drivers and software in general. Vanilla vista ran pretty well on old or budget computers, give or take some crappy intel GPUs that made even XP lag some... But OEMs would bundle it with anti-virus softwares that had known performance issues in Vista, versions of Nero that were incompatible, same with codecs... it really trashed the performance. AVG, one of the more popular free anti-virus, had serious issues with Vista back then (not sure about now, didn't hear anything about it in a while). That really hurt it.
OEMs are supposed to provide some added value in the form of a good configuration of the machine, and they always sucked at it, but they failed HARD at Vista's launch, up to a bit after SP1 (in my experience. The OEMs still shipped crappy configs a month or so after SP1 came out...).
Lets face it, for the longest time, as crappy as IE was, it -was- one of the more standard compliant browsers. One of the first with CSS support, and many other features. It stagnated from lack of competition, and MS reacted much too slowly (probably mostly, again, because of the Vista ressource drain, with all of its devs in a project management blackhole).
Same deal with Pocket IE... for the longest time, what was the competition? The mobile version of Opera? That was a joke. Now all of a sudden there's some very serious competition...and MS reacted far too late...so poof, they're losing marketshare, and more importantly, MIND share, by the minute.
Yeah, Windows Update keeps stuff like Office or SQL Server up to date. Even some third party stuff, like nvidia drivers (always late though). But not everything, unfortunately.
In the time where these things were designed, Vista's development (especially stuff like WinFS) were massive brain ressource blackholes at Microsoft, and all other projects were getting what was leftover, more or less, so everything else got the shaft.
Those 12 buttons and 2 sticks have different uses at different stage of the game, and games go fast in general. Add 15 input "Dial-A-Combo" like Ninja Gaiden 2, and you have something relatively complex... Then stuff like various pressure sensitivity, and the sticks being clickable, and it can get confusing in the heat of the action. Driving a car is slooooooooow (at least, if you obey the signs) and heavily repetitive. The wheel always does the same thing, and the widest difference in behavior you'll get is if you go in reverse =P
Add that all games are different, and you have to relearn constantly... its tricky. Even worse if you have multiple consoles. The SNES controller was optimal. Everything since then has just been bloat.
I'm sure if you made that game for Iphone right now, you'd get a few sells. A lot of sells if there's a picture of Cloud defeating Sephiroth in the background of the "You Win!" message.
the file copy and browsing issues were fixed in SP1. The hard links are mostly for backward compatibility (so stupid apps that hardcoded it don't break). If you had these issues with the latest patches as you mention, something's really really wrong with your setup.
A remake of a game that only appeals to people who like retro gaming is a mix up of the target audience. Thus why MM9 did so well. If you want to remake MM games, you need to remake the later ones, for example Maverick Hunter X, man that game is epic.
May depend on the region. Me, the stores were so full I simply turned around and left. Couldn't fucking move, especially in electronic stores (let say bestbuy). Looked like Six Flags or something, with the lines everywhere. I've seen stores packed full, but this was just insane.
One thing is that with Vista, most people who "hate" it never tried it, or was cursed with a poor OEM install. Nothing's wrong with the actual OS. So once you have Windows 7, which -is- much better than Vista, on top of the fact that Vista is just great, but people don't realize it... When you give Windows 7 to a supposed "Vista hater", you end up with "2" levels of improvement, making them think its just "one". So of course the reaction is quite positive.
The plans do have a "ridiculous" amount of texting included, even in North America. The thing is, the typical western schoolgirl can actually bust that. Thousands over thousands over thousands of text messages. I'm not even sure I'd be able to write that many if it was my full time job, but somehow they do.
Agreed. Linux being free isn't a huge advantage in a market where only a few countries respect copyright laws, and even in those, piracy is the norm, not the exception. For most practical purpose, aside in corporations of western and other major countries, Windows and Office are free, too.
I totally agree with you on that. However, the things that are platform independent are a fraction of what managing a server is all about... IIS has concepts that Apache doesn't have, Active Directory has stuff that open LDAP implementations do not. Exchange is a beast on its own. The "hard" part of administrating these things are knowing the details of these tools. I fully agree with you that someone who can use IPTables can circle around anything Windows can throw at them, but let say, the.NET security configurations? Some concepts SOMEWHAT relates to the "sandboxes" and security declarations you'll find in the high security Linux distro, but its still not going to help you much.
So ok...you're totally right for the core administration. For anything that Unix and Windows share directly or indirectly, the Unix admin will run circle around it. Once you get out of that though...not so much. (Same holds true for, let say, a C programmer vs a Java dev)
In that case, with the added clarification, I have to say, there's no way a Unix sysadmin can just come up and admin a Windows Server. It seems like they can because they can "click around", but doing it "right", it requires experience and/or training, in which case, both will be lost in the other's environment (again though: since the basic tasks will require absolutely no training in Windows, it may give the impression that the Unix sysadmin "can admin a Windows box". They cannot, there's just less to learn).
Thats why your original statement lead me to beleive you meant just being able to wing it... it isn't exactly an apple vs apple comparison. On one side you need to know what you're doing for the basics, on the other you can handle the basics by improvisation. Less learning curve.
With colleges now more and more pushing *Nix-only technologies and totally ignoring anything MS for various reasons, it is becoming the *nix users that are in the monoculture when it comes to servers (im talking about younger people...of course this wasn't true if one's training was 6-8 years ago or more). It is not uncommon for people in IT to have -never- seen a Windows server, ever, and what it can do. Much rarer with Unix, if the college's forcing you to use it. Not many Powershell equivalents in Unix, for one:)
Ever notice that most *nix admins can handle Windows but most Windows admins do not know their way around a *nix system? It's another sign that this is not a culture of carefully considering all available options, as in show me an administrator who is highly skilled with both *nix and Windows who still prefers Windows, and I'll call that a legitimate preference (and a member of a small minority).
I'm sorry here, but i have to correct you. I hear that quote a lot, how a *nix admin can handle windows but not the other way around. That always leave out one little detail. Someone with no experience as a sysadmin at all can handle Windows. You just need to know the basics. The UI is basically self explainatory. Happened to me back in the days... we stuck me in front of a Windows Server and said "you handle it". Within 2 hours I had things under control just looking around (mind you, it was a non-critical system, I'm just trying to make a point here). I have been a *nix sysadmin later on in my career, and it is not hard, but you can't really just click around and guess. You'll at the very least need to google up some command names. Windows Server 2008 introduced a "Core" mode, where administration is done by the command line... I'll tell you, it was flipping funny watching the Unix sysadmins try to handle that after spouting the above quote so many time...(there are some GUI tools, its not fully GUI-less like unix can be, but its close enough to cause confusion if someone gets too arrogant... )
I think the issue is unrealistic expectations. 10 years ago, being a DBA in the sense many companies want it (an SQL guru who can do whatever with the database and lock it down and administrate it) was possible.
Today, enterprise grade RDBMS are very complex, SQL is more than just a query language, and databases tend to support more (.NET, java, python, etc). Administrating them is just as tough as administrating servers. It can be a full time job for a large company. So you end up with 2 different "jobs". A database developer (often also a business intelligence specialist, though that can its own job too), and an actual database administrator. Asking someone to be a specialist in all these positions is setting yourself for failure. It is possible, and it does exist, I know a few...but its still not realistic of the average IT person. By making those 2 (or 3) specialities into distinct positions in the work environment, it becomes a lot easier to find someone who can fill them up, AND people can do their job to their full potential.
Its like asking a programmer to also be a designer. Some can do it. All 3 of them.
There is no patch! The only workaround is to disable execution of an extended stored procedure. Maybe you should read the line that says:
There is, sortoff: the latest service packs, except for SQL Server 2000 (for which its a genuine problem, if I understand well). The catch is that SQL Server without service pack are fully supported, so Microsoft must provide patches so you can fix it without needing the service packs for the other editions. Still, the line between a patch and a service pack is thin...
Or they get something else to run this extended stored procedure. Since this is normally regarded as harmless, it's easier than you think.
Ironically, I've actually never worked anywhere where extended SPs were allowed by the DBA unless careful consideration was made, and only if the database was used on the intranet only... extended SPs can do pretty much anything if not properly controlled, so you have to be fairly careful....
No! In sql server, there are many things that ANY user can use by default, like SELECT GETDATE() which returns the system date & time. By default, this extended stored procedure, sp_replwritetovarbin, can be executed by ANY user.
Which still means you need -A- user that can connect at all. I agree that isn't exactly a "priviledged user", but it still needs a user that can login. Not "any user" can do that.
As a general rule, people who "don't understand the difference between Command, Visitor, Chain of Responsability, etc", are people who learned patterns on Wikipedia, not those who read the book. Its fairly tough to read the book and "miss the point" (though I've seen posts for this very article of people who did...still, its uncommon).
How would you handle hardware support that way? It would have to go back like the days of the DOS game, where a game only supported a finite subset of hardware, and everything else had to run on the CPU...it was possible back then, with games being minimalistic, but now?
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drivers and software in general. Vanilla vista ran pretty well on old or budget computers, give or take some crappy intel GPUs that made even XP lag some... But OEMs would bundle it with anti-virus softwares that had known performance issues in Vista, versions of Nero that were incompatible, same with codecs... it really trashed the performance. AVG, one of the more popular free anti-virus, had serious issues with Vista back then (not sure about now, didn't hear anything about it in a while). That really hurt it.
OEMs are supposed to provide some added value in the form of a good configuration of the machine, and they always sucked at it, but they failed HARD at Vista's launch, up to a bit after SP1 (in my experience. The OEMs still shipped crappy configs a month or so after SP1 came out...).
-20C with enough snow to cover an entire car in front of my place... so no, I wouldn't really say warm :)
The "game" gets harder, the controls stay the same.
PocketIE suffered from the same issues as IE6.
Lets face it, for the longest time, as crappy as IE was, it -was- one of the more standard compliant browsers. One of the first with CSS support, and many other features. It stagnated from lack of competition, and MS reacted much too slowly (probably mostly, again, because of the Vista ressource drain, with all of its devs in a project management blackhole).
Same deal with Pocket IE... for the longest time, what was the competition? The mobile version of Opera? That was a joke. Now all of a sudden there's some very serious competition...and MS reacted far too late...so poof, they're losing marketshare, and more importantly, MIND share, by the minute.
It would be a more exceptional event if it -didn't-
Yeah, Windows Update keeps stuff like Office or SQL Server up to date. Even some third party stuff, like nvidia drivers (always late though). But not everything, unfortunately.
Countdown before an intern or an outsourced developer gets fired! 3....2.....1......
In the time where these things were designed, Vista's development (especially stuff like WinFS) were massive brain ressource blackholes at Microsoft, and all other projects were getting what was leftover, more or less, so everything else got the shaft.
Those 12 buttons and 2 sticks have different uses at different stage of the game, and games go fast in general. Add 15 input "Dial-A-Combo" like Ninja Gaiden 2, and you have something relatively complex... Then stuff like various pressure sensitivity, and the sticks being clickable, and it can get confusing in the heat of the action. Driving a car is slooooooooow (at least, if you obey the signs) and heavily repetitive. The wheel always does the same thing, and the widest difference in behavior you'll get is if you go in reverse =P
Add that all games are different, and you have to relearn constantly... its tricky. Even worse if you have multiple consoles. The SNES controller was optimal. Everything since then has just been bloat.
I'm sure if you made that game for Iphone right now, you'd get a few sells. A lot of sells if there's a picture of Cloud defeating Sephiroth in the background of the "You Win!" message.
Thats said, but its true :(
There's something totally wrong with that statement. Yup, you guessed it...thats exactly it.
There won't be a CD! Digital distribution is the future! Exactly!
the file copy and browsing issues were fixed in SP1. The hard links are mostly for backward compatibility (so stupid apps that hardcoded it don't break). If you had these issues with the latest patches as you mention, something's really really wrong with your setup.
A remake of a game that only appeals to people who like retro gaming is a mix up of the target audience. Thus why MM9 did so well. If you want to remake MM games, you need to remake the later ones, for example Maverick Hunter X, man that game is epic.
May depend on the region. Me, the stores were so full I simply turned around and left. Couldn't fucking move, especially in electronic stores (let say bestbuy). Looked like Six Flags or something, with the lines everywhere. I've seen stores packed full, but this was just insane.
Yup, thats pretty much what I was thinking of. Its pretty nuts, really.
One thing is that with Vista, most people who "hate" it never tried it, or was cursed with a poor OEM install. Nothing's wrong with the actual OS. So once you have Windows 7, which -is- much better than Vista, on top of the fact that Vista is just great, but people don't realize it... When you give Windows 7 to a supposed "Vista hater", you end up with "2" levels of improvement, making them think its just "one". So of course the reaction is quite positive.
The plans do have a "ridiculous" amount of texting included, even in North America. The thing is, the typical western schoolgirl can actually bust that. Thousands over thousands over thousands of text messages. I'm not even sure I'd be able to write that many if it was my full time job, but somehow they do.
Agreed. Linux being free isn't a huge advantage in a market where only a few countries respect copyright laws, and even in those, piracy is the norm, not the exception. For most practical purpose, aside in corporations of western and other major countries, Windows and Office are free, too.
I totally agree with you on that. However, the things that are platform independent are a fraction of what managing a server is all about... IIS has concepts that Apache doesn't have, Active Directory has stuff that open LDAP implementations do not. Exchange is a beast on its own. The "hard" part of administrating these things are knowing the details of these tools. I fully agree with you that someone who can use IPTables can circle around anything Windows can throw at them, but let say, the .NET security configurations? Some concepts SOMEWHAT relates to the "sandboxes" and security declarations you'll find in the high security Linux distro, but its still not going to help you much.
So ok...you're totally right for the core administration. For anything that Unix and Windows share directly or indirectly, the Unix admin will run circle around it. Once you get out of that though...not so much. (Same holds true for, let say, a C programmer vs a Java dev)
All that patch does is disable 95% of the features...you can do that without downloading anything.
In that case, with the added clarification, I have to say, there's no way a Unix sysadmin can just come up and admin a Windows Server. It seems like they can because they can "click around", but doing it "right", it requires experience and/or training, in which case, both will be lost in the other's environment (again though: since the basic tasks will require absolutely no training in Windows, it may give the impression that the Unix sysadmin "can admin a Windows box". They cannot, there's just less to learn).
Thats why your original statement lead me to beleive you meant just being able to wing it... it isn't exactly an apple vs apple comparison. On one side you need to know what you're doing for the basics, on the other you can handle the basics by improvisation. Less learning curve.
With colleges now more and more pushing *Nix-only technologies and totally ignoring anything MS for various reasons, it is becoming the *nix users that are in the monoculture when it comes to servers (im talking about younger people...of course this wasn't true if one's training was 6-8 years ago or more). It is not uncommon for people in IT to have -never- seen a Windows server, ever, and what it can do. Much rarer with Unix, if the college's forcing you to use it. Not many Powershell equivalents in Unix, for one :)
I'm sorry here, but i have to correct you. I hear that quote a lot, how a *nix admin can handle windows but not the other way around. That always leave out one little detail. Someone with no experience as a sysadmin at all can handle Windows. You just need to know the basics. The UI is basically self explainatory. Happened to me back in the days... we stuck me in front of a Windows Server and said "you handle it". Within 2 hours I had things under control just looking around (mind you, it was a non-critical system, I'm just trying to make a point here). I have been a *nix sysadmin later on in my career, and it is not hard, but you can't really just click around and guess. You'll at the very least need to google up some command names. Windows Server 2008 introduced a "Core" mode, where administration is done by the command line... I'll tell you, it was flipping funny watching the Unix sysadmins try to handle that after spouting the above quote so many time...(there are some GUI tools, its not fully GUI-less like unix can be, but its close enough to cause confusion if someone gets too arrogant... )
I think the issue is unrealistic expectations. 10 years ago, being a DBA in the sense many companies want it (an SQL guru who can do whatever with the database and lock it down and administrate it) was possible.
Today, enterprise grade RDBMS are very complex, SQL is more than just a query language, and databases tend to support more (.NET, java, python, etc). Administrating them is just as tough as administrating servers. It can be a full time job for a large company. So you end up with 2 different "jobs". A database developer (often also a business intelligence specialist, though that can its own job too), and an actual database administrator. Asking someone to be a specialist in all these positions is setting yourself for failure. It is possible, and it does exist, I know a few...but its still not realistic of the average IT person. By making those 2 (or 3) specialities into distinct positions in the work environment, it becomes a lot easier to find someone who can fill them up, AND people can do their job to their full potential.
Its like asking a programmer to also be a designer. Some can do it. All 3 of them.
There is, sortoff: the latest service packs, except for SQL Server 2000 (for which its a genuine problem, if I understand well). The catch is that SQL Server without service pack are fully supported, so Microsoft must provide patches so you can fix it without needing the service packs for the other editions. Still, the line between a patch and a service pack is thin...
Ironically, I've actually never worked anywhere where extended SPs were allowed by the DBA unless careful consideration was made, and only if the database was used on the intranet only... extended SPs can do pretty much anything if not properly controlled, so you have to be fairly careful....
Which still means you need -A- user that can connect at all. I agree that isn't exactly a "priviledged user", but it still needs a user that can login. Not "any user" can do that.
As a general rule, people who "don't understand the difference between Command, Visitor, Chain of Responsability, etc", are people who learned patterns on Wikipedia, not those who read the book. Its fairly tough to read the book and "miss the point" (though I've seen posts for this very article of people who did...still, its uncommon).
How would you handle hardware support that way? It would have to go back like the days of the DOS game, where a game only supported a finite subset of hardware, and everything else had to run on the CPU...it was possible back then, with games being minimalistic, but now?