documents, even Apple is moving for better Ink technology support. Also realize that there are a large population of people that use 'Ink' in Microsoft Office documents on a daily base. I even use it, and retain my notes and even my documents with the intact Ink. It is quite impressive to be able to edit and use Microsoft Word with Ink. You are basically using your own handwriting, but editing it with Wordprocessor tools, like doing spell check on it, move words around, etc etc.
And Ink is just a 'tiny' example of a feature that ODF does not support that you will find in other document formats, not even just stuff from Microsoft.
Microsoft tried to use a similar example like Ink several times, but the press and the people pushing for ODF would not listen.
You cannot have a universal document format if it does not have the capability to support features in the current products that would be using like Microsoft Word. Nor can you have a universal document format that does not have a structured way of standardizing new technologies that will be added to it in the future.
What happens when I drop a XAML animation or XPS document in my Word Document. These are simple binary or non-binary XML document structures, but yet, ODF would choke on this already. And you will see people using XAML/XPS based animations and images and document constructs even in applications like Microsoft Word within the year.
So this then breaks ODF for everyone but Microsoft Word users, and defeats the whole purpose of a standard document format. And Microsoft is NOT being evil with this, XPS/XAML is how the entire Vista OS works and passes information. Adobe also has many 'embedded' media technologies that fail in the ODF specification. We won't be able to use ODF easily with even something as simple as InDesign.
Now if you have read this far, please take note...
I think the ODF concept is grand, and there is NO reason Microsoft should hold the rules to any standard document format. We need a standard, but considering Microsoft truly DOES have the majority of the technologies used in document formating to extra concepts used in their documents like Ink, the ODF standard needs to USE Microsoft's knowledge on this subject.
It isn't like Microsoft isn't offering to help, they are. It also isn't like Microsoft has done something much like this before. RTF was a Microsoft creation, and even many of the XHTML and other 'web document' specifications have been written by or have been greatly improved by smart people at Microsoft.
Win95 & Win98 first editions would crash if you looked at them wrong......The Linux kernel hits the same pitfalls as the Windows kernel.
Just to clarify for you and others. Win95 and Win95 were based on a completely different kernel technology than the current generation of Windows.
As for Win9X being any indication of the Windows Kernel or the Kernel problems you might see in the Windows Line is not accurate.
WindowsNT is what the current WindowsXP and Win2k run on, which is a completely different kernel technology. (Comparing Win9x to WinXP would be like comparing System 7 to OSX in Mac terms. - They look a like but are completely different operating systems.)
The WindowsNT kernel has not had many problems over the years, nor is it hitting a point of 'pitfalls' like the Win9x kernel did. In fact many of the original designed features of the NT kernel are just now coming into use. NT was structured to not only evolve, but also had inherent capabilities that they knew hardware of the early 1990s could not use efficiently, so they were not utilized by the Win32 subsystem.
The Win9X kernel line was never designed for long term viability, it was designed as a gap for performance and compatibility between moving people from Win3.x to a future NT based Windows OS. (Essentially Win2k & WinXP)
I also agree that Linux may hit some hard roads if some issues are not addressed now. Not only bugs, but considering what Linux was designed for that we are still building on to what we are doing and wanting to do with it today are vastly different.
Thanks for the response, it appears you aren't some 1970s geek with some preconception that a GUI is totally non-essential in a server environment.
I do realize that my company and our clients use GUI portions and features provided by the GUI more than the average in server environments.
I do think you overestimate the 'load' of the GUI on Windows Servers, it is truly not like loading XWindows on a *nix box which does have a considerable overhead in comparison.
Microsoft was very sensitive to putting a GUI on the NT Server, but they also realized the advantages in doing so for future Server technologies. The way the GUI works on Windows truly is not much more than initializing the Video to a VGA resolution, and the overhead is in maintaining that Image. Very tiny in CPU cycles, and even system RAM consumed to do so.
In comparison, think back to older hardware like a 486-66 server with 32mb of RAM running Windows NT 4.0. The server performance level was dang good, besting even Novell of the day. So to make a blanket statement that a GUI is going to add overhead to a server is not well founded in the Windows world at least.
The GUI on Windows Server also adds a lot of functionality, part of which is overlooked. Even if you aren't running a GUI service on the server you have access to application level DLL and libraries that are associated with the Windows GUI and Win32 subsystem.
This is why Microsoft kept the GUI on NT Server, as they knew the importance of an Application server, especially one that was compatible with off the shelf Win16/32 applications to provide an easy development environment that could provide functionality for the regular Server services.
This is the big shift that game MS another advantage of Novell. Novell's development platform in the NT 4.0 and pre days was very limited and horrible to program for in comparison. Developers could write simple VB applications even that provided services or provided functionality on the server that you just couldn't do in a Novell environment.
This is also the same reason *nix environments are an advantage to the old Novell Server model, they are more than servers, they are application servers because of their inherent ease in running server side processes.
You also mention that with Windows you "don't have a choice" about running the GUI and you don't like that.
Actually you do with current Versions of Windows Server. You can easily run headless servers with no GUI initialization whatsoever, and fully use CUI and remote administration tools in place of RDPing into the server.
And even in this environment you can still run GUI based features from the server like via RDP, the only real difference here is whether the Video card is initialized on the server to the Login screen, and like I said that is very light weight.
Thanks for non-philippic response and engaging debate.
I am one that growing up we were taught to be polite, but my parents made a big distinction of 'words' and actions or thoughts.
However, there is a need for this in the business world, like in the example I gave, it would offend others and limit the 'creative' services like sending ECards from your company employees by them just leaving their 'best wishes' by picking up a phone. So the company might want to ensure their employees aren't doing the Serial Mom thing and not have to screen all the calls manually.
The other important thing here is the use of Digital media encoding in Radio and television broadcasts. Instead of using a 15 sec delay, features like this could help keep companies that have rules from the FCC out of trouble.
Besides, if there are anal parents that want to limit the words 'juicy c**t' from a movie they wouldn't mind their kid to see otherwise, hey this is actually giving the consumers more power.
As for MS patent on this, it is like the majority of their patents from their last couple of years of patent drives. They were sick of suits from Eola and others, and what they can patent and protect of theirs will help to stop a lot of this.
(If MS ever uses these patents to start stupid lawsuits, I will be one of the first to fly to seattle with my pitchfork.)
Not a republic, are you perhaps suggesting Bush has taken on the title of King Bush?
Technically, when the US Congress gave permission to the President to declare war without further consulting them, which is actually a power they can't give up, it installed a monarchal set of powers for the President. Not to mention that the intelligence that was given to the Congress in making this decision was 'filtered' and even 'altered', meaning the Whitehouse had access to CIA and FBI information, as well as reports from foreign agencies that the congress NEVER got to see at the time.
There are a few books on this, how it breaks the constitution, even in a '9/11' era, the president cannot make the decision in the context he did and was allowed to do.
This is just one example of a Monarchal power the president has not only taken but used illegally.
He also was installed by the Supreme Court, which is also against US 'republic' law. He wasn't elected, he managed to get the vote count suppressed before it would have shown he lost Florida, which is what the post election counts have shown repeatedly.
So king? Maybe... Lets see if he gives up his job at the end of his term or try to institute a state of emergency or martial law suspending the Presidential elections in 2008.
But this is something for the constitution attorneys to debate and bring to the public's attention, since the Media isn't focusing on the long term repercussions of the Monarchial powers Bush and his administration are using.
We could even talk about Cheney's Halliburton profits, which are ILLEGAL as well, and a form of financial profiting that is banned because of its relation to Monarchies and why our constitution and amendments prevent this.
Now to clarify some items and express my opinion on the article.
The things being alleged about Google are VERY damming, and it HAS nothing to do with the US being a republic and China being a communist state. (Which isn't technically true either.)
Child porn is illegal in the US, and easy to define. PERIOD.
Just like using 'democracy' in publications in China is illegal and apparently a law Google is MORE willing to uphold. It should also be mentioned that the freedom of speech constraints in China have less legal merit and are 'less' defined than the Child Porn laws in the US.
Filtering Child Porn in the US is something that is assumed Google would have been doing because it does break the LAW in the US.
Now add in the fact that Google was not filtering, which is one thing as there are a lot of sites that easily fool search engines. However not filtering searches is one thing, but making money from Child Porn advertisers is another thing on a grander level.
The big story is that it is being established they were making 'revenue' from Child Porn Site ads.
Advertisers for banners, etc from Google and most other onsite companies, require a process of approval to be accepted to become an advertiser. I have seen clients get 'denied' the ability to advertise on Google banner ads for some of the most stupid reasons, so now to learn that Child Porn sites were 'approved' is even more egregious.
BTW China is an economic state of capitalism but is a communism state for social policies. (The same could 'technically' be said of the US, Social Security, banning Marihuana, etc.)
So the argument that the difference in Google's policies is related to the country of business is not valid. Breaking laws is breaking laws.
Now I'm willing to let this play out and see what is found in discovery, etc. I am NOT a fan of Google's business practices, and as I have said many times, they make MS's tactics look less evil. However, the deserve the right to defend themselves on this, they would have had a 'pervert' manager approving these business activities and it is not some that was known or a company policy to allow.
Heck look at Homeland Security, two major figures were charged with child solicitation and expo
For the new test release of Office 12, I wish they'd kept the "skin" for titlebatrand controls the same as the first pre-beta. It was beautiful in silver and blue - without looking like iTunes. The new black thing, with a giant "ball" menu... Big step back, from the aesthetics.
You can set the Color of the UI, it just defaults to Black on Vista. But you can change it back to the default Blue, or even change it to Black on WinXP.
Look in the Options, it was kind of hidden in Beta 1, but is easier to find in Beta 1 TR.
And personally, I think it should offer more than just the two colors (besides the jokes of it only offering black & blue). It should also conform to the OS UI Theme settings, IMHO, but so far that doesn't seem to be an option.
Tinfoil hats off please, this is for Speech and Media Encorder Services...
So an employee or customer using realtime voice services could use an automated service and the company using MS Speech Server technologies could tell the system to not let them broadcast 4 letter words through the service for example.
Imagine a phone system service that allowed a customer to send messages to friends or family, and lets say the company was Apple using the product, they could use the MS technology to ensure the customer didn't tell everyone the service targeted to go get F**ked...
Another example would be a live broadcast that is encoding to Windows Media going out over the FCC air or the Internet, this could keep a bad caller on 'radio' show (for example) from violating FCC rules in realtime.
It could also be used for parents to censor TV or Audio off the Internet or Via a TV Box so they could limit certain words from their kids.
Get it?
As for 'censorship', come on lets pretend the easter bunny is trying to take over the world with toxic chocolate eggs or something more exciting.
As others have already pointed out, you're dead wrong. You'll find OS X Tiger runs better on a G3 than anything Redmond has put on any hardware yet.
Well I won't debate 'better than Redmond' stuff, as I can argue both ways on this, so that isn't my fight.
Also I responded above that I believed the person that posted the G3 example, it really was a misconception on my part, and I wasn't trying to call them a liar, but was truly trying to find out where I was off track. I fully accept Tiger does fine a G3s and even low end G3s.
It is insane to use 512MB on a server that doesn't need it just to run the OS on it.
Let alone a stupid GUI, which doesn't belong on servers anyway
Ok, this is where I stopped reading, because you are either in the stone age, or just don't know any better..
A GUI on a server is a bad thing? Lets see the GUI portion of a Windows 2003 server consumes about 2-8mb of RAM and virtually NO CPU time whatsoever. This was also true of NT4 when Novell was trying to tell people NT would be slower because it had a GUI.
The only way a GUI would slow down a server is if someone was logged into the GUI and running GUI based interfaces like the Explorer Desktop.
Secondly, you do realize this is the year 2006, and servers are used for more than just file and printer sharing, this not 1990 where servers have 2-3 basic functions.
Servers today provide video/audio encoding, are Media Servers... Oh and wait for it. They also provide GUI Multi-User interfaces for terminals. You know something like XWindows was doing in the FREAKING 1980s.
There are many companies that have centeralized applications running XWindows off a Server, as well as Windows 2003 servers with people running RDP/Terminal Services.
Why do we always have people jump into a topic, go off topic, then say things like 'Servers shouldn't have GUIs'. I sometimes think I slipped back to the 70s.
If you cannot envision a reason to have a GUI on a server, then you need to be more creative, and explore other ways your servers can be used.
And even if you can't do that, do the math on the GUI memory footprint, and the CPU utilization on a system like Windows 2003 server, where the VGA card booted to a login screen is consuming VIRTUALLY nothing.
Windows already runs WAY too much crap that screws itself every 7 days on my Windows 2000 servers which I have to reboot on a weekly basis or they tank running terminal services
I find this so hard to believe, unless you are running some really crappy internal software eating resources or having a major memory leak.
We run Win2k and Windows 2003 servers that are rebooted once a month for updates when needed. And we are handling some of the largest volume websites in the world. In addition to office environments with 1000s of users to a server.
If we have a server (Windows/Linux/Solaris) that has to be restarted because it starts to fail, there is a problem with the hardware, crap software, crap driver. PERIOD.
I suggest you maybe look inward or at whoever is adminstrating your Servers, you have a major problem that is far outside the norm.
In any case, an OPERATING SYSTEM shouldn't require that kind of power! An OS is meant to act as an interpretation layer between software and hardware, that's all. If it takes that much power to do such a "simple" task, one should wonder what the hell else is going on under the hood.
Well if we want to be technical about OSes then, sure I agree. The NT OS in Vista has a tiny footprint, the HAL is under 128KB on XP and 160KB on Vista, and even with the rest of the NT Core OS (input/output, you are looking at a few Megs.)
However when you add on the Win32 subsystem (Yes NT has subsystem technology, multi-API interfaces to the Kernel), then the OS footprint is still pretty small. (Go look up WindowsXP Embedded for a comparison, and it runs on tiny devices like routers, even with a GUI.)
An OS is the hardware interface providing basic input/output, but the level of functionality offered beyond basic I/O is based on the kernel technology.
Should we really go on? You do realize you are picking on the wrong OS (NT) to dog on for footprint, especially considering the kernel technology, where NT has quite an edge on OSes like Linux.
Just because you see the Win32 subsystem, does not mean that is the OS, any more than Linux running XWindows and KDE is the OS. (And even in this context, Windows Embedded with the full Win32 subsystem and GUI, is still considerably smaller than most GUI OS setups.)
If you want to continue going over kernel and OS theory, I'm up for it, but it would be just easier to send people to wikipedia or some other source that answers these questions.
when I happen along FUCKIGN WHORE! It makes me laugh
Actually I give it away for free, that technically makes me a slut...
But thanks for the insightful response that debates the post without trolling. I'm sure calling someone an F'ing Whore wins your technical arguments everytime.:)
Good Luck finding 512 MB RD RAM for $40. Not all PCs were on PC-100. For that matter, good luck finding 512 MB of PC 100 for $40
Considering 99% of most systems, even laptops you can easily get 512mb for around $40.
The only real exception to this is RDRAM, and it was always expensive and probably always will be. But considering how small a % of systems this is, I will stand by my statement.
Oh, and if you are having trouble finding a stick of RAM for $40 bucks (and I was being conservative) go to www.pricewatch.com
Define "run". Windows XP, assuming you want to run more than two applications at once, creeps like a paraplegic on tranquilizers if you only give it 512MB of RAM, so I have a hard time imagining Vista will run in an acceptable fashion on that much.
Hey, I hope you aren't trolling and just have had some bad and very unique situation.
We have 200mhz 80mb Laptops, and yes with Themes and 'everything' enabled on WinXP. The systems benchmark faster than they did with Win98 that shipped on the laptop.
And this includes running more than 'two' applications. These are test systems that we use for testing our own software, but also require our developers to actually 'use' once in a while and 'develop' on to ensure they are properly optimizing our applications for the least common senerio. We still belive in writing tight code, no matter how fast the baseline computers are today.
Also remember that when WindowsXP shipped, back in 2001, 128mb of RAM was pretty standard in hardware configurations.
Our techs personal recommendations are this, 128mb of RAM for good performance with WindowsXP, and no matter how old your system is, if you have at least 128mb of RAM, you should upgrade to WindowsXP. It out benchmarks Win9X and Win2k at the 128mb level. (80mb outperforms Win9x, but not Win2k unless you turn off System Restore which is a fairly heavy overhead.)
I should also note on the 200mhz laptop configurations I mentioned above, they have 6Gb HDs and our developers have to use them with MS Office, CorelDraw, Delphi, PhotoShop, and MS Visual Studio. So we don't just let them run as Web Browser only computers.
Now if you are playing WoW or Halo on your computer, it don't matter what OS you have, you need better video and more RAM period.
Yep, even the extra 'pretties' depending on the Video card.
Even with an old VGA Video card, the new graphic subsystem still does amazing things, but Vista won't do Glass as it drops to software rendering and would slow the computer down for cute animations and frosty Window borders, which is not worth the performance trade off.
Macs are WAY upgradeable if you know wtf you are doing
I do agree, and moving into the x86 realm should get even easier, the only thing that has held Macs back for upgrades is the OS support and driver support. And hopefully Apple is not going to keep their x86 migration to restricted in this regard.
PC users are 'use' to just being able to buy generic mainboard X and slapping it together with an infinite amount of hardware configurations. So when they see the Mac they do see it as 'limited' in terms of upgrading, but that doesn't mean there are 'plenty' of options in the Mac realm.
When you factor in infinite frankstein configurations in the PC world, it is one area WindowsXP and Linux deserve gold stars for being as stable as they are.
Mac has a solid OS architecture with the BSD core, so Apple can also acheive this on x86, as long as Apple doesn't try to lock the hardware options too much, but I wouldn't blame them if they did for stability.
Nah, then I wouldn't be in the cool crowd anymore and everyone would have access to it. (Just kidding)
Vista isn't even Beta 2, and if you have followed MS's past OS betas. Beta 1 to Beta 2 is like night and day. Beta 2 is where you can run it as your daily OS.
Without out popping an NDA or two, the biggest issues right now with Vista are getting the driver and compatibility in-sync. So much of the underlying OS technology has changed, this is where things are not so smooth right now.
Vista really isn't just XP with pretty graphics, tons of things that have effects throughout the system like the entire memory manager has been re-written, with new entry points for caching using external memory devices (which require driver adjustments for these device), and this is just one tiny area of change.
Then add in a new Video Driver Model, new graphics subsystem and API, and 100 other things if you go down the list.
Give MS time, I would rather it be late a month or two, rather than be crap and have to deal with customers using it. (I wouldn't want 50% of the Windows world moving to an OS with problems, let's say like *cough* WindowsME. Of course WinME did have one advantage, it is where and why the Win9X development team was disbanded and replaced by the Win2k/NT team.)/wink
I don't want to knock the cairographics work, but it still is not a full roundtrip API, nor a roundtrip Vector API.
Its strengths are it is surfaces, but they are bitmap based, much like OSX does now.
Vista really is doing some new things with its composer. Not only is Vector acceleration getting a major bump by dumping to the 3D GPU as much as possible, but the application to composer relationship has changed.
For example in Cairographics, they are also about device indepedance, something Vista is also taking to a new level as well. But in Cairographics because the surfaces are non-vector in the composer (or equiv. layer), when a difference resolution or device/display context is needed, the composer requests this inforamtion from the applications or the application 'surfaces'.
In Vista, there is no need to go back to the application, from changing device or display contexts to even more advanced things as when vector changes are made from Vista back to the application or from the application back to Vista, all that has to be communicated is the Vector change, not a full repaint of the application 'surface' to provide this change in information to Vista or to the application.
Now I know that cairographics does a bit of this on an upper layer, but when it gets to the composer layer, the OS (or the OS model of cairographics) is only maintaining the resulted bitmap for the display context.
For example, if you have an application with a 3D cube with a complex Vector Graphic dancing around it, the only changes that have to be sent to the Vista composer are the vector changes/animations.
This has tons of benefits, as it even becomes lighter and richer GUI protocol than X11 itself even. In this context, the RDP in Vista is now only passing simple vector changes even in complex graphical applications that are even doing 3D operations. (Hence why in Vista, doing a Remote Desktop is even more light weight than RDP, and also passes things like Glass and the complex vector level processing and animations in a compressed XAML type format to the client computer to process.)
But that is just one simple example of a benefit. There are performance advantages within the OS itself, as well as having a really rich device independance that doesn't get limited at any device. Vista can in theory pass a 3D animating application to a printer without translation. Which could allow allow the printer (if the printer mfg would support it) the ability to not only print a static image of the Application/Document, but even do a frame by frame printout. (Think old time paper filp book)
This is kind of a silly example, but when we see 'paper' printers replaced by electronic Ink, etc will become an important feature that your printed out on 'electronic paper' will animate as it did on the LCD and also open the door for you to interact with the digital paper, even though the applicatino is technically just 'printed' to the paper.
I truly wish more people would go check out the guts of the WPF/XAML portions of Vista, along with the new Vista Graphics Subsytem that makes these concepts really shine.
Also I do realize there are some technologies out there that are trying to do a full OpenGL type of desktop composers for KDE, etc. Some are impressive, but so far they are missing the roundtrip Vector concepts from my knowledge of them.
These are progression, but the bitmap composing is not efficient. To put it in a metaphor, it would be like having your character in WoW have to resend the bitmap of the character to the rendering engine with every tiny change. This is not how 3D GPUs like to work, and the overhead of maintaining Bitmaps in this fictional metaphor overlaid on the screen and other characters would be massive. Hence why games use vector meshes.
Think of Vista as the first OS to offer this level of composing and an API to support it not just for games, but as a standard part of the basic GUI 2D/3D rendering syste
You obviously haven't worked with the hordes of "knowledge workers" if you think this is a minor shift for them.
Would you believe I do instruction training for business productivity, including Office and Open Office?
I know that the initial shock may see big to people, but in what tests we have deployed in the beta with the same apprehension as you express has proven us wrong more than we would have thought.
The offset of the intial reluctance by users was easily outweighed by an increase in usage of the applications. Many users were impressed that the 'new' version (as they put it) could do so many things, and then when asked for examples, they demonstrated features that have been in Office for several years, they just never had noticed them or tried them because the features weren't so easily apparent.
Of all the MS divisions, the Office Development team tends to be on the upper scale of not only end user testing and real innovation, but also putting out fairly solid products. The new UI is also a demonstration they don't fully have their noses up the Windows Developer's butts. The Office developers also seem to have a good pulse on things non-Windows as well, considering MS Word and Excel got their success in the Mac world this isn't a big surprise.
This is why it also refreshing to see MS Office on a Mac work like a true Mac Applications. Some people forget that there is a portion of people at Microsoft that are die hard Mac fans and developers, and the Office division is one of the best examples.
I really don't think the Office 2007 UI will be a bust, I think we will see users get more out of the software as our test have shown. But I could be very wrong, and if I am, this is the time for other Office solutions to get their foot in the door. My only request from the competition, don't offer 'just enough', pump your next versions to be as feature complete or even more advanced than 99% of MS Office, even if you scale back or hide the complexity.
Tilebar rendering problems are not minor, when they make invisible the "close" and "minimize/maximise" controls! This is with the WDDM drivers for both the most popular nVidia cards, and the only Glass-capable ATI I have found in a laptop.
I don't fully disagree, but remember that the Office 2007 beta is not even a 'beta' build, the last release was a TR. Also I was amazed that MS even permitted a Beta on Beta installation, as this is not usually a good thing at this stage in the cycle. If either product was a RC stage, that would be different.
Also for the missing buttons, I have seen it too, we have units here with the same problem, including my personal 'baby' laptop. The buttons are there, just not visible, also you can access the features of the buttons from the Office drop down Menu on the left or using the defautl keystrokes, Alt-Space, etc etc.
Good luck and I apologize to everyone for the terse nature of my previous post, call it a bad day. However, I did feel that of all things to be picky about a beta on beta installation where these problems were known is not something to call a major issue. (Also note the WDDM drivers in Vista have change 10 fold in the past year, and with the new layers of complexity, it is not surprising tha NVidia/ATI and even MS themselves are still adjusting with each release. Just the Virtual GPU tasking and Memory sharing are more revisions, not only to the drivers, but a large paradigm shift in how video usually works on an OS.
The WDDM drivers are actually the most buggy at this point because of the shift.
Besides, there is no way MS is going to let Office 2007 look anything but flawless on Vista. Office is more of their bread and butter than a lot of people realize and it is also an opportunity to showcase some of the elegance of the Vista UI.
i'm the AC who posted just below this - the one with the G3 400 Mhz pismo and the install of Tiger required no tricks whatsoever. the OS does, i believe, have a requirement that the target machine have a dvd drive and firewire, but i also believe i read somewhere where people were able to work around that. as my pismo has firewire and dvd, this was not an issue for me.
Well I truly will take your word for Tiger on a G3. I don't have a G3 around here, so it isn't something I have had first hand access to test.
I probably could play with the CPU settings on a PearPC installation, but I will take your word. The G3 issues with Tiger that I had heard of from the news and customers must be more on the lines of other earlier OSX releases that also down scaled some of the 'pretties'.
Which is something I see as a level of innovation rather than stripping features as others here have tried to say of both Apple and MS on their OS technologies. It is how I see Vista too, scaling back a complex GUI in steps down for older hardware is a sign they are making it easy for everyone, not just people who buy the latest and greatest.
It is good to hear Apple is doing some of the same accomodations for older systems and are not leaving people behind, especailly when they are doing both the OS and the hardware. Kudos to Apple on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that if you allow such metadata, that opens the door for Microsoft to do their normal trick of perverting the standard
This is crap...
The entire point of 'creating structuredized extensibility' is that Microsoft won't add crap that breaks the method of adding it and 'requiring' it to be published.
If you don't put in mechanisms for extensibility, then every tom, joe, and MS will add crap to it as needed, and the standard will have serious problems.
Even HTML, as great as it was, the mechanisms for adding features and ways to extend it were not so well defined in the beginning, so what did we have Netscape and MS breaking the standards, adding in crap, etc etc...
Now we have W3C standards that control changes and new features, so we see things like DHTML/XHTML/CSS and all can give us what we need today, but yet offer standards for adding in future technologies, through a 'standardized process'. Now that W3C has these standards of 'extensibility' you will notice that even Microsoft is becoming a proponent of these standards, as they DO NOT LIMIT creativity or features.
in the way ODF is (non-discriminatory)
Ok, in who's eyes? From the Open Office people's point of view it is non-discriminatory, but from Microsoft and companies that offer more features it is very discriminatory.
How about from the user's persepective? I imagine they would say, "Oh, I would love to write this on my TablePC, or I would love to drop in Voice Notes with this letter or include an animation or a video or slideshow, but I have to 'publish' in ODF and it doesn't support any of these features." (Talk about dis-empowering people with software 'constraints')
I thought this was an Open advocacy site, how in the 'fek' do people think that just because they slap 'Open' on the front of something, then 'force' people to use it that this is about openness or empowering people?
If it was truly non-discriminatory then ODF would look at Microsoft's proposals and work with them instead of trying to TELL Microsoft and OTHER companies how the ODF people think it should be done. They are NOT the sole experts here, PERIOD.
Open should be truly open, not a just a standard FORCED on the industry with the word OPEN slapped on the front of it.
I could make a new 'open' Image format, call it OpenTNAImage, and then tell the industry that this is the only true 'open' image standard, sell it to some politicians that don't know a pixel from a light bulb. Then tell the rest of the world that they cannot have any say in my 'open standard' format.
Sound good? How about when I tell you that my new OpenTNAImage format is only 256pixels by 500pixels maximum and is only black and white, but HECK, it is OPEN so the entire world should just use it and convert all their images to my 'open' format even if it means the loss of image quaility. As long as I can sell it to non-tech politicians, then it must be the 'best'. Geesh.
How can people truly not get that ODF needs to be truly 'open' and 'extendible'? Not just a standard by people with 'agendas' with the word Open on the front of it?
The issue with ODF as it's come up (and Massachussetts in particular) is that they wanted to be able to publish information for the public in a format that they could use regardless of several factors, the big two of which are choice of representation and futureproofing.
Ok, future proofing is about 90% of what I was talking about in my post and something Microsoft has also stressed. But future proofing does not mean just accessibility in the 'future' it also means 'extendibility' something that ODF has crap support for.
I don't even want to touch the accessibility/ADA aspects
This line demonstrates there are a lot of things you do not get.
ODF has almost no provisions for accessibility, yet MS Office documents have numerous accesibility features that are 'embedded' in the document formats.
So you would rather have NO ADA aspects rather than have one that has ADA and can support 'sound' for the blind, and video the hearing impaired?
Do yourself a favor, go www.microsoft.com and look up accessibility before you post something this stupid again.
BTW One of my software companies specializes in software specifically for disabled individuals, so THIS is something I know a bit about.
ODF is TOO Basic. Even if want to make the argument that it should 'initially' be basic, there needs to be a standardized method for including non-standard structures that are put into a standard that all applications and readers can use.
These are emerging technologies and even though it seems people like you see the peak of features already here, this is flat wrong. Your arguments would be just as stupid as saying that ODF should not support Pictures or Font Styles, and 15 years ago, there were people that said these exact same stupid things.
We need Microsoft to work together on this. Microosft has joined in on the ODF project and also has been opening up Word and Excel formats slowly, and these formats have standardization, just not a published one.
MS Office formats can already do full HTML/XML storage without feature loss, and have support for adding features in a standardized structure. Who gives a crap if the ODF ends up looking more like a MS Word document, as long as it is published and does what IS NEEDED?
Think of a magazine. Magazines are commonly laid out in Quark XPress (as a common example). Quark has features like revision control, graphics control, text kerning and leading and flow-control. Myriad tweakable parameters that allow the people who work on the magazine to make it look and read the way they feel is best
Public document formats are more than just 'published ones' these are also internal use company and government documents that will be referenced in the future, so if people are publishing in ODF but usind MS Word or WordPerfect internally, half of the functionality and reasoning for ODF is rendered worthless, as these internal documents 'could' become unaccessible, and in our life time.
How many times have you encountered trying to read a PageMaker 1.0 file, or a WordStar file, or some other file format that is so outdated, even the current version of the product WILL NOT READ THEM. This again is an example of internal use formats being a problem that ODF is supposed to and would address.
We CANNOT just hold ODF to be a 'published' format, because then it become worthless if there is no round tripping. Based on your Magazine analogy, why don't we just render all the documents in a 1200dpi Image format then, heck print them to microfilm? There is no difference if it is just to be a published format only. See how important that round-tripping is to ODF yet?
If you want ODF dumbed down to the point PEOPLE WILL NOT USE IT, you are defeating the WHOLE purpose of ODF.
Get it yet?
The two examples that you provide are probably used by 0.01% of Microsoft Word documents. I would not call them "real world" examples.
Ok, in your world maybe, there are millions of TabletPCs, and guess what they use these features. Both Ink and annotative voice are used by these people EVERYDAY.
This is not only about what is NOW, but the future as well. Vista and the next OSX have extensive INK support throughout the OSes.
So you think all this technology should just be IGNORED in ODF because you don't use it?
And if you don't think future technologies are important, how about other stuff like this...
Embedded OLE or OpenDoc objects
Audio
Video
Animations
Interactive Animations & Controls
Redaction features
Markup-Revision features
And the list of what IS in use today and NOT in ODF could go on and on.
How about even advanced handing of font kerning, that Open Office doesn't support, or how about 'character' justification, that is in use, and even MS Word doesn't support.
Should MS Word just throw away all the information then also when editing an ODF document?
It amazes me that people in the ODF camp would rather HURT users rather than try to make it something that has true support and longevity.
I am only asking for more serious thought, and not just a specification that is essentially ONLY support base technologies in Open Office.
Flamebait? Who let neo-cons in here? *smile*
The sad part is even though my post seems a bit 'harsh' with regard to calling Bush King, the information I posted is factual.
(I encourage everyone to research this a bit.)
This could have long term reprocussions with future administrations, so even if you are a Bush supporter, what happens when another Clinton is in the WhiteHouse? Bush and the Republican congress have extended the powers of the President to a alarming Monarchal level.
And even if I am a bit 'tinfoil' on this, it isn't going to hurt anyone that cares about the US and its future to actually look at some of this and how it truly could hurt our republic.
Take Care...
Before we get the usual FUD and Tinfoil Responses
This is 'exactly' what Microsoft has been saying all along about ODF.
ODF does not support advanced features, nor provides a 'standard' or uniform implementation for advanced features, which makes the adoption of this document format very premature.
Basically, even a product like Microsoft Word uses and stores information that there is NO way to store this information in ODF. At least not with any standardization.
Microsoft made it clear that an open format should be adopted, just NOT this specification, as it is limited and its feature set is targeted at lower end document structures.
ODF takes non-standard data and splits this off from the ODF Document itself. How can this help interoperability?
Lets use a real world example. Microsoft Word uses technologies like 'Ink' and as well as even voice structure, in addition to rich media formats that there is no STANDARD way of storing this in an ODF.
So if Open Office doesn't support concepts like Ink, if the document is saved using ODF the 'ink' being non-standard would not be put in a format that Open Office could understand and this information would not MATCH changes to the document even if Open Office preserved the 'ink' data. Rendering this information and data useless.
Ink may not seem important, but there are companies that do use ink technology in Word Processor documents, even Apple is moving for better Ink technology support. Also realize that there are a large population of people that use 'Ink' in Microsoft Office documents on a daily base. I even use it, and retain my notes and even my documents with the intact Ink. It is quite impressive to be able to edit and use Microsoft Word with Ink. You are basically using your own handwriting, but editing it with Wordprocessor tools, like doing spell check on it, move words around, etc etc.
And Ink is just a 'tiny' example of a feature that ODF does not support that you will find in other document formats, not even just stuff from Microsoft.
Microsoft tried to use a similar example like Ink several times, but the press and the people pushing for ODF would not listen.
You cannot have a universal document format if it does not have the capability to support features in the current products that would be using like Microsoft Word. Nor can you have a universal document format that does not have a structured way of standardizing new technologies that will be added to it in the future.
What happens when I drop a XAML animation or XPS document in my Word Document. These are simple binary or non-binary XML document structures, but yet, ODF would choke on this already. And you will see people using XAML/XPS based animations and images and document constructs even in applications like Microsoft Word within the year.
So this then breaks ODF for everyone but Microsoft Word users, and defeats the whole purpose of a standard document format. And Microsoft is NOT being evil with this, XPS/XAML is how the entire Vista OS works and passes information. Adobe also has many 'embedded' media technologies that fail in the ODF specification. We won't be able to use ODF easily with even something as simple as InDesign.
Now if you have read this far, please take note...
I think the ODF concept is grand, and there is NO reason Microsoft should hold the rules to any standard document format. We need a standard, but considering Microsoft truly DOES have the majority of the technologies used in document formating to extra concepts used in their documents like Ink, the ODF standard needs to USE Microsoft's knowledge on this subject.
It isn't like Microsoft isn't offering to help, they are. It also isn't like Microsoft has done something much like this before. RTF was a Microsoft creation, and even many of the XHTML and other 'web document' specifications have been written by or have been greatly improved by smart people at Microsoft.
In reading through the press, buzz, FUD, and eve
Win95 & Win98 first editions would crash if you looked at them wrong... ...The Linux kernel hits the same pitfalls as the Windows kernel.
Just to clarify for you and others. Win95 and Win95 were based on a completely different kernel technology than the current generation of Windows.
As for Win9X being any indication of the Windows Kernel or the Kernel problems you might see in the Windows Line is not accurate.
WindowsNT is what the current WindowsXP and Win2k run on, which is a completely different kernel technology. (Comparing Win9x to WinXP would be like comparing System 7 to OSX in Mac terms. - They look a like but are completely different operating systems.)
The WindowsNT kernel has not had many problems over the years, nor is it hitting a point of 'pitfalls' like the Win9x kernel did. In fact many of the original designed features of the NT kernel are just now coming into use. NT was structured to not only evolve, but also had inherent capabilities that they knew hardware of the early 1990s could not use efficiently, so they were not utilized by the Win32 subsystem.
The Win9X kernel line was never designed for long term viability, it was designed as a gap for performance and compatibility between moving people from Win3.x to a future NT based Windows OS. (Essentially Win2k & WinXP)
I also agree that Linux may hit some hard roads if some issues are not addressed now. Not only bugs, but considering what Linux was designed for that we are still building on to what we are doing and wanting to do with it today are vastly different.
Take Care...
Thanks for the response, it appears you aren't some 1970s geek with some preconception that a GUI is totally non-essential in a server environment.
I do realize that my company and our clients use GUI portions and features provided by the GUI more than the average in server environments.
I do think you overestimate the 'load' of the GUI on Windows Servers, it is truly not like loading XWindows on a *nix box which does have a considerable overhead in comparison.
Microsoft was very sensitive to putting a GUI on the NT Server, but they also realized the advantages in doing so for future Server technologies. The way the GUI works on Windows truly is not much more than initializing the Video to a VGA resolution, and the overhead is in maintaining that Image. Very tiny in CPU cycles, and even system RAM consumed to do so.
In comparison, think back to older hardware like a 486-66 server with 32mb of RAM running Windows NT 4.0. The server performance level was dang good, besting even Novell of the day. So to make a blanket statement that a GUI is going to add overhead to a server is not well founded in the Windows world at least.
The GUI on Windows Server also adds a lot of functionality, part of which is overlooked. Even if you aren't running a GUI service on the server you have access to application level DLL and libraries that are associated with the Windows GUI and Win32 subsystem.
This is why Microsoft kept the GUI on NT Server, as they knew the importance of an Application server, especially one that was compatible with off the shelf Win16/32 applications to provide an easy development environment that could provide functionality for the regular Server services.
This is the big shift that game MS another advantage of Novell. Novell's development platform in the NT 4.0 and pre days was very limited and horrible to program for in comparison. Developers could write simple VB applications even that provided services or provided functionality on the server that you just couldn't do in a Novell environment.
This is also the same reason *nix environments are an advantage to the old Novell Server model, they are more than servers, they are application servers because of their inherent ease in running server side processes.
You also mention that with Windows you "don't have a choice" about running the GUI and you don't like that.
Actually you do with current Versions of Windows Server. You can easily run headless servers with no GUI initialization whatsoever, and fully use CUI and remote administration tools in place of RDPing into the server.
And even in this environment you can still run GUI based features from the server like via RDP, the only real difference here is whether the Video card is initialized on the server to the Login screen, and like I said that is very light weight.
Thanks for non-philippic response and engaging debate.
Take Care...
But do we really need this?
I am one that growing up we were taught to be polite, but my parents made a big distinction of 'words' and actions or thoughts.
However, there is a need for this in the business world, like in the example I gave, it would offend others and limit the 'creative' services like sending ECards from your company employees by them just leaving their 'best wishes' by picking up a phone. So the company might want to ensure their employees aren't doing the Serial Mom thing and not have to screen all the calls manually.
The other important thing here is the use of Digital media encoding in Radio and television broadcasts. Instead of using a 15 sec delay, features like this could help keep companies that have rules from the FCC out of trouble.
Besides, if there are anal parents that want to limit the words 'juicy c**t' from a movie they wouldn't mind their kid to see otherwise, hey this is actually giving the consumers more power.
As for MS patent on this, it is like the majority of their patents from their last couple of years of patent drives. They were sick of suits from Eola and others, and what they can patent and protect of theirs will help to stop a lot of this.
(If MS ever uses these patents to start stupid lawsuits, I will be one of the first to fly to seattle with my pitchfork.)
Not a republic, are you perhaps suggesting Bush has taken on the title of King Bush?
Technically, when the US Congress gave permission to the President to declare war without further consulting them, which is actually a power they can't give up, it installed a monarchal set of powers for the President. Not to mention that the intelligence that was given to the Congress in making this decision was 'filtered' and even 'altered', meaning the Whitehouse had access to CIA and FBI information, as well as reports from foreign agencies that the congress NEVER got to see at the time.
There are a few books on this, how it breaks the constitution, even in a '9/11' era, the president cannot make the decision in the context he did and was allowed to do.
This is just one example of a Monarchal power the president has not only taken but used illegally.
He also was installed by the Supreme Court, which is also against US 'republic' law. He wasn't elected, he managed to get the vote count suppressed before it would have shown he lost Florida, which is what the post election counts have shown repeatedly.
So king? Maybe... Lets see if he gives up his job at the end of his term or try to institute a state of emergency or martial law suspending the Presidential elections in 2008.
But this is something for the constitution attorneys to debate and bring to the public's attention, since the Media isn't focusing on the long term repercussions of the Monarchial powers Bush and his administration are using.
We could even talk about Cheney's Halliburton profits, which are ILLEGAL as well, and a form of financial profiting that is banned because of its relation to Monarchies and why our constitution and amendments prevent this.
Now to clarify some items and express my opinion on the article.
The things being alleged about Google are VERY damming, and it HAS nothing to do with the US being a republic and China being a communist state. (Which isn't technically true either.)
Child porn is illegal in the US, and easy to define. PERIOD.
Just like using 'democracy' in publications in China is illegal and apparently a law Google is MORE willing to uphold. It should also be mentioned that the freedom of speech constraints in China have less legal merit and are 'less' defined than the Child Porn laws in the US.
Filtering Child Porn in the US is something that is assumed Google would have been doing because it does break the LAW in the US.
Now add in the fact that Google was not filtering, which is one thing as there are a lot of sites that easily fool search engines. However not filtering searches is one thing, but making money from Child Porn advertisers is another thing on a grander level.
The big story is that it is being established they were making 'revenue' from Child Porn Site ads.
Advertisers for banners, etc from Google and most other onsite companies, require a process of approval to be accepted to become an advertiser. I have seen clients get 'denied' the ability to advertise on Google banner ads for some of the most stupid reasons, so now to learn that Child Porn sites were 'approved' is even more egregious.
BTW China is an economic state of capitalism but is a communism state for social policies. (The same could 'technically' be said of the US, Social Security, banning Marihuana, etc.)
So the argument that the difference in Google's policies is related to the country of business is not valid. Breaking laws is breaking laws.
Now I'm willing to let this play out and see what is found in discovery, etc. I am NOT a fan of Google's business practices, and as I have said many times, they make MS's tactics look less evil. However, the deserve the right to defend themselves on this, they would have had a 'pervert' manager approving these business activities and it is not some that was known or a company policy to allow.
Heck look at Homeland Security, two major figures were charged with child solicitation and expo
For the new test release of Office 12, I wish they'd kept the "skin" for titlebatrand controls the same as the first pre-beta. It was beautiful in silver and blue - without looking like iTunes. The new black thing, with a giant "ball" menu... Big step back, from the aesthetics.
You can set the Color of the UI, it just defaults to Black on Vista. But you can change it back to the default Blue, or even change it to Black on WinXP.
Look in the Options, it was kind of hidden in Beta 1, but is easier to find in Beta 1 TR.
And personally, I think it should offer more than just the two colors (besides the jokes of it only offering black & blue). It should also conform to the OS UI Theme settings, IMHO, but so far that doesn't seem to be an option.
Take Care...
Tinfoil hats off please, this is for Speech and Media Encorder Services...
So an employee or customer using realtime voice services could use an automated service and the company using MS Speech Server technologies could tell the system to not let them broadcast 4 letter words through the service for example.
Imagine a phone system service that allowed a customer to send messages to friends or family, and lets say the company was Apple using the product, they could use the MS technology to ensure the customer didn't tell everyone the service targeted to go get F**ked...
Another example would be a live broadcast that is encoding to Windows Media going out over the FCC air or the Internet, this could keep a bad caller on 'radio' show (for example) from violating FCC rules in realtime.
It could also be used for parents to censor TV or Audio off the Internet or Via a TV Box so they could limit certain words from their kids.
Get it?
As for 'censorship', come on lets pretend the easter bunny is trying to take over the world with toxic chocolate eggs or something more exciting.
You go from saying they've disclosed they data mine, to claiming you can no longer find the
Are you mental? Freaking search for the article yourself, it was even on Slashdot as well as several other news sources.
It is pretty commonly known information, sorry I assumed you were well read.
Oh by the way George W. Bush is the president of the USA, this is the year 2006 and no I'm not looking up links to prove these facts to you either.
As others have already pointed out, you're dead wrong. You'll find OS X Tiger runs better on a G3 than anything Redmond has put on any hardware yet.
Well I won't debate 'better than Redmond' stuff, as I can argue both ways on this, so that isn't my fight.
Also I responded above that I believed the person that posted the G3 example, it really was a misconception on my part, and I wasn't trying to call them a liar, but was truly trying to find out where I was off track. I fully accept Tiger does fine a G3s and even low end G3s.
Take Care...
It is insane to use 512MB on a server that doesn't need it just to run the OS on it.
Let alone a stupid GUI, which doesn't belong on servers anyway
Ok, this is where I stopped reading, because you are either in the stone age, or just don't know any better..
A GUI on a server is a bad thing? Lets see the GUI portion of a Windows 2003 server consumes about 2-8mb of RAM and virtually NO CPU time whatsoever. This was also true of NT4 when Novell was trying to tell people NT would be slower because it had a GUI.
The only way a GUI would slow down a server is if someone was logged into the GUI and running GUI based interfaces like the Explorer Desktop.
Secondly, you do realize this is the year 2006, and servers are used for more than just file and printer sharing, this not 1990 where servers have 2-3 basic functions.
Servers today provide video/audio encoding, are Media Servers... Oh and wait for it. They also provide GUI Multi-User interfaces for terminals. You know something like XWindows was doing in the FREAKING 1980s.
There are many companies that have centeralized applications running XWindows off a Server, as well as Windows 2003 servers with people running RDP/Terminal Services.
Why do we always have people jump into a topic, go off topic, then say things like 'Servers shouldn't have GUIs'. I sometimes think I slipped back to the 70s.
If you cannot envision a reason to have a GUI on a server, then you need to be more creative, and explore other ways your servers can be used.
And even if you can't do that, do the math on the GUI memory footprint, and the CPU utilization on a system like Windows 2003 server, where the VGA card booted to a login screen is consuming VIRTUALLY nothing.
Windows already runs WAY too much crap that screws itself every 7 days on my Windows 2000 servers which I have to reboot on a weekly basis or they tank running terminal services
I find this so hard to believe, unless you are running some really crappy internal software eating resources or having a major memory leak.
We run Win2k and Windows 2003 servers that are rebooted once a month for updates when needed. And we are handling some of the largest volume websites in the world. In addition to office environments with 1000s of users to a server.
If we have a server (Windows/Linux/Solaris) that has to be restarted because it starts to fail, there is a problem with the hardware, crap software, crap driver. PERIOD.
I suggest you maybe look inward or at whoever is adminstrating your Servers, you have a major problem that is far outside the norm.
Sorry to be so harsh, but Geesh...
In any case, an OPERATING SYSTEM shouldn't require that kind of power! An OS is meant to act as an interpretation layer between software and hardware, that's all. If it takes that much power to do such a "simple" task, one should wonder what the hell else is going on under the hood.
Well if we want to be technical about OSes then, sure I agree. The NT OS in Vista has a tiny footprint, the HAL is under 128KB on XP and 160KB on Vista, and even with the rest of the NT Core OS (input/output, you are looking at a few Megs.)
However when you add on the Win32 subsystem (Yes NT has subsystem technology, multi-API interfaces to the Kernel), then the OS footprint is still pretty small. (Go look up WindowsXP Embedded for a comparison, and it runs on tiny devices like routers, even with a GUI.)
An OS is the hardware interface providing basic input/output, but the level of functionality offered beyond basic I/O is based on the kernel technology.
Should we really go on? You do realize you are picking on the wrong OS (NT) to dog on for footprint, especially considering the kernel technology, where NT has quite an edge on OSes like Linux.
Just because you see the Win32 subsystem, does not mean that is the OS, any more than Linux running XWindows and KDE is the OS. (And even in this context, Windows Embedded with the full Win32 subsystem and GUI, is still considerably smaller than most GUI OS setups.)
If you want to continue going over kernel and OS theory, I'm up for it, but it would be just easier to send people to wikipedia or some other source that answers these questions.
Take Care.
when I happen along FUCKIGN WHORE! It makes me laugh
:)
Actually I give it away for free, that technically makes me a slut...
But thanks for the insightful response that debates the post without trolling. I'm sure calling someone an F'ing Whore wins your technical arguments everytime.
Good Luck finding 512 MB RD RAM for $40. Not all PCs were on PC-100. For that matter, good luck finding 512 MB of PC 100 for $40
Considering 99% of most systems, even laptops you can easily get 512mb for around $40.
The only real exception to this is RDRAM, and it was always expensive and probably always will be. But considering how small a % of systems this is, I will stand by my statement.
Oh, and if you are having trouble finding a stick of RAM for $40 bucks (and I was being conservative) go to www.pricewatch.com
Good Luck...
Define "run". Windows XP, assuming you want to run more than two applications at once, creeps like a paraplegic on tranquilizers if you only give it 512MB of RAM, so I have a hard time imagining Vista will run in an acceptable fashion on that much.
Hey, I hope you aren't trolling and just have had some bad and very unique situation.
We have 200mhz 80mb Laptops, and yes with Themes and 'everything' enabled on WinXP. The systems benchmark faster than they did with Win98 that shipped on the laptop.
And this includes running more than 'two' applications. These are test systems that we use for testing our own software, but also require our developers to actually 'use' once in a while and 'develop' on to ensure they are properly optimizing our applications for the least common senerio. We still belive in writing tight code, no matter how fast the baseline computers are today.
Also remember that when WindowsXP shipped, back in 2001, 128mb of RAM was pretty standard in hardware configurations.
Our techs personal recommendations are this, 128mb of RAM for good performance with WindowsXP, and no matter how old your system is, if you have at least 128mb of RAM, you should upgrade to WindowsXP. It out benchmarks Win9X and Win2k at the 128mb level. (80mb outperforms Win9x, but not Win2k unless you turn off System Restore which is a fairly heavy overhead.)
I should also note on the 200mhz laptop configurations I mentioned above, they have 6Gb HDs and our developers have to use them with MS Office, CorelDraw, Delphi, PhotoShop, and MS Visual Studio. So we don't just let them run as Web Browser only computers.
Now if you are playing WoW or Halo on your computer, it don't matter what OS you have, you need better video and more RAM period.
Take Care....
with all the advertised bells and whistles?
Yep, even the extra 'pretties' depending on the Video card.
Even with an old VGA Video card, the new graphic subsystem still does amazing things, but Vista won't do Glass as it drops to software rendering and would slow the computer down for cute animations and frosty Window borders, which is not worth the performance trade off.
Macs are WAY upgradeable if you know wtf you are doing
I do agree, and moving into the x86 realm should get even easier, the only thing that has held Macs back for upgrades is the OS support and driver support. And hopefully Apple is not going to keep their x86 migration to restricted in this regard.
PC users are 'use' to just being able to buy generic mainboard X and slapping it together with an infinite amount of hardware configurations. So when they see the Mac they do see it as 'limited' in terms of upgrading, but that doesn't mean there are 'plenty' of options in the Mac realm.
When you factor in infinite frankstein configurations in the PC world, it is one area WindowsXP and Linux deserve gold stars for being as stable as they are.
Mac has a solid OS architecture with the BSD core, so Apple can also acheive this on x86, as long as Apple doesn't try to lock the hardware options too much, but I wouldn't blame them if they did for stability.
that's great. so ship it.
/wink
Nah, then I wouldn't be in the cool crowd anymore and everyone would have access to it. (Just kidding)
Vista isn't even Beta 2, and if you have followed MS's past OS betas. Beta 1 to Beta 2 is like night and day. Beta 2 is where you can run it as your daily OS.
Without out popping an NDA or two, the biggest issues right now with Vista are getting the driver and compatibility in-sync. So much of the underlying OS technology has changed, this is where things are not so smooth right now.
Vista really isn't just XP with pretty graphics, tons of things that have effects throughout the system like the entire memory manager has been re-written, with new entry points for caching using external memory devices (which require driver adjustments for these device), and this is just one tiny area of change.
Then add in a new Video Driver Model, new graphics subsystem and API, and 100 other things if you go down the list.
Give MS time, I would rather it be late a month or two, rather than be crap and have to deal with customers using it. (I wouldn't want 50% of the Windows world moving to an OS with problems, let's say like *cough* WindowsME. Of course WinME did have one advantage, it is where and why the Win9X development team was disbanded and replaced by the Win2k/NT team.)
Well there is cairographics.org
I don't want to knock the cairographics work, but it still is not a full roundtrip API, nor a roundtrip Vector API.
Its strengths are it is surfaces, but they are bitmap based, much like OSX does now.
Vista really is doing some new things with its composer. Not only is Vector acceleration getting a major bump by dumping to the 3D GPU as much as possible, but the application to composer relationship has changed.
For example in Cairographics, they are also about device indepedance, something Vista is also taking to a new level as well. But in Cairographics because the surfaces are non-vector in the composer (or equiv. layer), when a difference resolution or device/display context is needed, the composer requests this inforamtion from the applications or the application 'surfaces'.
In Vista, there is no need to go back to the application, from changing device or display contexts to even more advanced things as when vector changes are made from Vista back to the application or from the application back to Vista, all that has to be communicated is the Vector change, not a full repaint of the application 'surface' to provide this change in information to Vista or to the application.
Now I know that cairographics does a bit of this on an upper layer, but when it gets to the composer layer, the OS (or the OS model of cairographics) is only maintaining the resulted bitmap for the display context.
For example, if you have an application with a 3D cube with a complex Vector Graphic dancing around it, the only changes that have to be sent to the Vista composer are the vector changes/animations.
This has tons of benefits, as it even becomes lighter and richer GUI protocol than X11 itself even. In this context, the RDP in Vista is now only passing simple vector changes even in complex graphical applications that are even doing 3D operations. (Hence why in Vista, doing a Remote Desktop is even more light weight than RDP, and also passes things like Glass and the complex vector level processing and animations in a compressed XAML type format to the client computer to process.)
But that is just one simple example of a benefit. There are performance advantages within the OS itself, as well as having a really rich device independance that doesn't get limited at any device. Vista can in theory pass a 3D animating application to a printer without translation. Which could allow allow the printer (if the printer mfg would support it) the ability to not only print a static image of the Application/Document, but even do a frame by frame printout. (Think old time paper filp book)
This is kind of a silly example, but when we see 'paper' printers replaced by electronic Ink, etc will become an important feature that your printed out on 'electronic paper' will animate as it did on the LCD and also open the door for you to interact with the digital paper, even though the applicatino is technically just 'printed' to the paper.
I truly wish more people would go check out the guts of the WPF/XAML portions of Vista, along with the new Vista Graphics Subsytem that makes these concepts really shine.
Also I do realize there are some technologies out there that are trying to do a full OpenGL type of desktop composers for KDE, etc. Some are impressive, but so far they are missing the roundtrip Vector concepts from my knowledge of them.
These are progression, but the bitmap composing is not efficient. To put it in a metaphor, it would be like having your character in WoW have to resend the bitmap of the character to the rendering engine with every tiny change. This is not how 3D GPUs like to work, and the overhead of maintaining Bitmaps in this fictional metaphor overlaid on the screen and other characters would be massive. Hence why games use vector meshes.
Think of Vista as the first OS to offer this level of composing and an API to support it not just for games, but as a standard part of the basic GUI 2D/3D rendering syste
You obviously haven't worked with the hordes of "knowledge workers" if you think this is a minor shift for them.
Would you believe I do instruction training for business productivity, including Office and Open Office?
I know that the initial shock may see big to people, but in what tests we have deployed in the beta with the same apprehension as you express has proven us wrong more than we would have thought.
The offset of the intial reluctance by users was easily outweighed by an increase in usage of the applications. Many users were impressed that the 'new' version (as they put it) could do so many things, and then when asked for examples, they demonstrated features that have been in Office for several years, they just never had noticed them or tried them because the features weren't so easily apparent.
Of all the MS divisions, the Office Development team tends to be on the upper scale of not only end user testing and real innovation, but also putting out fairly solid products. The new UI is also a demonstration they don't fully have their noses up the Windows Developer's butts. The Office developers also seem to have a good pulse on things non-Windows as well, considering MS Word and Excel got their success in the Mac world this isn't a big surprise.
This is why it also refreshing to see MS Office on a Mac work like a true Mac Applications. Some people forget that there is a portion of people at Microsoft that are die hard Mac fans and developers, and the Office division is one of the best examples.
I really don't think the Office 2007 UI will be a bust, I think we will see users get more out of the software as our test have shown. But I could be very wrong, and if I am, this is the time for other Office solutions to get their foot in the door. My only request from the competition, don't offer 'just enough', pump your next versions to be as feature complete or even more advanced than 99% of MS Office, even if you scale back or hide the complexity.
Tilebar rendering problems are not minor, when they make invisible the "close" and "minimize/maximise" controls! This is with the WDDM drivers for both the most popular nVidia cards, and the only Glass-capable ATI I have found in a laptop.
I don't fully disagree, but remember that the Office 2007 beta is not even a 'beta' build, the last release was a TR. Also I was amazed that MS even permitted a Beta on Beta installation, as this is not usually a good thing at this stage in the cycle. If either product was a RC stage, that would be different.
Also for the missing buttons, I have seen it too, we have units here with the same problem, including my personal 'baby' laptop. The buttons are there, just not visible, also you can access the features of the buttons from the Office drop down Menu on the left or using the defautl keystrokes, Alt-Space, etc etc.
Good luck and I apologize to everyone for the terse nature of my previous post, call it a bad day. However, I did feel that of all things to be picky about a beta on beta installation where these problems were known is not something to call a major issue. (Also note the WDDM drivers in Vista have change 10 fold in the past year, and with the new layers of complexity, it is not surprising tha NVidia/ATI and even MS themselves are still adjusting with each release. Just the Virtual GPU tasking and Memory sharing are more revisions, not only to the drivers, but a large paradigm shift in how video usually works on an OS.
The WDDM drivers are actually the most buggy at this point because of the shift.
Besides, there is no way MS is going to let Office 2007 look anything but flawless on Vista. Office is more of their bread and butter than a lot of people realize and it is also an opportunity to showcase some of the elegance of the Vista UI.
Take Care...
i'm the AC who posted just below this - the one with the G3 400 Mhz pismo and the install of Tiger required no tricks whatsoever. the OS does, i believe, have a requirement that the target machine have a dvd drive and firewire, but i also believe i read somewhere where people were able to work around that. as my pismo has firewire and dvd, this was not an issue for me.
Well I truly will take your word for Tiger on a G3. I don't have a G3 around here, so it isn't something I have had first hand access to test.
I probably could play with the CPU settings on a PearPC installation, but I will take your word. The G3 issues with Tiger that I had heard of from the news and customers must be more on the lines of other earlier OSX releases that also down scaled some of the 'pretties'.
Which is something I see as a level of innovation rather than stripping features as others here have tried to say of both Apple and MS on their OS technologies. It is how I see Vista too, scaling back a complex GUI in steps down for older hardware is a sign they are making it easy for everyone, not just people who buy the latest and greatest.
It is good to hear Apple is doing some of the same accomodations for older systems and are not leaving people behind, especailly when they are doing both the OS and the hardware. Kudos to Apple on this one.
Thanks for the update...