When the problem is that users are using the system in a vertical configuration as advertised by the manufacturer, you can bet your ass that it's a manufacturing defect! (More specifically a design defect, but we won't quibble.) Microsoft tells everyone that their system is just fine and dandy when placed in an upright position. Yet the slightest vibration (anyone have subwoofers? cabled controllers? hard wood floors?) can unseat the disc and cause scratches.
Can you give references for where the problem is just from using the unit upright?
The only information or sources I have on this topic is about when the unit is knocked over or flipped while upright.
But I will take any technical tests you have reference to that show what you are claiming. I will even have our labs pull a couple of old units and test whatever you can find to confirm it.
I am a little skeptical, because of how DVD players are designed and what I have read regarding the user claims.
If a subwoofer could be enough vibration to pop the DVD off the holding mechanism, Microsoft wanting to put 'bumper pads' in the unit would NOT help, even though it was seen as a viable fix. (These are not 'click in' DVD drives like you find in a laptop, it has an overhead 'compression' holder.)
This is not an example to generalize all units or disregard ligitimate claims; however, my personal unit has taken a literal beating, works fine, and has never harmed a Disc yet.
So to generalize this as a systemic problem is also not accurate. The units are NOT as fragile or damaging to Discs as people would like to make them out to be. (A lot of this falls into the PS3 vs XBox360 religions of gamers.)
Also when I mean not fragile, I am a good example of a bad user when it comes to caring for the unit or games, as I often leave discs in the unit and take it through airport security several times a month, with it either being checked and thrown by ramp workers under the plane in small case or in my carry on, where I have to take it out of the bag, put it in a plastic bin and watch it vibrate down the rollers through the screener's units.
WTF?! Whenever I pay $50 for a pressed DVD I take good care of it. Also, this is a manufacturing defect, not an unholy union of food and hardware.
1. I am sure YOU do, most gamers don't and even if they do, their friends might not be as careful.
2. It is technically not a manufacturing defect, as the unit was not designed to be flipped around while in use.
Maybe they could have put bigger idiot level warning labels on the units, but hey this is the year 2008, we need idiot labels on everything to protect the stupid people from themselves.
I wonder what will happen if I pick up my BluRay player and flip it or shake it while I it is running, there is no warning saying I can't, and if ANYTHING happens to the disc, it MUST BE A MFR defect in the BluRay player, right? Geesh...
Tabs are automatically aligned with each other to occupy the same screen space. That is a big difference from separate overlapping windows.
Not when the browser windows launch at the same place 'by design' on top of each other.
Also Microsoft was using tabs in some programs (especially the IDEs) for quite awhile so it is rather difficult to claim they wanted the taskbar to be used for this purpose
Sometimes there are places tabs do make sense, browsers are NOT one of them.
You mention an IDE, it is a good example of where tabs can work for debugging views, and also flipping between code 'within' a project, especially when you are not even dealing with the same type of code or content in each file. (It would be insane to have separate windows opening up for Form code, XAML code, C# code, VB code, HTML pages, and everything else that can be mixed into 'ONE project'.
There are hundreds of 'good' examples 'tabs' work for the UI; that doesn't make it RIGHT for everything.
but MDI was a development by Microsoft,
Ok, now you are giving MS too much credit here. MDI was not a MS design concept, but it something they used a lot during the 80s and early 90s.
However, as you would have noticed around 1995 when the new UI and document centric models of Win95 were coming out of MS, they even 'restructured' their own MDI applications, and Word adn Excel retained the MDI for people that wanted it, but the applicaitons also started to be allowed to run separately, and let 'Windows' INSTEAD of the internal application 'window menu' manage multiple open documents.
If something like MS Office applications can work better with 'One Window' per document, why would a browser be so 'big and cumbersome' that it would need a new internal UI metaphor to manage the pages?
(Yes Excel has 'workbooks' still with tabs, but this is one document with multiple pages, not multiple documents managed by the tabs.)
Microsoft even did away with 'Office Binder' as it was an application level 'bundling' of Office documents, as the OS and folders provide this functionality without an artificial application level application doing it.
Microsoft has been literally shoving old world geeks into better UIs for years, and they still have a lot more shoving to do. Heck even concepts from Win95 that are easier and faster are things old school geeks still don't user or even 'get'.
One Example: Right-Click New and other ways to have your own document templates are far faster and more powerful than pre-Win95 concepts. Yet, even to this day I see brilliant geeks dig into the start menu and launch Word to create a letter, instead of creating the letter via the 'New' menu or a template and opening the new blank document. As a side effect, Open and Save dialog boxes should almost NEVER be used inside an Application unless you are saving changes and need to rename the document, and even this is a bit of a dated concept. (And this is all stuff introduced to users in the Win95 era, and yet people are still working with documents and applications like they did in Windows 3.x or even older OSes.) - Sad, very sad...
Roughly the same could be said of XP if the user is actually a user rather than running everything as an administrator.
Actually, no...
Even as a 'user' on XP, the processes you launch get your security level. So IE7 on XP running as a 'user' would still be able to screw with your profile, documents, files, settings, just not the system files.
On Vista, no matter what your security level, whether you are an administrator or an user, IE runs at a lower and 'special' security level.
It is actually a smart idea, as when a exploit like the one we are talking about today is used, the browser by default protects the user from it, as the vulnerability can't get outside the IE protected mode security box.
I wish Firefox and other browsers would consider this type of approach as well, there is no reason that they could not set their own security policies and then run Firefox in a lower restricted security mode as well.
Anyway, the difference is IE on Vista keeps it from being able to screw with even user items that IE has no business touching, so FS and registry security step in to back IE off and prevent it from doing something outside it's protected mode 'box' and exploits spun from the IE process inherent the same restrictions by proxy.
Vista came out around jan. 2007. Windows 7 will be here sometime 2009. I don't think MS can get away with pushing a new OS every 2 years.
Besides, isn't Windows 2K supported till 2010? People who spent good money on MS software want their patches, pronto.
I don't disagree with you here.
My point was that a lot of people keep telling their friends to 'downgrade' to XP or buy XP for their new computers. This is what is INSANE.
Just yesterday, I had a friend bring a spyware filled laptop with XP. It was released earlier this year and was designed for Vista, but her 'expert friends' insisted she put XP on it and she even went as far to buy a retail copy of XP Professional.
If you have a choice, CHOOSE Vista, if you are buying an OS, buy Vista unless your computer was made before the year 2000. PERIOD.
I don't expect users to fork out money every couple of years, but if you getting a new computer and still are picking XP, or getting it and reformating Vista and install XP, it is INSANE.
The whole upgrade cost cycle is one reason I actually don't mind Windows, as the cost is factored into your computer based on the OEM price, and an XP computer from 2002 has had free updates and SPs and even new application accessories released for it every year without ANY additional cost.
Contrast this to OS X when the 'new' versions are less than a Windows SP and have cost about $500 for users in the same time period as XP owners that get the same level of updates and application software updates for free.
As for Vista and Windows 7, if you look at the timeframe it is much like Win2k and XP. The first was the architectual jump, the second expanded on the features the previous one made possible. So the release timeframes for each will be close.
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However, don't give up on Vista, just like XP, MS continues to bring newer technology to the previous versions.
Even with XP and Vista, MS released as much new features from Vista for XP as they could based on the XP architecture. (Desktop Search, Defender, WMP, IE, WPF/.NET3.5, etc) - So many in fact, it has made it less appealing for users to spend $$ to upgrade, even at MS's own financial detriment.
And they have specifically said that some of the new features of Windows 7 WILL be provided to Vista users, even DirectX11, since its architecture can handle it, unlike the break from XP to Vista where the Video driver model couldn't handle DirectX10.
While the Disc is playing, yes, while insert or ejecting, NO...
Slot loaders use rollers to grab the disc, and so many things can happen with this 'direct' contact.
- A dirty roller can scratch a disc rather easily, pitting it.
- A 'glossed' roller can fail to properly grab the disc and spin on the surface of the disc
- A user pushing against the disc when eject or pulled against when inserted will allow the rollers to rub the disc surfaces.
A good example is slot loaders in cars that get a lot of dirt and dust, CDs in the car take a lot of damage from slot loading players because of the rollers.
PS There are a few good ways to clean the rollers, and even de-gloss older rollers on slot loaders. If you have a car unit that fails to properly take or eject disc you can do a few things on the road even that will fix the problem.
- Get a Slot loader roller cleaner - rare, but around.
- Make your own. Use a 'printable' silver CDR, (the printable side has a light texture). Apply alcohol or even spit if you are on the road to the printed side of the disc and insert it upside down. If necessary hold the CDR to force the rollers to 'spin' on the disc. The texture will clean and de-gloss the rollers. Repeat until it works.
You can also use a black matte CD Label on a CD to get the same effect, but the paper could pull off and jam in the unit, so only use for a light cleaning.
(Then again, what do I know? Microsoft did try to cut corners wherever possible to create the system as cheap as possible.)
Well not as much as Microsoft. The odds of a unit being flipped while a Disc is spinning happens how often to the average user? But aged or dirty rollers will start killing discs and have a shorter lifetime.
Do you honestly think this is stuff MS didn't consider? Do you honestly think MS couldn't have gotten a 'good' deal on a custom slot loader design if they thought it was the best?
Gamers tend to be less careful with their disc, borrow discs, and when high even insert discs with peanut butter and jelly on them. This destroys front loaders rather fast and adds to their ability to harm disc with just a bit of crusted dirt or PB&J on the roller, your discs may continue to work, but you are slowly pitting them, and if the roller 'spins' on the disc, you are getting scratches.
There may be a good front loader solution, but I have not seen it, as both sides of the Disc are vulnerable and a device that demands contact with it present a constant risk.
MS made what they thought was the right decision, with a lot of 'smart' people considering the pros and cons.
- Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in Windows Vista limits the impact of the vulnerability.
- By default, Internet Explorer on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 runs in a restricted mode that is known as Enhanced Security Configuration. This mode sets the security level for the Internet zone to High. This is a mitigating factor for Web sites that you have not added to the Internet Explorer Trusted sites zone.
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In other words, if you are running IE7 or IE8 on Vista, about the most that happen is your browser crashes.
This is another example of where people telling their friends and users to stay with XP screws them over.
As much as people want to hate Vista, there are some real GOOD freaking reasons average users should be using it.
If you want a goog RealLife example, find a friend that has both an XP machine and Vista that has the same users on each computer (like your neighor's family) and notice there are tons of spyware crap on the XP computer and 99.9% of the time NONE on the Vista machine.
You're right Microsoft invented everything which is why GUIs never existed before Microsoft.
If you think I even implied MS invented the 'taskbar' concept, you are either a fool or your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
My example was about a feature MS 'effectively' already provided, yet the browser 'fanbois' pushed for the tabs to be placed inside the browser like all the other neato 'browsers' were doing.
This was to illustrate that MS is often forced to copy crap because fools decide they want crap. PERIOD.
The brower 'tabs' is an example of regression to MDI interfaces that MS and most other modern GUI companies have gotten away from because the OS should manage document to document and view to view, not the application. Windows already let you hotkey between them, Windows already provided previes of the 'pages/tabs' open, etc. There was no need for this to be recreated at the application level.
I guess the whole UI regression was lost on people that still think putting tabs 'in' the freaking browser instead of on the taskbar actually makes things easier.
Here is how it works in the real world - users learn how to click the taskbar and alt-tab and all their little tricks on whatever OS they are using. Now with tabs in the browser they are back to MDI concepts of the early 90s where they have to learn Ctrl-Tab to flip tabs and other 'new' keystrokes, and for that they get more wasted screen space for the same crap.
If anyone is 'paying' attention to Windows7, one of the features of the new taskbar is to burrow into IE so that even if you have multiple tabs open, they show on the Taskbar, just like they use to going back to Win95 and the original IE. They literally have to code to pull the 'tab' images out of freaking IE just to get the same functionality back.
MS didn't invent anything, but what they were doing was more on track than the insane tab 'logic' that geeks forced on users and shoved MS to add to IE, as even they were getting knocked down in reviews for 'not' having this feature, when it WAS NOT NEEDED - all this, even though it is a flawed UI concept and cumbersome at best.
With crap like this and the 'new' 3D desktop patent from Apple it is enough to scare the hell of people like myself that actually work with the psychology impact of UI design. With regard to Apple's 'silly' 3D Desktop patent, there is a reason the same project never got out of MS Research back in 1999, it offers few features and a lot of complexity for the user. However, Apple will probably shove it down their users throats and they will click ten more times for the same thing to happen and love it.
Before the OSS and Apple 'UI Innovations' are done, everyone will be using MS Bob or an MDI in an MDI for everything. Heck, crank out an old copy of MS Works, it will be a revolutionary idea again.
Webmasters have no obligations to cater to a particular browser
My response was to a poster blasting a web site for doing exactly this.
So you agree with my post then? Good...
PS The Microsoft 'troll' paranoia is a bit scary. The usage of IE in my post was specifically because of Slashdot's problems with it and the fact the OP was blasting a Microsoft site.
My freaking post was made from Firefox even, geesh...
Seriously. Whats next? Windows 7 will feature a task bar at the top of the screen with a magnifying shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen?
After watching the OSS world rip off the Dated Win95 taskbar concept for years, this is kind of a strange UI concept to suggest MS would be copying next.
It is just like 'tabbed' browsing, Windows users and people at MS didn't think users needed the feature, as the 'inherent' taskbar of the OS provided the same basic feature as having tabbed browsing, except your tabs are on the taskbar instead of taking up space in the Browser.
But idiots shoved for tabbed browsing, and MS had to add it and try to put a fresh 'use' or spin on it. MS should of just told user WTF, your tabs are already there, look at the freaking taskbar, it is where the browser 'tabs' ideas came from in the first place...
Wow, clicking Buttons/Tabs to flip between web pages, something everyone with a brain was doing on Windows since 1996 - and yet MS 'copied' the browser tabs feature - Holy crap...
Did everyone think MS wasn't smart enough to do a tabbed MDI? Had no one ever user a product called Excel or seen the freaking 'tabs' control from VB 1.0?
Microsoft just doesn't get it. If you can't get your service to work with all major browsers, your service is going to be seen as inferior, not the browser.
You mean a site like Slashdot?
Statements like this are quite silly and a bit paranoid, especially when you consider that the site you are posting it on offers features to Firefox that it denies to other browsers.
Using IE on Slashdot you lose a lot of features for very basic reading and commenting on the site.
It is almost like Slashdot is programmed for IE6 or some even older crap, as things don't align properly, and they are specific IE code nudges that are just badly coded. The site shows better if you tell Slashdot you are running Mozilla even when viewing it with IE7 or IE8.
So, continue your rant about how sites are viewed as inferior...
It's a pity that NTFS still doesn't compete with UFS for stability and reliability. Vista STILL has to defragment the damn thing
Fragment, gasp, you mean just like ZFS?
This is a 'mild' direct side effect of the 'copy on write' feature of the FS and ALL FS technologies that have true 'copy on write' abilities.
Go look it up...
Even FSs without 'copy of write' features become fragmented.(Like the newest UFS incarnations and HFS+) It is impossilbe for a FS to remain completely unfragmented without sacrificing massive upfront performance.
Using UFS as a 'pilar' of a FS that doesn't fragment is very, very wrong, as it might be argued that it won't fragment as much as ZFS or NTFS, because of no 'copy on write' features, the FS itself has heavy performance issues because of the lookup methods it uses and has always been a controversial FS due to managing block thrashing from the lookup index.
The key in dealing with fragmentation is in the lookup times associated with fragmentation, and on NTFS, even a massively fragmented file will still outpeform a contiguous file on other FS technologies because of how the original index of NTFS handles block allocation and can swipe the file segments in one pass without additional lookups.
The second key to figting fragmentation is a system level utility to check for performance impacting fragmentation and defragmenting during user idle time, something Vista does quite well, and even XP does on essential system files like the registry, etc.
Even OS X finally added a background defragmentation utility because even though UFS and HFS+ don't support 'copy on write' THEY STILL FRAGMENT, hence the need for a background defrag utility, just ike NT or ANY modern OS. (Try editing several multi GB video files and if you don't end up with fragmentation on any FS, you are lying, unless the FS disposes of all up front performance and rewrites the entire file to keep it contiguous.
That's part of the VMS legacy in NT, and not something to be proud of.
If you think NTFS has ANY legacy to VMS you have no idea what you are talking about. It has more heritage to HPFS from OS/2 1.x, but was re-written for NT and was a new FS technology.
NTFS was designed to be full featured and dynamically extensible, that is how MS has been able to easily add features to NTFS without recreating the basic FS core nor degrading performance. File system level compression - added. File system level encryption - added. Etc...
it's a pity that Apple uses that funky HFS+ and implements features at the file system level instead of the vnode level... which would make things like spotlight file-system agnostic
Ok, this is not technically accurate, but even if we accept your terminology as accurate it is irrelevant because Vista and XPs Desktop search is completely FS agnostic, so your point here has no validity.
(Early betas of Vista used NTFS metatagging, but this was removed because file tagging could be used 'in file' with added Desktop Search index tagging. This avoids the lost NTFS metadata when people ZIP or email files, and by using file type tagging support it avoids the horrors of appending resource forks to files/documents.)
You should do a bit more FS research than Wiki fact referencing, as there is a key differece between having 'facts' and understanding what they mean and their implications.
time machine isn't just finder. Applications can support it too. If you open time machine while running Address Book, you can browse and restore previous contact information
Neither is 'Previous Versions' in Vista...
However, for looking at 'folders' the OpenSolaris interface and the 'Previous Versions' interface of Vista are both superior to Time Machine, in addition to be technically superior as they have FS level support for on the HD tracking of changes to the files in real-time, no backups needed, but backups are also used on Vista just like TIme Machine.
The Application level APIs for the 'Previous Versions' features in Vista make Time Machine look like a free backup utility, so your assumptions that because it extends beyond finder is somehow unique is something I found astounding.
And this doesn't even touch the inherent features that older applications get via the OS dialogs, so inside a 1995 Win95 application, you can right click and ask for previous versions of the files inside the application.
Apple Marketing really did a number on people to make such a mundane and 'done' feature seem like the next generation of something, especially 4 years after people were using it in the Windows world. (Yes Windows 2003 Server and via it XP had the ability to use previous versions as well.)
Vista just added client side support of the feature and added backups to the list of versions in the timeline. MS didn't think it was something to scream from the rooftops because it was already so 'overdone' in the Windows world and a basic feature.
In fact it wasn't until the Apple marketing machine turned TimeMachine into something it isn't, and *nix users getting a taste of a solid FS like ZFS that FINALLY competes with NTFS in performance and features, that you see people running to use these 'wonderful' technologies that Windows users didn't realize how 'special' they apparently were since they have been using them for so many years.
Apple doesn't even have a solid FS technology to do 'copy on write'. This is why TimeMachine makes you backup every hour to get the 'versions' and if you are editing multi-GB videos or projects, this turns into a horrid performance issue. As the backup can't even do full bit/byte level differential backups, and Vista's backup system even does this, as well as being media agnostic, from a DVDR to a network location to a USB drive.
I get so tired of the Apple fan crap that have no idea how featureless and dated their OS is when it comes to core technologies.
Even as 'basic' as OpenSolaris is compared to a mature Linux installation, it at least has ZFS and all the technologies that this type of FS allows. From document and file level Time Slider features to volume and OS level restore points.
And sadly the *nix world had to wait for ZFS to come from a closed vendor to be the first FS that has most of the features of NTFS and seamlessly provide them at a performance level of NTFS.
Make fun of MS, Windows, Win32, even poke at NT if you want, but NTFS is something MS did well with, and it has been the holy-grail of FS technologies that the OSS and *nix world has been trying to catch up to for over 15 years now.
And Apple OS X? Oh my, fanbois, your OS is so far behind it is somewhat scary, as it will force Apple to do another 300 feature list and again resort to lising things like 'New Airport Menu' as a new feature for the freaking OS. As for technology in OS X, Apple is already hit the ropes of the kernel and GUI designs and are either patching like mad or if they are smart considering a new architecture and strapping another new GUI on it.
TimeSlider is much better. No big fancy 3d interface, just a slider in a folder you can drag forward and back... without abandoning the desktop. And the way Apple *implements* Time Machine that functionality would be rather easy to implement.
This is something I completely agree with. Time Machine is more of a marketing 'application' than either a good technology or an interface to the technology. Why Apple thought they needed a cumbersome Application just to have access to backed up data is rather insane.
The over the top nature of Time Machine is why 'Previous Versions' from Vista has often been so overlooked. Vista does both the OpenSolaris and OS X backup technologies with previous versions, but because the UI is rather simple and a right click to get to in a folder, most people never even know it is there, and even many Tech Journalists to this day give you a blank stare as they have no idea it exists.
OpenSolaris's UI of this technology is where someone got a UI mostly right, as it has the simpliest of implementation, is in your face so you know the feature exists, yet isn't a Frankenstein application that takes the user away from the folder.
A side note, people should be careful to not 'technically' compare OS X's Time Machine with the OpenSolaris Time Slider feature, as 'Time Machine' is built on external hourly backups, it is not a volume level recovery ability like like 'Time Slider'.
The 'Time Slider' feature in OpenSolaris should be compared to Vista 'Previous Versions', as they are technically doing the same thing with regard to the FS technologies. (NTFS and ZFS have copy on write functionality and this is why Windows 2003 Server and Vista also have the ability to view folders from a previous time on the same volume.)
Vista's 'Previous Versions' also adds backup data to the list, so it not only gives you what is available on the volume like 'OpenSolaris', but also gives you all the folder/files previous versions that exist in backups known like OS X does.
I do like the OpenSolaris ease of adding this interface to the technology ZFS offers.
'Previous Versions' in Vista is ok, as it presents a list and you can open the folder from any previous time in the list and drag stuff out of it or restore it rather seamlessly, but having the interface in the folder view itself is brilliant, and one less folder view open, so kudos to the Solaris team.
This is the type of User level UI stuff that can beat MS; however, good luck in beating Apple's marketing.
As I've never tried it myself (don't run Vista) I'm interested to know if it's worthwhile
It not always makes a big difference, but there are some good guidelines of knowing if it will help or why to use it.
1) Is your HD slow as crap? a 4200 or 5600rpm HD will see some gains, no matter what you are doing.
2) Is your system RAM at a level that your games/applications can consume it? For example even if you have 2GB of RAM, but your game consumes 90% of this to run, there is going to be a shortage of OS level HD RAM cache available, and ReadyBoost will help. Vista on 1GB will see more help than Vista on 2GB, but even then if a game is taking the RAM, it offers some caching help.
3) Gaming in general tends to get a nudge from ReadyBoost, as games often pull textures from various files, and the faster random seeks the Flash Driver offers will help.
4) Load times. Again, loading applications often pulls data from several places as well as having the OS pull or use API level files, so there is no way to full sequence lay the content on the HD, as the shared parts of the OS itself are not going to be moved for each application that uses them. On applications you use a lot, the Flash Drive used with SuperFetch will be smart enough to have data loaded that it expects you to use based on your patterns, time of day, previous applications you loaded, etc.
You also get a level on concurrency for read operations, so while your HD is yanking File A, the Flash Drive can be offering bits that are scattered around your HD at the same time, getting a double dip in performance improvement.
5) Flash Sticks are cheap, and if you have a newer(fast) one laying around, even if it is 2GB, throw it in, and get some boost from it when you aren't using it for other stuff. You can always turn off ReadyBoost on the device at anytime and shove your data on it before you go somewhere.
These are just some basics, but the last one is probbably the most important, as most of us have USB sticks laying around and can move our data off them and get a performance boost (even if it is fairly small) and not have to invest in one permanently just for ReadyBoost.
ReadyBoost would have made a bigger impact on performance and the market if faster USB sticks would have come about sooner. Also Vista Superfetch technologies, often work so well, ReadyBoost is just assisting. Superfetch is the grand daddy of smart look ahead caching technology as it takes into account so many factors and the more you use your system the faster things load and smoother games.
So if you are running Vista, give it a try. (Note there are some really crap USB sticks, so if Vista says it is too slow, it just won't let it be used, and this pissed off a lot of people like SanDIsk that made a lot of the crap Flash sticks.)
PS It can also be used for other type of Flash media like SD, if they are in a fast USB based Media reader.
Since you mention Vista, go to the horse's mouth..
There are several good whitepapers on this from NT engineers at Microsoft.com.
If you are aren't in the mood to read, go to channel9.msdn.com and look up topics on NT kernel, Vista, etc.
There are some really good explainations about VM and specifically how NT works and what Vista does differently in contrast to XP and previous version of NT memory management.
Do you need one, No.
Should you have one, well it probably doesn't make much of a difference in terms of performance on Vista. Vista doesn't use or dumpt crap to the pagefile in the 'sense' that you or many people would think based on previous OS memory management schemes.
Since you are using Vista, I would say, leave it on, as there are a few performance benefits, like speeding up hibernation, and applications that are written to 'allocate' RAM, but then dump that to the pagefile as it probably won't use it very often. (Even though memory allocation on NT is dynamic, some application developers know what they are doing and will take advantage of the pagefile to hold bitmaps or other things it seldom references, and there is no need to keep them in physical RAM, and they often don't go the extra step to check for pagefile size/presence and just assumes the system has one, as it use to be required years ago.)
On XP turning off the pagefile can help performance, as XP uses a more conservative method to dump applications to the pagefile, but again, if you are using applications like I describe in the paragraph above, you are losing RAM that isn't used for much, so then it comes down to how much 'extra' RAM you have and if you have a chance of ever hitting the celing, which is kind of a 'duh' logical conclusion.
Please show me which service pack made that many changes.
Ok, let's be serious for a second, have you actually read the 300 features list?
In perspective, if MS detailed changes as 'tiny' as Apple does and try to tout them as features, the list for Vista alone would have been over '5000' new features. (We could argue that Apple is smarter about marketing, but they are also conning people by doing this as well.)
Here I will open the link and scroll randomly to the middle and pick some of the 'features' to list and talk about.
(Networking) - New AirPort Menu - Self-Tuning TCP
(Parental Controls) - Simple Account Setup - Time Limits and Bedtimes - Activity Logging - Remote Control & Monitoring - Dynamic Web Filter - Web Filter Overrides
Now look at these seriously... They are laughable.
A New AirPort menu is worthy of mentioning as a new feature? Self tuning TCP is actually one of the few halfway reputable.
Parental Controls, uh? How can they even make this list being serious. These are not 'features' but new 'options' in a dialog box for the Parental Controls.
Now in contrast just to these items ONLY, MS released Vista with features list like this: Improved Networking Improved Parental Controls
See how this works? If you are a Fanboi or not paying attention it looks like: MS Vista two Features compared to OS X eight features. It is this level of awareness and poor journalism and poor MS marketing that leaves people thinking this.
For Vista, 'Improved Networking' there are over 200 'detailed' changes in the OS from the self-tuning to the network stack itself being new. 'Parental Controls', there are over 300 features that range from Game Rating restrictions to a new UI for parental controls as well as about 100 policies that can be used.
Ok, so you get an idea of this?
Now you were talking about Service Packs so lets take a look at a couple from the past years. And I will even let you use the 300 features as a goal for OS X here...
XP SP2 was the addition of recompiled and more managed code from the Windows 2003 project. This is why XP SP2 is faster than XP RTM or XP SP1. In this alone there are close to 100 items changes from the core changes applied in SP2.
If we were going to look at XP SP2 and list changes using the 'Apple Method' it would start to look like this really fast:
Networking - New Taskbar WiFi Menu - New WiFi Connection Manager - New Integrated WiFi Authenication systems (WPAv2, etc) - New WiFi network notification system - New Firewall with inbound and outbound policies - Updated TCP connection limitations to fight Spyware - IPv6 support - New VPN/IPSEC policies - New Security Center
On and on and on, and these are just off the top of my head, if I pulled out the item by item changes provided to IT professionals, we could fill pages of 'features', and it would be far more than 300.
Now on to Vista SP1. The entire OS was replaced with the Windows 2008 server build of the binaries. That is a lot of changes, in fact a year's newer OS replaced at the core level.
You will find about another 300-400 features/changes, and this is more detailed to the level of the crap Apple would list, as they demonstrate from their famous '300 list' you referenced.
Even after the user starts clicking on things, Macs are generally safe. The user must explicitly punch holes in their system to create most vulnerabilities.
Um... No...
All OSes now have UAC and *nix root priveledge request prompts. It is now the same for users on these OSes 99.9% of the time. Macs have nothing 'better' than anyone else in this area.
As for 'needing the user to punch holes', again this is false. If you even consider non-OS X items a Flash or Java exploit would hit the user quite easily. In fact if done via the browser would hit OS X easier than it would Vista, as IE on Vista runs with lower privledges than the user and can't even mess with user files, let alone system files, so JAVA or Flash launching from IE get the same low level of permissions.
(This is where I say, Firefox needs to move to a low security mode of operation to again be as secure as IE, and that is very sad for me to say.)
Mac users that insist OS X is more secure or safe are either ignorant about security or so smug they assume they are under the radar.
WindowsNT during the 90s only had one or two Anti-Virus products even made for it, and it was considered to be above viruses in contrast to Win9x.
This is EXACTLY like OS X is now, as it was fairly tight for the timeframe, and under the radar of hackers.
Guess what, when XP replaced Win9x, it was no longer under the radar and even NT's security based core couldn't help the debacle that was to come.
Apple is already now releasing more security updates by a factor or 20 to 1 compared to Vista, and with a bit more market share and the evil eye of a few good hackers will crumble the Mac user base a few times before Apple pulls their users out of the hole, a repeat of what happened to MS and Windows is to come for Apple and OS X.
Of course the world will have to rely on non-Apple sources, as Apple will continue to delete all evidence of these attacks from their forums and message boards, as they do today.
And yes they do occur today, and yes Apple deletes the hell out of them to keep their 'image' as secure...
It needs to happen to a few journalists before they will get printed and not hidden behind the Apple 'aluminum' curtain.
Trying to cash in on XP sp2's stigma, they're pushing vista as an aged operating system, that's been through the ropes. Now we've got a mature system, unlike that horrible old Vista RTM, that didn't do well.
Ya, no...
1) SP1 and SP2 are yearly updates. Microsoft is back on track to what people remember from the NT4 and Win2K days. (Possible troll view: And they aren't charging $99 a copy for these updates like Apple does, and they have more feature changes than each 10.x update from OS X.)
2) Vista RTM is not bad, the drivers from ATI, Intel, and NVidia were bad, and if you use RTM drivers out of the box for Video, it sucks. However, both Windows Update shoves new drivers to your system or you can grab the latest versions from ATI or NVidia yourself. (Yes we do internal testing with and without updates, and can say for certain that Vista RTM is faster than XP even for gaming with new video drivers.)
Vista SP1 is bascially a kernel and code update so that it matches Windows 2008, and of course there are going to be some performance and feature improvements.
Vista SP2 is a lighter update focusing on secondary systems that didn't get updates in SP1, like the Bluetooth stack, and features discovered to better handle flaky hardware for things like hibernate/resume(ACPI issues with MBs), and updates to WiFi priorities so that when you open the lid from standby WiFi is already there and going.
So Microsoft giving a SP once a year is normal and it is a good thing for once that MS is actually back on track for consistent updates instead of screwing around.
I think the new Windows Management shows with both the SP1/SP2 timeframes and the work and focus Windows 7 is getting. Tight, reliable and on time are trademarks of the Managers now on Windows and after the Vista series of mis-management structure, MS needed to clean house.
Additional backstory: There always was a class war inside MS between the NT OS developers and the Win9x developers. And this hit the roof when NT with a bit of RAM was outperforming the assembly optimized Win9x OSes, especially when you consider NT is using a portable C and has several security and structure layers that require more processing than the Win9x OSes did.
This made MS management go WTF x86 people, and it also created a bigger rip when the teams were merged for XP. Vista problems were a bit of a backlash from this merge that occurred in the XP timeframe, from clashing management styles to types and quality of code with regard to features. (Remember Vista V1 of development was started back in 2002, right during the flip over)
Yes and it works quiet well in real world performance testing.
Even a 1gb or 2gb stick can improve overall responsiveness enough that makes a tight XP installation feel slow. This is especially true with gaming and applications that push the limits of your RAM shoving the HD cache down.
There are a few crap Flash drives, that just don't perform well, avoid them and it works like promised.
Here we are again, conflating two arguments, one dealing with OSS traditions and Licensing and Kernel Designs and inherent limitations with tradition kernel models we are still stuck with as mainstream.
The whole licensing arguments just in here, makes the MS free software license look halfway noble. And it also makes the MS licensing of OSes and software to businesses look like child's play in comparison to the horror stories that are appearing in the OSS movement.
Why should it be easier to read through MS licensing policies for Windows 2008 Server and CALs and all the other crap than it is to understand basic licensing of OSS?
Seriously, all the OSS licensing and 'schemes' by some of the founders are nothing but a minefield, and it comes down to licensing instead of WHAT IS POSSIBLE?
Why can't we just stuff the licensing contraints and go back to 'what is possible' and shared ideas from this?
Now we are arguing about shoving 'necessary' driver and firmware code into an OSS project in order for it to even work on many devices. Are people really going to give up WiFi or other technologies that are dependant on non-OSS code?
Why not stop here, reconsider the licensing, and kill it, and kill requirements for sharing at certain thresholds. If you look at MS, 99% of the reason they haven't opened up more of their technology is that the licensing involved in doing so. The same goes for them in working with OSS software, as soon as they 'work' with OSS software, they are then required to open up their own technology, and this is just as crazy and also is killing OSS.
If you look at Mono and Moonlight for ONE example, MS specifically didn't develop the Silverlight or.NET CLR inside Microsoft, was because of the insane Licensing of the OSS world, that would have required MS to split open things from Windows that are not even related to Silverlight or.NET.
Why not start from scratch, put some new kernel ideas on the table with an abstracted driver layer that will allow people to be pure OSS users and make the layer agnostic to the core OS framework. Then from this either VM or layer the kernel so that non-OSS content can be easily added to the kernel technology without violating any licensing or even having to worry about it.
Right now, it would almost be better if Microsoft did create a more enhanced *nix subsystem for NT, supporting Linux and other upper level kernel API sets. Then you would have the abstraction and drivers and yet run in a full OSS sandbox that you can do anything you want to do. (And no this is not my suggestion, but it makes more sense than the insane licensing and arguing and splitting in the OSS community we are seeing once again.)
This is like the late 80s all over again with *nix and why it failed to make it to the desktop back then as well. Instead of fragmenting over what is proper and instead of arguing licenses, why not STOP, go from a generic DO WHAT IS POSSIBLE license and create a new kernel technology that is extensible enough to layer non-pure code outside the core kernel.
And no, I am not talking about frankensteining Linux as people are trying to do, as we could jump past all the inherent problems of the Linux kernel from locking crap, the frame buffer and being horribly non-layered. Even Linux itself has expected hardware core support needed, as the three modes of the VM expects the hardware to be there and requires emulation and/or firmware to supplement the missing hardware.
In contrast NT, also has hardware expectations, but that is where the semi-micro nature of NT using the HAL comes into play to ensure the bottom layer of NT is always providing the hardware expectations, and it is properly layered so that porting is actually easier than Linux and the layers are not mixed so that HAL doesn't have to compromise NT upper kernel layers. The OSS world knows how this works, and can build a better kernel than Linux or BSD or especially BSD/MACH
Geesh, are people really buying this junk science?
Go look up Humboldt State University, almost 10 years ago they had a very efficient and effective system of using solar energy to create Hydrogen cells and were driving cars around that took water and solar cells to produce ALL the energy for the car.
This is not 'rocket' science. Oh wait, the space shuttle uses hydrogen, weird I wonder why diesel isn't ALSO a better solution according to the gas companies?
Everything is not just Wiki definitions, even OpenBSD is more complex in 'trying' to define it in general terms as we are trying to keep this dicussion. If you want to get technical, we can write out some information and you can use it to append the Wiki pages properly.
Monolithic and microkernel are very vague general terms used to describe two aspects of current kernel design, and even the use of 'hybrid' kernel if you read from Wiki is very bad, as it will even call OS X a hybrid kernel because of the duct tape Apple added to improve multiprocesses handling, but this really does not make it a hybrid kernel.
Ok, so enough with the base line Wiki level of understanding?
You will never see revolutionary kernel designs come from established open source projects. They have enough on their plate as it is. Open source is about releasing frequent evolutionary improvements.
Why? Why do you believe this 'belief' system of what OSS should be to be true?
So OSS should just limit to working with existing technologies, really? Again why?
If the concept of OSS is combine resources and minds and push forward, why can't the sins of the past also be considered?
Do you think Linus set out to create a status quo OS, or want to try something different? If he would of had your mindset, it still would be a version of Minux. Although it jumped back to standard kernel concepts for Linux, at least it was a new direction.
Just as you define Windows as more evolutionary once again, you are missing a bigger picture. NT was not evolutionary, and people in the OS theory and engineering world will step up to recognize even if they don't like Microsoft. NT's kernel design was mix of many current and theory based ideas, and yet has no true fathers. There was nothing out there that worked like NT, and to this day it STILL is in a league of its own with no mainstream kernel technologies even close to challenging it.
The problem with this is that MS has a strong dynamic kernel technology that can STILL do many things other technologies cannot, and they will be able to further tap these abilities to keep leaping over anything thrown at them.
Think of even this simple aspect of the NT kernel, it has a client/server kernel nature (yes terms that are not hybrid, micro, or monolithic). With its layered client server nature, it already inherently runs a full BSD subsystem OS, that is a 'technical' equal to Win32 or Win64. This demonstrates that Microsoft can use NT, give a BSD access to the massive Windows driver database and if they want do even more.
So not only do you have an OS that is upper level agnostic and can support upper level kernel OS technologies like BSD or Win32, but now with the new VM abilities introduced in Windows Server 2008, it can leverage both hardware virtualization along with an agnostic kernel. So they could drop a FULL and REAL OS X subsystem (let users install OS X themselves), a Linux subsystem, and still run these on the NT kernel and when needed leverage the VM abilities to give the subsystem level OSes hardware level performance that in theory could be faster than native Linux or OS X.
The only reason this isn't done with Windows NT is that Microsoft saw what promoting other OSes did for OS/2 and is doing for OS X with boot camp.
However if Microsoft ever starts to lose the development or desktop front, they could move to being the best Linux or best OS X 'base' if they chose to do so, and bring along either a multi-front OS concept or even lock in and optimize for any OS variant while still keeping the NT driver model, making the distribution eclipse everything else out there with hardware support that is unheard of in the OSS and *nix world.
So even if OSS brings about major innovation to existing technologies, there is nothing preventing MS from using it, just as Apple used MACH/BSD with little return to OSS.
It kills me that people so underestimate Microsoft in this regard and are
Linux is a microkernel? Mach is monolithic? Since when?
Should read, "Linux with its non-microkernel heritage"
The point was that Linux has no traditional microkernel alignment in contrast with OS X that keeps the traditions of a microkernel that when paired with a monolithic BSD interface kills a lot of the concept of what the MACH kernel was intended to do.
Originally MACH was a microkernel concept, but in its current incarnations, like OpenBSD, OS X, etc, it is no longer a microkernel by any set of definitions other than being another abstraction layer for the upper level kernel API sets.
MACH when paired with BSD, a monolithic kernel API you lose a lot of the direct hardware one request concept of a microkernel, especially on today's architectures.
Linux was true to itself in that it never attempted to abstract hardware and instead set its own rules for what was expected of the hardware, and when running on hardware that cannot meet the needs, the functionality that Linux requires must be simulated on that hardware.
So you have Linux that will outperform OS X because of its all in one nature that doesn't have to cross call API layers for kernel processes. On the other hand you have a BSD/MACH concepts like OS X that can do well for hard crunching simple tasks that funnel all the way to the MACH kernel, but when it gets to handling multiple requests, process communication gets sticky and multi-tasking can kill the once low level elegant level of performance offered.
NT has neither of these pitfalls. It has a very fast process creation system, a low level HAL, and multi-layered kernel API sets. Not only do you get the near speed of a microkernel, but you also get the robust API sets that STILL reside in true kernel layers.
On Windows this is taken to such an extreme that even Win32, which is an OS subsystem running on NT, has its own kernel32, that is technically a 'kernel' level API, yet sits all the way up in an agnostic subsystem.
There is a reason the kernel designer of MACH let it go and moved on to Microsoft and has put their knowledge and work behind NT, because they believe in the architecture, even over their own creation.
As for NT being a copy or rip off of VMS, there is some truth that the knowledge from the VMS team didn't forget what they learned when they went to Micrsoft, but also remember, they were wanting to replace VMS when at DEC even and much of their concepts where thrown by corporate politics, preventing any massive innovation to the platform that they seriously wanted to explore. This is what moved so many to go to MS so they could make the next generation OS.
NT wasn't just a overnight bastard creation, it was the best and brightest from MS and VMS and even the UNIX developers of the time...
Cutler is brilliant, but in today's kernel world, even he admits he is getting dated. (Even Windows 7 moved in a few new people to optimize in different directions reworking old standard Cutler level code in the kernel.)
So if we can say, what Culter's team did in the 1990s was more revolutionary than evolutionary, as NT really doesn't conform to VMS concepts, especially theoretical kernel concepts, then why can't we ask the OSS world today to revisit kernel architecture on a larger scale?
Instead I see articles flying around about BSD vs Linux and Linus writing about why monolithic kernel designs will alwasy be better and other experts debating that moving back to an more inclusive microkernel with modern hardware in mind would be better.
Where are the movers in the OSS word that are outside this box and why isn't the actively working on even a basic hybrid kernel technology of its own that with what kernel engineers know today will leapfrog kernel design?
Instead the big work you see on actual new kernel concepts are yet again coming from places like Microsoft Research where they are playing with singularity and other kernel concepts that range from managed code kernel designs to even frankenstei
If you take a look at the OS kernel models and would form base predictions from the kernel architecture alone it would closely mimic the results of the tests.
There is a reason kernel architecture is a highly engineered science, and why even old models of inherent pluses or negatives would still manifest even in today's latest incarnations of these kernel architecture models.
If you look at Linux, with its microkernel heritage, it is going to offer better low level kernel multitasking and kernel messaging. Also if you look at a classic monolithic kernel design (even with Apple duct tape) the OS X kernel is going to be better at straight non-conflictive messaging and queues at the kernel level with a lighter API, but have a harder time moving past the multi-threading bottlenecks.
This is also why OS X being tied to 'specific' hardware is a plus for OS X, because if it had to deal with more diverse hardware and kernel level exceptions it would be even harder to squeeze performance out of the system and not run into multi-threading bottlenecks from the MACH kernel with the BSD API interface.
The reason I am stating (in generic terms) the obvious, is that the kernel models in use in all these OSes are very DATED concepts. In fact, every kernel architecture compared in these tests and OS X where deemed to be too primative for even the MS NT team back in 1990, which gave rise to the NT kernel which is neither a microkernel nor monolithic in nature, and why MS to this day, with even as 'bloated' as Windows is seen in the technical world, can use the NT architecture to shove around some suprising numbers not only in the consumer desktop markets, but even now in the supercomputer markets, all using the same code.
So with this in mind, it isn't a NT is great speech, but food for thought that the OSS world still needs to rethink its heritage, use Virtual Machine concepts and rally around a new set of kernel architectures that can shove NT into the ground.
Until this happens, these 'old' kernel models and architectures are going to trail NT just based on something as simple as the basic kernel theory and architecture that MS chose to use and abandon the 'in use' kernel concepts of 1990 and instead build NT around kernel technologies that were nothing but a group of theories at the time.
And there is no reason that almost 20 years later the OSS world cannot do the same and give up the primatvie kernel architectures it has been rehashing and slapping bandaids on to move forward and remain competitive.
Yes there have been some really good work on the existing technologies and bringing some 'new' ideas back to these dated concepts (even Apple has done well with putting bandaids on the monolithic nature of BSD/MACH), but why continue to work backwards and keep 'repairing or patching' technologies to move them to new hardware and instead rally behind a set of new kernel designs that are just now mainly theory.
If MS could do this 20 years ago and even choose to NOT use a *nix model as well (they owned XENIX remember), there is no reason the OSS community cannot dig deeper and start from scratch as well and VM existing OS models on the new kernel technologies.
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When the problem is that users are using the system in a vertical configuration as advertised by the manufacturer, you can bet your ass that it's a manufacturing defect! (More specifically a design defect, but we won't quibble.) Microsoft tells everyone that their system is just fine and dandy when placed in an upright position. Yet the slightest vibration (anyone have subwoofers? cabled controllers? hard wood floors?) can unseat the disc and cause scratches.
Can you give references for where the problem is just from using the unit upright?
The only information or sources I have on this topic is about when the unit is knocked over or flipped while upright.
But I will take any technical tests you have reference to that show what you are claiming. I will even have our labs pull a couple of old units and test whatever you can find to confirm it.
I am a little skeptical, because of how DVD players are designed and what I have read regarding the user claims.
If a subwoofer could be enough vibration to pop the DVD off the holding mechanism, Microsoft wanting to put 'bumper pads' in the unit would NOT help, even though it was seen as a viable fix. (These are not 'click in' DVD drives like you find in a laptop, it has an overhead 'compression' holder.)
This is not an example to generalize all units or disregard ligitimate claims; however, my personal unit has taken a literal beating, works fine, and has never harmed a Disc yet.
So to generalize this as a systemic problem is also not accurate. The units are NOT as fragile or damaging to Discs as people would like to make them out to be. (A lot of this falls into the PS3 vs XBox360 religions of gamers.)
Also when I mean not fragile, I am a good example of a bad user when it comes to caring for the unit or games, as I often leave discs in the unit and take it through airport security several times a month, with it either being checked and thrown by ramp workers under the plane in small case or in my carry on, where I have to take it out of the bag, put it in a plastic bin and watch it vibrate down the rollers through the screener's units.
WTF?! Whenever I pay $50 for a pressed DVD I take good care of it. Also, this is a manufacturing defect, not an unholy union of food and hardware.
1. I am sure YOU do, most gamers don't and even if they do, their friends might not be as careful.
2. It is technically not a manufacturing defect, as the unit was not designed to be flipped around while in use.
Maybe they could have put bigger idiot level warning labels on the units, but hey this is the year 2008, we need idiot labels on everything to protect the stupid people from themselves.
I wonder what will happen if I pick up my BluRay player and flip it or shake it while I it is running, there is no warning saying I can't, and if ANYTHING happens to the disc, it MUST BE A MFR defect in the BluRay player, right? Geesh...
Tabs are automatically aligned with each other to occupy the same screen space. That is a big difference from separate overlapping windows.
Not when the browser windows launch at the same place 'by design' on top of each other.
Also Microsoft was using tabs in some programs (especially the IDEs) for quite awhile so it is rather difficult to claim they wanted the taskbar to be used for this purpose
Sometimes there are places tabs do make sense, browsers are NOT one of them.
You mention an IDE, it is a good example of where tabs can work for debugging views, and also flipping between code 'within' a project, especially when you are not even dealing with the same type of code or content in each file. (It would be insane to have separate windows opening up for Form code, XAML code, C# code, VB code, HTML pages, and everything else that can be mixed into 'ONE project'.
There are hundreds of 'good' examples 'tabs' work for the UI; that doesn't make it RIGHT for everything.
but MDI was a development by Microsoft,
Ok, now you are giving MS too much credit here. MDI was not a MS design concept, but it something they used a lot during the 80s and early 90s.
However, as you would have noticed around 1995 when the new UI and document centric models of Win95 were coming out of MS, they even 'restructured' their own MDI applications, and Word adn Excel retained the MDI for people that wanted it, but the applicaitons also started to be allowed to run separately, and let 'Windows' INSTEAD of the internal application 'window menu' manage multiple open documents.
If something like MS Office applications can work better with 'One Window' per document, why would a browser be so 'big and cumbersome' that it would need a new internal UI metaphor to manage the pages?
(Yes Excel has 'workbooks' still with tabs, but this is one document with multiple pages, not multiple documents managed by the tabs.)
Microsoft even did away with 'Office Binder' as it was an application level 'bundling' of Office documents, as the OS and folders provide this functionality without an artificial application level application doing it.
Microsoft has been literally shoving old world geeks into better UIs for years, and they still have a lot more shoving to do. Heck even concepts from Win95 that are easier and faster are things old school geeks still don't user or even 'get'.
One Example: Right-Click New and other ways to have your own document templates are far faster and more powerful than pre-Win95 concepts. Yet, even to this day I see brilliant geeks dig into the start menu and launch Word to create a letter, instead of creating the letter via the 'New' menu or a template and opening the new blank document. As a side effect, Open and Save dialog boxes should almost NEVER be used inside an Application unless you are saving changes and need to rename the document, and even this is a bit of a dated concept. (And this is all stuff introduced to users in the Win95 era, and yet people are still working with documents and applications like they did in Windows 3.x or even older OSes.) - Sad, very sad...
Roughly the same could be said of XP if the user is actually a user rather than running everything as an administrator.
Actually, no...
Even as a 'user' on XP, the processes you launch get your security level. So IE7 on XP running as a 'user' would still be able to screw with your profile, documents, files, settings, just not the system files.
On Vista, no matter what your security level, whether you are an administrator or an user, IE runs at a lower and 'special' security level.
It is actually a smart idea, as when a exploit like the one we are talking about today is used, the browser by default protects the user from it, as the vulnerability can't get outside the IE protected mode security box.
I wish Firefox and other browsers would consider this type of approach as well, there is no reason that they could not set their own security policies and then run Firefox in a lower restricted security mode as well.
Anyway, the difference is IE on Vista keeps it from being able to screw with even user items that IE has no business touching, so FS and registry security step in to back IE off and prevent it from doing something outside it's protected mode 'box' and exploits spun from the IE process inherent the same restrictions by proxy.
Vista came out around jan. 2007. Windows 7 will be here sometime 2009. I don't think MS can get away with pushing a new OS every 2 years.
Besides, isn't Windows 2K supported till 2010? People who spent good money on MS software want their patches, pronto.
I don't disagree with you here.
My point was that a lot of people keep telling their friends to 'downgrade' to XP or buy XP for their new computers. This is what is INSANE.
Just yesterday, I had a friend bring a spyware filled laptop with XP. It was released earlier this year and was designed for Vista, but her 'expert friends' insisted she put XP on it and she even went as far to buy a retail copy of XP Professional.
If you have a choice, CHOOSE Vista, if you are buying an OS, buy Vista unless your computer was made before the year 2000. PERIOD.
I don't expect users to fork out money every couple of years, but if you getting a new computer and still are picking XP, or getting it and reformating Vista and install XP, it is INSANE.
The whole upgrade cost cycle is one reason I actually don't mind Windows, as the cost is factored into your computer based on the OEM price, and an XP computer from 2002 has had free updates and SPs and even new application accessories released for it every year without ANY additional cost.
Contrast this to OS X when the 'new' versions are less than a Windows SP and have cost about $500 for users in the same time period as XP owners that get the same level of updates and application software updates for free.
As for Vista and Windows 7, if you look at the timeframe it is much like Win2k and XP. The first was the architectual jump, the second expanded on the features the previous one made possible. So the release timeframes for each will be close.
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However, don't give up on Vista, just like XP, MS continues to bring newer technology to the previous versions.
Even with XP and Vista, MS released as much new features from Vista for XP as they could based on the XP architecture. (Desktop Search, Defender, WMP, IE, WPF/.NET3.5, etc) - So many in fact, it has made it less appealing for users to spend $$ to upgrade, even at MS's own financial detriment.
And they have specifically said that some of the new features of Windows 7 WILL be provided to Vista users, even DirectX11, since its architecture can handle it, unlike the break from XP to Vista where the Video driver model couldn't handle DirectX10.
The slot-loader is gentle on the disc,
While the Disc is playing, yes, while insert or ejecting, NO...
Slot loaders use rollers to grab the disc, and so many things can happen with this 'direct' contact.
- A dirty roller can scratch a disc rather easily, pitting it.
- A 'glossed' roller can fail to properly grab the disc and spin on the surface of the disc
- A user pushing against the disc when eject or pulled against when inserted will allow the rollers to rub the disc surfaces.
A good example is slot loaders in cars that get a lot of dirt and dust, CDs in the car take a lot of damage from slot loading players because of the rollers.
PS There are a few good ways to clean the rollers, and even de-gloss older rollers on slot loaders. If you have a car unit that fails to properly take or eject disc you can do a few things on the road even that will fix the problem.
- Get a Slot loader roller cleaner - rare, but around.
- Make your own.
Use a 'printable' silver CDR, (the printable side has a light texture). Apply alcohol or even spit if you are on the road to the printed side of the disc and insert it upside down. If necessary hold the CDR to force the rollers to 'spin' on the disc. The texture will clean and de-gloss the rollers. Repeat until it works.
You can also use a black matte CD Label on a CD to get the same effect, but the paper could pull off and jam in the unit, so only use for a light cleaning.
(Then again, what do I know? Microsoft did try to cut corners wherever possible to create the system as cheap as possible.)
Well not as much as Microsoft. The odds of a unit being flipped while a Disc is spinning happens how often to the average user? But aged or dirty rollers will start killing discs and have a shorter lifetime.
Do you honestly think this is stuff MS didn't consider? Do you honestly think MS couldn't have gotten a 'good' deal on a custom slot loader design if they thought it was the best?
Gamers tend to be less careful with their disc, borrow discs, and when high even insert discs with peanut butter and jelly on them. This destroys front loaders rather fast and adds to their ability to harm disc with just a bit of crusted dirt or PB&J on the roller, your discs may continue to work, but you are slowly pitting them, and if the roller 'spins' on the disc, you are getting scratches.
There may be a good front loader solution, but I have not seen it, as both sides of the Disc are vulnerable and a device that demands contact with it present a constant risk.
MS made what they thought was the right decision, with a lot of 'smart' people considering the pros and cons.
- Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in Windows Vista limits the impact of the vulnerability.
- By default, Internet Explorer on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 runs in a restricted mode that is known as Enhanced Security Configuration. This mode sets the security level for the Internet zone to High. This is a mitigating factor for Web sites that you have not added to the Internet Explorer Trusted sites zone.
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In other words, if you are running IE7 or IE8 on Vista, about the most that happen is your browser crashes.
This is another example of where people telling their friends and users to stay with XP screws them over.
As much as people want to hate Vista, there are some real GOOD freaking reasons average users should be using it.
If you want a goog RealLife example, find a friend that has both an XP machine and Vista that has the same users on each computer (like your neighor's family) and notice there are tons of spyware crap on the XP computer and 99.9% of the time NONE on the Vista machine.
You're right Microsoft invented everything which is why GUIs never existed before Microsoft.
If you think I even implied MS invented the 'taskbar' concept, you are either a fool or your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
My example was about a feature MS 'effectively' already provided, yet the browser 'fanbois' pushed for the tabs to be placed inside the browser like all the other neato 'browsers' were doing.
This was to illustrate that MS is often forced to copy crap because fools decide they want crap. PERIOD.
The brower 'tabs' is an example of regression to MDI interfaces that MS and most other modern GUI companies have gotten away from because the OS should manage document to document and view to view, not the application. Windows already let you hotkey between them, Windows already provided previes of the 'pages/tabs' open, etc. There was no need for this to be recreated at the application level.
I guess the whole UI regression was lost on people that still think putting tabs 'in' the freaking browser instead of on the taskbar actually makes things easier.
Here is how it works in the real world - users learn how to click the taskbar and alt-tab and all their little tricks on whatever OS they are using. Now with tabs in the browser they are back to MDI concepts of the early 90s where they have to learn Ctrl-Tab to flip tabs and other 'new' keystrokes, and for that they get more wasted screen space for the same crap.
If anyone is 'paying' attention to Windows7, one of the features of the new taskbar is to burrow into IE so that even if you have multiple tabs open, they show on the Taskbar, just like they use to going back to Win95 and the original IE. They literally have to code to pull the 'tab' images out of freaking IE just to get the same functionality back.
MS didn't invent anything, but what they were doing was more on track than the insane tab 'logic' that geeks forced on users and shoved MS to add to IE, as even they were getting knocked down in reviews for 'not' having this feature, when it WAS NOT NEEDED - all this, even though it is a flawed UI concept and cumbersome at best.
With crap like this and the 'new' 3D desktop patent from Apple it is enough to scare the hell of people like myself that actually work with the psychology impact of UI design. With regard to Apple's 'silly' 3D Desktop patent, there is a reason the same project never got out of MS Research back in 1999, it offers few features and a lot of complexity for the user. However, Apple will probably shove it down their users throats and they will click ten more times for the same thing to happen and love it.
Before the OSS and Apple 'UI Innovations' are done, everyone will be using MS Bob or an MDI in an MDI for everything. Heck, crank out an old copy of MS Works, it will be a revolutionary idea again.
Geesh...
Webmasters have no obligations to cater to a particular browser
My response was to a poster blasting a web site for doing exactly this.
So you agree with my post then? Good...
PS The Microsoft 'troll' paranoia is a bit scary. The usage of IE in my post was specifically because of Slashdot's problems with it and the fact the OP was blasting a Microsoft site.
My freaking post was made from Firefox even, geesh...
Seriously. Whats next? Windows 7 will feature a task bar at the top of the screen with a magnifying shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen?
After watching the OSS world rip off the Dated Win95 taskbar concept for years, this is kind of a strange UI concept to suggest MS would be copying next.
It is just like 'tabbed' browsing, Windows users and people at MS didn't think users needed the feature, as the 'inherent' taskbar of the OS provided the same basic feature as having tabbed browsing, except your tabs are on the taskbar instead of taking up space in the Browser.
But idiots shoved for tabbed browsing, and MS had to add it and try to put a fresh 'use' or spin on it. MS should of just told user WTF, your tabs are already there, look at the freaking taskbar, it is where the browser 'tabs' ideas came from in the first place...
Wow, clicking Buttons/Tabs to flip between web pages, something everyone with a brain was doing on Windows since 1996 - and yet MS 'copied' the browser tabs feature - Holy crap...
Did everyone think MS wasn't smart enough to do a tabbed MDI? Had no one ever user a product called Excel or seen the freaking 'tabs' control from VB 1.0?
Geesh...
Microsoft just doesn't get it. If you can't get your service to work with all major browsers, your service is going to be seen as inferior, not the browser.
You mean a site like Slashdot?
Statements like this are quite silly and a bit paranoid, especially when you consider that the site you are posting it on offers features to Firefox that it denies to other browsers.
Using IE on Slashdot you lose a lot of features for very basic reading and commenting on the site.
It is almost like Slashdot is programmed for IE6 or some even older crap, as things don't align properly, and they are specific IE code nudges that are just badly coded. The site shows better if you tell Slashdot you are running Mozilla even when viewing it with IE7 or IE8.
So, continue your rant about how sites are viewed as inferior...
It's a pity that NTFS still doesn't compete with UFS for stability and reliability. Vista STILL has to defragment the damn thing
Fragment, gasp, you mean just like ZFS?
This is a 'mild' direct side effect of the 'copy on write' feature of the FS and ALL FS technologies that have true 'copy on write' abilities.
Go look it up...
Even FSs without 'copy of write' features become fragmented.(Like the newest UFS incarnations and HFS+) It is impossilbe for a FS to remain completely unfragmented without sacrificing massive upfront performance.
Using UFS as a 'pilar' of a FS that doesn't fragment is very, very wrong, as it might be argued that it won't fragment as much as ZFS or NTFS, because of no 'copy on write' features, the FS itself has heavy performance issues because of the lookup methods it uses and has always been a controversial FS due to managing block thrashing from the lookup index.
The key in dealing with fragmentation is in the lookup times associated with fragmentation, and on NTFS, even a massively fragmented file will still outpeform a contiguous file on other FS technologies because of how the original index of NTFS handles block allocation and can swipe the file segments in one pass without additional lookups.
The second key to figting fragmentation is a system level utility to check for performance impacting fragmentation and defragmenting during user idle time, something Vista does quite well, and even XP does on essential system files like the registry, etc.
Even OS X finally added a background defragmentation utility because even though UFS and HFS+ don't support 'copy on write' THEY STILL FRAGMENT, hence the need for a background defrag utility, just ike NT or ANY modern OS. (Try editing several multi GB video files and if you don't end up with fragmentation on any FS, you are lying, unless the FS disposes of all up front performance and rewrites the entire file to keep it contiguous.
That's part of the VMS legacy in NT, and not something to be proud of.
If you think NTFS has ANY legacy to VMS you have no idea what you are talking about. It has more heritage to HPFS from OS/2 1.x, but was re-written for NT and was a new FS technology.
NTFS was designed to be full featured and dynamically extensible, that is how MS has been able to easily add features to NTFS without recreating the basic FS core nor degrading performance. File system level compression - added. File system level encryption - added. Etc...
it's a pity that Apple uses that funky HFS+ and implements features at the file system level instead of the vnode level... which would make things like spotlight file-system agnostic
Ok, this is not technically accurate, but even if we accept your terminology as accurate it is irrelevant because Vista and XPs Desktop search is completely FS agnostic, so your point here has no validity.
(Early betas of Vista used NTFS metatagging, but this was removed because file tagging could be used 'in file' with added Desktop Search index tagging. This avoids the lost NTFS metadata when people ZIP or email files, and by using file type tagging support it avoids the horrors of appending resource forks to files/documents.)
You should do a bit more FS research than Wiki fact referencing, as there is a key differece between having 'facts' and understanding what they mean and their implications.
time machine isn't just finder. Applications can support it too. If you open time machine while running Address Book, you can browse and restore previous contact information
Neither is 'Previous Versions' in Vista...
However, for looking at 'folders' the OpenSolaris interface and the 'Previous Versions' interface of Vista are both superior to Time Machine, in addition to be technically superior as they have FS level support for on the HD tracking of changes to the files in real-time, no backups needed, but backups are also used on Vista just like TIme Machine.
The Application level APIs for the 'Previous Versions' features in Vista make Time Machine look like a free backup utility, so your assumptions that because it extends beyond finder is somehow unique is something I found astounding.
And this doesn't even touch the inherent features that older applications get via the OS dialogs, so inside a 1995 Win95 application, you can right click and ask for previous versions of the files inside the application.
Apple Marketing really did a number on people to make such a mundane and 'done' feature seem like the next generation of something, especially 4 years after people were using it in the Windows world. (Yes Windows 2003 Server and via it XP had the ability to use previous versions as well.)
Vista just added client side support of the feature and added backups to the list of versions in the timeline. MS didn't think it was something to scream from the rooftops because it was already so 'overdone' in the Windows world and a basic feature.
In fact it wasn't until the Apple marketing machine turned TimeMachine into something it isn't, and *nix users getting a taste of a solid FS like ZFS that FINALLY competes with NTFS in performance and features, that you see people running to use these 'wonderful' technologies that Windows users didn't realize how 'special' they apparently were since they have been using them for so many years.
Apple doesn't even have a solid FS technology to do 'copy on write'. This is why TimeMachine makes you backup every hour to get the 'versions' and if you are editing multi-GB videos or projects, this turns into a horrid performance issue. As the backup can't even do full bit/byte level differential backups, and Vista's backup system even does this, as well as being media agnostic, from a DVDR to a network location to a USB drive.
I get so tired of the Apple fan crap that have no idea how featureless and dated their OS is when it comes to core technologies.
Even as 'basic' as OpenSolaris is compared to a mature Linux installation, it at least has ZFS and all the technologies that this type of FS allows. From document and file level Time Slider features to volume and OS level restore points.
And sadly the *nix world had to wait for ZFS to come from a closed vendor to be the first FS that has most of the features of NTFS and seamlessly provide them at a performance level of NTFS.
Make fun of MS, Windows, Win32, even poke at NT if you want, but NTFS is something MS did well with, and it has been the holy-grail of FS technologies that the OSS and *nix world has been trying to catch up to for over 15 years now.
And Apple OS X? Oh my, fanbois, your OS is so far behind it is somewhat scary, as it will force Apple to do another 300 feature list and again resort to lising things like 'New Airport Menu' as a new feature for the freaking OS. As for technology in OS X, Apple is already hit the ropes of the kernel and GUI designs and are either patching like mad or if they are smart considering a new architecture and strapping another new GUI on it.
TimeSlider is much better. No big fancy 3d interface, just a slider in a folder you can drag forward and back... without abandoning the desktop. And the way Apple *implements* Time Machine that functionality would be rather easy to implement.
This is something I completely agree with. Time Machine is more of a marketing 'application' than either a good technology or an interface to the technology. Why Apple thought they needed a cumbersome Application just to have access to backed up data is rather insane.
The over the top nature of Time Machine is why 'Previous Versions' from Vista has often been so overlooked. Vista does both the OpenSolaris and OS X backup technologies with previous versions, but because the UI is rather simple and a right click to get to in a folder, most people never even know it is there, and even many Tech Journalists to this day give you a blank stare as they have no idea it exists.
OpenSolaris's UI of this technology is where someone got a UI mostly right, as it has the simpliest of implementation, is in your face so you know the feature exists, yet isn't a Frankenstein application that takes the user away from the folder.
A side note, people should be careful to not 'technically' compare OS X's Time Machine with the OpenSolaris Time Slider feature, as 'Time Machine' is built on external hourly backups, it is not a volume level recovery ability like like 'Time Slider'.
The 'Time Slider' feature in OpenSolaris should be compared to Vista 'Previous Versions', as they are technically doing the same thing with regard to the FS technologies. (NTFS and ZFS have copy on write functionality and this is why Windows 2003 Server and Vista also have the ability to view folders from a previous time on the same volume.)
Vista's 'Previous Versions' also adds backup data to the list, so it not only gives you what is available on the volume like 'OpenSolaris', but also gives you all the folder/files previous versions that exist in backups known like OS X does.
I do like the OpenSolaris ease of adding this interface to the technology ZFS offers.
'Previous Versions' in Vista is ok, as it presents a list and you can open the folder from any previous time in the list and drag stuff out of it or restore it rather seamlessly, but having the interface in the folder view itself is brilliant, and one less folder view open, so kudos to the Solaris team.
This is the type of User level UI stuff that can beat MS; however, good luck in beating Apple's marketing.
As I've never tried it myself (don't run Vista) I'm interested to know if it's worthwhile
It not always makes a big difference, but there are some good guidelines of knowing if it will help or why to use it.
1) Is your HD slow as crap? a 4200 or 5600rpm HD will see some gains, no matter what you are doing.
2) Is your system RAM at a level that your games/applications can consume it? For example even if you have 2GB of RAM, but your game consumes 90% of this to run, there is going to be a shortage of OS level HD RAM cache available, and ReadyBoost will help. Vista on 1GB will see more help than Vista on 2GB, but even then if a game is taking the RAM, it offers some caching help.
3) Gaming in general tends to get a nudge from ReadyBoost, as games often pull textures from various files, and the faster random seeks the Flash Driver offers will help.
4) Load times. Again, loading applications often pulls data from several places as well as having the OS pull or use API level files, so there is no way to full sequence lay the content on the HD, as the shared parts of the OS itself are not going to be moved for each application that uses them. On applications you use a lot, the Flash Drive used with SuperFetch will be smart enough to have data loaded that it expects you to use based on your patterns, time of day, previous applications you loaded, etc.
You also get a level on concurrency for read operations, so while your HD is yanking File A, the Flash Drive can be offering bits that are scattered around your HD at the same time, getting a double dip in performance improvement.
5) Flash Sticks are cheap, and if you have a newer(fast) one laying around, even if it is 2GB, throw it in, and get some boost from it when you aren't using it for other stuff. You can always turn off ReadyBoost on the device at anytime and shove your data on it before you go somewhere.
These are just some basics, but the last one is probbably the most important, as most of us have USB sticks laying around and can move our data off them and get a performance boost (even if it is fairly small) and not have to invest in one permanently just for ReadyBoost.
ReadyBoost would have made a bigger impact on performance and the market if faster USB sticks would have come about sooner. Also Vista Superfetch technologies, often work so well, ReadyBoost is just assisting. Superfetch is the grand daddy of smart look ahead caching technology as it takes into account so many factors and the more you use your system the faster things load and smoother games.
So if you are running Vista, give it a try. (Note there are some really crap USB sticks, so if Vista says it is too slow, it just won't let it be used, and this pissed off a lot of people like SanDIsk that made a lot of the crap Flash sticks.)
PS It can also be used for other type of Flash media like SD, if they are in a fast USB based Media reader.
Since you mention Vista, go to the horse's mouth..
There are several good whitepapers on this from NT engineers at Microsoft.com.
If you are aren't in the mood to read, go to channel9.msdn.com and look up topics on NT kernel, Vista, etc.
There are some really good explainations about VM and specifically how NT works and what Vista does differently in contrast to XP and previous version of NT memory management.
Do you need one, No.
Should you have one, well it probably doesn't make much of a difference in terms of performance on Vista. Vista doesn't use or dumpt crap to the pagefile in the 'sense' that you or many people would think based on previous OS memory management schemes.
Since you are using Vista, I would say, leave it on, as there are a few performance benefits, like speeding up hibernation, and applications that are written to 'allocate' RAM, but then dump that to the pagefile as it probably won't use it very often. (Even though memory allocation on NT is dynamic, some application developers know what they are doing and will take advantage of the pagefile to hold bitmaps or other things it seldom references, and there is no need to keep them in physical RAM, and they often don't go the extra step to check for pagefile size/presence and just assumes the system has one, as it use to be required years ago.)
On XP turning off the pagefile can help performance, as XP uses a more conservative method to dump applications to the pagefile, but again, if you are using applications like I describe in the paragraph above, you are losing RAM that isn't used for much, so then it comes down to how much 'extra' RAM you have and if you have a chance of ever hitting the celing, which is kind of a 'duh' logical conclusion.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but are you serious with point one and OS X?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html
Please show me which service pack made that many changes.
Ok, let's be serious for a second, have you actually read the 300 features list?
In perspective, if MS detailed changes as 'tiny' as Apple does and try to tout them as features, the list for Vista alone would have been over '5000' new features. (We could argue that Apple is smarter about marketing, but they are also conning people by doing this as well.)
Here I will open the link and scroll randomly to the middle and pick some of the 'features' to list and talk about.
(Networking)
- New AirPort Menu
- Self-Tuning TCP
(Parental Controls)
- Simple Account Setup
- Time Limits and Bedtimes
- Activity Logging
- Remote Control & Monitoring
- Dynamic Web Filter
- Web Filter Overrides
Now look at these seriously... They are laughable.
A New AirPort menu is worthy of mentioning as a new feature?
Self tuning TCP is actually one of the few halfway reputable.
Parental Controls, uh? How can they even make this list being serious. These are not 'features' but new 'options' in a dialog box for the Parental Controls.
Now in contrast just to these items ONLY, MS released Vista with features list like this:
Improved Networking
Improved Parental Controls
See how this works? If you are a Fanboi or not paying attention it looks like: MS Vista two Features compared to OS X eight features. It is this level of awareness and poor journalism and poor MS marketing that leaves people thinking this.
For Vista, 'Improved Networking' there are over 200 'detailed' changes in the OS from the self-tuning to the network stack itself being new. 'Parental Controls', there are over 300 features that range from Game Rating restrictions to a new UI for parental controls as well as about 100 policies that can be used.
Ok, so you get an idea of this?
Now you were talking about Service Packs so lets take a look at a couple from the past years. And I will even let you use the 300 features as a goal for OS X here...
XP SP2 was the addition of recompiled and more managed code from the Windows 2003 project. This is why XP SP2 is faster than XP RTM or XP SP1. In this alone there are close to 100 items changes from the core changes applied in SP2.
If we were going to look at XP SP2 and list changes using the 'Apple Method' it would start to look like this really fast:
Networking
- New Taskbar WiFi Menu
- New WiFi Connection Manager
- New Integrated WiFi Authenication systems (WPAv2, etc)
- New WiFi network notification system
- New Firewall with inbound and outbound policies
- Updated TCP connection limitations to fight Spyware
- IPv6 support
- New VPN/IPSEC policies
- New Security Center
On and on and on, and these are just off the top of my head, if I pulled out the item by item changes provided to IT professionals, we could fill pages of 'features', and it would be far more than 300.
Now on to Vista SP1. The entire OS was replaced with the Windows 2008 server build of the binaries. That is a lot of changes, in fact a year's newer OS replaced at the core level.
Here is a link to the 'Overview' of changes, which is a 'light' list as MS 'defines' features/changes. On this page alone there are about 100.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749132.aspx
Now move on to a broader list for IT professions:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709618.aspx
You will find about another 300-400 features/changes, and this is more detailed to the level of the crap Apple would list, as they demonstrate from their famous '300 list' you referenced.
A
Even after the user starts clicking on things, Macs are generally safe. The user must explicitly punch holes in their system to create most vulnerabilities.
Um... No...
All OSes now have UAC and *nix root priveledge request prompts. It is now the same for users on these OSes 99.9% of the time. Macs have nothing 'better' than anyone else in this area.
As for 'needing the user to punch holes', again this is false. If you even consider non-OS X items a Flash or Java exploit would hit the user quite easily. In fact if done via the browser would hit OS X easier than it would Vista, as IE on Vista runs with lower privledges than the user and can't even mess with user files, let alone system files, so JAVA or Flash launching from IE get the same low level of permissions.
(This is where I say, Firefox needs to move to a low security mode of operation to again be as secure as IE, and that is very sad for me to say.)
Mac users that insist OS X is more secure or safe are either ignorant about security or so smug they assume they are under the radar.
WindowsNT during the 90s only had one or two Anti-Virus products even made for it, and it was considered to be above viruses in contrast to Win9x.
This is EXACTLY like OS X is now, as it was fairly tight for the timeframe, and under the radar of hackers.
Guess what, when XP replaced Win9x, it was no longer under the radar and even NT's security based core couldn't help the debacle that was to come.
Apple is already now releasing more security updates by a factor or 20 to 1 compared to Vista, and with a bit more market share and the evil eye of a few good hackers will crumble the Mac user base a few times before Apple pulls their users out of the hole, a repeat of what happened to MS and Windows is to come for Apple and OS X.
Of course the world will have to rely on non-Apple sources, as Apple will continue to delete all evidence of these attacks from their forums and message boards, as they do today.
And yes they do occur today, and yes Apple deletes the hell out of them to keep their 'image' as secure...
It needs to happen to a few journalists before they will get printed and not hidden behind the Apple 'aluminum' curtain.
Trying to cash in on XP sp2's stigma, they're pushing vista as an aged operating system, that's been through the ropes. Now we've got a mature system, unlike that horrible old Vista RTM, that didn't do well.
Ya, no...
1) SP1 and SP2 are yearly updates. Microsoft is back on track to what people remember from the NT4 and Win2K days. (Possible troll view: And they aren't charging $99 a copy for these updates like Apple does, and they have more feature changes than each 10.x update from OS X.)
2) Vista RTM is not bad, the drivers from ATI, Intel, and NVidia were bad, and if you use RTM drivers out of the box for Video, it sucks. However, both Windows Update shoves new drivers to your system or you can grab the latest versions from ATI or NVidia yourself.
(Yes we do internal testing with and without updates, and can say for certain that Vista RTM is faster than XP even for gaming with new video drivers.)
Vista SP1 is bascially a kernel and code update so that it matches Windows 2008, and of course there are going to be some performance and feature improvements.
Vista SP2 is a lighter update focusing on secondary systems that didn't get updates in SP1, like the Bluetooth stack, and features discovered to better handle flaky hardware for things like hibernate/resume(ACPI issues with MBs), and updates to WiFi priorities so that when you open the lid from standby WiFi is already there and going.
So Microsoft giving a SP once a year is normal and it is a good thing for once that MS is actually back on track for consistent updates instead of screwing around.
I think the new Windows Management shows with both the SP1/SP2 timeframes and the work and focus Windows 7 is getting. Tight, reliable and on time are trademarks of the Managers now on Windows and after the Vista series of mis-management structure, MS needed to clean house.
Additional backstory:
There always was a class war inside MS between the NT OS developers and the Win9x developers. And this hit the roof when NT with a bit of RAM was outperforming the assembly optimized Win9x OSes, especially when you consider NT is using a portable C and has several security and structure layers that require more processing than the Win9x OSes did.
This made MS management go WTF x86 people, and it also created a bigger rip when the teams were merged for XP. Vista problems were a bit of a backlash from this merge that occurred in the XP timeframe, from clashing management styles to types and quality of code with regard to features. (Remember Vista V1 of development was started back in 2002, right during the flip over)
Yes and it works quiet well in real world performance testing.
Even a 1gb or 2gb stick can improve overall responsiveness enough that makes a tight XP installation feel slow. This is especially true with gaming and applications that push the limits of your RAM shoving the HD cache down.
There are a few crap Flash drives, that just don't perform well, avoid them and it works like promised.
Licenses and Kernels Oh My...
Here we are again, conflating two arguments, one dealing with OSS traditions and Licensing and Kernel Designs and inherent limitations with tradition kernel models we are still stuck with as mainstream.
The whole licensing arguments just in here, makes the MS free software license look halfway noble. And it also makes the MS licensing of OSes and software to businesses look like child's play in comparison to the horror stories that are appearing in the OSS movement.
Why should it be easier to read through MS licensing policies for Windows 2008 Server and CALs and all the other crap than it is to understand basic licensing of OSS?
Seriously, all the OSS licensing and 'schemes' by some of the founders are nothing but a minefield, and it comes down to licensing instead of WHAT IS POSSIBLE?
Why can't we just stuff the licensing contraints and go back to 'what is possible' and shared ideas from this?
Now we are arguing about shoving 'necessary' driver and firmware code into an OSS project in order for it to even work on many devices. Are people really going to give up WiFi or other technologies that are dependant on non-OSS code?
Why not stop here, reconsider the licensing, and kill it, and kill requirements for sharing at certain thresholds. If you look at MS, 99% of the reason they haven't opened up more of their technology is that the licensing involved in doing so. The same goes for them in working with OSS software, as soon as they 'work' with OSS software, they are then required to open up their own technology, and this is just as crazy and also is killing OSS.
If you look at Mono and Moonlight for ONE example, MS specifically didn't develop the Silverlight or .NET CLR inside Microsoft, was because of the insane Licensing of the OSS world, that would have required MS to split open things from Windows that are not even related to Silverlight or .NET.
Why not start from scratch, put some new kernel ideas on the table with an abstracted driver layer that will allow people to be pure OSS users and make the layer agnostic to the core OS framework. Then from this either VM or layer the kernel so that non-OSS content can be easily added to the kernel technology without violating any licensing or even having to worry about it.
Right now, it would almost be better if Microsoft did create a more enhanced *nix subsystem for NT, supporting Linux and other upper level kernel API sets. Then you would have the abstraction and drivers and yet run in a full OSS sandbox that you can do anything you want to do. (And no this is not my suggestion, but it makes more sense than the insane licensing and arguing and splitting in the OSS community we are seeing once again.)
This is like the late 80s all over again with *nix and why it failed to make it to the desktop back then as well. Instead of fragmenting over what is proper and instead of arguing licenses, why not STOP, go from a generic DO WHAT IS POSSIBLE license and create a new kernel technology that is extensible enough to layer non-pure code outside the core kernel.
And no, I am not talking about frankensteining Linux as people are trying to do, as we could jump past all the inherent problems of the Linux kernel from locking crap, the frame buffer and being horribly non-layered. Even Linux itself has expected hardware core support needed, as the three modes of the VM expects the hardware to be there and requires emulation and/or firmware to supplement the missing hardware.
In contrast NT, also has hardware expectations, but that is where the semi-micro nature of NT using the HAL comes into play to ensure the bottom layer of NT is always providing the hardware expectations, and it is properly layered so that porting is actually easier than Linux and the layers are not mixed so that HAL doesn't have to compromise NT upper kernel layers. The OSS world knows how this works, and can build a better kernel than Linux or BSD or especially BSD/MACH
And another ad of how good smoking is by Marlboro
Geesh, are people really buying this junk science?
Go look up Humboldt State University, almost 10 years ago they had a very efficient and effective system of using solar energy to create Hydrogen cells and were driving cars around that took water and solar cells to produce ALL the energy for the car.
This is not 'rocket' science. Oh wait, the space shuttle uses hydrogen, weird I wonder why diesel isn't ALSO a better solution according to the gas companies?
Geesh...
Just another correction:
Everything is not just Wiki definitions, even OpenBSD is more complex in 'trying' to define it in general terms as we are trying to keep this dicussion. If you want to get technical, we can write out some information and you can use it to append the Wiki pages properly.
Monolithic and microkernel are very vague general terms used to describe two aspects of current kernel design, and even the use of 'hybrid' kernel if you read from Wiki is very bad, as it will even call OS X a hybrid kernel because of the duct tape Apple added to improve multiprocesses handling, but this really does not make it a hybrid kernel.
Ok, so enough with the base line Wiki level of understanding?
You will never see revolutionary kernel designs come from established open source projects. They have enough on their plate as it is. Open source is about releasing frequent evolutionary improvements.
Why? Why do you believe this 'belief' system of what OSS should be to be true?
So OSS should just limit to working with existing technologies, really? Again why?
If the concept of OSS is combine resources and minds and push forward, why can't the sins of the past also be considered?
Do you think Linus set out to create a status quo OS, or want to try something different? If he would of had your mindset, it still would be a version of Minux. Although it jumped back to standard kernel concepts for Linux, at least it was a new direction.
Just as you define Windows as more evolutionary once again, you are missing a bigger picture. NT was not evolutionary, and people in the OS theory and engineering world will step up to recognize even if they don't like Microsoft. NT's kernel design was mix of many current and theory based ideas, and yet has no true fathers. There was nothing out there that worked like NT, and to this day it STILL is in a league of its own with no mainstream kernel technologies even close to challenging it.
The problem with this is that MS has a strong dynamic kernel technology that can STILL do many things other technologies cannot, and they will be able to further tap these abilities to keep leaping over anything thrown at them.
Think of even this simple aspect of the NT kernel, it has a client/server kernel nature (yes terms that are not hybrid, micro, or monolithic). With its layered client server nature, it already inherently runs a full BSD subsystem OS, that is a 'technical' equal to Win32 or Win64. This demonstrates that Microsoft can use NT, give a BSD access to the massive Windows driver database and if they want do even more.
So not only do you have an OS that is upper level agnostic and can support upper level kernel OS technologies like BSD or Win32, but now with the new VM abilities introduced in Windows Server 2008, it can leverage both hardware virtualization along with an agnostic kernel. So they could drop a FULL and REAL OS X subsystem (let users install OS X themselves), a Linux subsystem, and still run these on the NT kernel and when needed leverage the VM abilities to give the subsystem level OSes hardware level performance that in theory could be faster than native Linux or OS X.
The only reason this isn't done with Windows NT is that Microsoft saw what promoting other OSes did for OS/2 and is doing for OS X with boot camp.
However if Microsoft ever starts to lose the development or desktop front, they could move to being the best Linux or best OS X 'base' if they chose to do so, and bring along either a multi-front OS concept or even lock in and optimize for any OS variant while still keeping the NT driver model, making the distribution eclipse everything else out there with hardware support that is unheard of in the OSS and *nix world.
So even if OSS brings about major innovation to existing technologies, there is nothing preventing MS from using it, just as Apple used MACH/BSD with little return to OSS.
It kills me that people so underestimate Microsoft in this regard and are
Linux is a microkernel? Mach is monolithic? Since when?
Should read, "Linux with its non-microkernel heritage"
The point was that Linux has no traditional microkernel alignment in contrast with OS X that keeps the traditions of a microkernel that when paired with a monolithic BSD interface kills a lot of the concept of what the MACH kernel was intended to do.
Originally MACH was a microkernel concept, but in its current incarnations, like OpenBSD, OS X, etc, it is no longer a microkernel by any set of definitions other than being another abstraction layer for the upper level kernel API sets.
MACH when paired with BSD, a monolithic kernel API you lose a lot of the direct hardware one request concept of a microkernel, especially on today's architectures.
Linux was true to itself in that it never attempted to abstract hardware and instead set its own rules for what was expected of the hardware, and when running on hardware that cannot meet the needs, the functionality that Linux requires must be simulated on that hardware.
So you have Linux that will outperform OS X because of its all in one nature that doesn't have to cross call API layers for kernel processes. On the other hand you have a BSD/MACH concepts like OS X that can do well for hard crunching simple tasks that funnel all the way to the MACH kernel, but when it gets to handling multiple requests, process communication gets sticky and multi-tasking can kill the once low level elegant level of performance offered.
NT has neither of these pitfalls. It has a very fast process creation system, a low level HAL, and multi-layered kernel API sets. Not only do you get the near speed of a microkernel, but you also get the robust API sets that STILL reside in true kernel layers.
On Windows this is taken to such an extreme that even Win32, which is an OS subsystem running on NT, has its own kernel32, that is technically a 'kernel' level API, yet sits all the way up in an agnostic subsystem.
There is a reason the kernel designer of MACH let it go and moved on to Microsoft and has put their knowledge and work behind NT, because they believe in the architecture, even over their own creation.
As for NT being a copy or rip off of VMS, there is some truth that the knowledge from the VMS team didn't forget what they learned when they went to Micrsoft, but also remember, they were wanting to replace VMS when at DEC even and much of their concepts where thrown by corporate politics, preventing any massive innovation to the platform that they seriously wanted to explore. This is what moved so many to go to MS so they could make the next generation OS.
NT wasn't just a overnight bastard creation, it was the best and brightest from MS and VMS and even the UNIX developers of the time...
Cutler is brilliant, but in today's kernel world, even he admits he is getting dated. (Even Windows 7 moved in a few new people to optimize in different directions reworking old standard Cutler level code in the kernel.)
So if we can say, what Culter's team did in the 1990s was more revolutionary than evolutionary, as NT really doesn't conform to VMS concepts, especially theoretical kernel concepts, then why can't we ask the OSS world today to revisit kernel architecture on a larger scale?
Instead I see articles flying around about BSD vs Linux and Linus writing about why monolithic kernel designs will alwasy be better and other experts debating that moving back to an more inclusive microkernel with modern hardware in mind would be better.
Where are the movers in the OSS word that are outside this box and why isn't the actively working on even a basic hybrid kernel technology of its own that with what kernel engineers know today will leapfrog kernel design?
Instead the big work you see on actual new kernel concepts are yet again coming from places like Microsoft Research where they are playing with singularity and other kernel concepts that range from managed code kernel designs to even frankenstei
If you take a look at the OS kernel models and would form base predictions from the kernel architecture alone it would closely mimic the results of the tests.
There is a reason kernel architecture is a highly engineered science, and why even old models of inherent pluses or negatives would still manifest even in today's latest incarnations of these kernel architecture models.
If you look at Linux, with its microkernel heritage, it is going to offer better low level kernel multitasking and kernel messaging. Also if you look at a classic monolithic kernel design (even with Apple duct tape) the OS X kernel is going to be better at straight non-conflictive messaging and queues at the kernel level with a lighter API, but have a harder time moving past the multi-threading bottlenecks.
This is also why OS X being tied to 'specific' hardware is a plus for OS X, because if it had to deal with more diverse hardware and kernel level exceptions it would be even harder to squeeze performance out of the system and not run into multi-threading bottlenecks from the MACH kernel with the BSD API interface.
The reason I am stating (in generic terms) the obvious, is that the kernel models in use in all these OSes are very DATED concepts. In fact, every kernel architecture compared in these tests and OS X where deemed to be too primative for even the MS NT team back in 1990, which gave rise to the NT kernel which is neither a microkernel nor monolithic in nature, and why MS to this day, with even as 'bloated' as Windows is seen in the technical world, can use the NT architecture to shove around some suprising numbers not only in the consumer desktop markets, but even now in the supercomputer markets, all using the same code.
So with this in mind, it isn't a NT is great speech, but food for thought that the OSS world still needs to rethink its heritage, use Virtual Machine concepts and rally around a new set of kernel architectures that can shove NT into the ground.
Until this happens, these 'old' kernel models and architectures are going to trail NT just based on something as simple as the basic kernel theory and architecture that MS chose to use and abandon the 'in use' kernel concepts of 1990 and instead build NT around kernel technologies that were nothing but a group of theories at the time.
And there is no reason that almost 20 years later the OSS world cannot do the same and give up the primatvie kernel architectures it has been rehashing and slapping bandaids on to move forward and remain competitive.
Yes there have been some really good work on the existing technologies and bringing some 'new' ideas back to these dated concepts (even Apple has done well with putting bandaids on the monolithic nature of BSD/MACH), but why continue to work backwards and keep 'repairing or patching' technologies to move them to new hardware and instead rally behind a set of new kernel designs that are just now mainly theory.
If MS could do this 20 years ago and even choose to NOT use a *nix model as well (they owned XENIX remember), there is no reason the OSS community cannot dig deeper and start from scratch as well and VM existing OS models on the new kernel technologies.