The non-Intel ports of NT software was a problem, but not for Microsoft's productivity software. There was a Microsoft office for many of the ports.
Alpha and Dec was one of the few chips to get past this, by providing an emulation for Intel apps on NT, and the emulation even got faster as the CPU learned how the software worked, it was quite nifty.
You somehow think that Microsoft's software goals were directed at and for the Intel platform only, this is SO not true. Even NT itself was written on non-intel cpus and ran on these before it ever ran on the x86.
NT's biggest flaw in the non-intel ports is that Microsoft should of had a rich managed subsystem that was not binary win32 specific for applications, hence why apps written for the x86 systems, were locked to run only on them unless they were recompiled.
Microsoft did great things with providing emulation layers with Win16 and DOS, they should have kept this extendible model to something along the lines of what.NET is today, instead of the basic win32 API that was CPU dependant when compiled.
Obviously Microsoft did this for performance at the time, but with the changes in hardware in the latter part of the 1990s, Microsoft could have easily changed the development APIs and model to support CPU independant software development. Or created an emulation subsytem for each port with a common instruction set to be emulated (probably the x86 set as the Win95 apps and market were then controlling the software markets, not NT)
Their OS is based on an open source kernel, they don't have any security holes that allow bots to spread
Let me translate this...
1) Apple couldn't develop a stable kernel, even though they had many rhapsody and pink projects for over 10 years, so they did the only thing they could, they took other peoples work, and slapped an apple logo on it and are now shoving it with closed and high priced hardware down consumers throats cause they don't know any better.
Apple's only open source work is DIRECTLY tied to what SPECIFICALLY they had to keep open by license. Anything that falls outside of the license is more closed than even Microsoft Windows. Anyone have the OSX GUI running on a box with the open source Apple distributed? I don't think so.
2) Apple doesn't have security holes and Mac's don't crash. (Actually they have both, but Apple made most flaws so cosmetically transparent, the users don't even realize their machine just took a dive). It amazes me how many Mac users that have sudden reboots, and crashes but yet don't even know that this is what a crash is, or have an application 'disappear', and then turn around and tell the IT department they never have crashes on their Macs. It is quite amusing at the user ignorance. One company I was in the other day the IT department manager was literally choking from laughing so hard. They had two users in one day, need IT support because of the 'programs disappearing' off the screen, and then turned around and told the IT people that they never had a crash on their Mac.
If you aren't bright enough to realize that your machine restarting is a crash, then yep, OSX is secure and crash free.
As for security, really, no holes at all? Then why does Apple's site have patches and articles themselves that say there have been SEVERAL security holes. Even with the release of last OSX update, that apple CHARGED their users another $100 for, it listed MANY security flaws fixed in the OS, and the only way users could get the 'high risk' security holes fixed, was to buy the upgrade. (Apple got another $100 out of the Mac users, and Microsoft and *nix variants are criticized for just posting updates and fixes for free.) How does Apple distort reality for its users so easily? Is it the ignorance level of the main user base, or do they have an active brainwashing program?
I think the previous post was asking how easy of a transition it was going to be. It won't be an upgrade that preseves installed applications, so some work is required.
But you are right, the file and settings transfer wizard and even a basic backup and you will move to the new install pretty easily.
Given that SPARC, POWER, PA-RISC, and MIPS are all still around, running Windows was never a pre-condition for survival. Alpha is like a foster child going from home to home eventually fizzling out and ending up in an addiction treatment shelter waiting out its last days hoping for a chance to die. Compaq, DEC, and HP just are bad parents, that's all.
Ya, I agree, although the Alpha and Dec relationship to NT was more contigent than a lot of other processors. Dec used NT to showcase the power of the Alpha CPU, even before it was released back in 1992, it was being demonstrated runnting NT at comdex that year.
So Dec had pinned a lot of the success on it relationship with NT.
But it wasn't the loss of NT that killed the Alpha, everyone knew that Compaq had no interest in keeping the Alpha project alive when they aquired DEC, in some ways we pretty much knew they wanted to off the Alpha, as it was competing against Compaq servers of the time.
Compaq not only cut the Alpha support off at the throat, they directly nailed the project the first chance they had.
No but they will let you buy it at the upgrade price from home to pro.
And if there is a manufacturer shipping home edition on a 64bit system, they are the ones that need to be yelled at, as Microsoft's OEM division even tells them not to do this.
It was just recently announced that Windows XP 64bit would be a free upgrade for 64bit CPU users that had purchased or received a computer with the 32bit version of Windows XP.
So it will be free if you already purchased the 32bit version for you computer. The retail prices for 64bit XP are expected to be the same as the 32bit version of XP.
The upgrade path is something Microsoft purposely left out for moving users to a 64bit world. So you will have to do a clean or full install of 64bit XP, upgrading from the 32bit version is not supported.
now u can sell your product to those who got amd64 comps for xmas and weren't told that the pre installed os would be holding them back. also congratulations to linux x86_64 which is going on 19 months old.
1). 64bit CPU users will get to upgrade to the 64bit (AMD) native version of XP for free.
2). WindowsNT has been running natively on 64bit processsors for more than 10 years. Even Windows 64bit Desktop for Itanium was released in 2001.
Besides the fact your statement isn't even fully accurate, as Linux also had 64bit variants far before 19mos ago, just not on the AMD. And the AMD version has not been a 'mature' product for 19mos, it has been in sort of a 'beta' stage, just like WindowsXP for AMD64bit has been.
Seems kind of funny after the whole NT on Alpha death microsoft induced. Now this should be the final blow (thankfully) for the UnObtanium.
Compaq purchased DEC, and halted the Windows2000 production agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft regretably pulled support from the Alpha in RC1 of Windows2000.
So peeps can thank Compaq for killing the Alpha, not Microsoft.
Of course it won't work the way it's intended. That's not what I was trying to say. If that's the way I came across, then I apologize. I'll be honest - I don't follow the MS lawsuits real closely, so I could very well be wrong in my understanding of the arguments. I thought that a lot of it had to do with MS libraries playing nice with other peoples libraries, and MS made it hard to replace their apps with others. Perhaps you could post some links
Don't have time for links tonight, but you really need them, I will post them later.
You have truly missed what the case was about. It was about having an unfair advantage because Microsoft put their own technologies in Windows. It was NEVER about IE breaking any body else's application or messing up their DLLs, it was NEVER about media player doing that either.
(The reference to messing with other people DLLS and Settings, would be the great real.com myth, where RealPlayer had used INCORRECT MIME and ASSOCIATION maps for their application, and by install one of the never versions of Windows Medica Player, it fixed these settings, cause Real Player to be associated with the files it needed. - EVEN Real finally admitted it was an interal error on their part, and not something Microsoft had done to them)
Again, some links, please. How do I install it on my legacy hardware? What CLI apps are available? Can I install an X-windows type system, if I decide I do want a GUI?
Stripped version of Windows NT can run on even the lowest specifications of computers avaialable today. Even Windows NT 3.1 ran well on 16mb or RAM and a 486-33mhz processor, and this includes the full win32 subsystem with GUI running on top of it.
As for stripped versions, do some serach on Windows Embedded like I suggested before. There are ways to get it through the Microsoft Developer Network, or even purchase and OEM right's usage license for your computer or project.
It is NOT Free, because its core NT technologies are not derived from any other works, when it was designed it was the first OS to put many of the theories it uses into play. Its kernel is unique, its hal, and even the way the NT Core separates itself from the higher layer OS subsytems. (This is why Win32 has a kernel, and yet under that is another NT kernel - Win32 is an OS subsystem)
Why you might ask isn't it free, when Apple has made darwin free? It is just this simple, THE ONLY THINGS APPLE HAS MADE FREE IS WHAT APPLE IS REQUIRED TO KEEP OPEN BY LAW according to the licenses. From the main Kernel to the basis of the BSD OS that OSX is built on is Open Source, Apple is using these free open source technologies, instead of inventing their own. This can be good and can be bad, depending on what side of the fence people are arguing.
I will assert though, APPLE hasn't kept anything free or open source that they DID NOT HAVE TO. That is why you also won't be able to download the GUI part of OSX for free ANYWHERE.
So is Apple a good guy in this. Yes and No. Yes that they are working with Open Source technologies, No in that they are only dotting Is and crossing T when it comes to making parts of the OS open source and free. So in one way they are good by using opensource, in another way it looks like they are taking advantage of the open source world by using the open source technologies, instead of creating them theirselves and putting the R&D into creating a new OS model.
Windows NT was designed from the ground up, but the development team at Microsoft not only had the ability, but even the (c) license (XENIX) to make NT a Unix varant as well. Most of the NT core development team and designer were well known unix marvels of the time. They came to the conclusion that the *nix model was not extensible enough for what they wanted to do with NT. Hence they took many of the best OS theories of the time and actually put them into NT. From the internal token based security, to the client/server model, and even the unique variant of the kernel a
From a company that has a proven track record of putting "phone home" code into their software
Wow, it is considered "phone home" code now, even though the user has to open the application themselves, click through 5 screens confirming they want to register or activate.
Wow, this "phone home" code is getting pretty sneaky.
erm, the QuickTime you're thinking about isn't an application, it's a library. You could however remove the "Quicktime Player" application without any ill effects and it can be done simply by dragging the icon to the trash which is what the original poster was talking about. That's not possible with IE on Windows as testified by Microsoft in court.
IE and IE Browser are two different things, and the terms are often thrown around incorrectly. IE Rendering technologies and the Browser interface are not the same thing.
Microsoft never said that Windows couldn't run without the browser wrapper and IE icon.
Microsoft never even said windows couldn't run with IE engine, Microsoft said by removing the IE rendering engine, it would break many third party applications that relied on the IE libraries to render HTML content in the third party applications, like Quicken, AOL, etc.
The IE browser that everyone, like you, continues to confuse this with is about 250K of code specific to the browser.
Check for yourself, the Internet Explorer folder under program files has the complete IE BROWSER specific set of code in it.
Why people CONTINUE to get this backwards still floors me.
Deleteing Quicktime.app doesn't remove any of the codecs. I can drag it to the trash and empty it, no problem. Finder still previews just fine, thank you. As I understand it, WMP isn't quite so easily removed. And as long as we're talking about the Finder, I could decide to trash it and port Konquerer, use it as my file browser instead. Or Safari. Or even IE. Now wouldn't that be ironic.
Remove the COMMON DLLS of QuickTime, not the Application and try OSX to see how well Finder works.
Microsoft never ARGUED for the.exe of Media Player, or the.exe of iexplorer, Microsoft argued about the media and rendering capabilities of both if the common DLLS and libraries were removed from Windows. Just like if you removed the common libraries of QuickTime from OSX.
Which is the SAME EXACT ARGUMENT you are making about Quicktime and OSX.
So thank you very much for proving my point. People either don't get it or choose not to get it.
I can download the source and binaries for OS Xs kernel. I can install and run it without any GUI layer at all. Could you please point to directions on how one installs NT without the GUI layer?
Which version? Windows 2000 and XP have had GUI stripped version available for years now. Look up Windows Embedded, or even take a look at the architectural model of Windows NT to see that Win32 is the higher level cosmetic interface that sits on the NT kernel.
Which is why I said 'portrayed' as inseparable. MS seems to want everyone to believe that their apps can't be removed without hampering core functionality. I'm not saying it's true. I understand that the apps are (or should be) nothing more than front-ends.
Not sure why you think it is hard, or impossible. I sometimes think people either have their head in the sand, or choose not to look, so they can hold other companies on a higher pedestal.
Microsoft has given Developers and other software vendors TONS of tools that describe how to run Windows without Explorer. Many companies that have proprietary applications often NEVER even use Explorer, they boot to their application or OS interface and explorer.exe NEVER runs.
Want a case in point, go back to Windows 3.1 Norton Shell fully replaced the Program Manger. Want a more current one? Go to your average ATM that runs Windows (as many do), and there is no Explorer.exe running on the system AT ALL. Just the banking application.
Want more examples of Windows without Explorer? Look up the 100s of Shells and tools written by third parties that replace Windows Explorer.
Or if you want examples from Microsoft, actually search their site, instead of saying they don't do this, or they portray it as not being able to do this.
It sometimes scares me when I see people give praise to Apple for finally doing something other OS vendors have done forever. You won't find many XWindows users from the old days that would say that replacing an OS shell is something special. It has been a way of life for most OSes since they were created, Apple may be just NOW getting caught up with the rest of the world, but it isn't NEW outside of the Mac world.
It's a question of scale. Apple doesn't truly integrate its apps; rather, it creates separate apps that work well together and can easily trade info back and forth, yet no single app is required at all. You could replace every Apple app on your OS X system, and the core OS would still operate fine. Even the Finder. With MS, the apps are portrayed as being necessary to the operation of the OS.
Oh my gawd, you are kidding right, no one on slashdot is really this stupid are they?
1) Remove all of QuickTime off of your precious OSX and see how well finder does QuickTime previews, and other apps like adobe Photoshop or EVEN iMovie import or export QuickTime formats.
Buzz... It will NOT work, just like if you removed Windows Media Codecs and DLLs off your Windows machine. They are SHARED Core libraries that EVEN THE GUI of the OS uses. And yes, even on your precious OSX.
2) There is a difference between the CORE OS and the GUI. I will repeat this once again for the hard of hearing. Win16/Win32/Win64 IS NOT THE WINDOWS NT CORE OS. They are SUBSYSTEM LAYERS. Even NT can run without ANY of these installed on them. NT could run with NO WINDOWS GUI, in fact it does.
3) Explorer can EASILY be replaced in Windows. It has been easy to replace for YEARS AND YEARS. Explorer, just like Finder is NOT NECESSARY for the OS or even the Win32/Win64 GUI to run. Why on earth people would think this is something special or cool or Apple OSX is insane or living in a vacuum.
There are also 25 other things that by removing will bring OSX to a halt or break a ton of applications, just like Windows or any Unix variant that uses shared libraries or resources for the applications.
Why people think that when Microsoft said IE was necessary NOT TO BREAK applications, they somehow assumed this was different than ANY OTHER OS vendor was doing at the time. All OSes use common and shared resources and libraries.
IE was simply a freaking HTML rendering set of technologies, it was NOT the Internet Explorer Browser people always confuse it with.
This is why a third party Windows app back in 1998 could tell Windows to render an HTML page to the screen and Windows would know how and do so in the non-Microsoft application. Just like when an application in OSX or Windows asks the OS to render a Font to the screen, the OS does it for the app, and it don't matter if the Font is Truetype, Opentype or whatever the OS understands. These are NOT different concepts, it is just extending to the OS abilities that were once only in applications. Just like Adobe Font Manager was once needed on Windows and Macs, the OS at the time did not know how to render the font. Now they DO know how to render the font, hence this application's abilities and functionality was brought back to the OS level and provided for use by all applications of Macs and Windows. The same is true of rendering HTML by the OS on Windows, it gave developers a way to use HTML pages without having to write a HTMl rendering engine. And at the time in 1998, a good rendering engine for developers was NOT readily available, and by having that in the Windows OS, saved us developers weeks, and months of work.
It kills me that some of even the top intellectuals here at SlashDot either don't get this, or just don't want to, as it gives them some twisted reason to separate them or what they use from the evil Microsoft.
Dear OSS advocator. Please research the difference between free as in "beer" and free as in "speech". It's attitudes like this that make everyone think that the main free in all OSS should be free beer. Not neccessarily the best thing. If there was a token payment charged for full access to/. (not just advert removal) I would wager a bet that the s/n ratio would go way up.
You picked the wrong person to be posting your response. I tend to fall on the line between the benefits of open and closed source.
How you can correlate this to 'free speech' and 'free beer' concepts is kind of out there. I think you should go back and read the first amendment and see that it has nothing to do with what I have said or what these posts are about.
I never suggested that OSS and the 'free beer' concepts played into this. It is just silly that people would suggest 'closing' access to a site that is all about sharing of ideas and promoting OSS concepts.
If you have been visiting Slashdot for as long as i have, you will note that it would take a fair chunk of peak bandwidth to keep the site up. That is why many referenced articles from this side get 'slashdotted', since they don't have the normal bandwidth load Slashdot is use to and SOMEONE is paying the bill.
So if they need to throw an ad at the top of the page so it remains free, great. And they are giving the people that want to help fit the bill the option to remove the ads, then they are offerning the best of both worlds. You can be happy, and so can the 15yr old out in the middle of nowhere without the cash to pay for the subscription can also get access to the information here and be happy and possibly learn something.
Have you checked to see what advertisers are paying for banner ad "eyeballs" these days? Not very much. I doubt the ad revenue contributes much more than statistical noise to OSDN's revenue.
Yeah, actually I do know, even our smallest website that is for specific clients produces about $2000 a month from ads, more than covering connectivity and maintenance for the site, giving the users free access to our information.
If you don't like the ads, subscribe to the site. My company gives this option to our users as well. That way sites can afford to offer free content to visitors and give people the option to not have to deal with ads if it really bothers them.
It is kind of the whole idea of free access to information. Why should only people that can afford it, get access to it?
Isn't open source all about not 'closing' information from people?
Supporting yourself by annoying your viewers doesn't strike me as being a terribly clever business model. And I AM a subscriber, but choose not to use my real login lest I be "reprimanded" for complaining about the adverts.
So how should the site support itself? Charge EVERYONE subscriptions?
Would be kind of ironic, a site dedicated to open source software, free exchange of ideas, code and concepts, but makes you pay to access the information.
That would be a really bright way to re-enforce the viability of Open Source projects.
With the quality so close, what it came down to for me was the history of print head clogs on the Epsons and the Canon's faster speed.
One bit of warning on this, what they also don't tell you is that even though Canon's printers have a semi-permanent head, the print head in the Canon will degrade with usage, the Epson does not. It is the nature of the heat based 'Bubble jet" technology that both Canon and HP use in their Printers.
Canon does a better job at print head longevity than HP, hence why HP replaces print heads with the ink cartridge on most of their models. However, after you own a Canon you can see a marked difference in print quality from when the printer was new and after a year or two of use. That is why Canon sells replacement heads, and their heads are removable.
So keep a close eye on your Canon print quality if you are using the output in any type of production capacity.
As for the Epson print head clogging, that was very true of the older 600, 640, 800, 850 line of color printers, even though there was an easy fix for this.
However, with the newer line of Epson printers, starting from the first color photo line with the 1200, the clogging issue no longer exists. The only clogging you will find on any of the newer Epson printers is no different than you would on any other brand, and simple head cleanings will clear.
As for your research, I'm not sure why you were looking at the 2200 unless you wanted the Ink type for archiving specifically, but the 1280 actually has a higher quality output due to the different type of ink. (I can try to find the side by side comparisons if anyone requests).
The 1280 was the top rated printer of the 2002-2003 time frame for large format printers for photo quality. And even though the 1280 doesn't have the 2200 archival inks, the basic inks are rated for 27 years; making it a semi-archival printer, even though the prints won't last the 100 years the 2200 prints will.
And considering this thread is about Canon finally having printers with long term inks available, their 30 years is only 3 years off the 27yr prints from the 1280 that is almost outdated in the Epson line of printers.
and tend to do a little better with color reproduction
You need to actually watch some of the reviews over the past few years, and current year that are done by photo professionals.
Epson is always the quality leader. You are right their photo printers are not always the fastest, but they always score the highest for quality.
And I'm NOT talking about the 4 color non photo printers; I am talking about the photo printers with 6 or 7 inks.
You will also notice that reviews by computer nerds that have no idea about image quality and density often have very different quality awards compared to photographers and photo professional magazines that rate the printers.
In the professional photo world or print media professionals, Epson is always awarded the best quality.
Please. Apple has never been the platform of choice for rendering farms. They may be in the future, but they're going up from zero.
Actually you are pretty much correct, but there was a surge of Mac rendering farms, mainly from the custom design software of the time around 2000, when MacOSX was merely a Server OS.
However, you would have thought with MacOX becoming the System software of Apple it would have continued to climb, instead Linix and WindowsXP/2000/2003 systems are both the growing trend for best design and rendering bang for the buck.
You're obviously not into graphic design, animation, photography, etc etc etc.
How strange, another myopic statement in a Mac zealot frenzy of posts.
Graphic design is surging to the Windows/PC at an alarming rate for Apple.
With the Adobe memos stating PCs are faster for their products, to the number of Publishers and Editors that are retiring Macs. (PS. One of my company's clients is one of the largest syndication and publishers in the US.) We deal with Mac migration at what would be alarming rates if Apple truly cared about the industry it once thrived in.
Next, factor in the Hollywood market, again the surge has been to Windows and *nix based systems for rendering farms.
And if you belive getting photos off a camera or flash drive on a Mac is easier than doing so on a WindowsXP based PC, you apparently haven't compared the two.
If you so truly believe the Mac is a better Graphic Design platform, you either have found a feature that the majority of the market hasn't or just like believing your own hyperboles.
As for the 2 itanium version being released so closely, this is because they were both developed at the same time, with most of the code being shared between that and the x86 version.
And yet you agree on this, but still contest that it was hard to port NT to 64bits?
The Itanium and the x86 platform are NOT the same, and the WindowsXP for the Itanium is a FULL 64bit OS that runs in full native mode on the Itanium...
So if you agree, on this, how can you still say that porting NT to 64bits was hard? And if you have seen and used the 64bit of NT or Win2k for the Alpha, how can you say it was a hard port? NT was written and designed to be an easily ported OS, that is why even the fundamental core of WindowsCE which has pieces of the NT architecture runs on a variety of handheld processors. And also why NT 4.0 was available for many CPUs, from RISC to PowerPC.
Go read up on the design of NT, the design goals of NT, how it is written in a high level language for portability and uses the HAL for assisting in being easily ported.
People act like NT is Win32 and it is locked to the 32bit x86 world. It wasn't and still isn't nor will it ever be, even though that is the majority of the systems it is run on today. The original NT code didn't even run on x86 during development. Geesh..
As for the Alpha, you need to do a little more research than just pulling a tech info article.
The NT for the Alpha supported the original Alpha, which only had 40bit memory addressing, and even the later Alpha 64bit CPUs still had a limited 48bit memory address range, as MANY of the current 64bit processors that are available now do. The NT Alpha version catered to both versions of the Alpha CPU, just as I stated. Go Look it up if you truly don't know this...
As for the Mac being a 32bit OS, I never said it was based on having pre-emptive multitasking; that was just an example of how aged the MacOS was in comparison to NT, or even Windows95. The PowerPC CPU was technically capable of running pre-emptive multitasking easily, yet Apple didn't even utilize this functionality in the CPUs they were using for YEARS until OSX.
The MacOS did NOT fully utilize the 32bit features of the 68000, nor did it expand to use larger 32bit memory addressing, even when Apple moved to newer CPUs that had a full 32bit external bus.
Hence, MacOS System software up to version 9 was NOT A TRUE 32bit OS, period.
MacOSX was the first, even by Apple's own documentation, full/real 32bit OS.
Again, saying that any MacOS up to System 9 was a 32bit OS would be like saying Windows 3.1 was a 32bit OS because it used a few 32bit features of the x86. But neither were 32bit OSes, PERIOD.
.NET: There's no way you'd use.NET framework objects in a DirectX game. It's waaaaay too fucking slow.
Liked your post; however, this line is not accurate.
You would probably be surprised to learn that DirectX 9.0b already uses.NET in many areas.
This was a big issue even at Microsoft, as they wanted to pull in the managed code and security they would benefit from.NET into DirectX, but many people did not know if.NET was mature enough to maintain the DirectX performance.
What they found is that the.NET implementation in DirectX caused virtually no performance hit, and added stability to DirectX that easily offset any small performance hits.
So games using.NET is very conceivable if DirectX itself can use it without performance loss.
Also it would surprise you to know that people are already using.NET for managed code solutions for gaming as we type.
Saying that MacOS was always 32bit because the 68000 Motorola CPU was 32bit internally would be just like saying that WIndows 3.0 was a 32bit OS because it used features from the 386 portion of the x86 processor to do things it was not able to do on 286 processors. So using your logic, Windows 3.0 was also a 32bit operating system, and especially Windows 3.1, because it added direct hardware access to the HDD controller using a 386 feature.
However, neither statement is true. Windows 3.0/3.1 were not 32bit OSes, NT was. Also MacOS was not a 32bit OS fully until MacOSX was released, a good 8 years after Windows NT was released.
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The non-Intel ports of NT software was a problem, but not for Microsoft's productivity software. There was a Microsoft office for many of the ports.
.NET is today, instead of the basic win32 API that was CPU dependant when compiled.
Alpha and Dec was one of the few chips to get past this, by providing an emulation for Intel apps on NT, and the emulation even got faster as the CPU learned how the software worked, it was quite nifty.
You somehow think that Microsoft's software goals were directed at and for the Intel platform only, this is SO not true. Even NT itself was written on non-intel cpus and ran on these before it ever ran on the x86.
NT's biggest flaw in the non-intel ports is that Microsoft should of had a rich managed subsystem that was not binary win32 specific for applications, hence why apps written for the x86 systems, were locked to run only on them unless they were recompiled.
Microsoft did great things with providing emulation layers with Win16 and DOS, they should have kept this extendible model to something along the lines of what
Obviously Microsoft did this for performance at the time, but with the changes in hardware in the latter part of the 1990s, Microsoft could have easily changed the development APIs and model to support CPU independant software development. Or created an emulation subsytem for each port with a common instruction set to be emulated (probably the x86 set as the Win95 apps and market were then controlling the software markets, not NT)
Their OS is based on an open source kernel, they don't have any security holes that allow bots to spread
Let me translate this...
1) Apple couldn't develop a stable kernel, even though they had many rhapsody and pink projects for over 10 years, so they did the only thing they could, they took other peoples work, and slapped an apple logo on it and are now shoving it with closed and high priced hardware down consumers throats cause they don't know any better.
Apple's only open source work is DIRECTLY tied to what SPECIFICALLY they had to keep open by license. Anything that falls outside of the license is more closed than even Microsoft Windows. Anyone have the OSX GUI running on a box with the open source Apple distributed? I don't think so.
2) Apple doesn't have security holes and Mac's don't crash. (Actually they have both, but Apple made most flaws so cosmetically transparent, the users don't even realize their machine just took a dive). It amazes me how many Mac users that have sudden reboots, and crashes but yet don't even know that this is what a crash is, or have an application 'disappear', and then turn around and tell the IT department they never have crashes on their Macs. It is quite amusing at the user ignorance. One company I was in the other day the IT department manager was literally choking from laughing so hard. They had two users in one day, need IT support because of the 'programs disappearing' off the screen, and then turned around and told the IT people that they never had a crash on their Mac.
If you aren't bright enough to realize that your machine restarting is a crash, then yep, OSX is secure and crash free.
As for security, really, no holes at all? Then why does Apple's site have patches and articles themselves that say there have been SEVERAL security holes. Even with the release of last OSX update, that apple CHARGED their users another $100 for, it listed MANY security flaws fixed in the OS, and the only way users could get the 'high risk' security holes fixed, was to buy the upgrade. (Apple got another $100 out of the Mac users, and Microsoft and *nix variants are criticized for just posting updates and fixes for free.) How does Apple distort reality for its users so easily? Is it the ignorance level of the main user base, or do they have an active brainwashing program?
I think the previous post was asking how easy of a transition it was going to be. It won't be an upgrade that preseves installed applications, so some work is required.
But you are right, the file and settings transfer wizard and even a basic backup and you will move to the new install pretty easily.
Given that SPARC, POWER, PA-RISC, and MIPS are all still around, running Windows was never a pre-condition for survival. Alpha is like a foster child going from home to home eventually fizzling out and ending up in an addiction treatment shelter waiting out its last days hoping for a chance to die. Compaq, DEC, and HP just are bad parents, that's all.
Ya, I agree, although the Alpha and Dec relationship to NT was more contigent than a lot of other processors. Dec used NT to showcase the power of the Alpha CPU, even before it was released back in 1992, it was being demonstrated runnting NT at comdex that year.
So Dec had pinned a lot of the success on it relationship with NT.
But it wasn't the loss of NT that killed the Alpha, everyone knew that Compaq had no interest in keeping the Alpha project alive when they aquired DEC, in some ways we pretty much knew they wanted to off the Alpha, as it was competing against Compaq servers of the time.
Compaq not only cut the Alpha support off at the throat, they directly nailed the project the first chance they had.
No but they will let you buy it at the upgrade price from home to pro.
And if there is a manufacturer shipping home edition on a 64bit system, they are the ones that need to be yelled at, as Microsoft's OEM division even tells them not to do this.
It was just recently announced that Windows XP 64bit would be a free upgrade for 64bit CPU users that had purchased or received a computer with the 32bit version of Windows XP.
So it will be free if you already purchased the 32bit version for you computer. The retail prices for 64bit XP are expected to be the same as the 32bit version of XP.
The upgrade path is something Microsoft purposely left out for moving users to a 64bit world. So you will have to do a clean or full install of 64bit XP, upgrading from the 32bit version is not supported.
now u can sell your product to those who got amd64 comps for xmas and weren't told that the pre installed os would be holding them back. also congratulations to linux x86_64 which is going on 19 months old.
1). 64bit CPU users will get to upgrade to the 64bit (AMD) native version of XP for free.
2). WindowsNT has been running natively on 64bit processsors for more than 10 years. Even Windows 64bit Desktop for Itanium was released in 2001.
Besides the fact your statement isn't even fully accurate, as Linux also had 64bit variants far before 19mos ago, just not on the AMD. And the AMD version has not been a 'mature' product for 19mos, it has been in sort of a 'beta' stage, just like WindowsXP for AMD64bit has been.
Seems kind of funny after the whole NT on Alpha death microsoft induced. Now this should be the final blow (thankfully) for the UnObtanium.
Compaq purchased DEC, and halted the Windows2000 production agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft regretably pulled support from the Alpha in RC1 of Windows2000.
So peeps can thank Compaq for killing the Alpha, not Microsoft.
Of course it won't work the way it's intended. That's not what I was trying to say. If that's the way I came across, then I apologize. I'll be honest - I don't follow the MS lawsuits real closely, so I could very well be wrong in my understanding of the arguments. I thought that a lot of it had to do with MS libraries playing nice with other peoples libraries, and MS made it hard to replace their apps with others. Perhaps you could post some links
Don't have time for links tonight, but you really need them, I will post them later.
You have truly missed what the case was about. It was about having an unfair advantage because Microsoft put their own technologies in Windows. It was NEVER about IE breaking any body else's application or messing up their DLLs, it was NEVER about media player doing that either.
(The reference to messing with other people DLLS and Settings, would be the great real.com myth, where RealPlayer had used INCORRECT MIME and ASSOCIATION maps for their application, and by install one of the never versions of Windows Medica Player, it fixed these settings, cause Real Player to be associated with the files it needed. - EVEN Real finally admitted it was an interal error on their part, and not something Microsoft had done to them)
Again, some links, please. How do I install it on my legacy hardware? What CLI apps are available? Can I install an X-windows type system, if I decide I do want a GUI?
Stripped version of Windows NT can run on even the lowest specifications of computers avaialable today. Even Windows NT 3.1 ran well on 16mb or RAM and a 486-33mhz processor, and this includes the full win32 subsystem with GUI running on top of it.
As for stripped versions, do some serach on Windows Embedded like I suggested before. There are ways to get it through the Microsoft Developer Network, or even purchase and OEM right's usage license for your computer or project.
It is NOT Free, because its core NT technologies are not derived from any other works, when it was designed it was the first OS to put many of the theories it uses into play. Its kernel is unique, its hal, and even the way the NT Core separates itself from the higher layer OS subsytems. (This is why Win32 has a kernel, and yet under that is another NT kernel - Win32 is an OS subsystem)
Why you might ask isn't it free, when Apple has made darwin free? It is just this simple, THE ONLY THINGS APPLE HAS MADE FREE IS WHAT APPLE IS REQUIRED TO KEEP OPEN BY LAW according to the licenses. From the main Kernel to the basis of the BSD OS that OSX is built on is Open Source, Apple is using these free open source technologies, instead of inventing their own. This can be good and can be bad, depending on what side of the fence people are arguing.
I will assert though, APPLE hasn't kept anything free or open source that they DID NOT HAVE TO. That is why you also won't be able to download the GUI part of OSX for free ANYWHERE.
So is Apple a good guy in this. Yes and No. Yes that they are working with Open Source technologies, No in that they are only dotting Is and crossing T when it comes to making parts of the OS open source and free. So in one way they are good by using opensource, in another way it looks like they are taking advantage of the open source world by using the open source technologies, instead of creating them theirselves and putting the R&D into creating a new OS model.
Windows NT was designed from the ground up, but the development team at Microsoft not only had the ability, but even the (c) license (XENIX) to make NT a Unix varant as well. Most of the NT core development team and designer were well known unix marvels of the time. They came to the conclusion that the *nix model was not extensible enough for what they wanted to do with NT. Hence they took many of the best OS theories of the time and actually put them into NT. From the internal token based security, to the client/server model, and even the unique variant of the kernel a
From a company that has a proven track record of putting "phone home" code into their software
Wow, it is considered "phone home" code now, even though the user has to open the application themselves, click through 5 screens confirming they want to register or activate.
Wow, this "phone home" code is getting pretty sneaky.
LOL
erm, the QuickTime you're thinking about isn't an application, it's a library. You could however remove the "Quicktime Player" application without any ill effects and it can be done simply by dragging the icon to the trash which is what the original poster was talking about. That's not possible with IE on Windows as testified by Microsoft in court.
IE and IE Browser are two different things, and the terms are often thrown around incorrectly. IE Rendering technologies and the Browser interface are not the same thing.
Microsoft never said that Windows couldn't run without the browser wrapper and IE icon.
Microsoft never even said windows couldn't run with IE engine, Microsoft said by removing the IE rendering engine, it would break many third party applications that relied on the IE libraries to render HTML content in the third party applications, like Quicken, AOL, etc.
The IE browser that everyone, like you, continues to confuse this with is about 250K of code specific to the browser.
Check for yourself, the Internet Explorer folder under program files has the complete IE BROWSER specific set of code in it.
Why people CONTINUE to get this backwards still floors me.
Deleteing Quicktime.app doesn't remove any of the codecs. I can drag it to the trash and empty it, no problem. Finder still previews just fine, thank you. As I understand it, WMP isn't quite so easily removed.
.exe of Media Player, or the .exe of iexplorer, Microsoft argued about the media and rendering capabilities of both if the common DLLS and libraries were removed from Windows. Just like if you removed the common libraries of QuickTime from OSX.
And as long as we're talking about the Finder, I could decide to trash it and port Konquerer, use it as my file browser instead. Or Safari. Or even IE. Now wouldn't that be ironic.
Remove the COMMON DLLS of QuickTime, not the Application and try OSX to see how well Finder works.
Microsoft never ARGUED for the
Which is the SAME EXACT ARGUMENT you are making about Quicktime and OSX.
So thank you very much for proving my point. People either don't get it or choose not to get it.
I can download the source and binaries for OS Xs kernel. I can install and run it without any GUI layer at all. Could you please point to directions on how one installs NT without the GUI layer?
Which version? Windows 2000 and XP have had GUI stripped version available for years now. Look up Windows Embedded, or even take a look at the architectural model of Windows NT to see that Win32 is the higher level cosmetic interface that sits on the NT kernel.
Which is why I said 'portrayed' as inseparable. MS seems to want everyone to believe that their apps can't be removed without hampering core functionality. I'm not saying it's true. I understand that the apps are (or should be) nothing more than front-ends.
Not sure why you think it is hard, or impossible. I sometimes think people either have their head in the sand, or choose not to look, so they can hold other companies on a higher pedestal.
Microsoft has given Developers and other software vendors TONS of tools that describe how to run Windows without Explorer. Many companies that have proprietary applications often NEVER even use Explorer, they boot to their application or OS interface and explorer.exe NEVER runs.
Want a case in point, go back to Windows 3.1 Norton Shell fully replaced the Program Manger. Want a more current one? Go to your average ATM that runs Windows (as many do), and there is no Explorer.exe running on the system AT ALL. Just the banking application.
Want more examples of Windows without Explorer? Look up the 100s of Shells and tools written by third parties that replace Windows Explorer.
Or if you want examples from Microsoft, actually search their site, instead of saying they don't do this, or they portray it as not being able to do this.
It sometimes scares me when I see people give praise to Apple for finally doing something other OS vendors have done forever. You won't find many XWindows users from the old days that would say that replacing an OS shell is something special. It has been a way of life for most OSes since they were created, Apple may be just NOW getting caught up with the rest of the world, but it isn't NEW outside of the Mac world.
It's a question of scale. Apple doesn't truly integrate its apps; rather, it creates separate apps that work well together and can easily trade info back and forth, yet no single app is required at all. You could replace every Apple app on your OS X system, and the core OS would still operate fine. Even the Finder.
With MS, the apps are portrayed as being necessary to the operation of the OS.
Oh my gawd, you are kidding right, no one on slashdot is really this stupid are they?
1) Remove all of QuickTime off of your precious OSX and see how well finder does QuickTime previews, and other apps like adobe Photoshop or EVEN iMovie import or export QuickTime formats.
Buzz... It will NOT work, just like if you removed Windows Media Codecs and DLLs off your Windows machine. They are SHARED Core libraries that EVEN THE GUI of the OS uses. And yes, even on your precious OSX.
2) There is a difference between the CORE OS and the GUI. I will repeat this once again for the hard of hearing. Win16/Win32/Win64 IS NOT THE WINDOWS NT CORE OS. They are SUBSYSTEM LAYERS. Even NT can run without ANY of these installed on them. NT could run with NO WINDOWS GUI, in fact it does.
3) Explorer can EASILY be replaced in Windows. It has been easy to replace for YEARS AND YEARS. Explorer, just like Finder is NOT NECESSARY for the OS or even the Win32/Win64 GUI to run. Why on earth people would think this is something special or cool or Apple OSX is insane or living in a vacuum.
There are also 25 other things that by removing will bring OSX to a halt or break a ton of applications, just like Windows or any Unix variant that uses shared libraries or resources for the applications.
Why people think that when Microsoft said IE was necessary NOT TO BREAK applications, they somehow assumed this was different than ANY OTHER OS vendor was doing at the time. All OSes use common and shared resources and libraries.
IE was simply a freaking HTML rendering set of technologies, it was NOT the Internet Explorer Browser people always confuse it with.
This is why a third party Windows app back in 1998 could tell Windows to render an HTML page to the screen and Windows would know how and do so in the non-Microsoft application. Just like when an application in OSX or Windows asks the OS to render a Font to the screen, the OS does it for the app, and it don't matter if the Font is Truetype, Opentype or whatever the OS understands. These are NOT different concepts, it is just extending to the OS abilities that were once only in applications. Just like Adobe Font Manager was once needed on Windows and Macs, the OS at the time did not know how to render the font. Now they DO know how to render the font, hence this application's abilities and functionality was brought back to the OS level and provided for use by all applications of Macs and Windows. The same is true of rendering HTML by the OS on Windows, it gave developers a way to use HTML pages without having to write a HTMl rendering engine. And at the time in 1998, a good rendering engine for developers was NOT readily available, and by having that in the Windows OS, saved us developers weeks, and months of work.
It kills me that some of even the top intellectuals here at SlashDot either don't get this, or just don't want to, as it gives them some twisted reason to separate them or what they use from the evil Microsoft.
Dear OSS advocator. Please research the difference between free as in "beer" and free as in "speech". It's attitudes like this that make everyone think that the main free in all OSS should be free beer. Not neccessarily the best thing. If there was a token payment charged for full access to /. (not just advert removal) I would wager a bet that the s/n ratio would go way up.
You picked the wrong person to be posting your response. I tend to fall on the line between the benefits of open and closed source.
How you can correlate this to 'free speech' and 'free beer' concepts is kind of out there. I think you should go back and read the first amendment and see that it has nothing to do with what I have said or what these posts are about.
I never suggested that OSS and the 'free beer' concepts played into this. It is just silly that people would suggest 'closing' access to a site that is all about sharing of ideas and promoting OSS concepts.
If you have been visiting Slashdot for as long as i have, you will note that it would take a fair chunk of peak bandwidth to keep the site up. That is why many referenced articles from this side get 'slashdotted', since they don't have the normal bandwidth load Slashdot is use to and SOMEONE is paying the bill.
So if they need to throw an ad at the top of the page so it remains free, great. And they are giving the people that want to help fit the bill the option to remove the ads, then they are offerning the best of both worlds. You can be happy, and so can the 15yr old out in the middle of nowhere without the cash to pay for the subscription can also get access to the information here and be happy and possibly learn something.
Have you checked to see what advertisers are paying for banner ad "eyeballs" these days? Not very much. I doubt the ad revenue contributes much more than statistical noise to OSDN's revenue.
Yeah, actually I do know, even our smallest website that is for specific clients produces about $2000 a month from ads, more than covering connectivity and maintenance for the site, giving the users free access to our information.
If you don't like the ads, subscribe to the site. My company gives this option to our users as well. That way sites can afford to offer free content to visitors and give people the option to not have to deal with ads if it really bothers them.
It is kind of the whole idea of free access to information. Why should only people that can afford it, get access to it?
Isn't open source all about not 'closing' information from people?
Supporting yourself by annoying your viewers doesn't strike me as being a terribly clever business model. And I AM a subscriber, but choose not to use my real login lest I be "reprimanded" for complaining about the adverts.
So how should the site support itself? Charge EVERYONE subscriptions?
Would be kind of ironic, a site dedicated to open source software, free exchange of ideas, code and concepts, but makes you pay to access the information.
That would be a really bright way to re-enforce the viability of Open Source projects.
Geesh.
With the quality so close, what it came down to for me was the history of print head clogs on the Epsons and the Canon's faster speed.
One bit of warning on this, what they also don't tell you is that even though Canon's printers have a semi-permanent head, the print head in the Canon will degrade with usage, the Epson does not. It is the nature of the heat based 'Bubble jet" technology that both Canon and HP use in their Printers.
Canon does a better job at print head longevity than HP, hence why HP replaces print heads with the ink cartridge on most of their models. However, after you own a Canon you can see a marked difference in print quality from when the printer was new and after a year or two of use. That is why Canon sells replacement heads, and their heads are removable.
So keep a close eye on your Canon print quality if you are using the output in any type of production capacity.
As for the Epson print head clogging, that was very true of the older 600, 640, 800, 850 line of color printers, even though there was an easy fix for this.
However, with the newer line of Epson printers, starting from the first color photo line with the 1200, the clogging issue no longer exists. The only clogging you will find on any of the newer Epson printers is no different than you would on any other brand, and simple head cleanings will clear.
As for your research, I'm not sure why you were looking at the 2200 unless you wanted the Ink type for archiving specifically, but the 1280 actually has a higher quality output due to the different type of ink. (I can try to find the side by side comparisons if anyone requests).
The 1280 was the top rated printer of the 2002-2003 time frame for large format printers for photo quality. And even though the 1280 doesn't have the 2200 archival inks, the basic inks are rated for 27 years; making it a semi-archival printer, even though the prints won't last the 100 years the 2200 prints will.
And considering this thread is about Canon finally having printers with long term inks available, their 30 years is only 3 years off the 27yr prints from the 1280 that is almost outdated in the Epson line of printers.
and tend to do a little better with color reproduction
You need to actually watch some of the reviews over the past few years, and current year that are done by photo professionals.
Epson is always the quality leader. You are right their photo printers are not always the fastest, but they always score the highest for quality.
And I'm NOT talking about the 4 color non photo printers; I am talking about the photo printers with 6 or 7 inks.
You will also notice that reviews by computer nerds that have no idea about image quality and density often have very different quality awards compared to photographers and photo professional magazines that rate the printers.
In the professional photo world or print media professionals, Epson is always awarded the best quality.
Please. Apple has never been the platform of choice for rendering farms. They may be in the future, but they're going up from zero.
Actually you are pretty much correct, but there was a surge of Mac rendering farms, mainly from the custom design software of the time around 2000, when MacOSX was merely a Server OS.
However, you would have thought with MacOX becoming the System software of Apple it would have continued to climb, instead Linix and WindowsXP/2000/2003 systems are both the growing trend for best design and rendering bang for the buck.
There are several notebooks and even subnotebooks with 1.8 drives that have been around for quite a while, are you serious?
We have two laptops that are 1.8 drive based, the one I was specifically referring to was the Toshiba Protege.
When did Slashdot go from being the cutting tech edge/Open Source news site to the newbie and Apple (Closed Hardware/Software) fan site?
Did I miss the memo?
I see more informed responses on newbie newsgroups than I see here anymore, sad, very sad.
You're obviously not into graphic design, animation, photography, etc etc etc.
How strange, another myopic statement in a Mac zealot frenzy of posts.
Graphic design is surging to the Windows/PC at an alarming rate for Apple.
With the Adobe memos stating PCs are faster for their products, to the number of Publishers and Editors that are retiring Macs. (PS. One of my company's clients is one of the largest syndication and publishers in the US.) We deal with Mac migration at what would be alarming rates if Apple truly cared about the industry it once thrived in.
Next, factor in the Hollywood market, again the surge has been to Windows and *nix based systems for rendering farms.
And if you belive getting photos off a camera or flash drive on a Mac is easier than doing so on a WindowsXP based PC, you apparently haven't compared the two.
If you so truly believe the Mac is a better Graphic Design platform, you either have found a feature that the majority of the market hasn't or just like believing your own hyperboles.
iPod and iPod photo: 1.8 inch hard disks
iPod mini: 1.0 inch hard disks
Notebooks: 2.5 inch hard disks
Thought you were right on? Think again.
Funny, the 1.8in Hard Drive in my laptop must have been put there by mistake. I will alert the manufacturer immediately.
Myopic twit...
As for the 2 itanium version being released so closely, this is because they were both developed at the same time, with most of the code being shared between that and the x86 version.
And yet you agree on this, but still contest that it was hard to port NT to 64bits?
The Itanium and the x86 platform are NOT the same, and the WindowsXP for the Itanium is a FULL 64bit OS that runs in full native mode on the Itanium...
So if you agree, on this, how can you still say that porting NT to 64bits was hard? And if you have seen and used the 64bit of NT or Win2k for the Alpha, how can you say it was a hard port? NT was written and designed to be an easily ported OS, that is why even the fundamental core of WindowsCE which has pieces of the NT architecture runs on a variety of handheld processors. And also why NT 4.0 was available for many CPUs, from RISC to PowerPC.
Go read up on the design of NT, the design goals of NT, how it is written in a high level language for portability and uses the HAL for assisting in being easily ported.
People act like NT is Win32 and it is locked to the 32bit x86 world. It wasn't and still isn't nor will it ever be, even though that is the majority of the systems it is run on today. The original NT code didn't even run on x86 during development. Geesh..
As for the Alpha, you need to do a little more research than just pulling a tech info article.
The NT for the Alpha supported the original Alpha, which only had 40bit memory addressing, and even the later Alpha 64bit CPUs still had a limited 48bit memory address range, as MANY of the current 64bit processors that are available now do. The NT Alpha version catered to both versions of the Alpha CPU, just as I stated. Go Look it up if you truly don't know this...
As for the Mac being a 32bit OS, I never said it was based on having pre-emptive multitasking; that was just an example of how aged the MacOS was in comparison to NT, or even Windows95. The PowerPC CPU was technically capable of running pre-emptive multitasking easily, yet Apple didn't even utilize this functionality in the CPUs they were using for YEARS until OSX.
The MacOS did NOT fully utilize the 32bit features of the 68000, nor did it expand to use larger 32bit memory addressing, even when Apple moved to newer CPUs that had a full 32bit external bus.
Hence, MacOS System software up to version 9 was NOT A TRUE 32bit OS, period.
MacOSX was the first, even by Apple's own documentation, full/real 32bit OS.
Again, saying that any MacOS up to System 9 was a 32bit OS would be like saying Windows 3.1 was a 32bit OS because it used a few 32bit features of the x86. But neither were 32bit OSes, PERIOD.
Liked your post; however, this line is not accurate.
You would probably be surprised to learn that DirectX 9.0b already uses
This was a big issue even at Microsoft, as they wanted to pull in the managed code and security they would benefit from
What they found is that the
So games using
Also it would surprise you to know that people are already using
PS
Saying that MacOS was always 32bit because the 68000 Motorola CPU was 32bit internally would be just like saying that WIndows 3.0 was a 32bit OS because it used features from the 386 portion of the x86 processor to do things it was not able to do on 286 processors. So using your logic, Windows 3.0 was also a 32bit operating system, and especially Windows 3.1, because it added direct hardware access to the HDD controller using a 386 feature.
However, neither statement is true. Windows 3.0/3.1 were not 32bit OSes, NT was. Also MacOS was not a 32bit OS fully until MacOSX was released, a good 8 years after Windows NT was released.