For me: Going from 2000 to XP made me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm dumb Going from XP to Vista made me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm stupid Going from Windows or UNIX to OS X made me feel like Apple thinks I'm the biggest moron on the planet with an IQ of -83.
I'm strictly talking GUI here and not shell/command-line. Granted I understand things are different and made simpler in OS X, however I feel like there's a lot more dumbing down and hand holding in OS X than XP or Vista.
Perhaps it's a rip off of OS X, however it's not like Apple hasn't copied ideas from elsewhere. I hope I don't need to provide examples to prove that point. The really good ideas generally get copied. Sometimes it's done better and sometimes it's done worse.
I suggest looking to see what crapware software is running. A lot of applications out there can cause Windows to be unstable.
I suggest doing the following: -Backup all their document, pictures, movies, etc. files on the system -Format the drive and install XP from scratch -Install drivers, but try and stay away from unnecessary add-on software such as a WiFi manager or software for special buttons that are never used -Install a good antivirus software that's not from Symantec or McAfee -Only install the software that's needed and stay away from crapware and software that's riddled with spyware. For software that's off of "some website", research it first. If I am not familiar with a program, I install it on a virtualized copy of XP in VMWare first to check for any shenanigans. -Regardless if each person has their own account or there is just one account for everyone, the account type should only have User level permissions and not Administrator permissions -Have one "admin" account (the Administrator account would be fine) that is password protected and has Administrator level permissions. This account is strictly for installing, updating, and uninstalling software.
Many new computers, especially consumer ones, come with a lot of useless programs installed. Some of the software is nifty little tools that one will never use; IBM/Lenovo come to mind here. Even though this software comes preinstalled, that doesn't mean it won't cause stability issues. A significant number of freeware and shareware apps are not written well, may come with spyware, do things they shouldn't do, make changes to the Registry, and/or make changes to the system files that shouldn't be changed and can cause instability.
For me XP has been pretty stable over the years as long as I didn't install crapware. I have systems that only need to reboot when an update is applied. Some of the systems haven't been updated in months, but are still running without issue. They're vulnerable to some security holes, but never venture past the firewall and content-filter.
Not everyone in IT works for a Fortune 500 company and is an engineer (a designer and/or builder). I'd suspect that those highly paid IT Engineers have college degrees and a number of certifications, which generally calls for a higher salary.
The people that do complain are the ones who get taken advantage of and/or are not treated like a human being. The crap pay they get, just isn't worth it.
Sometimes no amount of money is worth it. Like one of the posters above said, being there for his family and seeing his kids grow up is priceless.
The page doesn't document every variation, but it has quite a few. The variant I generally encounter says it's TRUE, was on Good Morning America, and has been verified by a lawyer zOMG! This particular hoax e-mail is amongst the older ones, has bitten me twice, and I fear it's going to repeat.
The first indecent was at the last company I worked for, which employed 100,000+ employees globally and 75% of that were in the US. Some moron forwarded it from his Hotmail account to his work e-mail. From there he opened the GAL, started at the top, and selected the max number of entries (256 IIRC) that would fit in the TO line, then proceeded to do the same for the CC line. A mail storm ensued as about 20 other idiots did a Reply All and replaced some of the entries with addresses of their friends. From there a few more goofballs did Reply Alls saying to stop or to take them off the list. This caused e-mail processing in a 20+ server Exchange cluster to come to a screaming halt forcing the Exchange Admin team, that thankfully I wasn't a part of, to shut it all down. The CEO or a VP sent out a mass mail telling everyone not to pull those shenanigans again.
At my current employer, one of the sales reps almost did the same thing exactly. We didn't have a mail storm thankfully since the company only employs about 120 people and there aren't a whole lot of DLs and mail-enabled PFs. I believe one grunt did a Reply All calling BS and a couple of others sending a WTF via Reply All. With the company being so small, we were able to stop the idiocy quickly.
Here in the US the ink in the check must be a special magnetic ink with the routing, account, and check numbers formatted in a specific fashion on the bottom left with a specific font.
The ink/toner is obtainable for a few more bucks and the font is easily downloaded if one doesn't have it. Obviously the check readers use the magnetic ink and unique font to read the numbers.
If you're just need an X server on Windows to connect to your *nix box, I suggest using Xming. It's free, lightweight, easy to configure, and one can quickly setup shortcuts to connect to a specific server and run a program. It's also very useful for getting around a content filter if you can access your own *nix server from the internet.
I don't have any affiliation with Colin Harrison, however I've used other X servers on Windows before and this has been the best. Here's my experience with different X servers: Exceed - Bloated, expensive, extra licensing fee for doing X11 over SSH, unstable copy and paste (in the past versions I used) ReflectionX - A bit bloated, expensive, funky interface Cygwin* - Too many unneeded apps included for just an X server, FREE, difficult to configure if you're not familiar with it Xming - Light weight, FREE, quick install, can use PuTTY's plink to do configure free X11 forwarding over SSH, copy and paste works, it just works
*In regards to Cygwin, I understand that it is more than just an X server, however it has been recommended a number of times to me as a solution for a free X server on Windows
It's great and all that we can take pictures like this and do extrasolar planetary tracking, however Subby's description is a bit misleading. I thought it said there were actual detailed pictures of these planets like the pictures we have of planets in our system.
Wake me up when there's a pic of what the weather (atmosphere) looks like on an extrasolar planet.
So mister fuckface. tell me HOW you can with your shitty windows and shitty linux and extra shitty BSD
Wow you have no idea about where the OS X kernel was derived from. It's a hybrid of the Mach and BSD kernels, both of which are clones of UNIX; kinda sounds like Linux.
capture, compost and edit a TV show or movie without making it look like a 12 year old did it in his basement.
Obviously you've never heard of a company called Avid. If you really want to get out of the Prosumer field and into Professional video editing and be taken seriously in the industry, you'd start with Avid. Avid's Media Composer (replacement for Xpress Pro) is their software only product for video editing. And they have compiled for both Mac and Windows.
Adobe products suck,
Bite the hand that feeds thee I see. Without Adobe to keep people interested in Macs durring Apple's wanning years, they'd probably would have gone under.
Everything else on your beloved PeeeCeee platforms sucks...
Wow, you really don't have a damn clue about what's under the hood of your beloved Mac. The Power PC processor is RISC based along with Alpha, ARM, MIPS, etc. Microsoft has compiled versions of NT 3.51 and 4.0 that will run on that Mac Power PC. Let's not exclude Apple's decision to abandon the RISC architecture in favor of CISC. Most, if not all, of the chipsets used in present day Macs are from the "PC" parts bin. Macs and PCs are the same damn hardware, just in a different packaging and a premium price put on anything with an Apple logo.
Only FCP is a real tool.
Spoken like a true Apple fanboy
I do work on my Mac that makes me money...
I work on "PCs" and sometimes Macs and that makes me money. What's your point? I'm sorry that editing videos of people's weddings is so difficult that you have to push aside your keyboard in favor of a slow mouse interface.
you wanking off all day to free porn found on google images does not impress anyone.
I could care less of what a candidate's genetic heritage is. I'm more interested in the candidate not being full of shit, not be an embarrassment, share similar political views as me, do the damn job right, and not fuck up things further.
Don't get me wrong though. I am very happy about the voter turnout and am glad to see someone with significant African descent elected and us further move away from this racial and prejudice stupidity.
If you want an example of something that Clinton did that we are starting to feel the effects of years later, look up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (passed in 1999) which repeals a key piece of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed in 1933/during the Great Depression). If that key piece wasn't repealed, we wouldn't have the issues we have with the housing market and mortgage failures that had a major influence in the big problems with the financial industry as of late.
There are changes that are made that take a long time to actually have an impact. One can not discount this. The $700 billion bailout has not fixed isht overnight; it will take some time. Somethings that are passed do have noticeable effects soon after and some do not have noticeable effects until much later.
Both are true and both Clinton and Bush have made mistakes.
All you'll have to do is migrate your XP to Vista and then migrate from Vista to 7.
The sad this is FTFA the MS guy is quoted talking about upgrading from Vista to 7 and there is no mention of upgrades from Vista. Either their marketing blood is thick expecting everyone to already have upgraded to Vista from XP or they're just ignoring the fact there have been a significant number of people that have downgraded or just refuse to upgrade.
If you want something that runs 21st century software and games, buy Vista or Windows 7.
You do realize what you said was completely asinine? XP is 21st century software. It was released in 2001; that's a year that falls into the 21st century and is an inarguable fact unlike the year 2000. And look, all of the software I ran on XP before Vista was released was 21st century software too!
And to actually contribute: IMHO a significant amount of those that have downgraded, plan to downgrade, or refuse to upgrade are not accepting that paradigm. I'm one of them.
I can confirm this. A few years ago I took an old P3 900MHz computer and built it into a server running FreeBSD 5.1. I mainly use it to store files and host a picture gallery on Gallery. Occasionally I have it run Firefox via Xming on my work computer when I want to check a potentially NSFW or malware ridden website.
Over the years I have upgraded FreeBSD to the current RELEASE builds and updated the other software. With each new major build of FreeBSD I have seen a performance increase. I wouldn't say it was a drastic change every upgrade, but there have been noticeable improvements.
IMHO it is quite possible for Microsoft to write a new version of their OS and not add significant bloat. Sadly their mentality is to not worry about bloat since they expect the hardware to compensate. I agree that the hardware exists to run Vista nicely, there's just a premium for it. For what I need my laptop to do, I can do nicely with XP. To do it with Vista I'll need more RAM which comes out to buying two expensive sticks of 4GB SODIMMs.
We should replace it with nothing. Just eliminate it. It would simplify life at no cost.
THIS.
DST just doesn't make any sense to me. I haven't come across a good reason for it yet. I was told once that it benefited farming to which my answer is "let them change their hours of operation semi-annually." Energy savings don't hold any weight either for me. Of the bathrooms that I've had, most didn't have a window and the ones that did had a very small BS window, so I am going to turn the light on anyways in the morning. Sunlight coming into any part of my residence wasn't the best either, so I'm going to turn the light on unless I wanted to take a nap.
The changes to the DST schedule in 2007 was really BS. I haven't come across a report that actually said we didn't use X amount of energy or saved X millions of dollars as a result. If anything it was a complete waste of money and a royal PITA. IMHO the world spent more money getting all of our electronic crap ready than actually saving anything. Hell, we had the light on all night too because we were busting our butts to get everything ready in time.
This is roughly my experience as well. The Hitachi (formerly branded as IBM) DeskStars we've called DeathStars for quite some time for good reason. Each and every Western Digital HDD that I've had under my roof has died on me within a year or two. Quantum was the worst on my list and I was quite concerned about Maxtor drives when they bought out Quantum. So far my first/current Maxtor drives are still running after a year.
I swear by Seagate and love having drives that are warrantied for five years. I've only had one die on me and that was due to over-voltage from the USB external HDD enclosure.
To answer your question, IMHO the big deal is collaboration, productivity, integration, and a lot of features "just work"*. I'd wager to say that the majority of medium to large companies use MS Office and MS Outlook as their productivity suite and e-mail client respectively of choice.
Collaboration Setting up meeting requests are simple. I can easily see other people's calendars so I can pick the best time and I can even set a meeting location which will automatically reserve something like the meeting room for example. Meetings automatically get put on my calendar as tentative and I'll receive a notification in case I forget to accept the invitation. Updated meeting change my calendar as well without intervention.
Productivity I can set reminders, flag e-mails for follow-ups, create folders to organize, create processing rules to eliminate common tasks. A lot of rules will run on the Exchange server without the need of a client running and I don't get unnecessary e-mails on my phone. Outlook maintains a constant connection with Exchange so e-mails are sent and received nearly instantly.
Integration and crap just working Obviously most MS products can seamlessly integrate well with one another. In the latest version of Outlook I can preview a number of attachments within Outlook without actually opening them up in their designated app, thus a new window. I can set a folder to actually open up a webpage within Outlook to "Integrate" a webapp or just be sly on reading Slashdot.
Phone integration really is a big one for me. Using a WM5, WM6, or iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync is almost the best thing since sliced bread. I remember the days of having a PDA and the PITA it was to do a hard-reset or get a new one. Even getting a new phone and having to manually enter in each contact sucked (I've been a CDMA whore for eight years). All my contacts are kept on Exchange and this allows me to reference and edit them via the phone or Outlook. Having to do a hard-reset or get a new WM phone is no big deal; a three minute sync with Exchange over the air gets me all my contacts back and access to my e-mail. The rare third party apps I use are kept on an SD card. Life is easy getting the execs and lusers up and running as well.
Integration with Active Directory (LDAP) makes my life as an admin easier with GPOs and groups to divvy out permissions. And for some reason all this stuff works without much hassle.
The bad Exchange and Outlook truly do have their faults. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. I wont get too far into the bad since I'm running out of time with the wife waiting on me. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. Exchange works great with communication within itself and other Exchange servers. It does a decent job at SMTP transmissions most of the time. The big headache I have right now stems from a tech at MS telling me that "the RFCs for the SMTP protocol are merely suggestions." It's not like SMTP is overly complex; there are only a handful of commands that are exchanged within SMTP communication and Exchange even F's that up. And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.
I'm glad to see some open source Exchange clones out there. I'll eventually run one of them for my server at home just so I can keep my contacts synced when I leave my current company.
To put things into perspective, I'm not a MS fanboy, but I'm not a MS hater either. I know their products well and is a part of my profession. My real passion is UNIX; specifically FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I try to introduce them where possible and applicable. Not to mention there is some stuff I can get done easier and faster with UNIX than I could with MS Windows. Other products out there are just as buggy and bloated as MS's; they just get more attention since they're more widely used.
I hope that Zarafa and others continue to innovate and make a nice profit. Competition is good for innovation and lowering prices; both of which benefits us consumers.
* Setup can be a RPITA. When something doesn't work as expected it can be an easy fix or cause suicide.
Current technology and our understanding of how the human brain works is no where near what is necessary to even qualify as evidence in any type of court case. We've only scratched the surface of understanding the human brain. We're just starting to be able to use sensors to pick up on thought and use it to control something; even then it's not that great. Even if this device can somehow read a person's memory, can it truly tell the difference between a memory of an actual event or a memory of something else like a dream?
We can't discuss prosecuting someone based off of their memories or even thought until we do one of the following. Option one is to completly understand the human brain and be able to decifer between a real event and a made up one. Option two is to create a PI License and certification test for astral projection in order to read someone's book of life with at least three of these certified people testifying in court. Though here in the US that wouldn't work too well since there's this Fifth Amendment to the Constitution that stipulates someone doesn't need to self-incriminate themselves. IMHO memories, thought, and even the book of life fall under that classification.
Am I the only one that at first glance I thought BeOS became mainstream in India overnight and now we are prosecuting based off of it?
When you get right down to it, for me it's cost and BD provides no justifiable advantages over DVD. I still have a SD CRT and that wont be replaced by a HDTV anytime soon. Our priorities are House first, then a 1080p HDTV when I can get a nice size for $1000, and then I'll consider BD. Even then I may or may not go for it.
A number of posters above me have stated that the improvements of unscaled DVD to BD is only marginal. I might consider getting BD for newer content, but I wont be replacing my current DVD collection with BDs of the same title since none of them were originally recorded in 1080p. Let's not forget the constant updates they're making to the BD spec. Yeah the PS3 is supposedly future-proof, but that damn thing puts out a lot of heat and doesn't have the audio output I'm looking for.
More than likely when I do get a house and a 1080p HDTV, I'll build a HTPC to handle streaming movies from my server and possibly include BD drive. We'll see where the market, BD hardware, BD playing software, and especially the price of BD in general are when all that happens. If you're an analyst and looking for a timetable, at the earliest this will happen is a year from now; probably not even that. If you really want me to consider having a BD player and owning BD movies anytime soon, you're going to have to bring the price down on the players and media quite a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd wager to say that your OS needed a reinstall anyways.
A fresh install of XP takes 89MB of RAM. Just saying.
For me:
Going from 2000 to XP made me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm dumb
Going from XP to Vista made me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm stupid
Going from Windows or UNIX to OS X made me feel like Apple thinks I'm the biggest moron on the planet with an IQ of -83.
I'm strictly talking GUI here and not shell/command-line. Granted I understand things are different and made simpler in OS X, however I feel like there's a lot more dumbing down and hand holding in OS X than XP or Vista.
Perhaps it's a rip off of OS X, however it's not like Apple hasn't copied ideas from elsewhere. I hope I don't need to provide examples to prove that point. The really good ideas generally get copied. Sometimes it's done better and sometimes it's done worse.
I suggest looking to see what crapware software is running. A lot of applications out there can cause Windows to be unstable.
I suggest doing the following:
-Backup all their document, pictures, movies, etc. files on the system
-Format the drive and install XP from scratch
-Install drivers, but try and stay away from unnecessary add-on software such as a WiFi manager or software for special buttons that are never used
-Install a good antivirus software that's not from Symantec or McAfee
-Only install the software that's needed and stay away from crapware and software that's riddled with spyware. For software that's off of "some website", research it first. If I am not familiar with a program, I install it on a virtualized copy of XP in VMWare first to check for any shenanigans.
-Regardless if each person has their own account or there is just one account for everyone, the account type should only have User level permissions and not Administrator permissions
-Have one "admin" account (the Administrator account would be fine) that is password protected and has Administrator level permissions. This account is strictly for installing, updating, and uninstalling software.
Many new computers, especially consumer ones, come with a lot of useless programs installed. Some of the software is nifty little tools that one will never use; IBM/Lenovo come to mind here. Even though this software comes preinstalled, that doesn't mean it won't cause stability issues. A significant number of freeware and shareware apps are not written well, may come with spyware, do things they shouldn't do, make changes to the Registry, and/or make changes to the system files that shouldn't be changed and can cause instability.
For me XP has been pretty stable over the years as long as I didn't install crapware. I have systems that only need to reboot when an update is applied. Some of the systems haven't been updated in months, but are still running without issue. They're vulnerable to some security holes, but never venture past the firewall and content-filter.
I guess I'll stick with CDs then thanks...
I think that's partially the idea.
Not everyone in IT works for a Fortune 500 company and is an engineer (a designer and/or builder). I'd suspect that those highly paid IT Engineers have college degrees and a number of certifications, which generally calls for a higher salary.
The people that do complain are the ones who get taken advantage of and/or are not treated like a human being. The crap pay they get, just isn't worth it.
Sometimes no amount of money is worth it. Like one of the posters above said, being there for his family and seeing his kids grow up is priceless.
If you don't know which one this is, check out this link:
http://www.f-secure.com/hoaxes/msemtrk.shtml
The page doesn't document every variation, but it has quite a few. The variant I generally encounter says it's TRUE, was on Good Morning America, and has been verified by a lawyer zOMG! This particular hoax e-mail is amongst the older ones, has bitten me twice, and I fear it's going to repeat.
The first indecent was at the last company I worked for, which employed 100,000+ employees globally and 75% of that were in the US. Some moron forwarded it from his Hotmail account to his work e-mail. From there he opened the GAL, started at the top, and selected the max number of entries (256 IIRC) that would fit in the TO line, then proceeded to do the same for the CC line. A mail storm ensued as about 20 other idiots did a Reply All and replaced some of the entries with addresses of their friends. From there a few more goofballs did Reply Alls saying to stop or to take them off the list. This caused e-mail processing in a 20+ server Exchange cluster to come to a screaming halt forcing the Exchange Admin team, that thankfully I wasn't a part of, to shut it all down. The CEO or a VP sent out a mass mail telling everyone not to pull those shenanigans again.
At my current employer, one of the sales reps almost did the same thing exactly. We didn't have a mail storm thankfully since the company only employs about 120 people and there aren't a whole lot of DLs and mail-enabled PFs. I believe one grunt did a Reply All calling BS and a couple of others sending a WTF via Reply All. With the company being so small, we were able to stop the idiocy quickly.
Here in the US the ink in the check must be a special magnetic ink with the routing, account, and check numbers formatted in a specific fashion on the bottom left with a specific font.
The ink/toner is obtainable for a few more bucks and the font is easily downloaded if one doesn't have it. Obviously the check readers use the magnetic ink and unique font to read the numbers.
No doubt. Trade one PITA for another.
It'd be nice if one could upgrade their existing purchased DRM'd songs for the non-DRM.
No I didn't RTFM or watch the keynote.
If you're just need an X server on Windows to connect to your *nix box, I suggest using Xming. It's free, lightweight, easy to configure, and one can quickly setup shortcuts to connect to a specific server and run a program. It's also very useful for getting around a content filter if you can access your own *nix server from the internet.
I don't have any affiliation with Colin Harrison, however I've used other X servers on Windows before and this has been the best. Here's my experience with different X servers:
Exceed - Bloated, expensive, extra licensing fee for doing X11 over SSH, unstable copy and paste (in the past versions I used)
ReflectionX - A bit bloated, expensive, funky interface
Cygwin* - Too many unneeded apps included for just an X server, FREE, difficult to configure if you're not familiar with it
Xming - Light weight, FREE, quick install, can use PuTTY's plink to do configure free X11 forwarding over SSH, copy and paste works, it just works
*In regards to Cygwin, I understand that it is more than just an X server, however it has been recommended a number of times to me as a solution for a free X server on Windows
It's great and all that we can take pictures like this and do extrasolar planetary tracking, however Subby's description is a bit misleading. I thought it said there were actual detailed pictures of these planets like the pictures we have of planets in our system.
Wake me up when there's a pic of what the weather (atmosphere) looks like on an extrasolar planet.
Yeah right stupid ass.
Too bad they don't have anything lower than a -1
So mister fuckface. tell me HOW you can with your shitty windows and shitty linux and extra shitty BSD
Wow you have no idea about where the OS X kernel was derived from. It's a hybrid of the Mach and BSD kernels, both of which are clones of UNIX; kinda sounds like Linux.
capture, compost and edit a TV show or movie without making it look like a 12 year old did it in his basement.
Obviously you've never heard of a company called Avid. If you really want to get out of the Prosumer field and into Professional video editing and be taken seriously in the industry, you'd start with Avid. Avid's Media Composer (replacement for Xpress Pro) is their software only product for video editing. And they have compiled for both Mac and Windows.
Adobe products suck,
Bite the hand that feeds thee I see. Without Adobe to keep people interested in Macs durring Apple's wanning years, they'd probably would have gone under.
Everything else on your beloved PeeeCeee platforms sucks...
Wow, you really don't have a damn clue about what's under the hood of your beloved Mac. The Power PC processor is RISC based along with Alpha, ARM, MIPS, etc. Microsoft has compiled versions of NT 3.51 and 4.0 that will run on that Mac Power PC. Let's not exclude Apple's decision to abandon the RISC architecture in favor of CISC. Most, if not all, of the chipsets used in present day Macs are from the "PC" parts bin. Macs and PCs are the same damn hardware, just in a different packaging and a premium price put on anything with an Apple logo.
Only FCP is a real tool.
Spoken like a true Apple fanboy
I do work on my Mac that makes me money...
I work on "PCs" and sometimes Macs and that makes me money. What's your point? I'm sorry that editing videos of people's weddings is so difficult that you have to push aside your keyboard in favor of a slow mouse interface.
you wanking off all day to free porn found on google images does not impress anyone.
GIS isn't the best place to get free porn.
This.
I could care less of what a candidate's genetic heritage is. I'm more interested in the candidate not being full of shit, not be an embarrassment, share similar political views as me, do the damn job right, and not fuck up things further.
Don't get me wrong though. I am very happy about the voter turnout and am glad to see someone with significant African descent elected and us further move away from this racial and prejudice stupidity.
If you want an example of something that Clinton did that we are starting to feel the effects of years later, look up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (passed in 1999) which repeals a key piece of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed in 1933/during the Great Depression). If that key piece wasn't repealed, we wouldn't have the issues we have with the housing market and mortgage failures that had a major influence in the big problems with the financial industry as of late.
There are changes that are made that take a long time to actually have an impact. One can not discount this. The $700 billion bailout has not fixed isht overnight; it will take some time. Somethings that are passed do have noticeable effects soon after and some do not have noticeable effects until much later.
Both are true and both Clinton and Bush have made mistakes.
All you'll have to do is migrate your XP to Vista and then migrate from Vista to 7.
The sad this is FTFA the MS guy is quoted talking about upgrading from Vista to 7 and there is no mention of upgrades from Vista. Either their marketing blood is thick expecting everyone to already have upgraded to Vista from XP or they're just ignoring the fact there have been a significant number of people that have downgraded or just refuse to upgrade.
If you want something that runs 21st century software and games, buy Vista or Windows 7.
You do realize what you said was completely asinine? XP is 21st century software. It was released in 2001; that's a year that falls into the 21st century and is an inarguable fact unlike the year 2000. And look, all of the software I ran on XP before Vista was released was 21st century software too!
zOMG! OHNOES!
Your post really is missing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY ;)
And to actually contribute:
IMHO a significant amount of those that have downgraded, plan to downgrade, or refuse to upgrade are not accepting that paradigm. I'm one of them.
I can confirm this. A few years ago I took an old P3 900MHz computer and built it into a server running FreeBSD 5.1. I mainly use it to store files and host a picture gallery on Gallery. Occasionally I have it run Firefox via Xming on my work computer when I want to check a potentially NSFW or malware ridden website.
Over the years I have upgraded FreeBSD to the current RELEASE builds and updated the other software. With each new major build of FreeBSD I have seen a performance increase. I wouldn't say it was a drastic change every upgrade, but there have been noticeable improvements.
IMHO it is quite possible for Microsoft to write a new version of their OS and not add significant bloat. Sadly their mentality is to not worry about bloat since they expect the hardware to compensate. I agree that the hardware exists to run Vista nicely, there's just a premium for it. For what I need my laptop to do, I can do nicely with XP. To do it with Vista I'll need more RAM which comes out to buying two expensive sticks of 4GB SODIMMs.
We should replace it with nothing. Just eliminate it. It would simplify life at no cost.
THIS.
DST just doesn't make any sense to me. I haven't come across a good reason for it yet. I was told once that it benefited farming to which my answer is "let them change their hours of operation semi-annually." Energy savings don't hold any weight either for me. Of the bathrooms that I've had, most didn't have a window and the ones that did had a very small BS window, so I am going to turn the light on anyways in the morning. Sunlight coming into any part of my residence wasn't the best either, so I'm going to turn the light on unless I wanted to take a nap.
The changes to the DST schedule in 2007 was really BS. I haven't come across a report that actually said we didn't use X amount of energy or saved X millions of dollars as a result. If anything it was a complete waste of money and a royal PITA. IMHO the world spent more money getting all of our electronic crap ready than actually saving anything. Hell, we had the light on all night too because we were busting our butts to get everything ready in time.
This is roughly my experience as well. The Hitachi (formerly branded as IBM) DeskStars we've called DeathStars for quite some time for good reason. Each and every Western Digital HDD that I've had under my roof has died on me within a year or two. Quantum was the worst on my list and I was quite concerned about Maxtor drives when they bought out Quantum. So far my first/current Maxtor drives are still running after a year.
I swear by Seagate and love having drives that are warrantied for five years. I've only had one die on me and that was due to over-voltage from the USB external HDD enclosure.
To answer your question, IMHO the big deal is collaboration, productivity, integration, and a lot of features "just work"*. I'd wager to say that the majority of medium to large companies use MS Office and MS Outlook as their productivity suite and e-mail client respectively of choice.
Collaboration
Setting up meeting requests are simple. I can easily see other people's calendars so I can pick the best time and I can even set a meeting location which will automatically reserve something like the meeting room for example. Meetings automatically get put on my calendar as tentative and I'll receive a notification in case I forget to accept the invitation. Updated meeting change my calendar as well without intervention.
Productivity
I can set reminders, flag e-mails for follow-ups, create folders to organize, create processing rules to eliminate common tasks. A lot of rules will run on the Exchange server without the need of a client running and I don't get unnecessary e-mails on my phone. Outlook maintains a constant connection with Exchange so e-mails are sent and received nearly instantly.
Integration and crap just working
Obviously most MS products can seamlessly integrate well with one another. In the latest version of Outlook I can preview a number of attachments within Outlook without actually opening them up in their designated app, thus a new window. I can set a folder to actually open up a webpage within Outlook to "Integrate" a webapp or just be sly on reading Slashdot.
Phone integration really is a big one for me. Using a WM5, WM6, or iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync is almost the best thing since sliced bread. I remember the days of having a PDA and the PITA it was to do a hard-reset or get a new one. Even getting a new phone and having to manually enter in each contact sucked (I've been a CDMA whore for eight years). All my contacts are kept on Exchange and this allows me to reference and edit them via the phone or Outlook. Having to do a hard-reset or get a new WM phone is no big deal; a three minute sync with Exchange over the air gets me all my contacts back and access to my e-mail. The rare third party apps I use are kept on an SD card. Life is easy getting the execs and lusers up and running as well.
Integration with Active Directory (LDAP) makes my life as an admin easier with GPOs and groups to divvy out permissions. And for some reason all this stuff works without much hassle.
The bad
Exchange and Outlook truly do have their faults. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. I wont get too far into the bad since I'm running out of time with the wife waiting on me. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. Exchange works great with communication within itself and other Exchange servers. It does a decent job at SMTP transmissions most of the time. The big headache I have right now stems from a tech at MS telling me that "the RFCs for the SMTP protocol are merely suggestions." It's not like SMTP is overly complex; there are only a handful of commands that are exchanged within SMTP communication and Exchange even F's that up. And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.
I'm glad to see some open source Exchange clones out there. I'll eventually run one of them for my server at home just so I can keep my contacts synced when I leave my current company.
To put things into perspective, I'm not a MS fanboy, but I'm not a MS hater either. I know their products well and is a part of my profession. My real passion is UNIX; specifically FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I try to introduce them where possible and applicable. Not to mention there is some stuff I can get done easier and faster with UNIX than I could with MS Windows. Other products out there are just as buggy and bloated as MS's; they just get more attention since they're more widely used.
I hope that Zarafa and others continue to innovate and make a nice profit. Competition is good for innovation and lowering prices; both of which benefits us consumers.
* Setup can be a RPITA. When something doesn't work as expected it can be an easy fix or cause suicide.
Current technology and our understanding of how the human brain works is no where near what is necessary to even qualify as evidence in any type of court case. We've only scratched the surface of understanding the human brain. We're just starting to be able to use sensors to pick up on thought and use it to control something; even then it's not that great. Even if this device can somehow read a person's memory, can it truly tell the difference between a memory of an actual event or a memory of something else like a dream?
We can't discuss prosecuting someone based off of their memories or even thought until we do one of the following. Option one is to completly understand the human brain and be able to decifer between a real event and a made up one. Option two is to create a PI License and certification test for astral projection in order to read someone's book of life with at least three of these certified people testifying in court. Though here in the US that wouldn't work too well since there's this Fifth Amendment to the Constitution that stipulates someone doesn't need to self-incriminate themselves. IMHO memories, thought, and even the book of life fall under that classification.
Am I the only one that at first glance I thought BeOS became mainstream in India overnight and now we are prosecuting based off of it?
I came here to say the same thing. I would LMAO if it was true too.
RIAA Lesson Learned: Do not annoy those that can devote their full time occupation to making you look like an ass.
FTFY
When you get right down to it, for me it's cost and BD provides no justifiable advantages over DVD. I still have a SD CRT and that wont be replaced by a HDTV anytime soon. Our priorities are House first, then a 1080p HDTV when I can get a nice size for $1000, and then I'll consider BD. Even then I may or may not go for it.
A number of posters above me have stated that the improvements of unscaled DVD to BD is only marginal. I might consider getting BD for newer content, but I wont be replacing my current DVD collection with BDs of the same title since none of them were originally recorded in 1080p. Let's not forget the constant updates they're making to the BD spec. Yeah the PS3 is supposedly future-proof, but that damn thing puts out a lot of heat and doesn't have the audio output I'm looking for.
More than likely when I do get a house and a 1080p HDTV, I'll build a HTPC to handle streaming movies from my server and possibly include BD drive. We'll see where the market, BD hardware, BD playing software, and especially the price of BD in general are when all that happens. If you're an analyst and looking for a timetable, at the earliest this will happen is a year from now; probably not even that. If you really want me to consider having a BD player and owning BD movies anytime soon, you're going to have to bring the price down on the players and media quite a bit.