Did you read all of my post? I talked about "booting into windows by default" i.e. we would be using Windows primarily. When you boot into Windows on an Intel-based Mac there is ZERO difference from using Windows on a Gateway or Dell. Also, for Engineering we are looking at Mac Pro Workstations to replace the Dell/HP workstations they have now.
Because of the shift to Intel processors, Apple has been suggesting the possibility to our University (~ 12,000 users so on par with a medium-sized corporation) of pitching Apple as a "hardware" solution NOT an operating system. The idea being to put Imacs and Macbooks in the hands of everyone and just have them boot to Windows by default. Throw in a windows style mouse and keyboard and voila, there is no difference except you are running on nicer looking hardware.
Many will say "Apple is more expensive". Totally not true. Based on educational pricing we have been comparing what we can get to get a 20" or 24" iMac with 2GB ram and 3-year APP etc. vs equivalent machines/warranty/features from Gateway and Dell and guess what, Apple is CHEAPER. The same holds true for laptops as well. We can't see any reason why not to move to a dual-boot or Parallels based platform (and no the new EULAs dont affect those of us using Vista enterprise - virtualization is allowed). Why not view a high-end Apple machine as your Vista upgrade path? We are seriously thinking of doing this as a method to not only get new machines that can run Vista well (have been running Vista on my Macbook Pro with full Aero support since last summer!), but also allows us to more easily support a mixed platform environment so whoever needs/wants to run Mac or Windows applications can. This helps us out tremendously with applications such as R-25 and Banner for compatibility issues we've had with our Mac users and lets everyone use Final Cut Pro to do their video editing etc for the departments that need it. I see this is as a win-win situation, so please enlighten me as to the downside i'm not seeing.
Also, we have an Apple-certified service center (as well as Gateway certified) so we do on-site hardware support already so the support isn't an issue in our organization.
I'm not sure what the issue is here. Citizens entering the United States are expected to abide by our rules and regulations for entry (fairly draconian at this point i'm sure). How is it not fair that other countries not hold our citizens to the same standards?
Remember way back when when your parents (hopefully) told you that you have to suffer the consequences for your actions, well, there isn't a time limit on those consequences. We see at least once a year in the news that someone who committed a crime 30-40 years ago is finally arrested and punished for their crimes. Being barred entry unless you fill out some extra paperwork to another country is not what i'd call ridiculous. You can claim unconstitutionally cruel and unsual punishment because of the length to which you are punished for your crimes, but GUESS WHAT - nobody else in the world gives a flip about our constitution, they have their own set of rules by which we have to abide if we wish to travel there. Entry into another country is a priviledge granted by that country, not our right. They can choose to deny anyone they wish for any reason and we can whine and moan about it but that doesn't mean they can't do it.
Perhaps my views here are a tad too black and white as i'm sure there are special cases where the person convicted of said offense was innocent, but police agencies don't generally deal well with shades of grey.
Did anyone else just hear Madden's voice in their head at OP statement: "Seriously though, while a fun game is a fun game, a fun game with great graphics is even better"
Think i've watched too many Madden impersonations by Frank Caliendo..
My brother and his wife completed medical school over a year ago and are both Doctors now (still in residency). This is actually a major concern that has come up both during their time in medical school and now in their work at the hospital. My brother has related how numerous times people come in and try to self-diagnose their issues and suggest treatments even though they are almost always wrong about what they have!
If you've ever watched "House" when Dr. House is in the clinic and people are always telling him what they have, it may be done in an over the top humorous way but that sort of thing actually happens on a daily basis. Places like WebMD may be great for regular people to find out information about things, but its a real pain to the Doctors when people come in and say "Well I have some stomach pain and my head hurts so I must have appendicitis according to the symptoms I saw on WebMD!" or some other crazy diagnosis based on a few random symptoms (that could belong to any number of other more benign problems).
So yes, I think this is a huge issue and that the Pharmacy companies are really doing a dis-service to people when they convince them that this medicine is the next best thing and to "ask your Doctor about it!" because when they go in and want that medicine but are denied it because it is not appropriate for them or has too many negative interactions with existing medicines they are angry with the Doctor and think that they are "incompetent" somehow. Instead, they need to trust the fact that Doctors go through years of rigorous training followed by extensive exams to make sure they know what they are doing. I've watched as they both went through medical school and it is a LOT of work, they are extremely knowledgeable and there is no way I would try to tell doctors what I have since i'm not qualified to offer an opinion on it.
"Vanguard makes use of Epic's Unreal 3 engine, and if you have a high-end system, you can really see what this allows for. There's so much that can look spectacular here, when all the settings are raised, like cobblestone path textures, volumetric clouds that float like puffy cotton balls across the sky, and trees that are so finely detailed you can count individual leaves on their gently swaying branches."
Ok, so I played in late beta and umm..it looks like Unreal 2 at best to me. Where is this pretty game they speak of? I put it all on Ultra-High settings on my 7900 GTX 512 and it stuttered horribly on interiors and zone chunking and did NOT look anywhere near close to Gears of War which IS Unreal 3. Where is the properly done HDR, models and bump mapping / specular etc etc etc. Vanguard looks like crap compared to Gears of War - and if they are using the same engine then Vanguard needs to get some new art design or something. The game runs terrible for the graphical quality that it gives you in my opinion.
Number of applications written for the O/S that work without third-party apps: Windows
That's the reason why Windows is so prevalent today, it is self-fulfilling. People use it because just about every application they want will run on it, and those applications are written for Windows because so many people use it. It is extremely hard to break this cycle and Apple is making good strides by writing a lot of really good first-party applications but i'd like to see more third-party applications support for OS X. Parallels and Boot Camp don't count as you are just falling back to Windows again to use apps (and Microsoft still gets your money if you use Parallels / Boot camp as you are supposed to buy a copy of Windows to use them!).
Also, working in IT every day at a University with a mixed environment, I will say that we have almost as many Macintosh support issues as we do Windows, just different sorts. With Windows it is usually something like "My Outlook isn't working right" or "I have Sobig virus" and with the Mac it is usually something along the lines of "Entourage doesnt work right" or "My mouse is behaving funny". The Entourage issue is of course not Apple's fault, that is us still using a crappy old version of Exchange server that Entourage doesnt like (and our over reliance on a domain-based network which OS X still doesnt like to play 100% nice with).
I really love Macs but I also have to use PCs/Consoles for my gaming because I don't feel like emulating or rebooting into Windows on my Macbook Pro to play something (other than WoW).
The PS3 with a 20GB or 60GB HD (and a User Replaceable one at that), certainly seems like a better choice.
Yeah, if the PS3 had a lot worth downloading. There are several really good 360 Arcade titles now, the only decent title on PS3 I can think of is Flow and it doesnt really amuse me all that much.
Also I don't think they are reacting to PS3 at all, I think they are reacting to developer requests for more space (so everything doesnt have to be procedurally textured) and also as part of the upcoming XNA competition and the consumer developer mantra they are trying to reinforce. If you've played around with XNA Game Studio Express you know that the.XNB files it converts all your art assets into are basically uncompressed and massive. Allowing for 250mb gives a lot more room to play with, especially since whoever wins the DreamBuildPlay competition will have their game published on Live Arcade.
I was sort of surprised when Steve Jobs acted like Apple had "innovated" the idea of multi-touch and even the finger pinch image resizing, because I had recalled Jeff Han's video from last year demonstrating a working multi-touch product with the same type of gestures Steve Jobs was using. I wonder if its possible that Apple licensed the tech from Jeff Han's company?
If not I wonder who filed patents first on a lot of these technologies as the article linked above mentions that many different companies are working on basically the same product ideas using infrared light detection to detect multiple touches on a screen surface. I can definitely foresee a huge patent lawsuit war brewing in the multi-touch screen arena as everyone claims to be the first innovator. One thing I know for sure is if Apple has only been working in the iPhone for 2 years, they did NOT "innovate" the multi-touch technology as the idea and prototypes for such existed before then.
And if anyone had actually read the article, they would see that according to Samsung, the Flash technology in use in the drives has a lifetime of TEN years (your IDE / SATA HD likely wont last that long btw). They also note how much the R/W cycle issue has improved in the last few years.
Oh wait, this is/., we don't read the articles we just write silly comments first!
Hey if I would have had mod points I would have modded you up! You posted exactly what I was thinking, everyone raves about how the PS3 has a "free" service but free != useable or fun. I am very happy with paying $50/yr for the 360 live service. Microsoft may have made a lot of stumbles in the hardware area in their console attempts, but they are a software company first and foremost, and Xbox Live is all about software - something they generally know something about, so i'm impressed by the way it works from a software standpoint. I can't stress enough how useful the feature of "I host a game and invite my friends to it, they are in and ready to play in a few seconds with none of this searching for a match crap". That feature alone is enough to sing Xbox Live's praises. It totally simplifies an annoying aspect of multiplayer gaming - finding and getting into the same game with your friends.
I work for a University and we recently went to a conference where Microsoft presented some of their new licensing schemes for Vista. We were quite perturbed to say the least. For one, they don't want us to ever use the "Ultimate" version. Here's how the conversation goes with the Microsoft rep:
Microsoft Rep: "So as you can see, Windows Vista Ultimate's CD media costs will be very cheap and each copy will have its own CD key for use in activation."
Us: "So umm..is there volume licensing for the Ultimate version?"
Microsoft Rep: "No, but the CD Media is very cheap!"
Us: "So, you don't want us to use the Ultimate version then?"
Microsoft Rep: "No, you can still use it, you just need to buy an individual CD with an individual key for use with individual product activation!"
Us: "So, basically, you don't want us to use the Ultimate edition then, got it."
Not only are they nuking volume licensing for the highest level products, they are also going to require product activation even with volume licensing! In Windows XP, we have a volume-license key that is embedded in the Image during SysPrep and that key does NOT require activation. Activation is annoying when you are imaging thousands of machines every year. No word yet on whether the volume license activation will be requiring an individual key for every copy of Vista you install (if they even let us make an image of it at all!).
A good solution if you are concerned about generally maintaining the same exact image consistently when people use the machine is to utilize Deep Freeze. In our IT Department at a medium-size University (10,000 students) we use Deep Freeze extensively to keep students from ruining lab computers. Deep Freeze is as others have mentioned, a virtual partition system. Each time you reboot the machine, the original image you had is restored and any changes wiped (only files kept in the "Thawspace" are maintained, all others are lost). This means that no matter what your students do, the machine will be restored on bootup.
Now, if you want to further limit what they can do, you can make many changes to the registry in windows to block users from doing many things such as using the "run" menu, installing applications or a number of other things as simple as changing screen resolution or color depth. Once you set everything up and create the image of your restricted setup, Deep Freeze will maintain it every time for you.
You can get Deep Freeze from here: http://www.faronics.com/ or look there to find out more information about how it works.
We have tried other products in the past that claimed to "restrict" Windows such that users could not make harmful changes (e.g. OnGuard) but none of the ones we utilized were able to be fool-proof and stop students from getting around it or messing something up. Short of reformatting the machine Deep Freeze is pretty hard for the student to get around. Thawing the machine to make changes requires a lengthy key combination to even bring up the password box (key combination is customizeable by you), or you can enter a key combination on bootup to access the password box to thaw the machine. You can also maintain the systems through a Deep Freeze console so you can admin all the machines at once and even push new images to them that way.
That's my three cents on how we do things in an Academic environment, but our general policy has been slight restrictions but allow them a lot of free reign - except we reset the system every time it is rebooted. I'd suggest for Middle and High school to implement a lot more restrictions on the base image that you use with Deep Freeze than what we have here at the University level.
In the article it states: "Some scientists speculate that some birds might even be able to catch up on some forms of sleep while in flight, but this idea has yet to be fully tested.".
The article is not even about sleeping while flying, they are talking entirely of the bird's sleep states during the daytime (and then the birds would fly at night). But, what do I expect? This is/. after all where nobody reads the article and makes hilarious comments anyway.
1. Make a comic-themed MMO.
2. Get sued by Marvel, make comic-themed MMO for them that competes against two of your own products.
3. Profit?!?
Jack "Statesman" Emmert claims that the new MMO will be more "story" based and tied into new comic book storylines etc and that they will continue to support the COX (City of Villains and City of Heroes) games. However, it seems to me that they must be competing with themselves on some level, even if with two separate development teams at Cryptic handling the different games. Can anyone here imagine them *not* using the same style of character creator that they have in the COX games? It is brilliantly executed and almost necessary for this type of game so I'm pretty sure we will see it in some form in the Marvel MMO. The Marvel MMO will probably have 40-50% nicer looking graphics which is going to woo a lot of people as well as full permission to use all Marvel charactes in the story which is also going to draw a lot of fans. I think the COX games have reached their peak in subscribers and once the Marvel MMO comes out, they will in all likelihood lose customers. However, Cryptic is probably making a % of all profits from the Marvel MMO so this works out well for them but not so great for long-term support for the COX games.
I love how the controller takes the movement detection from the Wii, the "Guide" button from the 360 controller and the wireless ideas. They also changed some of the shoulder buttons to be more like trigger buttons..hmm..this controller is sounding more and more like..the 360 controller! Even their menu system sounds a lot like the 360's blade system. Oh well, "innovate" ideas that work well, that seems to be Sony's new motto.
I recently bought a 50" Samsung DLP TV that has full 1080p support (no upconversion cheating etc). However, I have my 360 set on 720p instead of 1080i even because the 360 is NOT very good at upconverting signals into 1080 anything. I suspect their 1080p upconversion will be the same. My tv is much better at upconverting 720p to 1080p than the 360 is at upconverting from 720p to 1080i. This is especially noticeable on my NBA 2k6 game where the 360 upconversion is much more grainy and aliased looking than the one my TV does. I'm guessing that those of us with 1080p TVs will have to wait 4-5 years until the "next-generation" of consoles comes out that actually fully support it. Many of the games don't look really nice on my TV because it is large enough to magnify any flaws in the graphics and makes most games look more aliased since there just isnt enough resolution being pushed to the TV to look smooth.
Vista Beta 2 runs just fine under BootCamp with a few minor annoyances such as very little power management so battery life is quite poor. I'm running it on my Macbook Pro that I use at work and haven't had any major issues as of yet.
No privacy issues? Just look at some of the data that you can link to a specific user ID over that 3 month period. It is not too hard to figure out who it is. As TFA points out, many people type in their own name to search engines to see if they show up anywhere on the internet. Tied with birth dates, horoscope searches, SS #'s etc, it is not too hard to figure out who a particular user is.
With some recent software updates my new Macbook Pro (around a month old now) doesn't run overly hot under OS X, even when charging the battery. However, I installed Vista under Boot Camp and since it isn't supported by Boot Camp yet the power management functions don't all seem to work as normal (it is a beta after all). Well, needless to say you can't put the Macbook Pro on your lap at all, especially not when plugged in (which, running Vista you get maybe 90 mins of battery life or less so plugged in is a constant state). I could easily cook many things on that upper left corner which is where I assume the battery is located at since the charging input is on that side. My guess would be that the temperature on that side exceeds 130 degrees fahrenheit or more.
And yes, it is blasphemy that I am running Vista on a Mac and its unsupported blah blah blah blah, but either way the Macbook Pro's still run way too hot and don't ever seem to run their fan. Their own documentation tells you not to use your *laptop* on your lap, which seems quite stupid to me. Whats the point of a mobile computer if I have to be tied to a *DESK*.
I was thinking Cambridge, MA (where MIT is located and right next door to Harvard), my bad:-P University of Cambridge is of course in England. Still, they should be ashamed of themselves for helping China - England claims to value freedom as well IIRC.
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Did you read all of my post? I talked about "booting into windows by default" i.e. we would be using Windows primarily. When you boot into Windows on an Intel-based Mac there is ZERO difference from using Windows on a Gateway or Dell. Also, for Engineering we are looking at Mac Pro Workstations to replace the Dell/HP workstations they have now.
Because of the shift to Intel processors, Apple has been suggesting the possibility to our University (~ 12,000 users so on par with a medium-sized corporation) of pitching Apple as a "hardware" solution NOT an operating system. The idea being to put Imacs and Macbooks in the hands of everyone and just have them boot to Windows by default. Throw in a windows style mouse and keyboard and voila, there is no difference except you are running on nicer looking hardware.
Many will say "Apple is more expensive". Totally not true. Based on educational pricing we have been comparing what we can get to get a 20" or 24" iMac with 2GB ram and 3-year APP etc. vs equivalent machines/warranty/features from Gateway and Dell and guess what, Apple is CHEAPER. The same holds true for laptops as well. We can't see any reason why not to move to a dual-boot or Parallels based platform (and no the new EULAs dont affect those of us using Vista enterprise - virtualization is allowed). Why not view a high-end Apple machine as your Vista upgrade path? We are seriously thinking of doing this as a method to not only get new machines that can run Vista well (have been running Vista on my Macbook Pro with full Aero support since last summer!), but also allows us to more easily support a mixed platform environment so whoever needs/wants to run Mac or Windows applications can. This helps us out tremendously with applications such as R-25 and Banner for compatibility issues we've had with our Mac users and lets everyone use Final Cut Pro to do their video editing etc for the departments that need it. I see this is as a win-win situation, so please enlighten me as to the downside i'm not seeing.
Also, we have an Apple-certified service center (as well as Gateway certified) so we do on-site hardware support already so the support isn't an issue in our organization.
Apparently the Canadians do. I'm not the one making the rules, just commenting on the ones we have. Making rules is above my paygrade, sorry!
I'm not sure what the issue is here. Citizens entering the United States are expected to abide by our rules and regulations for entry (fairly draconian at this point i'm sure). How is it not fair that other countries not hold our citizens to the same standards?
Remember way back when when your parents (hopefully) told you that you have to suffer the consequences for your actions, well, there isn't a time limit on those consequences. We see at least once a year in the news that someone who committed a crime 30-40 years ago is finally arrested and punished for their crimes. Being barred entry unless you fill out some extra paperwork to another country is not what i'd call ridiculous. You can claim unconstitutionally cruel and unsual punishment because of the length to which you are punished for your crimes, but GUESS WHAT - nobody else in the world gives a flip about our constitution, they have their own set of rules by which we have to abide if we wish to travel there. Entry into another country is a priviledge granted by that country, not our right. They can choose to deny anyone they wish for any reason and we can whine and moan about it but that doesn't mean they can't do it.
Perhaps my views here are a tad too black and white as i'm sure there are special cases where the person convicted of said offense was innocent, but police agencies don't generally deal well with shades of grey.
Did anyone else just hear Madden's voice in their head at OP statement: "Seriously though, while a fun game is a fun game, a fun game with great graphics is even better"
Think i've watched too many Madden impersonations by Frank Caliendo..
My brother and his wife completed medical school over a year ago and are both Doctors now (still in residency). This is actually a major concern that has come up both during their time in medical school and now in their work at the hospital. My brother has related how numerous times people come in and try to self-diagnose their issues and suggest treatments even though they are almost always wrong about what they have!
If you've ever watched "House" when Dr. House is in the clinic and people are always telling him what they have, it may be done in an over the top humorous way but that sort of thing actually happens on a daily basis. Places like WebMD may be great for regular people to find out information about things, but its a real pain to the Doctors when people come in and say "Well I have some stomach pain and my head hurts so I must have appendicitis according to the symptoms I saw on WebMD!" or some other crazy diagnosis based on a few random symptoms (that could belong to any number of other more benign problems).
So yes, I think this is a huge issue and that the Pharmacy companies are really doing a dis-service to people when they convince them that this medicine is the next best thing and to "ask your Doctor about it!" because when they go in and want that medicine but are denied it because it is not appropriate for them or has too many negative interactions with existing medicines they are angry with the Doctor and think that they are "incompetent" somehow. Instead, they need to trust the fact that Doctors go through years of rigorous training followed by extensive exams to make sure they know what they are doing. I've watched as they both went through medical school and it is a LOT of work, they are extremely knowledgeable and there is no way I would try to tell doctors what I have since i'm not qualified to offer an opinion on it.
From the GameSpy article:
"Vanguard makes use of Epic's Unreal 3 engine, and if you have a high-end system, you can really see what this allows for. There's so much that can look spectacular here, when all the settings are raised, like cobblestone path textures, volumetric clouds that float like puffy cotton balls across the sky, and trees that are so finely detailed you can count individual leaves on their gently swaying branches."
Ok, so I played in late beta and umm..it looks like Unreal 2 at best to me. Where is this pretty game they speak of? I put it all on Ultra-High settings on my 7900 GTX 512 and it stuttered horribly on interiors and zone chunking and did NOT look anywhere near close to Gears of War which IS Unreal 3. Where is the properly done HDR, models and bump mapping / specular etc etc etc. Vanguard looks like crap compared to Gears of War - and if they are using the same engine then Vanguard needs to get some new art design or something. The game runs terrible for the graphical quality that it gives you in my opinion.
Apparently some /.'ers don't even read the article summaries anymore! RTFAS?
Number of applications written for the O/S that work without third-party apps: Windows
That's the reason why Windows is so prevalent today, it is self-fulfilling. People use it because just about every application they want will run on it, and those applications are written for Windows because so many people use it. It is extremely hard to break this cycle and Apple is making good strides by writing a lot of really good first-party applications but i'd like to see more third-party applications support for OS X. Parallels and Boot Camp don't count as you are just falling back to Windows again to use apps (and Microsoft still gets your money if you use Parallels / Boot camp as you are supposed to buy a copy of Windows to use them!).
Also, working in IT every day at a University with a mixed environment, I will say that we have almost as many Macintosh support issues as we do Windows, just different sorts. With Windows it is usually something like "My Outlook isn't working right" or "I have Sobig virus" and with the Mac it is usually something along the lines of "Entourage doesnt work right" or "My mouse is behaving funny". The Entourage issue is of course not Apple's fault, that is us still using a crappy old version of Exchange server that Entourage doesnt like (and our over reliance on a domain-based network which OS X still doesnt like to play 100% nice with).
I really love Macs but I also have to use PCs/Consoles for my gaming because I don't feel like emulating or rebooting into Windows on my Macbook Pro to play something (other than WoW).
Also I don't think they are reacting to PS3 at all, I think they are reacting to developer requests for more space (so everything doesnt have to be procedurally textured) and also as part of the upcoming XNA competition and the consumer developer mantra they are trying to reinforce. If you've played around with XNA Game Studio Express you know that the
I was sort of surprised when Steve Jobs acted like Apple had "innovated" the idea of multi-touch and even the finger pinch image resizing, because I had recalled Jeff Han's video from last year demonstrating a working multi-touch product with the same type of gestures Steve Jobs was using. I wonder if its possible that Apple licensed the tech from Jeff Han's company?
If not I wonder who filed patents first on a lot of these technologies as the article linked above mentions that many different companies are working on basically the same product ideas using infrared light detection to detect multiple touches on a screen surface. I can definitely foresee a huge patent lawsuit war brewing in the multi-touch screen arena as everyone claims to be the first innovator. One thing I know for sure is if Apple has only been working in the iPhone for 2 years, they did NOT "innovate" the multi-touch technology as the idea and prototypes for such existed before then.
So, pretty much the same reaction that those of us who have played WoW have?
And if anyone had actually read the article, they would see that according to Samsung, the Flash technology in use in the drives has a lifetime of TEN years (your IDE / SATA HD likely wont last that long btw). They also note how much the R/W cycle issue has improved in the last few years.
/., we don't read the articles we just write silly comments first!
Oh wait, this is
Hey if I would have had mod points I would have modded you up! You posted exactly what I was thinking, everyone raves about how the PS3 has a "free" service but free != useable or fun. I am very happy with paying $50/yr for the 360 live service. Microsoft may have made a lot of stumbles in the hardware area in their console attempts, but they are a software company first and foremost, and Xbox Live is all about software - something they generally know something about, so i'm impressed by the way it works from a software standpoint. I can't stress enough how useful the feature of "I host a game and invite my friends to it, they are in and ready to play in a few seconds with none of this searching for a match crap". That feature alone is enough to sing Xbox Live's praises. It totally simplifies an annoying aspect of multiplayer gaming - finding and getting into the same game with your friends.
I work for a University and we recently went to a conference where Microsoft presented some of their new licensing schemes for Vista. We were quite perturbed to say the least. For one, they don't want us to ever use the "Ultimate" version. Here's how the conversation goes with the Microsoft rep:
Microsoft Rep: "So as you can see, Windows Vista Ultimate's CD media costs will be very cheap and each copy will have its own CD key for use in activation."
Us: "So umm..is there volume licensing for the Ultimate version?"
Microsoft Rep: "No, but the CD Media is very cheap!"
Us: "So, you don't want us to use the Ultimate version then?"
Microsoft Rep: "No, you can still use it, you just need to buy an individual CD with an individual key for use with individual product activation!"
Us: "So, basically, you don't want us to use the Ultimate edition then, got it."
Not only are they nuking volume licensing for the highest level products, they are also going to require product activation even with volume licensing! In Windows XP, we have a volume-license key that is embedded in the Image during SysPrep and that key does NOT require activation. Activation is annoying when you are imaging thousands of machines every year. No word yet on whether the volume license activation will be requiring an individual key for every copy of Vista you install (if they even let us make an image of it at all!).
A good solution if you are concerned about generally maintaining the same exact image consistently when people use the machine is to utilize Deep Freeze. In our IT Department at a medium-size University (10,000 students) we use Deep Freeze extensively to keep students from ruining lab computers. Deep Freeze is as others have mentioned, a virtual partition system. Each time you reboot the machine, the original image you had is restored and any changes wiped (only files kept in the "Thawspace" are maintained, all others are lost). This means that no matter what your students do, the machine will be restored on bootup.
Now, if you want to further limit what they can do, you can make many changes to the registry in windows to block users from doing many things such as using the "run" menu, installing applications or a number of other things as simple as changing screen resolution or color depth. Once you set everything up and create the image of your restricted setup, Deep Freeze will maintain it every time for you.
You can get Deep Freeze from here: http://www.faronics.com/ or look there to find out more information about how it works.
We have tried other products in the past that claimed to "restrict" Windows such that users could not make harmful changes (e.g. OnGuard) but none of the ones we utilized were able to be fool-proof and stop students from getting around it or messing something up. Short of reformatting the machine Deep Freeze is pretty hard for the student to get around. Thawing the machine to make changes requires a lengthy key combination to even bring up the password box (key combination is customizeable by you), or you can enter a key combination on bootup to access the password box to thaw the machine. You can also maintain the systems through a Deep Freeze console so you can admin all the machines at once and even push new images to them that way.
That's my three cents on how we do things in an Academic environment, but our general policy has been slight restrictions but allow them a lot of free reign - except we reset the system every time it is rebooted. I'd suggest for Middle and High school to implement a lot more restrictions on the base image that you use with Deep Freeze than what we have here at the University level.
In the article it states: "Some scientists speculate that some birds might even be able to catch up on some forms of sleep while in flight, but this idea has yet to be fully tested.".
/. after all where nobody reads the article and makes hilarious comments anyway.
The article is not even about sleeping while flying, they are talking entirely of the bird's sleep states during the daytime (and then the birds would fly at night). But, what do I expect? This is
1. Make a comic-themed MMO. 2. Get sued by Marvel, make comic-themed MMO for them that competes against two of your own products. 3. Profit?!?
Jack "Statesman" Emmert claims that the new MMO will be more "story" based and tied into new comic book storylines etc and that they will continue to support the COX (City of Villains and City of Heroes) games. However, it seems to me that they must be competing with themselves on some level, even if with two separate development teams at Cryptic handling the different games. Can anyone here imagine them *not* using the same style of character creator that they have in the COX games? It is brilliantly executed and almost necessary for this type of game so I'm pretty sure we will see it in some form in the Marvel MMO. The Marvel MMO will probably have 40-50% nicer looking graphics which is going to woo a lot of people as well as full permission to use all Marvel charactes in the story which is also going to draw a lot of fans. I think the COX games have reached their peak in subscribers and once the Marvel MMO comes out, they will in all likelihood lose customers. However, Cryptic is probably making a % of all profits from the Marvel MMO so this works out well for them but not so great for long-term support for the COX games.
I love how the controller takes the movement detection from the Wii, the "Guide" button from the 360 controller and the wireless ideas. They also changed some of the shoulder buttons to be more like trigger buttons..hmm..this controller is sounding more and more like..the 360 controller! Even their menu system sounds a lot like the 360's blade system. Oh well, "innovate" ideas that work well, that seems to be Sony's new motto.
I recently bought a 50" Samsung DLP TV that has full 1080p support (no upconversion cheating etc). However, I have my 360 set on 720p instead of 1080i even because the 360 is NOT very good at upconverting signals into 1080 anything. I suspect their 1080p upconversion will be the same. My tv is much better at upconverting 720p to 1080p than the 360 is at upconverting from 720p to 1080i. This is especially noticeable on my NBA 2k6 game where the 360 upconversion is much more grainy and aliased looking than the one my TV does. I'm guessing that those of us with 1080p TVs will have to wait 4-5 years until the "next-generation" of consoles comes out that actually fully support it. Many of the games don't look really nice on my TV because it is large enough to magnify any flaws in the graphics and makes most games look more aliased since there just isnt enough resolution being pushed to the TV to look smooth.
Odd how the lists i've seen MajorNelson publish such as this one for the week of 9/4 show COD2 as being third behind Madden and Saints Row: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/09/Xbox -Live-Activity-for-week-of-September-4-2006.aspx
The week before that was also Madden topping it: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/02/Top- Xbox-Live-Games-for-week-of-8-28.aspx
But I guess Activision is working off of old information even though their Press Release is from today and their game has not been the top game on Live for almost 3 weeks now.
Sadly, no 360 game can hold the title of "Top Live" game period as Halo 2 has held that position since its release. Hopefully Gears of War will have a good shot though.
Vista Beta 2 runs just fine under BootCamp with a few minor annoyances such as very little power management so battery life is quite poor. I'm running it on my Macbook Pro that I use at work and haven't had any major issues as of yet.
No privacy issues? Just look at some of the data that you can link to a specific user ID over that 3 month period. It is not too hard to figure out who it is. As TFA points out, many people type in their own name to search engines to see if they show up anywhere on the internet. Tied with birth dates, horoscope searches, SS #'s etc, it is not too hard to figure out who a particular user is.
But wait, you were being sarcastic right?
With some recent software updates my new Macbook Pro (around a month old now) doesn't run overly hot under OS X, even when charging the battery. However, I installed Vista under Boot Camp and since it isn't supported by Boot Camp yet the power management functions don't all seem to work as normal (it is a beta after all). Well, needless to say you can't put the Macbook Pro on your lap at all, especially not when plugged in (which, running Vista you get maybe 90 mins of battery life or less so plugged in is a constant state). I could easily cook many things on that upper left corner which is where I assume the battery is located at since the charging input is on that side. My guess would be that the temperature on that side exceeds 130 degrees fahrenheit or more.
And yes, it is blasphemy that I am running Vista on a Mac and its unsupported blah blah blah blah, but either way the Macbook Pro's still run way too hot and don't ever seem to run their fan. Their own documentation tells you not to use your *laptop* on your lap, which seems quite stupid to me. Whats the point of a mobile computer if I have to be tied to a *DESK*.
I was thinking Cambridge, MA (where MIT is located and right next door to Harvard), my bad :-P University of Cambridge is of course in England. Still, they should be ashamed of themselves for helping China - England claims to value freedom as well IIRC.