Nowadays, a few days before April Fools Day I turn off styles in my web browser, for situations such as this. It's become a grim, but necessary ritual. Before CSS became big I used Lynx for that awkward time.
...they aren't necessary anymore. I have not bought a tech book in the past 3 or 4 years, aside from cheap reference manuals that I keep at my desk. I used to buy a tech book every week or so, but then I realized I could get most of the information they contained online, for free. I tend to find more detailed, more applicable, more timely information online.
Although I cannot confirm the.NET delay rumors, I think I understand what you mean. I have even fallen victim to this coding paradigm in the past. I had written a small utility program that did its job quite well. Eventually, I got bored with the program and its functionality. I wanted something expandable, modular, adaptable to any platform or situation.
Filled with ideas of "design patterns" and "modular coding practices" from university classes, I decided to recode my program from scratch. I decided to do it "the right way" this time. All I can say is, it was a big mistake. I switched from C++ to Java. I "corrected" my algorithms, doing everything by the books. Sure, simple operations took more time and more memory, but I was took comfort knowing that everything was being done "the right way".
Recoding for the sake of recoding is _never_ a good idea, but that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista. Sure, they are claiming they want to build Vista into a revolutionary, ultra-flexible platform. But I don't buy it, and I won't buy Vista. Microsoft's intentions may have been good in the beginning of Vista's development, but they may have set their goals too high. They attempted to change core pieces of the OS in a relatively short period of time, resulting in a sloppy, delayed release that has no hope of living up to previous expectations.
I have sometimes supported Microsoft in past arguments, but I think the decisions they have made regarding Vista have been counter-productive for the mostpart. I will stick with XP for now, eventually switching to Linux or Mac once enough of my core applications are ported over.
I may only be one person, but when corporations begin to do the same as me, Microsoft will be in deep trouble. Bubble v2.0
If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them?
If songs dropped to $0.10US each, I would not bother to pirate music. But, I don't think labels would bother releasing them, not when they are used to getting 10x that price right now (and even more for CDs in record stores). The problem isn't that music costs to much, it's that record labels have been getting paid vastly inflated prices for their songs for the past 50+ years.
Without people like DVD Jon and Maxxuss I would get depressed about things like HDCP, but I know in the back of mind that everything will be alright because they believe technology should be open, and they have the means to make it open.
According to TFA: The new Acclaim, based in Beverly Hills, California, will not only offer free online games, but it also will incorporate multiple business models such as in-game advertising and the option for gamers to purchase in-game items.
I have doubts about the business plan described in the article. Games cost money to develop, and MMOGs cost even more due to hosting costs, maintenance, expansion, etc. I find it very hard to believe that companies will pay Acclaim enough money to pay for employees, servers, bandwidth, and ongoing development. The in-game purchases might bring in some money, but I think many people will either feel cheated or somehow wronged by the game/company if someone with a large amount of money in real life beats them because that person could afford to pay more.
Maybe I'm incorrect, and maybe advertisers are clamoring to give Acclaim money for what is essentially product placement in an unproven game. And who knows what the "multiple business models" actually consist of. Anyway, it's something to think about...
- Article is obviously biased towards MS. It's one thing to be excited about a new product, but not mentioning ANY bad parts of it is just wrong.
- "If that sounds like a bunch of technobabble nonsense, don't worry. You don't have to know what it means, you just have to know that it makes life easier on developers and improves performance. And it doesn't stop with heaps. Lots of relatively little, commonly-used functions have been improved, like procedure calls." That's exactly what I _don't_ want to read in a review from ExtremeTECH. "You don't need to know the specs of the video card. All you need to know is it will make things look pretty."
- Improvements to sleep/hibernate mode? Get rid of them on the desktop please. It's not worth the trouble. I guess it's a nice improvement for laptops though.
- "The driver model of Vista has been totally changed. Many of the drivers that used to sit at the system (kernel) level are now at the user level, which means that when drivers fail, your whole system shouldn't crash. You should also be able to update most drivers without rebooting your system." Well I am biased on this one because I cannot even remember the last time my XP installation crashed. As for not having to reboot for driver updates, blah. I've written about the pointlessness of no-reboot systems before, and it would be redundant to say it all over again.
- The details on "Media Center Improvements" were a little (ok a lot) scarce, so I'm reserving judgment. However, I think Media Center does a lot of things right in its current XP incarnation, so my hopes are pretty high for Vista's Media Center.
- I like the per-application volume controls a lot. Built in speech recognition is really cool too, assuming it's implemented well. Speech recognition is overrated though. I hope there won't be a Clippy type creature constantly asking me, "Would you like to use your microphone to write this email?"
- "Graphics cards will have to produce results within a very small margin of error to be considered DX10 compliant, so developers shouldn't have to worry about the same operation producing different visuals on different cards." I'll believe that when I see it, pun intended.
- "There are lots of backup utilities for Windows XP, and most of the good ones cost money. Vista will offer a built-in backup utility, where you can perform manual backups or restoration of folders or entire drives, or automate backup scheduling. You should be able to backup your files to CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, internal or external hard drives, or even other computers on your local network." If it's better than the one included with XP I'll be happy. Although it sounds very similar to XP's backup utility.
- I suppose Paint will still be included with Vista?
- The UI... ah the UI. Glass/Aero look like they might be cool for a week, but after that it will just be another resource hog. The sidebar might be cool, especially since there will be so many people making widgets. I can't wait for widget viruses/worms though!
- The "Security security security" section had me rolling my eyes. First, the built-in security can't be that great if Microsoft is already planning a subscription-only security service for Vista. There will be viruses/worms/trojans for Vista, plain and simple. There will always be holes. I just hope these new security features won't give people a false sense of absolute security.
- Should you upgrade? Well, you will have to eventually, if you plan to stay in the Windows World. Do I want to? No, not really. I could not wait for XP to be released, because it was such a big improvement over previous versions. But Vista seems, to me, to be a collection of cool little toys that Microsoft is hoping, when combined, will be a top-notch OS. I am considering a Mac for the first time in a long time, and Linux is almost ready for my consideration as my main workstation.
If you want to display HD-DVD or BluRay content on ANY operating system (not just Vista) you will need to buy a new HDCP monitor. Don't blame Microsoft for DRM put in place by other companies.
The only valid point that I thought the article made had to do with Word documents. It's no secret that interpretting Word documents is haphazard at best (just look at OpenOffice) and that standards need to be documented more thoroughly. Almost everything else in that article seemed like nit picking, and for once I feel bad for Microsoft.
They can't win: if they include Windows Media Player with their OS they get sued, if they don't include it they get hundreds of thousands of complaints from users and even more Microsoft bashing than before. If they include Active Directory with their OS they get sued, if the don't include it they get thousands of complaints from administrators and even more Microsoft bashing than before. The list goes on and on. As for Outlook being bundled with Office, I think that since Office is a suite consumers pay for (either in retail channels or through OEMs), Microsoft should be able to include what it wants to. Outlook is part of the suite, plain and simple.
We'll be starting by equipping all the full-time faculty this year, then next year start requiring (as in 'you can use financial aid to pay for it') each new student to buy a laptop that meets our specs (Apple or Dell, depending on major).
What happens if someone changes their major after they buy a laptop? Will they be required to buy a new laptop? Will there be a trade-in program? Will the Apple/PC requirement be more of a guideline than a rule? I'm not a fan of switching to laptops entirely anyway, but I would be even angrier if I was stuck having to buy two laptops just because I switched to a "non-Apple" major or vice versa.
Well yeah, in that case you would use it quite often:-)
I was talking more about the average Joe looking for sports scores or news. I think most people know where to go for their information, and search engines are just a last resort when they absolutely can't find what they need on the sites they know. I think Ruppert Murdoc said something to that effect. Although I think Murdoc is wrong about nearly everything else, I have to agree with him on that small point.
Insert generic comment about the overuse of a drug leading to the evolution of the disease to a new super form that is resistant to all known treatments.
Insert generic comment about you never having to watch someone die from this disease. It's easy for you to say things like that... until it affects you.
The application is meant to primarily run on Linux, but should be portable to Windows without much difficulty.
Well there's your problem.
I know: -1 Flamebait. But really, this is Slashdot. A story with such a minor reference to Windows going without a Windows-bashing comment for this long is just inexcusable.
I guess by now we can be fairly certain that search engines are here to stay...
I'm not so sure I agree with you. What do people really search for nowadays (OK, other than "sex"/"porn")? I know where to go for my news, weather, sports, tech news, political discussion, coding tips, dining reviews, etc. The last time I *really* searched for something was a couple months back. I search within websites quite often, but I do not use large search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. more than a few times a year. Maybe I'm in the minority, but do search engines really have a long future ahead of them?
Slashdot Mirror
I also recommend reading this. Google's translation feature provides and accurate, easy-to-read translation of Japanese texts.
Nowadays, a few days before April Fools Day I turn off styles in my web browser, for situations such as this. It's become a grim, but necessary ritual. Before CSS became big I used Lynx for that awkward time.
When I read your post, I thought to myself, "Come on, there's gotta be _one_ good GooglePages.com site."
I'm sad to say, you were right all along.
...they aren't necessary anymore. I have not bought a tech book in the past 3 or 4 years, aside from cheap reference manuals that I keep at my desk. I used to buy a tech book every week or so, but then I realized I could get most of the information they contained online, for free. I tend to find more detailed, more applicable, more timely information online.
Although I cannot confirm the .NET delay rumors, I think I understand what you mean. I have even fallen victim to this coding paradigm in the past. I had written a small utility program that did its job quite well. Eventually, I got bored with the program and its functionality. I wanted something expandable, modular, adaptable to any platform or situation.
Filled with ideas of "design patterns" and "modular coding practices" from university classes, I decided to recode my program from scratch. I decided to do it "the right way" this time. All I can say is, it was a big mistake. I switched from C++ to Java. I "corrected" my algorithms, doing everything by the books. Sure, simple operations took more time and more memory, but I was took comfort knowing that everything was being done "the right way".
Recoding for the sake of recoding is _never_ a good idea, but that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista. Sure, they are claiming they want to build Vista into a revolutionary, ultra-flexible platform. But I don't buy it, and I won't buy Vista. Microsoft's intentions may have been good in the beginning of Vista's development, but they may have set their goals too high. They attempted to change core pieces of the OS in a relatively short period of time, resulting in a sloppy, delayed release that has no hope of living up to previous expectations.
I have sometimes supported Microsoft in past arguments, but I think the decisions they have made regarding Vista have been counter-productive for the mostpart. I will stick with XP for now, eventually switching to Linux or Mac once enough of my core applications are ported over.
I may only be one person, but when corporations begin to do the same as me, Microsoft will be in deep trouble. Bubble v2.0
Well this, and the fact that it completely took over every aspect of my life.
...we still have to invent warp drive, phasers, photon torpedos, transporters, and replicators.
Oh, and androids.
If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them?
If songs dropped to $0.10US each, I would not bother to pirate music. But, I don't think labels would bother releasing them, not when they are used to getting 10x that price right now (and even more for CDs in record stores). The problem isn't that music costs to much, it's that record labels have been getting paid vastly inflated prices for their songs for the past 50+ years.
Everyone knows that no programming language is a perfect fit for every job.
I program in raw machine code. It's a perfect fit for every job, every time!
Without people like DVD Jon and Maxxuss I would get depressed about things like HDCP, but I know in the back of mind that everything will be alright because they believe technology should be open, and they have the means to make it open.
According to TFA: The new Acclaim, based in Beverly Hills, California, will not only offer free online games, but it also will incorporate multiple business models such as in-game advertising and the option for gamers to purchase in-game items.
I have doubts about the business plan described in the article. Games cost money to develop, and MMOGs cost even more due to hosting costs, maintenance, expansion, etc. I find it very hard to believe that companies will pay Acclaim enough money to pay for employees, servers, bandwidth, and ongoing development. The in-game purchases might bring in some money, but I think many people will either feel cheated or somehow wronged by the game/company if someone with a large amount of money in real life beats them because that person could afford to pay more.
Maybe I'm incorrect, and maybe advertisers are clamoring to give Acclaim money for what is essentially product placement in an unproven game. And who knows what the "multiple business models" actually consist of. Anyway, it's something to think about...
- Article is obviously biased towards MS. It's one thing to be excited about a new product, but not mentioning ANY bad parts of it is just wrong.
- "If that sounds like a bunch of technobabble nonsense, don't worry. You don't have to know what it means, you just have to know that it makes life easier on developers and improves performance. And it doesn't stop with heaps. Lots of relatively little, commonly-used functions have been improved, like procedure calls." That's exactly what I _don't_ want to read in a review from ExtremeTECH. "You don't need to know the specs of the video card. All you need to know is it will make things look pretty."
- Improvements to sleep/hibernate mode? Get rid of them on the desktop please. It's not worth the trouble. I guess it's a nice improvement for laptops though.
- "The driver model of Vista has been totally changed. Many of the drivers that used to sit at the system (kernel) level are now at the user level, which means that when drivers fail, your whole system shouldn't crash. You should also be able to update most drivers without rebooting your system." Well I am biased on this one because I cannot even remember the last time my XP installation crashed. As for not having to reboot for driver updates, blah. I've written about the pointlessness of no-reboot systems before, and it would be redundant to say it all over again.
- The details on "Media Center Improvements" were a little (ok a lot) scarce, so I'm reserving judgment. However, I think Media Center does a lot of things right in its current XP incarnation, so my hopes are pretty high for Vista's Media Center.
- I like the per-application volume controls a lot. Built in speech recognition is really cool too, assuming it's implemented well. Speech recognition is overrated though. I hope there won't be a Clippy type creature constantly asking me, "Would you like to use your microphone to write this email?"
- "Graphics cards will have to produce results within a very small margin of error to be considered DX10 compliant, so developers shouldn't have to worry about the same operation producing different visuals on different cards." I'll believe that when I see it, pun intended.
- "There are lots of backup utilities for Windows XP, and most of the good ones cost money. Vista will offer a built-in backup utility, where you can perform manual backups or restoration of folders or entire drives, or automate backup scheduling. You should be able to backup your files to CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, internal or external hard drives, or even other computers on your local network." If it's better than the one included with XP I'll be happy. Although it sounds very similar to XP's backup utility.
- I suppose Paint will still be included with Vista?
- The UI... ah the UI. Glass/Aero look like they might be cool for a week, but after that it will just be another resource hog. The sidebar might be cool, especially since there will be so many people making widgets. I can't wait for widget viruses/worms though!
- The "Security security security" section had me rolling my eyes. First, the built-in security can't be that great if Microsoft is already planning a subscription-only security service for Vista. There will be viruses/worms/trojans for Vista, plain and simple. There will always be holes. I just hope these new security features won't give people a false sense of absolute security.
- Should you upgrade? Well, you will have to eventually, if you plan to stay in the Windows World. Do I want to? No, not really. I could not wait for XP to be released, because it was such a big improvement over previous versions. But Vista seems, to me, to be a collection of cool little toys that Microsoft is hoping, when combined, will be a top-notch OS. I am considering a Mac for the first time in a long time, and Linux is almost ready for my consideration as my main workstation.
If you want to display HD-DVD or BluRay content on ANY operating system (not just Vista) you will need to buy a new HDCP monitor. Don't blame Microsoft for DRM put in place by other companies.
Oh sorry, I meant to add this to the end of my previous post:
/joke
Oh please! Am I the only one who thinks it's a carbon copy of Gentoo 2005.9.9a?
And you guys criticize Microsoft for not innovating!
The only valid point that I thought the article made had to do with Word documents. It's no secret that interpretting Word documents is haphazard at best (just look at OpenOffice) and that standards need to be documented more thoroughly. Almost everything else in that article seemed like nit picking, and for once I feel bad for Microsoft.
They can't win: if they include Windows Media Player with their OS they get sued, if they don't include it they get hundreds of thousands of complaints from users and even more Microsoft bashing than before. If they include Active Directory with their OS they get sued, if the don't include it they get thousands of complaints from administrators and even more Microsoft bashing than before. The list goes on and on. As for Outlook being bundled with Office, I think that since Office is a suite consumers pay for (either in retail channels or through OEMs), Microsoft should be able to include what it wants to. Outlook is part of the suite, plain and simple.
Next week's top story: "TextPad Sues Microsoft for Bundling Notepad with its Windows Operating System"
Well duh, it's Craigslist. I can also find prostitutes, free porn and Madeline dolls.
Well yeah, in that case you would use it quite often :-)
I was talking more about the average Joe looking for sports scores or news. I think most people know where to go for their information, and search engines are just a last resort when they absolutely can't find what they need on the sites they know. I think Ruppert Murdoc said something to that effect. Although I think Murdoc is wrong about nearly everything else, I have to agree with him on that small point.
When I first read the headline I thought Shuffles had been slashed, as in removed from existence. Too bad they were talking about prices "slashing"...
Thanks Anonymous Coward. I'll get right on that...
I know: -1 Flamebait. But really, this is Slashdot. A story with such a minor reference to Windows going without a Windows-bashing comment for this long is just inexcusable.
...I'm booked solid for the next six months. Check back with me in August or September and I might be able to squeeze you in.