I haven't delved deeper into those things because I *don't need* those things. I'm just your average ordinary user. Well, I'm more than that actually, but I still don't need those things, so Joe Six Pack is almost surely not going to need them either. Which was the entire point.
Meeting Centre? I'm not collaborating with anyone.
IPv6? I just get a plain old IP address from my router. And from the looks of it, that was available for XP anyway.
Firewall? After spending some time with that thing last night, it's sure hard to see it's improved. And the only reason I needed to do that is that Vista has busted most firewalls, and a huge chunk of them haven't yet got themselves working under Vista. This article details some of the madness involved in simply getting one program blocked from calling home. Check out the screen gallery page by page, it's really a hoot. (They never did manage to block it.)
To a huge chunk of the population, all Vista will end up being is a new face. I'm not bitching about the appearance changes, I'm just pointing out that without those, a ton of users wouldn't even know they weren't using XP any more.
Wow. Folks actually switch windows to see if something is done? I don't think I've done a "click the window, ooh it's not done yet, click the old window" in my life.
If I'm burning a cd, I know how long it takes, so I won't come back to it until I know when it's done. If I'm scanning, I again know how long it takes. Regardless, they'll make a noise when they're done, or the taskbar will flash if something needs attention. If it's a video, then obviously it's paused until I come back to it.
Ok, I can see how some of you could use that. But it seems like impatience to me. You end up wasting time checking if things are done. So this helps you waste less time. Personally, I'd rather keep working, than spend my time checking.
I checked it out, I really did. My brother has been crowing Mac for years, so when it came time for a new laptop, it was at least on the list.
The lack of a decent screen size at the low end really hurts. I was looking at a $1200 CDN Dell, or a $2200 Macbook Pro to get the same 15.4 screen. At the same price, the Macbook delivered 37% the hard drive space (60 vs 160 gigs), 512 megs instead of 2 gigs, and a 13 inch screen instead of 15.4.
So it pretty much turned into an instant pass. No way I'm going to spend at least $1000, maybe as high as $2000 to get roughly an equivalent machine.
And exactly what features would that be? Seriously.
I've been using Vista for a few weeks now, came with my new laptop. There's been a single thing where I've thought "Hey, that's new, and really useful". And that's the search in the start menu. Everything else is just meh, or just a new face on an old item.
The taskbar preview is a perfect example. I move my mouse down to the taskbar to click on a folder, and a little thumbnail appears. A *useless* thumbnail. It doesn't do anything, or provide any more info than the folder icon and it's name did. It's just miscellaneous fluff. Same thing for the flip 3d thing. I don't even use it, just alt-tab the same as I've always done. Oooh, the start menu, that's different, it's now a circle instead of an elongated oval. Woohoo. Except it no longer scrolls in a useful manner. Until I turn off the new appearance, which makes the one useful thing disappear (the search). The sidebar? It's the same old stuff just on the side, instead of down at the bottom in the tray. A couple of new games.
And in exchange for these few new things, I get UAC that harasses me 20 times a day every time I do anything like open a folder or install a program. There's really nothing here, it's the emperors new clothes. The same old XP in a new face to hide it.
Literally, I have *zero* desire to install it on my other computer that came with XP.
Did you click my dell link, or just visit Dell US?
When I click the link I gave, I end up at Dell Canada, and the base 6400 laptop is $1249 CDN. Add $40 bucks for the 9 cell battery, and you're done at $1289 (nearly identical to my pretax price), which is around $1000 US. Dells are *always* on sale, every few days there's some sort of deal on their pages, that particular day I ordered the Complete Care was included, today it's the free upgrade to 2 gigs, etc.
If you ended up at Dell US and the E1505 ends up at $1700 US, well then, I guess you 'Merkins are being gouged out the ying yang.:)
I did a Pangolin, Core 2 T5600, 2 gigs ram, Intel GMA 950, 100 gig drive, dvd burner, 6 cell battery came to $1395 US, plus $60 to $70 shipping, plus possible duties and border fees. Somewhere around $1900 CDN after exchange and taxes.
A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Dell 6400, Core 2 T5600, 2 gigs ram, GeForce Go 7300 GS, 160 gig drive, dvd burner, 9 cell battery, Complete Care for $1468.32 CDN delivered, including shipping and after all taxes.
I haven't compared the US E1505, which is the same model as the 6400.
It doesn't even have to be about false positives. With the latest WGA crap, I can't download IE 7 (not that I want it), or Media Player, or more importantly, trust the system to get updates and bug fixes any more.
And it's even worse in Vista. So at that point, I may as well go to Linux, which will be the case when this machine gets retired.
Without the Blu ray, the PS3 would have done even worse than it is now. I believe a significant chunk of the sales have been to folks who primarily just use it for playing movies.
Couple bucks? I get a few hundred bucks difference, and that's also giving me integrated graphics instead of the dedicated I recently ordered from Dell, 60 gigs less hard drive space, and a smaller battery. Plus shipping and whatever border duties might apply.
I plan on trying Ubuntu on it, I'm just not going to pay more for the pleasure of doing so.
If I were already using his software legally, I'd be uninstalling the thing ASAP.
No way in hell I'd continue to use something with a bomb in it, when all it takes is one bug or me doing something to my system (like registry cleaning something I thought was benign) that it interprets incorrectly to blow up.
I've noticed that the propaganda machine is in full force right now for Blu Ray. Sony declares the "war over". Web sites galore are touting that Blu Ray is now dominating sales, when in reality they're basically equal. And here they take a miniscule difference and blow it up and make it seem important.
disclaimer: no dog in this hunt. Don't own either format, or even a high def tv.
That's garbage. Tech support reasons were hardly what was behind the AARD code.
First of all, the code *is* present in the final win.com. What's different is that they added a flag byte in the final version to control if the error message should appear or not. A one byte patch will make the "error" message re-appear in the final code. Basically, they patched around it once caught. In all likelihood, their lawyers figured out it wasn't a great idea.
Why did the code present a confusing bug like error message of "Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726" rather than a simple "MS-DOS not found" message? The code didn't even check for something *useful*, like checking the data structures to verify that they contain information they're going to need later.
And if this code was so benign, why was it using all the tricks that copy protection routines used, self modifying code, XOR encryption, anti-debugger tricks? Why spend developer hours *hiding* this code? They had nothing better to do? Time on their hands, Windows was finished, they're just waiting for the release date, so what the heck, let's try our hand at obfuscating some code for fun.
Three generations are gathered together at a reunion. The youngest is preparing dinner, a fine potroast. She takes the roast, dutifully cuts off each end of the roast as taught years ago by her mom, and puts it in the pan. She asks her mother "Mom, I never really understood that part, why do we always cut off the ends of the roast? It's perfectly good meat we're just throwing away."
And the mother responds, "I don't know really, I always do it because that's the way Grandma taught *me*". So they decide to go out into the living room, and ask Grandma. And she replies... "I used to cut the ends off so the damn roast so it would fit inside the pan, you idiots".
It is still the same old behaviour, but the physical constraints that legitimized that behaviour are now gone, and the behaviour should change accordingly.;)
I see this all the time in various ways. Online stores, software, you name it, various industries or designs clinging to behaviours that used to have physical limitations still doing things the same old way, even though they no longer have to.
My wife and I just raise our eyebrows and whisper "potroast" to each other.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be US only initially. ;)
I haven't delved deeper into those things because I *don't need* those things. I'm just your average ordinary user. Well, I'm more than that actually, but I still don't need those things, so Joe Six Pack is almost surely not going to need them either. Which was the entire point.
Meeting Centre? I'm not collaborating with anyone.IPv6? I just get a plain old IP address from my router. And from the looks of it, that was available for XP anyway.
Firewall? After spending some time with that thing last night, it's sure hard to see it's improved. And the only reason I needed to do that is that Vista has busted most firewalls, and a huge chunk of them haven't yet got themselves working under Vista. This article details some of the madness involved in simply getting one program blocked from calling home. Check out the screen gallery page by page, it's really a hoot. (They never did manage to block it.)
To a huge chunk of the population, all Vista will end up being is a new face. I'm not bitching about the appearance changes, I'm just pointing out that without those, a ton of users wouldn't even know they weren't using XP any more.
Wow. Folks actually switch windows to see if something is done? I don't think I've done a "click the window, ooh it's not done yet, click the old window" in my life.
If I'm burning a cd, I know how long it takes, so I won't come back to it until I know when it's done. If I'm scanning, I again know how long it takes. Regardless, they'll make a noise when they're done, or the taskbar will flash if something needs attention. If it's a video, then obviously it's paused until I come back to it.
Ok, I can see how some of you could use that. But it seems like impatience to me. You end up wasting time checking if things are done. So this helps you waste less time. Personally, I'd rather keep working, than spend my time checking.
I checked it out, I really did. My brother has been crowing Mac for years, so when it came time for a new laptop, it was at least on the list.
The lack of a decent screen size at the low end really hurts. I was looking at a $1200 CDN Dell, or a $2200 Macbook Pro to get the same 15.4 screen. At the same price, the Macbook delivered 37% the hard drive space (60 vs 160 gigs), 512 megs instead of 2 gigs, and a 13 inch screen instead of 15.4.
So it pretty much turned into an instant pass. No way I'm going to spend at least $1000, maybe as high as $2000 to get roughly an equivalent machine.
And exactly what features would that be? Seriously.
I've been using Vista for a few weeks now, came with my new laptop. There's been a single thing where I've thought "Hey, that's new, and really useful". And that's the search in the start menu. Everything else is just meh, or just a new face on an old item.
The taskbar preview is a perfect example. I move my mouse down to the taskbar to click on a folder, and a little thumbnail appears. A *useless* thumbnail. It doesn't do anything, or provide any more info than the folder icon and it's name did. It's just miscellaneous fluff. Same thing for the flip 3d thing. I don't even use it, just alt-tab the same as I've always done. Oooh, the start menu, that's different, it's now a circle instead of an elongated oval. Woohoo. Except it no longer scrolls in a useful manner. Until I turn off the new appearance, which makes the one useful thing disappear (the search). The sidebar? It's the same old stuff just on the side, instead of down at the bottom in the tray. A couple of new games.
And in exchange for these few new things, I get UAC that harasses me 20 times a day every time I do anything like open a folder or install a program. There's really nothing here, it's the emperors new clothes. The same old XP in a new face to hide it.
Literally, I have *zero* desire to install it on my other computer that came with XP.
It's as if I'm reading the Onion when I read that article.
I'm speechless.
Did you click my dell link, or just visit Dell US?
:)
When I click the link I gave, I end up at Dell Canada, and the base 6400 laptop is $1249 CDN. Add $40 bucks for the 9 cell battery, and you're done at $1289 (nearly identical to my pretax price), which is around $1000 US. Dells are *always* on sale, every few days there's some sort of deal on their pages, that particular day I ordered the Complete Care was included, today it's the free upgrade to 2 gigs, etc.
If you ended up at Dell US and the E1505 ends up at $1700 US, well then, I guess you 'Merkins are being gouged out the ying yang.
I did a Pangolin, Core 2 T5600, 2 gigs ram, Intel GMA 950, 100 gig drive, dvd burner, 6 cell battery came to $1395 US, plus $60 to $70 shipping, plus possible duties and border fees. Somewhere around $1900 CDN after exchange and taxes.
A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Dell 6400, Core 2 T5600, 2 gigs ram, GeForce Go 7300 GS, 160 gig drive, dvd burner, 9 cell battery, Complete Care for $1468.32 CDN delivered, including shipping and after all taxes.
I haven't compared the US E1505, which is the same model as the 6400.
It doesn't even have to be about false positives. With the latest WGA crap, I can't download IE 7 (not that I want it), or Media Player, or more importantly, trust the system to get updates and bug fixes any more.
And it's even worse in Vista. So at that point, I may as well go to Linux, which will be the case when this machine gets retired.
They've definitely pushed too hard.
Without the Blu ray, the PS3 would have done even worse than it is now. I believe a significant chunk of the sales have been to folks who primarily just use it for playing movies.
Couple bucks? I get a few hundred bucks difference, and that's also giving me integrated graphics instead of the dedicated I recently ordered from Dell, 60 gigs less hard drive space, and a smaller battery. Plus shipping and whatever border duties might apply.
I plan on trying Ubuntu on it, I'm just not going to pay more for the pleasure of doing so.
Exactly. Ain't it funny? They release good games, and they sell well. They release a crap game, and when it doesn't sell well it's because of piracy.
This is just the same old developer blame game we've seen hundreds of times before, blame anybody and everything for your own shortcomings.
Data types? In my day, all we had was text fields.
Yet.
It takes time for military developments to work their way into the private sector.
Geezus, we even had folks complaining about a *robot* who had a *nightmare* about suicide.
If I were already using his software legally, I'd be uninstalling the thing ASAP.
No way in hell I'd continue to use something with a bomb in it, when all it takes is one bug or me doing something to my system (like registry cleaning something I thought was benign) that it interprets incorrectly to blow up.
I was just agreeing with you. You said "Or is there something else" and I don't think there is, so I said 'not really'.
Not really.
I've noticed that the propaganda machine is in full force right now for Blu Ray. Sony declares the "war over". Web sites galore are touting that Blu Ray is now dominating sales, when in reality they're basically equal. And here they take a miniscule difference and blow it up and make it seem important.
disclaimer: no dog in this hunt. Don't own either format, or even a high def tv.
Not everyone. *cough* extended 'trial' period by downloading from unauthorized sources *cough*
That's garbage. Tech support reasons were hardly what was behind the AARD code.
First of all, the code *is* present in the final win.com. What's different is that they added a flag byte in the final version to control if the error message should appear or not. A one byte patch will make the "error" message re-appear in the final code. Basically, they patched around it once caught. In all likelihood, their lawyers figured out it wasn't a great idea.
Why did the code present a confusing bug like error message of "Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726" rather than a simple "MS-DOS not found" message? The code didn't even check for something *useful*, like checking the data structures to verify that they contain information they're going to need later.
And if this code was so benign, why was it using all the tricks that copy protection routines used, self modifying code, XOR encryption, anti-debugger tricks? Why spend developer hours *hiding* this code? They had nothing better to do? Time on their hands, Windows was finished, they're just waiting for the release date, so what the heck, let's try our hand at obfuscating some code for fun.
The real story.3D and real time? Aw fuck.
And what's with this "got progressively worse" stuff? Fallout 2 was almost as good as Fallout 1. Certainly not a disaster like they're implying.
Demon Seed redux?
Aw frickin' son of a bitch. I missed it! *argh* Looks like he had it for free download, but it's gone now.
I've been looking for that song for over 15 years.
I had found that page in the past, but all it had at that time was other folks like me, looking for the song. Thanks though, some good solid leads.
"Insanely Great" wasn't hyperbole, it was a humourous reference to Apple's old advertising campaign of the same name.
One of my favourite stories...
;)
Three generations are gathered together at a reunion. The youngest is preparing dinner, a fine potroast. She takes the roast, dutifully cuts off each end of the roast as taught years ago by her mom, and puts it in the pan. She asks her mother "Mom, I never really understood that part, why do we always cut off the ends of the roast? It's perfectly good meat we're just throwing away."
And the mother responds, "I don't know really, I always do it because that's the way Grandma taught *me*". So they decide to go out into the living room, and ask Grandma. And she replies... "I used to cut the ends off so the damn roast so it would fit inside the pan, you idiots".
It is still the same old behaviour, but the physical constraints that legitimized that behaviour are now gone, and the behaviour should change accordingly.
I see this all the time in various ways. Online stores, software, you name it, various industries or designs clinging to behaviours that used to have physical limitations still doing things the same old way, even though they no longer have to.
My wife and I just raise our eyebrows and whisper "potroast" to each other.