So, MSFT got caught doing something bad with Novell's IP and ended up being stuck with bunch of Linux licenses to sell. And after a couple legitimate high-profile license purchases they finally found a loophole in the contract. So now, instead of making lucrative sales on behalf of Novell to the high tech corporate businesses they opted for the most common denominator consumer market which by and large is the smallest piece of pie when it comes to computer/OS deployment. More so, this is the area most resistant to Linux adoption (think for how long were Linspire and Mandriva available on Walmart shelves and how much of a difference that made), and as such Microsoft's safest bet for preserving market dominance.
I suspect there will be some layoffs in the Novell legal department over this one...
"What a nice way to start your response, just like a typical Jack developer. Do you intend to become a professional some day?"
First off, I am not a JACK developer. Second, I use more than just Linux, and perhaps most importantly I do audio for living (and yes, use JACK in time-critical situations), so I guess that by definition qualifies me as a "professional."
"It's all working perfectly".
Well, yes, in a nutshell it works when configured right. On my hardware I have had no problems on 3 different laptops and subsequently their soundcards to generate 2ms latency in JACK without dropouts even while compiling another program. Naturally, this only happened after I configured my system properly (please see rationale for that in my previous post). Granted, I've never kept JACK session up for a week, but then again, I've never heard of a time-critical recording that had to last non-stop for that long.
"per-sample processing is the alternative despite the overhead"
Can't you see how oxymoronic this statement is? This is *not* an alternative on any desktop OS currently in existence. Dedicated hardware, perhaps yes, but not a desktop OS. Today's kernels are not capable of delivering this consistently (apart from RTLinux kernel which is used for specialized hardware-oriented tasks), the overhead is not manageable with the current computing power, and the hardware latency is not designed to harness this, thus even if it was feasible it would be superfluous. So, no. This is not an alternative, so don't waste everyone's time clouding the issue more than it has already been with your misinformed FUD.
"variable-buffer processing is another"
Well, as Paul mentioned, you are either a genius or are still not getting it. There is no commercial product that does this kind of an approach simply because it is:
1) too much work for too little gain 2) has serious architectural/overhead problems 3) defeats the whole concept of what JACK/ASIO/Rewire/etc. stands for
Now, if you happen to know something that no one else in the industry does, it may be a good idea design this thing you know so well of because if it truly is what you are suggesting it is, it could make you a hell of a profit. In the meantime, I'll stick to JACK.
"I obviously meant "requires hard RT to work without continuous XRUNs""
JACK works without RT and without XRUNS provided you increase base latency. So, yes, it can work without hard RT and at the same time not have continuous XRUNs. This is the nature of the beast on any OS and using any of the software audio solutions which provide JACK-like functionality. OS prioritizes its processes and if a process is non-realtime, it will be attended to less often. As such you need to provide it a larger window within which the process can remain unattended without causing it to have dropouts. This is not a Linux-only issue, but rather a universal problem in the world of computing.
"XRUNs are the *norm* on RT-enabled Jack on all types of machines"
See my comments above. You are clearly not capable of configuring your system right as I've had no such problems myself, *after* my system was configured properly.
"It's not possible to hold a rational discussion if you're intent on acting like a fanboy wishing only to deflect criticism rather than to make continual improvements."
Oh, so you want a rational discussion? How for starters you go read some of the online how-tos and configure your system right before making pompous statements without substance? And then if you are truly a genius who has just discovered a new and better way of doing audio, perhaps provide at least conceptual solution as to how will this ingenious server maintain sample-accuracy while providing the "slack" you are advocating. Once you do that, I will be much more keen on listening to what you have to say.
"We are perfect" is clearly the standard MO in Jack audio circles. So be it. Don't complain when professionals laugh at you though, despite your claim that "We rock".
No one said anything about being perfect. But then again, you do not see me go around talking shit without having acquired either the necessary credentials or the critical experience to do so.
You sir, are either ignorant fool, a troll general, or a total idiot. As other reply clearly suggests, JACK offers -nperiods or simply -n flag which allows exactly what you are looking for. Currently, JACK technologically speaking is ahead of anything else out there in terms of sample-accurate sync, audio I/O resource sharing, and low latency.
"delay model is buffersize-based"
In audio, is there any other model *if* you wish to maintain sample-accurate sync which is criticial for pro-audio work?
"and so it requires *HARD* realtime to work"
No it doesn't. You can run JACK with or without -rt flag.
"which simply isn't what the standard realtime module in 2.6 and special patches give you"
History teaches us that there is no such thing as the ultimate solution that meets all needs and is fit for all purposes. There is no such vehicle which can be a sports car, a family van, an all-terrain vehicle, a bus, a truck, limo, and a bulldozer. Each car has its purpose and thus its disadvantages. The same is with kernels. This becomes especially the case when you go into extreme scenarios, i.e. ~2ms latency in the audio world. For instance, OSX is a well-rounded OS which offers (apart from other benefits) a relatively good audio latency. However, attemtps at getting extremely low audio latency is pretty much a lesson in futility.
"You *can* still get Jack to work perfectly with 2ms latency (and hundreds of people do), but only with extreme care about what applications you're running and with the use of fast top-end audio hardware,"
Another troll. JACK can run real-time on a crummy laptop soundcard as well as pro-audio hardware with the same results. If a card is especially crummy sometimes extremely low buffer size will not work due to hardware limitations. Also unreasonably large buffers will usually not work on many soundcards, but trying to do so would be stupid anyhow. If you want big buffers and no sample-accurate sync, why not use the enchant ESD instead?
"to provide vastly more timing slack"
Why would you want that? Are you interested in having your apps' audio output drift from each other? How about Propellerhead's Rewire? Does it allow this? Again, if you are looking for a crappy solution, use a crappy solution. Don't bitch how something not geared towards your needs does not meet your needs.
I will give you a credit for saying that achieving XRUN-free and low latency situation is not easy. However, this is not due to flawed design in JACK but rather a flaw in how other concurrently running software is abusing kernel spinlocks, especially proprietary drivers (i.e. ATI and NVIDIA) which we have no ability to alter other than not use them (something that in most situations means disabling of 3D acceleration). But again, this is not because JACK is flawed, rather because the offending software makers are doing things they shouldn't.
If you are refering to those pathetic 2 sentences which can be summarized as "Zune sucks because it is more expensive than a Toshiba and not enough like iPod, unlike nano-like Sansa" then, yes, you are right to state that article did *mention* other players but their comparison/context is so shitty, instead of calling it journalism, it's called a word-turd-stew spread accross a webpage canvas.
The interesting thing is that even though many think first-gen Zune is not that good (and therefore, apart its from the inflamatory-turd-instead-of-real-content character, their thoughts are in sync with this article), this author has managed to introduce so much bias that his article has lost any credibility...
Before you head bursts from an acute case of fanboy-ism, please note that sound quality-wise Creative devices have been repeatedly rated above Apple's. Why? Because Apple currently has no incentive to make things radically better (unlike its underdog competitors). Most of iPods have had incremental if not cosmetic facelifts in the recent revisions. As far as the iRiver is concerned, while its current offering is lacking, iRiver H1xx series are to this day reigning champion of features and sound quality (please notice I did not mention form factor/sex appeal/whatever). Don't believe me? Most pro-audio colleagues as well as sound connoiseurs to this day seek to buy this discontinued model due to its high quality sound output and more importantly CD-quality recording feature which includes also optical I/O. On top of that it also has a user-replaceable battery and hard drive so that you are not stuck in the "do-it-the-way-Steve/Bill-wants-you-to" wonderland.
So, yes, an objective comparison of features (not "everyone's-got-one-so-I-ought-to-have-one-too" commmon denominator approach often used when reviewing OSs by comparing it to Windows, or as is the case here comparing an mp3 player solely to an iPod).
Not only does Linux have a number of start-up themes, but also, judging from the number of downloads, there is a genuine community interest in them as well. For instance, see:
Zealotry aside (FWIW, I am a Linux advocate although I use all three platforms mentioned here), the businesses are not "scared" to use Linux and/or OSX, they don't want to due to a simple reason that APIs in Linux and surprisingly enough OSX are moving targets which constantly break stuff left and right. Granted, this is not accross the board, but it is prominent enough to affect the overall product and warrant a significant rise in TCO. Case in point, I purchased an $800 OSX software 1 month ago. Upon installing it, it turned out to be a PowerPC-only application which surprisingly ran quite well under Rossetta in 10.4.7 (especially considering that it was altivec optimized). Then came the 10.4.8 and suddenly my application icon was crossed out saying this application is not supported. So, now I either have to wait for the original software makers to release an update (which they've been promising for some time but nothing has shipped yet and there is a lingering suspicion that in the end I'll have to pay for it), or use my new software as an $800 paperweight... Either way, I am losing in productivity and/or money.
Now if you consider how many times did the Apple platform switch in the recent years and how much overhead has that generated for the Apple third-party software manufacturers, not to mention how many API changes have taken place since 10.0, you'll quickly realize that Apple platform is almost as "enthusiast" as Linux. OTOH, whether you like it or not, XP in 2006 can run software made in 1995 without any problems whatsoever. All this means that businesses can get more mileage from their custom solutions and hence the market share disparity...
Had the AV software makers had user interests in their minds, most of the virii could've been prevented through simple and succinct prompts which would warn idiot users as to what they were about to do. In other words, if the AV makers wanted to make honest living they would've incorporated an "educational" component to their bloatware. However, being for-profit endeavors, they simply turned in reactive repositories of past threats, as that warranted continuous cash-flow. SP2 in that respect was three times the AV software any of these ever were. I, for one, am very glad to see these blood-sucking fuckers go...
OTOH, there are those who do have a moral agenda, i.e. AVG anti-virus suite which has always been and continues to be free and is ironically the least bloated of them all...
It is rather obvious what your problem is. You are probably running a resident program (this may be even something as benign as Office update or something similar that came bundled with one of your software packages) which has a memory leak. Windows itself has not such a problem since early Beta. It would be probably wise to check on latest updates not only for Windows but also for Office and other software packages. Also, please note that Dreamweaver is a nice concept, but a very poor implementation app (i.e. the app totally hangs while trying to connect to ftp, so if you are offline, you can forget about Dreamweaver for the next couple of minutes unless you want to resort to the three-finger-salute), so it will likely be sluggish no matter what kind of computer you use. I'd also drop Norton crap and get the free AVG anti-virus software, it is much less intrusive and heck, you certainly can't beat the price.
As far as the infection is concerned, I wouldn't exclude that just yet, since other computers that may be inside your domain (and therefore unaffected by the external firewall) may infect your computer... Also, think if you had ever used your USB flash drive, floppy, and/or other stuff on another machine and then hooked it up on your machine...
Finally, sometimes slowdowns are a direct result of a misconfigured motherboard (although I've never seen them deteriorating over time as you've suggested).
What's wrong with this picture: a company (granted, not with much of a positive reputation) tries to minimize rampant piracy by encouraging validation of your purchased license. In return you get 5 years worth of free updates plus additional software, which although of dubious value is still free as in beer (i.e. Security Center, Firewall, Malicious Software Removal, etc.). Does Windows have tons of problems? Yes. Is it totally crappy? Hell. no. Is this move something to bitch about? Absolutely not. People especially from the Apple camp should hold their tongues as even though OSX is a lot less prone to exploits (it's not that simple but for the sake of conserving valuable bandwidth, let's leave it for the time being as such), since OSX release in 2001, if users wanted to keep-up with updates, we had to dish out $100/year for every incremental update since (and some of which were touting bug fixes as one of "hundreds" of new features). All in all, we are talking about another ~$500.00 since year 2001. Now, on Windows, yes one had to get anti-virus software et al, but most of that is, believe it or not, free (google for AVG anti-virus suite for instance). So, when the Vista comes out with a $400 price tag for the top enterprise package, I think that should still leave Windoze users with a nice Franklin smiling in their pockets. Now, as far as security and virii go, that's yet to be seen...
All that being said, I've written this post on my triple-booting MBP. And just for the record: after having dealt for many years with all of them, I have to admit that I hate Windows, OSX, and Linux with passion (ok, Linux less so simply due to its philosophical supremacy), despite the fact that (or should I perhaps say because?) I use all three on a more-or-less daily basis...
It's hard to be "wrong" when you speak from personal experience, especially when the numbers do not stack up (hundreds of student users vs. your mom), but I guess if you say so...
I generally would not put much weight into anecdotal examples with a relatively brief history. I personally triple-boot my MBP after dealing with dual-boot machines since 1998 and I cannot tell you how tiring this has become--at this point I think I hate every OS under the Sun, simply because every single one of them has something valuable to offer, yet none of them do it all. As I mentioned earlier Parallales et al do not cut it in any more specialized situation (which most of them usually are, unlike your example which is unusually trivial) in which one cannot get reliable operation needless to mention total lack of decent accelerated audio/video support (no, I do not mean games, but rather specialized multimedia needs, and yes, there is such a thing as "accelerated" audio, although it is not always referred to it as such).
Even in your case, I would be curious how your mom will feel a year from now knowing that she has to reboot her machine just to do one trivial thing (which, as I mentioned earlier is truly trivial in comparison with many other things). Bear in mind that she is the only one using this machine which vastly simplifies things as well, rather than having a student/user come to you and say, "where is my start button? the only thing I see is a " and the next thing you know they forcefully powercycle the machine thinking that'll fix it...
Considering that there are a number of posts suggesting that the Boot camp will promote switching...
After having managed a number of labs (some multi-OS, some OS-specific), I can tell you both from the maintenance and user perspectives, dual-booting will never make anyone a "switcher." If anything it will just end-up being a frustration to those who are partial to one of the OSs involved. As for those who are not very computer savvy, they will end-up frustrating tech support and vice versa. Boot camp is nothing more than a proof-of-concept idea and a marketing ploy targetting the geeky community. Beyond that, adoption will be spotty at best (that is not to say that there won't be adopters, but simply there won't be enough of it to warrant this move as a catalyst for winning over a large market share). Ultimately, the only way you can make multi-platform labs "just work" is to have dedicated machines for each os (parallels et al do not cut it if you need specialized systems since most of the virtualization options usually do not support several important hardware layers)...
I must agree with the first comment that the whole thing is anything but revolutionary as even the common Dock (a.k.a. taskbar) has been around for many years in KDE and I also believe in Gnome. Heck, even XP has had, in addition to third-party solutions, a native applet that does exactly that for quite some time (although obviously with a lot less eye-candy). Personally, I prefer Xgl's implementation (http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/)which has a single desktop wrapped around 4 faces of a cube (this can be configured to use more than 4, of course). Not only do you not have to disengage from the desktop view to move windows around (you can use small viewport which is in the bottom right corner by default and in which all windows are visually represented), but the windows can coexist on two spaces at once (see screenshots on the link provided). This in and of itself feels a lot more organic to me than the constant switching back and forth between two views.
Well, we all know just how long Vista has been in development:-), so at least for once they can use this emarrasing fact to their advantage... IIRC, first mention of its inclusion was very early on when they demoed the power of the new Aero interface.
AFAIK, Vista is to implement something original (for a change) regarding resolution woes mentioned in the article, namely Aero will always maintain the same size ratio among widget on the desktop no matter what is the desktop resolution. The widgets will be simply spread across more pixels. This, to the best of my knowledge has never been implemented before, yet is seems like the best logical next step that fosters cross-desktop standardization of look'n'feel and I am honestly surprised to see that OS X has not tackled this issue yet (needless to mention that in the light of this argument the "Redmond photocopying joke" from the recent WWDC looks somewhat overrated).
If I had bought a Dell and something went wrong (and lets not kid ourselves, every company has issues occassionally), it would have taken ages to get the part fixed
Wrong. I had a similar thing with a Dell and not only was the guy coming to *my* house to fix it within 24 hours but after having 2 different issues go bad on a refurb notebook, no less, they replaced it with one that was twice as fast CPU, memory, and GPU-wise. So, please stop the FUD... Apple, just like any other company is a money-making corporation that seeks to please its stockholders. If you think any other way than you are more naive than the common folks who got their computer from a local Best Buy.
Man, this is definitely one of those headlines that does not pay to skim over (although I guess at least either way it manages to grab your attention)...
I've had reports from a close colleague of mine that similar projects were researched before by the US airforce. Granted, targets were not incoming rockets, but ironically it was the oxygen supply which was provided to the enemy pilots via a small tube. This was in part due to inefficiency of older day lasers which had to be carried in huge airplanes which stored immense chemical tanks that powered a single laser (one such airplane can be seen at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Dayton, OH). So, a huge airplane was flown in an attempt to cut such a tube by melting the cockpit window and cutting of the oxygen supply on a supersonic jet. If you ask me, this was more of a madness than sci-fi...
Slashdot Mirror
So, MSFT got caught doing something bad with Novell's IP and ended up being stuck with bunch of Linux licenses to sell. And after a couple legitimate high-profile license purchases they finally found a loophole in the contract. So now, instead of making lucrative sales on behalf of Novell to the high tech corporate businesses they opted for the most common denominator consumer market which by and large is the smallest piece of pie when it comes to computer/OS deployment. More so, this is the area most resistant to Linux adoption (think for how long were Linspire and Mandriva available on Walmart shelves and how much of a difference that made), and as such Microsoft's safest bet for preserving market dominance.
I suspect there will be some layoffs in the Novell legal department over this one...
"What a nice way to start your response, just like a typical Jack developer. Do you intend to become a professional some day?"
First off, I am not a JACK developer. Second, I use more than just Linux, and perhaps most importantly I do audio for living (and yes, use JACK in time-critical situations), so I guess that by definition qualifies me as a "professional."
"It's all working perfectly".
Well, yes, in a nutshell it works when configured right. On my hardware I have had no problems on 3 different laptops and subsequently their soundcards to generate 2ms latency in JACK without dropouts even while compiling another program. Naturally, this only happened after I configured my system properly (please see rationale for that in my previous post). Granted, I've never kept JACK session up for a week, but then again, I've never heard of a time-critical recording that had to last non-stop for that long.
"per-sample processing is the alternative despite the overhead"
Can't you see how oxymoronic this statement is? This is *not* an alternative on any desktop OS currently in existence. Dedicated hardware, perhaps yes, but not a desktop OS. Today's kernels are not capable of delivering this consistently (apart from RTLinux kernel which is used for specialized hardware-oriented tasks), the overhead is not manageable with the current computing power, and the hardware latency is not designed to harness this, thus even if it was feasible it would be superfluous. So, no. This is not an alternative, so don't waste everyone's time clouding the issue more than it has already been with your misinformed FUD.
"variable-buffer processing is another"
Well, as Paul mentioned, you are either a genius or are still not getting it. There is no commercial product that does this kind of an approach simply because it is:
1) too much work for too little gain
2) has serious architectural/overhead problems
3) defeats the whole concept of what JACK/ASIO/Rewire/etc. stands for
Now, if you happen to know something that no one else in the industry does, it may be a good idea design this thing you know so well of because if it truly is what you are suggesting it is, it could make you a hell of a profit. In the meantime, I'll stick to JACK.
"I obviously meant "requires hard RT to work without continuous XRUNs""
JACK works without RT and without XRUNS provided you increase base latency. So, yes, it can work without hard RT and at the same time not have continuous XRUNs. This is the nature of the beast on any OS and using any of the software audio solutions which provide JACK-like functionality. OS prioritizes its processes and if a process is non-realtime, it will be attended to less often. As such you need to provide it a larger window within which the process can remain unattended without causing it to have dropouts. This is not a Linux-only issue, but rather a universal problem in the world of computing.
"XRUNs are the *norm* on RT-enabled Jack on all types of machines"
See my comments above. You are clearly not capable of configuring your system right as I've had no such problems myself, *after* my system was configured properly.
"It's not possible to hold a rational discussion if you're intent on acting like a fanboy wishing only to deflect criticism rather than to make continual improvements."
Oh, so you want a rational discussion? How for starters you go read some of the online how-tos and configure your system right before making pompous statements without substance? And then if you are truly a genius who has just discovered a new and better way of doing audio, perhaps provide at least conceptual solution as to how will this ingenious server maintain sample-accuracy while providing the "slack" you are advocating. Once you do that, I will be much more keen on listening to what you have to say.
"We are perfect" is clearly the standard MO in Jack audio circles. So be it. Don't complain when professionals laugh at you though, despite your claim that "We rock".
No one said anything about being perfect. But then again, you do not see me go around talking shit without having acquired either the necessary credentials or the critical experience to do so.
You sir, are either ignorant fool, a troll general, or a total idiot. As other reply clearly suggests, JACK offers -nperiods or simply -n flag which allows exactly what you are looking for. Currently, JACK technologically speaking is ahead of anything else out there in terms of sample-accurate sync, audio I/O resource sharing, and low latency.
"delay model is buffersize-based"
In audio, is there any other model *if* you wish to maintain sample-accurate sync which is criticial for pro-audio work?
"and so it requires *HARD* realtime to work"
No it doesn't. You can run JACK with or without -rt flag.
"which simply isn't what the standard realtime module in 2.6 and special patches give you"
History teaches us that there is no such thing as the ultimate solution that meets all needs and is fit for all purposes. There is no such vehicle which can be a sports car, a family van, an all-terrain vehicle, a bus, a truck, limo, and a bulldozer. Each car has its purpose and thus its disadvantages. The same is with kernels. This becomes especially the case when you go into extreme scenarios, i.e. ~2ms latency in the audio world. For instance, OSX is a well-rounded OS which offers (apart from other benefits) a relatively good audio latency. However, attemtps at getting extremely low audio latency is pretty much a lesson in futility.
"You *can* still get Jack to work perfectly with 2ms latency (and hundreds of people do), but only with extreme care about what applications you're running and with the use of fast top-end audio hardware,"
Another troll. JACK can run real-time on a crummy laptop soundcard as well as pro-audio hardware with the same results. If a card is especially crummy sometimes extremely low buffer size will not work due to hardware limitations. Also unreasonably large buffers will usually not work on many soundcards, but trying to do so would be stupid anyhow. If you want big buffers and no sample-accurate sync, why not use the enchant ESD instead?
"to provide vastly more timing slack"
Why would you want that? Are you interested in having your apps' audio output drift from each other? How about Propellerhead's Rewire? Does it allow this? Again, if you are looking for a crappy solution, use a crappy solution. Don't bitch how something not geared towards your needs does not meet your needs.
I will give you a credit for saying that achieving XRUN-free and low latency situation is not easy. However, this is not due to flawed design in JACK but rather a flaw in how other concurrently running software is abusing kernel spinlocks, especially proprietary drivers (i.e. ATI and NVIDIA) which we have no ability to alter other than not use them (something that in most situations means disabling of 3D acceleration). But again, this is not because JACK is flawed, rather because the offending software makers are doing things they shouldn't.
this is my BOOMSTICK!
Three words:
About f***ing time!
God knows how many times I could've used this in the past...
If you are refering to those pathetic 2 sentences which can be summarized as "Zune sucks because it is more expensive than a Toshiba and not enough like iPod, unlike nano-like Sansa" then, yes, you are right to state that article did *mention* other players but their comparison/context is so shitty, instead of calling it journalism, it's called a word-turd-stew spread accross a webpage canvas.
The interesting thing is that even though many think first-gen Zune is not that good (and therefore, apart its from the inflamatory-turd-instead-of-real-content character, their thoughts are in sync with this article), this author has managed to introduce so much bias that his article has lost any credibility...
Before you head bursts from an acute case of fanboy-ism, please note that sound quality-wise Creative devices have been repeatedly rated above Apple's. Why? Because Apple currently has no incentive to make things radically better (unlike its underdog competitors). Most of iPods have had incremental if not cosmetic facelifts in the recent revisions. As far as the iRiver is concerned, while its current offering is lacking, iRiver H1xx series are to this day reigning champion of features and sound quality (please notice I did not mention form factor/sex appeal/whatever). Don't believe me? Most pro-audio colleagues as well as sound connoiseurs to this day seek to buy this discontinued model due to its high quality sound output and more importantly CD-quality recording feature which includes also optical I/O. On top of that it also has a user-replaceable battery and hard drive so that you are not stuck in the "do-it-the-way-Steve/Bill-wants-you-to" wonderland.
So, yes, an objective comparison of features (not "everyone's-got-one-so-I-ought-to-have-one-too" commmon denominator approach often used when reviewing OSs by comparing it to Windows, or as is the case here comparing an mp3 player solely to an iPod).
...and from the looks of it, it appears to make people go insane... http://www.threebrain.com/
...having said this exact thing only a couple days ago even though I was totally oblivious to this blog post that obviously predates my comment (see http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=205851&c id=16794030), what a coincidence indeed :-)
Not only does Linux have a number of start-up themes, but also, judging from the number of downloads, there is a genuine community interest in them as well. For instance, see:
1 2584
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=
There are more here:
http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=25
(granted, some of them are bland copies of XP/OSX themes, but there are also some that are very much worth downloading)
Zealotry aside (FWIW, I am a Linux advocate although I use all three platforms mentioned here), the businesses are not "scared" to use Linux and/or OSX, they don't want to due to a simple reason that APIs in Linux and surprisingly enough OSX are moving targets which constantly break stuff left and right. Granted, this is not accross the board, but it is prominent enough to affect the overall product and warrant a significant rise in TCO. Case in point, I purchased an $800 OSX software 1 month ago. Upon installing it, it turned out to be a PowerPC-only application which surprisingly ran quite well under Rossetta in 10.4.7 (especially considering that it was altivec optimized). Then came the 10.4.8 and suddenly my application icon was crossed out saying this application is not supported. So, now I either have to wait for the original software makers to release an update (which they've been promising for some time but nothing has shipped yet and there is a lingering suspicion that in the end I'll have to pay for it), or use my new software as an $800 paperweight... Either way, I am losing in productivity and/or money.
Now if you consider how many times did the Apple platform switch in the recent years and how much overhead has that generated for the Apple third-party software manufacturers, not to mention how many API changes have taken place since 10.0, you'll quickly realize that Apple platform is almost as "enthusiast" as Linux. OTOH, whether you like it or not, XP in 2006 can run software made in 1995 without any problems whatsoever. All this means that businesses can get more mileage from their custom solutions and hence the market share disparity...
Had the AV software makers had user interests in their minds, most of the virii could've been prevented through simple and succinct prompts which would warn idiot users as to what they were about to do. In other words, if the AV makers wanted to make honest living they would've incorporated an "educational" component to their bloatware. However, being for-profit endeavors, they simply turned in reactive repositories of past threats, as that warranted continuous cash-flow. SP2 in that respect was three times the AV software any of these ever were. I, for one, am very glad to see these blood-sucking fuckers go...
OTOH, there are those who do have a moral agenda, i.e. AVG anti-virus suite which has always been and continues to be free and is ironically the least bloated of them all...
... a death sentence to the Weird Al's MySpace page to me.
...wouldn't it be amusing if someone passed by such a bilboard with a bluetooth-based vibrator?
It is rather obvious what your problem is. You are probably running a resident program (this may be even something as benign as Office update or something similar that came bundled with one of your software packages) which has a memory leak. Windows itself has not such a problem since early Beta. It would be probably wise to check on latest updates not only for Windows but also for Office and other software packages. Also, please note that Dreamweaver is a nice concept, but a very poor implementation app (i.e. the app totally hangs while trying to connect to ftp, so if you are offline, you can forget about Dreamweaver for the next couple of minutes unless you want to resort to the three-finger-salute), so it will likely be sluggish no matter what kind of computer you use. I'd also drop Norton crap and get the free AVG anti-virus software, it is much less intrusive and heck, you certainly can't beat the price.
As far as the infection is concerned, I wouldn't exclude that just yet, since other computers that may be inside your domain (and therefore unaffected by the external firewall) may infect your computer... Also, think if you had ever used your USB flash drive, floppy, and/or other stuff on another machine and then hooked it up on your machine...
Finally, sometimes slowdowns are a direct result of a misconfigured motherboard (although I've never seen them deteriorating over time as you've suggested).
What's wrong with this picture: a company (granted, not with much of a positive reputation) tries to minimize rampant piracy by encouraging validation of your purchased license. In return you get 5 years worth of free updates plus additional software, which although of dubious value is still free as in beer (i.e. Security Center, Firewall, Malicious Software Removal, etc.). Does Windows have tons of problems? Yes. Is it totally crappy? Hell. no. Is this move something to bitch about? Absolutely not. People especially from the Apple camp should hold their tongues as even though OSX is a lot less prone to exploits (it's not that simple but for the sake of conserving valuable bandwidth, let's leave it for the time being as such), since OSX release in 2001, if users wanted to keep-up with updates, we had to dish out $100/year for every incremental update since (and some of which were touting bug fixes as one of "hundreds" of new features). All in all, we are talking about another ~$500.00 since year 2001. Now, on Windows, yes one had to get anti-virus software et al, but most of that is, believe it or not, free (google for AVG anti-virus suite for instance). So, when the Vista comes out with a $400 price tag for the top enterprise package, I think that should still leave Windoze users with a nice Franklin smiling in their pockets. Now, as far as security and virii go, that's yet to be seen...
All that being said, I've written this post on my triple-booting MBP. And just for the record: after having dealt for many years with all of them, I have to admit that I hate Windows, OSX, and Linux with passion (ok, Linux less so simply due to its philosophical supremacy), despite the fact that (or should I perhaps say because?) I use all three on a more-or-less daily basis...
It's hard to be "wrong" when you speak from personal experience, especially when the numbers do not stack up (hundreds of student users vs. your mom), but I guess if you say so...
I generally would not put much weight into anecdotal examples with a relatively brief history. I personally triple-boot my MBP after dealing with dual-boot machines since 1998 and I cannot tell you how tiring this has become--at this point I think I hate every OS under the Sun, simply because every single one of them has something valuable to offer, yet none of them do it all. As I mentioned earlier Parallales et al do not cut it in any more specialized situation (which most of them usually are, unlike your example which is unusually trivial) in which one cannot get reliable operation needless to mention total lack of decent accelerated audio/video support (no, I do not mean games, but rather specialized multimedia needs, and yes, there is such a thing as "accelerated" audio, although it is not always referred to it as such).
Even in your case, I would be curious how your mom will feel a year from now knowing that she has to reboot her machine just to do one trivial thing (which, as I mentioned earlier is truly trivial in comparison with many other things). Bear in mind that she is the only one using this machine which vastly simplifies things as well, rather than having a student/user come to you and say, "where is my start button? the only thing I see is a " and the next thing you know they forcefully powercycle the machine thinking that'll fix it...
Considering that there are a number of posts suggesting that the Boot camp will promote switching...
After having managed a number of labs (some multi-OS, some OS-specific), I can tell you both from the maintenance and user perspectives, dual-booting will never make anyone a "switcher." If anything it will just end-up being a frustration to those who are partial to one of the OSs involved. As for those who are not very computer savvy, they will end-up frustrating tech support and vice versa. Boot camp is nothing more than a proof-of-concept idea and a marketing ploy targetting the geeky community. Beyond that, adoption will be spotty at best (that is not to say that there won't be adopters, but simply there won't be enough of it to warrant this move as a catalyst for winning over a large market share). Ultimately, the only way you can make multi-platform labs "just work" is to have dedicated machines for each os (parallels et al do not cut it if you need specialized systems since most of the virtualization options usually do not support several important hardware layers)...
I must agree with the first comment that the whole thing is anything but revolutionary as even the common Dock (a.k.a. taskbar) has been around for many years in KDE and I also believe in Gnome. Heck, even XP has had, in addition to third-party solutions, a native applet that does exactly that for quite some time (although obviously with a lot less eye-candy). Personally, I prefer Xgl's implementation (http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/)which has a single desktop wrapped around 4 faces of a cube (this can be configured to use more than 4, of course). Not only do you not have to disengage from the desktop view to move windows around (you can use small viewport which is in the bottom right corner by default and in which all windows are visually represented), but the windows can coexist on two spaces at once (see screenshots on the link provided). This in and of itself feels a lot more organic to me than the constant switching back and forth between two views.
Well, we all know just how long Vista has been in development :-), so at least for once they can use this emarrasing fact to their advantage... IIRC, first mention of its inclusion was very early on when they demoed the power of the new Aero interface.
AFAIK, Vista is to implement something original (for a change) regarding resolution woes mentioned in the article, namely Aero will always maintain the same size ratio among widget on the desktop no matter what is the desktop resolution. The widgets will be simply spread across more pixels. This, to the best of my knowledge has never been implemented before, yet is seems like the best logical next step that fosters cross-desktop standardization of look'n'feel and I am honestly surprised to see that OS X has not tackled this issue yet (needless to mention that in the light of this argument the "Redmond photocopying joke" from the recent WWDC looks somewhat overrated).
Rollin' rollin' rollin'...
AAPL stock is fallin'...
Move 'em out
Move 'em out
Move 'em out
etc.
If I had bought a Dell and something went wrong (and lets not kid ourselves, every company has issues occassionally), it would have taken ages to get the part fixed
Wrong. I had a similar thing with a Dell and not only was the guy coming to *my* house to fix it within 24 hours but after having 2 different issues go bad on a refurb notebook, no less, they replaced it with one that was twice as fast CPU, memory, and GPU-wise. So, please stop the FUD... Apple, just like any other company is a money-making corporation that seeks to please its stockholders. If you think any other way than you are more naive than the common folks who got their computer from a local Best Buy.
Man, this is definitely one of those headlines that does not pay to skim over (although I guess at least either way it manages to grab your attention)...
I've had reports from a close colleague of mine that similar projects were researched before by the US airforce. Granted, targets were not incoming rockets, but ironically it was the oxygen supply which was provided to the enemy pilots via a small tube. This was in part due to inefficiency of older day lasers which had to be carried in huge airplanes which stored immense chemical tanks that powered a single laser (one such airplane can be seen at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Dayton, OH). So, a huge airplane was flown in an attempt to cut such a tube by melting the cockpit window and cutting of the oxygen supply on a supersonic jet. If you ask me, this was more of a madness than sci-fi...