It's got latex names for most symbols and constructs but it doesn't actually work like LaTeX. I was amused reading the developers' blog posts who never mentioned LaTeX at all.
You are incorrect. Although software players do need free updates to read some new media, no hardware player has been made useless by this system. Yet.
If the problem can be fixed by updating firmware (e.g. somebody flashes their firmware to make the device region-free, to fix the problem the firmware mmust be reflashed) then the firmware can be placed on any new disc and the flashing happens transparently.
This isn't cloaked as an administrative fee; the announcement says:
"Although the purpose of these fees is to discourage piracy and compensate the University for resources spent dealing with DMCA complaints, for the first year of the program, the affected departments have agreed that these fees will be transferred to ASSU's general operating budget to enhance Stanford student activities."
"Vista today is doing better than XP without SP did. A -lot- better."
No, it isn't. Computers are selling twice as fast today as they did when XP came out. Also, Vista is selling twice as fast as XP initially did. Co-incidence? No.
This rate of sales (normalised against the rate of PC sales) is normal for Microsoft.
The person I originally replied to said: "Microsoft has stopped making core improvements to the OS for some time. And by CORE improvements I mean innovations to the underlying OS."
I guess I missed the "innovations" part. I agree that not all of it is new (i.e. it was already in Linux/Mac).
New sound subsystem - OK, I'm sorry, but I find it useful. Why go "Pfft?"? Sometimes I just want to play misbehaving Flash games while listening to music. Per-app volume control is awesome.
"New networking stack including TCP scaling and ground-up IPv6 support...that has already been causing problems" Can't get everything right every time. Besides, TCP is so messy (with so many misbehaving devices), there have to be some problems in order to improve performance.
"Internet Explorer Protected Mode...that prevents critical vulns except for the ones they patched last week? The file broker is a good idea but it's not exactly innovation central, go and look at non-monolithic architectures such as the postfix mta." I have to admit I haven't read about the protected mode, but didn't it reduce the scope of the.ani vulnerability on Vista?
ASLR - yes, only new to Windows. Still, they wrote it, it's an improvement.
WinPE - I see nothing wrong with them creating their own boot CD and a new imaging system to help deployments. Just because Linux can do most of it, it's wrong??
UAC - Try this for me. Go to the Gnome deskbar (awesome app), type "synaptic", press enter. Synaptic opens, and mark some apps to install. Now you try apply the changes and - whoops! - "no can do!" Synaptic expects you to re-open it with gksu and remark all your changes. WTF? At least with UAC, it doesn't ask you if you use a program for non-administrative means. (That's the theory anyway, seems to not apply to MS somehow...)
- New sound subsystem allowing per-application volume control - New networking stack including TCP scaling and ground-up IPv6 support - Internet Explorer Protected Mode - Address Space Layout Randomisation (yes, it's in Linux too) - WinPE - UAC (it's not just an unpretty interface) - Kernel Patch Protection (ha ha. In Linux, nobody needs to patch the kernel in runtime!)
If linux's hardware support is so amazing, why is almost everybody (excluding embedded) still using x86 and x86-64? Oh yeah, because that's where the good processors are.
* Slashdot earns money from traffic (via ad clicks). Admittedly, the poster was not receiving financial reward. * It was the whole of OT III, which at the time was not very easy to find. * I don't think the original post had any criticism, just the text. * Why is it unlikely to affect its commercial value? If people were able to read OT III when they were just joining then Scientology would practically collapse.
"Don't even get me started on the replacement of add/remove programs"
I agree, it's awful that they added a search function (including search-as-you-type), and it's also terrible that it now displays items as it finds them, instead of taking 5 minutes to show anything at all. I'm also disgusted by their use of a standard "listview" control so that there's a simple interface to sort the programs.
What the fuck is wrong with the new add/remove programs?
I know it's probably too late to reply now (I just woke up) but...
Jobs is not (at least publically) philosophically opposed to DRM. He's just opposed to people paying the same amount of money digitally as with CDs and them not getting a fair value (as determined by their alternative, CDs). He is upset that the industry is going to such lengths to "protect" music while "90% of music is sold unprotected today".
With video, you're paying the same thing (or less) as a DVD and getting the same restrictions, and also getting the video in a much lower quality. That's fair, to Jobs. So to him, in this situation, DRM is fine.
With Mac OS X, restricting some software to some hardware is ethically fine, as long as there are viable alternatives. So in this situation, DRM restricting OS X to Apple computers is fine too.
"The people who can't figure out or don't understand what's being asked of them in that dialogue are the same users who likely won't notice or mind the application eating up a little more disk space to save them a headache later."
What if somebody sent them a csv file and needs to recieve a csv file back? What if the csv file will be input to some other application? The user and Excel aren't just in a vacuum where Excel can use whatever format it likes.
"a dummy mode that's toggled on by default isn't necessarily a bad thing when dealing largely with dummies."
Except when a dummy asks me for help and the whole UI is different because I'm not a dummy. Or they need to do something and the option simply isn't there. Or they need to do something in non-dummy mode and never turn it off and then get confused. Or they just think they're not a dummy, although they actually are.
In audio, the studios are selling CDs unprotected by the planeload, but - what's that? You want a convenient format? OK, buy it at the same price of a CD, but get it unusable in a variety of confusing ways! Alternatively, you could commit to paying us a monthly fee for the rest of your life!
In video, the studios have never sold unprotected videos. There has always been quality loss when copying a VCR tape, and DVDs (HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays, UMDs) have always had copy protection. Therefore, it's quite reasonable that their new non-physical format also has copy protection.
I want DRM-free video just as much as you, but I don't think Jobs is being in any way hypocritical.
DRM does not qualify as "modern encryption", because to play the media (which costs $1 - $50 depending on what you bought), you must have the decryption software, *and* the key, *and* the ciphertext, and the computer on which it runs.
Now, the safe, maybe it "keeps almost-honest people honest". The DRM just pisses people off ("I already bought it!") and just recategorises honest people as breaking the law.
Imagine a safe which you paid for, was kept in your house, and yet you needed to call a special warden every time you wanted to open it. That's about as good as I can do;-).
The original plan was to require Ctrl+Alt+Del *and* the user's password on every UAC prompt. (See the Vista team blog.) They removed this requirement after user testing, also taking a more lax view of what should require UAC. (In my view, in the Control Panel, not lax enough.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's got latex names for most symbols and constructs but it doesn't actually work like LaTeX. I was amused reading the developers' blog posts who never mentioned LaTeX at all.
Don't worry. Microsoft just made everything against the EULA, but they won't bother you for installing software.
Today, anyway.
You are incorrect. Although software players do need free updates to read some new media, no hardware player has been made useless by this system. Yet.
If the problem can be fixed by updating firmware (e.g. somebody flashes their firmware to make the device region-free, to fix the problem the firmware mmust be reflashed) then the firmware can be placed on any new disc and the flashing happens transparently.
'Imagine "Pictionary" where you could sketch the "clue" on the screen with the remote, the secret word could be given quietly via the remote speaker.'
Yes... or maybe you should just play with pencil and paper.
"Where's the right balance?"
I don't know - how many people would you like to die?
What about the RADIATION? Think of the CHILDREN!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6677051.stm
Because the text will look sharper, and more detail will appear on the pictures too.
Silly you.
Increase the DPI?
This isn't cloaked as an administrative fee; the announcement says:
"Although the purpose of these fees is to discourage piracy and compensate the
University for resources spent dealing with DMCA complaints, for the first year of the
program, the affected departments have agreed that these fees will be transferred to
ASSU's general operating budget to enhance Stanford student activities."
What shit.
"Vista today is doing better than XP without SP did. A -lot- better."
No, it isn't. Computers are selling twice as fast today as they did when XP came out. Also, Vista is selling twice as fast as XP initially did. Co-incidence? No.
This rate of sales (normalised against the rate of PC sales) is normal for Microsoft.
(See recent arstechnica article.)
The person I originally replied to said: "Microsoft has stopped making core improvements to the OS for some time. And by CORE improvements I mean innovations to the underlying OS."
...that has already been causing problems"
...that prevents critical vulns except for the ones they patched last week? The file broker is a good idea but it's not exactly innovation central, go and look at non-monolithic architectures such as the postfix mta." .ani vulnerability on Vista?
I guess I missed the "innovations" part. I agree that not all of it is new (i.e. it was already in Linux/Mac).
New sound subsystem - OK, I'm sorry, but I find it useful. Why go "Pfft?"? Sometimes I just want to play misbehaving Flash games while listening to music. Per-app volume control is awesome.
"New networking stack including TCP scaling and ground-up IPv6 support
Can't get everything right every time. Besides, TCP is so messy (with so many misbehaving devices), there have to be some problems in order to improve performance.
"Internet Explorer Protected Mode
I have to admit I haven't read about the protected mode, but didn't it reduce the scope of the
ASLR - yes, only new to Windows. Still, they wrote it, it's an improvement.
WinPE - I see nothing wrong with them creating their own boot CD and a new imaging system to help deployments. Just because Linux can do most of it, it's wrong??
UAC - Try this for me. Go to the Gnome deskbar (awesome app), type "synaptic", press enter. Synaptic opens, and mark some apps to install. Now you try apply the changes and - whoops! - "no can do!" Synaptic expects you to re-open it with gksu and remark all your changes. WTF? At least with UAC, it doesn't ask you if you use a program for non-administrative means. (That's the theory anyway, seems to not apply to MS somehow...)
New stuff:
- New sound subsystem allowing per-application volume control
- New networking stack including TCP scaling and ground-up IPv6 support
- Internet Explorer Protected Mode
- Address Space Layout Randomisation (yes, it's in Linux too)
- WinPE
- UAC (it's not just an unpretty interface)
- Kernel Patch Protection (ha ha. In Linux, nobody needs to patch the kernel in runtime!)
If linux's hardware support is so amazing, why is almost everybody (excluding embedded) still using x86 and x86-64? Oh yeah, because that's where the good processors are.
* Slashdot earns money from traffic (via ad clicks). Admittedly, the poster was not receiving financial reward.
* It was the whole of OT III, which at the time was not very easy to find.
* I don't think the original post had any criticism, just the text.
* Why is it unlikely to affect its commercial value? If people were able to read OT III when they were just joining then Scientology would practically collapse.
"Don't even get me started on the replacement of add/remove programs"
I agree, it's awful that they added a search function (including search-as-you-type), and it's also terrible that it now displays items as it finds them, instead of taking 5 minutes to show anything at all. I'm also disgusted by their use of a standard "listview" control so that there's a simple interface to sort the programs.
What the fuck is wrong with the new add/remove programs?
Jobs is not (at least publically) philosophically opposed to DRM. He's just opposed to people paying the same amount of money digitally as with CDs and them not getting a fair value (as determined by their alternative, CDs). He is upset that the industry is going to such lengths to "protect" music while "90% of music is sold unprotected today".
With video, you're paying the same thing (or less) as a DVD and getting the same restrictions, and also getting the video in a much lower quality. That's fair, to Jobs. So to him, in this situation, DRM is fine.
With Mac OS X, restricting some software to some hardware is ethically fine, as long as there are viable alternatives. So in this situation, DRM restricting OS X to Apple computers is fine too.
"The people who can't figure out or don't understand what's being asked of them in that dialogue are the same users who likely won't notice or mind the application eating up a little more disk space to save them a headache later."
What if somebody sent them a csv file and needs to recieve a csv file back? What if the csv file will be input to some other application? The user and Excel aren't just in a vacuum where Excel can use whatever format it likes.
"a dummy mode that's toggled on by default isn't necessarily a bad thing when dealing largely with dummies."
Except when a dummy asks me for help and the whole UI is different because I'm not a dummy. Or they need to do something and the option simply isn't there. Or they need to do something in non-dummy mode and never turn it off and then get confused. Or they just think they're not a dummy, although they actually are.
In audio, the studios are selling CDs unprotected by the planeload, but - what's that? You want a convenient format? OK, buy it at the same price of a CD, but get it unusable in a variety of confusing ways! Alternatively, you could commit to paying us a monthly fee for the rest of your life!
In video, the studios have never sold unprotected videos. There has always been quality loss when copying a VCR tape, and DVDs (HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays, UMDs) have always had copy protection. Therefore, it's quite reasonable that their new non-physical format also has copy protection.
I want DRM-free video just as much as you, but I don't think Jobs is being in any way hypocritical.
That explains .NET Passport and .NET messenger perfectly... thanks. :-)
DRM does not qualify as "modern encryption", because to play the media (which costs $1 - $50 depending on what you bought), you must have the decryption software, *and* the key, *and* the ciphertext, and the computer on which it runs.
;-).
Now, the safe, maybe it "keeps almost-honest people honest". The DRM just pisses people off ("I already bought it!") and just recategorises honest people as breaking the law.
Imagine a safe which you paid for, was kept in your house, and yet you needed to call a special warden every time you wanted to open it. That's about as good as I can do
The original plan was to require Ctrl+Alt+Del *and* the user's password on every UAC prompt. (See the Vista team blog.) They removed this requirement after user testing, also taking a more lax view of what should require UAC. (In my view, in the Control Panel, not lax enough.)
"You can't freaking open the Control Panel without a UAC prompt."
:-)
On the contrary: you can open it with a UAC prompt, but in a typical Control Panel session, you will be prompted about 10 seperate times.
On the very first post, even!
I guess everybody was scrambling to find it.
So you're saying "Windows" is a luxury brand? I think it's more of an "annoyance and bane of computers" brand, even outside of Slashdot.
They sell those $500 computers with Windows Vista on them, and until you get one, you don't know that it will run like crap on wheels.
You will soon need to add the Vista bootloader to that list.
Also lilo is more common for some non-x86 architectures.