Window's file system has always been screwed up. Too many unnecessary attributes (remember all those times when you tried to delete the file it won't let you, saying it is in use), then drive letters are just silly and bunch of other problems.
The legacy software is both a blessing and a curse for Microsoft. They cannot break legacy code but Apple gambled and did it, and I think it succeeded. Subjectively I know more and more people who ditch their Windows machines for Macs or even Linux.
Now imagine in a parallel universe where MS decided that instead of NT or Windows XP they would just base their next OS on a compatible freely available Unix system (a *BSD for example;). They probably would not have had to work as hard as they did writing a new NT kernel from scratch. We probably would not have had Macs and Linux-es today like we do. Microsoft could have released very cheap versions of it's OS for home and personal use ($35/pop so that the most avid pirate would rather buy it than waste time downloading it, and to make sure every child grows up immersed in a windows environment). They would have a great (free) kernel that would be secure, a powerful network stack that doesn't suck and a almost default free server that they could offer their corporate clients. Instead of supporting old legacy software they could have had some virtualization or emulation more for old DOS programs and so on. If that had happened 10 years on they would have had total monopoly in the OS market.
Today the best move MS could make is probably embrace Linux(Unix) with all they've got. They could make their own free *nix distro (yeah, I know Novel's Suse...), make it easy to install and run Windows software on that (something of a fast and reliable Wine). I bet a lot of the Linux crowd would jump ship quickly if they could play DVDs, mp3's, run Photoshop and Office on it, while still having their command prompt, the network stack and ext3/XFS etc. But Windows is still hesitating, it is a giant that has got a huge momentum and can't just stop and turn in the Unix direction, although it sure is starting to look in its direction...
People with inflated egos and too much money are always dangerous, first to others and then probably to themselves as well. Now I am not sure if they always had inflated egos or it was the money that did it to them, probably the former is the case. You should have watched Cuban's show on TV a couple of years back where he gave a winner of his little contest $1M. He might have sold Yahoo just at the right time but he still is an arrogant 12 year old that tries to get attention to himself and brag.
Out of the "surprise" tech billionaires of the late 90's, I like Shuttleworth, because he is giving back to the Linux community, Cuban on the other hand is just suing everyone who he thinks is "better" than him...
Hardly visible => The cat/friend/child/self will not avert their eyes immediately and end up with a burnt retina. That is why the infrared lasers are also very dangerous.
A security blog from MS says quite definitely they have no backdoor.
Because if they had, they would blog about it...;)
The encryption algorithms are open.
That's not the point, the algorithms are open but an implementation might have a back door. For example the code could be if(key==0xDEADBEEF){ let_NSA_in(); }
I am with you on SVG. My take on it is that it is the browser's job to implement SVG well and it will take off from there. I have tried creating SVG-only pages with Inkscape and it turned out pretty well...
I wonder if the govt. will demand that MS install a backdoor in the encryption algorithm so they can continue fighting the "War on [insert cause or randomly choose from {terror, drugs, porn, hippies, pink llamas} ]"...
I have been wondering for years if Windows already has something like that. Initially it would have been motivated by the fact that in case of a cyberwar, the US Govt. should have an upper hand if the rivals happen to use any MS products....
I have been using Ubuntu for a long time and love it. I have tried a lot of distros (RedHat, Fedora, Mandriva, DamnSmall, Mepis, Debian and "yes" -- (open)Suse). Finally I have settled on Ubuntu with the default Gnome desktop. It is simple, it works, it does what I need, and Debian's excellent universe repositories are just an "apt-get install" away...
GLONASS is not that great and is not fully operational all the time. I doubt the Chinese satellites will be better.
But in general I think competition is good, the system with less downtime, more coverage, higher precision will win (this doesn't apply to the high precision military-only applications). And if the Chinese manage to have a great system then I bet there will be devices that would use more than one system and that would perhaps will help increase accuracy....
I don't think digital backs to 35mm SLR are viable when for the same price you can get the whole body. Now medium and large formats -- that's a different story....
over time, will tie up more money in lenses than digital camera bodies. --
Amen to that!
Most photographers I talked to, told me if I ever wanted to buy a DSLR to buy the lens(es) _first_ then buy the body. A good lens will set you back a couple thousand...
I am actually a fan of Pentax and already pre-ordered the new K10D and ordered some lenses (I like my set of primes) and then I'll wait for the new set of zoom lenses coming in spring. Along with the macro and some wide angles I already have from the Pentax K1000 (film SLR) I should be set...)
I noticed the new Pentax K10D has a dedicated RAW button on the front that lets the photographer easily choose to shoot RAW without having to navigate any menus. There is also a RAW+JPEG option.
I pre-ordered one for my wife, I hope she likes as she if very picky (still sticking to her film SLRs) --- pssst.. women...
What do you think of the features of the new K10D compared to K100D?
I ordered the K10D for my wife who still isn't sure whether to part with her film SLRs (Pentax K1000 and Minolta XG-M). She has more lenses for Pentax (and Minolta is dead for all practical purposes) so I ordered a Pentax after pitching to her all the features. The problem is, the release of the K10D is delayed and it is still not out (it was supposed to be the start of October). So now I am thinking to just cancel the order and get her a K100D...
Well, if you are a conservative good for you, as long as you are not a xenophobe. I was not talking about conservatives as somehow being "bad" or "good" I was talking about xenophobia. So what's the deal then with the personal insult: Here's to hoping an extremely fat naked man lays his scrotum on your mustache. -- It makes you (and by association all the conservatives) look rather bad. Good day to ya'
Let's be clear here -- portions of Sacha's interviews don't just border on racism, they are very racist. What those scenes reveal is not stereotypes of a "backwater" region such as Kazakhstan but rather the stereotypes of the Americans. It was not the "backwaters" of an ex-Soviet republic that are funny it is the "backwaters" of US that are funny.
All the Kazakh customs and Borat's behaviors are made up, people in Kazakhstan do know how to use toilets and they do not act like Borat. Heck, Borat doesn't even look Kazakh, he doesn't really speak the Kazakh language, and the village was actually Romanian. But the fact that most Americans Borat met didn't realize that (including you) is the ironic part, that is what Borat character was meant to show. There are plenty of scenes where "civilized" Americans go along and tacitly or explicitly agree with some very racist and anti-semitic remarks. For example when Borat goes into the gun dealer's shop and asks for a good gun to kill Jews with, the owner proudly gives him a nice handgun that looked like its bullets could pierce thick armor!
I was glad I payed for Borat. I would even go and say it is a masterpiece. It has something for everyone: the bleeding heart liberals like me can go and see in it how racists the Americans are, the conservative xenophobes can look at it and laugh at the "stupid" foreigner thus only reinforcing their own position of "we are the best country and everyone else is backwards" -- which I have to say on a certain level is funny in an of itself, and of course, there is plenty of slapstick and "Mr. Bean" type humor for everyone else. The interesting part, as I read in another review, is that Sacha Cohen had only one take for his scenes and most of them were not rehearsed (that's why the "masterpiece" label).
Unfortunately those choices are not weighted equally. "A" is probably 75%, "B"+"C" together is 20% and "D" only around 5%. Anything that fails at "A" will not come even close.
I love Linux and I am trying to contribute and spread the word about it, but I also have to be realistic -- Linux is not ready for professional graphic design and photo work (note: Maya is ported, so 3D design would work great)
Eventually she might switch to using a Mac. Then I won't need to "fix" her machine anymore. But at this time she wants the fastest hardware for the lowest price (even at the expense of having deal with freezes and needing an antivirus suite running). One could also argue that the time spent fiddling with the drivers and cleaning out spyware is more expensive over time than the upfront cost of a Mac.
Could be, but she knows she gets much faster and cheaper hardware for the same price. She would rather spend money on lenses.
In other words she can process batches of images and create contact sheets much faster on Windows but at the expense of dealing with instability and Windows glitches. And, of course, she has me who can troubleshoot her machine win-win for her (free tech support and really fast hardware). If she had a Mac I would not be "fixing" her machine - it would probably just work.
I use Ubuntu too. I think as far as hardware just working -- Ubuntu succeeds in that.
The problem is with the software, as soon as the user needs anything more than browse,read email and write letters they hit the wall with Linux.
I have a photographer friend who uses Photoshop extensively. When fixing her Windows machine that kept freezing, I decided to make a it a double boot with Ubuntu as the second OS. I added all her bookmarks from Firefox, I made sure she could access her documents, her expensive high end Epson printer had a nice functional Gutenprint driver, and of course, I added GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop.
When I demoed the system to her, up until we got to the GIMP part, my friend was impressed with Ubuntu. She liked the clean Gnome menus, she liked how her printer could print, she liked that she didn't have to use an antivirus and she liked Ubuntu because it means "humanity towards others" -- so far all was well.
Then the bomb was dropped: she had asked a simple question -- "Where is Photoshop?" I quietly told her that there is nice replacement for it called GIMP. And headed over to the Graphics>GIMP menu to show her GIMP -- what I think is an excellent image manipulation program. But she told me to stop the whole thing and to give back her Photoshop. She didn't care that windows' security had more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese, she didn't care that her Windows machine would freeze once in a while, she didn't care about the "free" part and she definitely didn't give a damn anymore about "Humanity towards others" when she could not have her Photoshop. Just the fact that she would have to tell other professionals that she uses a program called "GIMP" was enough for her to not wanting to try it. In other words just the names and the "image" of some of the OS applications sound "goofy", childish or "geeky" and no matter how much we don't like it but appearances and first impression are important (the marketing folk know that too well).
Now, I know that GIMP is probably just as good and that with more or less effort one can achieve the same result with GIMP as one can with Photoshop. I have been using it for many years with success, BUT I am also a geek who likes to write device drivers and re-compile kernels. I love Linux and would never go back to Windows. I figured out a way to do everything I needed in Linux. But most people are not geeks like me. They want their computer to do a specific job. In other words the computer to them is a "tool" much like a monkey wrench -- just a means to an end, to me the computer is a "the end".
People falsely assume that Microsoft conquered the world because of its great operating system. It was not the operating system, it was Office (especially Excel and Word) and other applications, most written by a 3rd party, that made Windows into what it is. Most people who use Windows would probably agree that it sucks: bad security, blue screens and restarts -- everyone hates those things. But as long as Office along with Photoshop, Dreamweaver and other software that people spend hundreds and thousands of dollars is there -- they will be glued to Windows.
I realize that it is a "chicken and egg" problem: if Linux would be more popular the software companies would invest in porting their application to Linux (think Maya, Matlab and Mathematica...) but part of the reason that Linux is not that popular is because most of the applications will not work in Linux.
P.S. No, I didn't try running Photoshop with WINE because I heard it is not stable, and Linux also didn't have an easy way to calibrate and match the input/output color profiles and was missing some other software that my friend was using. I just used Photoshop as a prime example.
Once the sound is digitized, a software package can be used to edit and manipulate it. The only thing that should not happen inside a typical PC case as any A/D or D/A conversion. Only digital streams should be manipulated.
I have been using the development Eft tree ever since they opened it (I like to live on the 'Edge' I guess). I watched new upgrades trickle in over time. The biggest problems were the volumeid changes i.e. referring to the drives using and UUIDs instead of/dev/hd[a-x][0-9] format coupled with a change in udev (and or kernel) that re-mapped the drive order and names. That caused a bit of a headache but I thought it eventually got fixed. Otherwise, there have been no major problems.
The reason I think the upgrade disasters happened is because most developers have been upgrading gradually, over time, just like me. After the release, they assumed upgrading works fine and focused most of the testing on fresh installs. This left the situation of a sudden dist-upgrade from Dapper to Eft un-tested.
In general testing upgrades is pretty difficult. One has to account for X possible previous versions (Dapper, Hoary, Breezy along with mixed software from universe repositories installed by hand) times Y possible hardware configurations. This results in a lot of testing scenarios....
My other take on the situation is that a lot more people are upgrading and therefore there is a total increase in upgrade problems. A year or more ago, there weren't that many Breezy users who upgraded to Dapper (just because there weren't that many Ubuntu users). Now there are a lot more users --- a lot more upgrades --- a lot more upgrade problems.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Those who understand Unix use ... Plan9! /ducks
The legacy software is both a blessing and a curse for Microsoft. They cannot break legacy code but Apple gambled and did it, and I think it succeeded. Subjectively I know more and more people who ditch their Windows machines for Macs or even Linux.
Now imagine in a parallel universe where MS decided that instead of NT or Windows XP they would just base their next OS on a compatible freely available Unix system (a *BSD for example
Today the best move MS could make is probably embrace Linux(Unix) with all they've got. They could make their own free *nix distro (yeah, I know Novel's Suse...), make it easy to install and run Windows software on that (something of a fast and reliable Wine). I bet a lot of the Linux crowd would jump ship quickly if they could play DVDs, mp3's, run Photoshop and Office on it, while still having their command prompt, the network stack and ext3/XFS etc. But Windows is still hesitating, it is a giant that has got a huge momentum and can't just stop and turn in the Unix direction, although it sure is starting to look in its direction...
Out of the "surprise" tech billionaires of the late 90's, I like Shuttleworth, because he is giving back to the Linux community, Cuban on the other hand is just suing everyone who he thinks is "better" than him...
Hardly visible => The cat/friend/child/self will not avert their eyes immediately and end up with a burnt retina. That is why the infrared lasers are also very dangerous.
Because if they had, they would blog about it...;)
The encryption algorithms are open.
That's not the point, the algorithms are open but an implementation might have a back door. For example the code could be if(key==0xDEADBEEF){ let_NSA_in(); }
I am with you on SVG. My take on it is that it is the browser's job to implement SVG well and it will take off from there. I have tried creating SVG-only pages with Inkscape and it turned out pretty well...
I have been wondering for years if Windows already has something like that. Initially it would have been motivated by the fact that in case of a cyberwar, the US Govt. should have an upper hand if the rivals happen to use any MS products....
But in general I think competition is good, the system with less downtime, more coverage, higher precision will win (this doesn't apply to the high precision military-only applications). And if the Chinese manage to have a great system then I bet there will be devices that would use more than one system and that would perhaps will help increase accuracy....
I don't think digital backs to 35mm SLR are viable when for the same price you can get the whole body. Now medium and large formats -- that's a different story....
Most photographers I talked to, told me if I ever wanted to buy a DSLR to buy the lens(es) _first_ then buy the body. A good lens will set you back a couple thousand...
I am actually a fan of Pentax and already pre-ordered the new K10D and ordered some lenses (I like my set of primes) and then I'll wait for the new set of zoom lenses coming in spring. Along with the macro and some wide angles I already have from the Pentax K1000 (film SLR) I should be set...)
I noticed the new Pentax K10D has a dedicated RAW button on the front that lets the photographer easily choose to shoot RAW without having to navigate any menus. There is also a RAW+JPEG option.
I pre-ordered one for my wife, I hope she likes as she if very picky (still sticking to her film SLRs) --- pssst.. women...
What do you think of the features of the new K10D compared to K100D? I ordered the K10D for my wife who still isn't sure whether to part with her film SLRs (Pentax K1000 and Minolta XG-M). She has more lenses for Pentax (and Minolta is dead for all practical purposes) so I ordered a Pentax after pitching to her all the features. The problem is, the release of the K10D is delayed and it is still not out (it was supposed to be the start of October). So now I am thinking to just cancel the order and get her a K100D...
You must be an anonymous coward, always afraid of taking responsibility for your words...
Well, if you are a conservative good for you, as long as you are not a xenophobe. I was not talking about conservatives as somehow being "bad" or "good" I was talking about xenophobia. So what's the deal then with the personal insult:
Here's to hoping an extremely fat naked man lays his scrotum on your mustache.
-- It makes you (and by association all the conservatives) look rather bad.
Good day to ya'
"Troll" moderation -- not surprising Slashdot's finest at their "best".
All the Kazakh customs and Borat's behaviors are made up, people in Kazakhstan do know how to use toilets and they do not act like Borat. Heck, Borat doesn't even look Kazakh, he doesn't really speak the Kazakh language, and the village was actually Romanian. But the fact that most Americans Borat met didn't realize that (including you) is the ironic part, that is what Borat character was meant to show. There are plenty of scenes where "civilized" Americans go along and tacitly or explicitly agree with some very racist and anti-semitic remarks. For example when Borat goes into the gun dealer's shop and asks for a good gun to kill Jews with, the owner proudly gives him a nice handgun that looked like its bullets could pierce thick armor!
I was glad I payed for Borat. I would even go and say it is a masterpiece. It has something for everyone: the bleeding heart liberals like me can go and see in it how racists the Americans are, the conservative xenophobes can look at it and laugh at the "stupid" foreigner thus only reinforcing their own position of "we are the best country and everyone else is backwards" -- which I have to say on a certain level is funny in an of itself, and of course, there is plenty of slapstick and "Mr. Bean" type humor for everyone else. The interesting part, as I read in another review, is that Sacha Cohen had only one take for his scenes and most of them were not rehearsed (that's why the "masterpiece" label).
I love Linux and I am trying to contribute and spread the word about it, but I also have to be realistic -- Linux is not ready for professional graphic design and photo work (note: Maya is ported, so 3D design would work great)
Eventually she might switch to using a Mac. Then I won't need to "fix" her machine anymore. But at this time she wants the fastest hardware for the lowest price (even at the expense of having deal with freezes and needing an antivirus suite running). One could also argue that the time spent fiddling with the drivers and cleaning out spyware is more expensive over time than the upfront cost of a Mac.
In other words she can process batches of images and create contact sheets much faster on Windows but at the expense of dealing with instability and Windows glitches. And, of course, she has me who can troubleshoot her machine win-win for her (free tech support and really fast hardware). If she had a Mac I would not be "fixing" her machine - it would probably just work.
The problem is with the software, as soon as the user needs anything more than browse,read email and write letters they hit the wall with Linux.
I have a photographer friend who uses Photoshop extensively. When fixing her Windows machine that kept freezing, I decided to make a it a double boot with Ubuntu as the second OS. I added all her bookmarks from Firefox, I made sure she could access her documents, her expensive high end Epson printer had a nice functional Gutenprint driver, and of course, I added GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop.
When I demoed the system to her, up until we got to the GIMP part, my friend was impressed with Ubuntu. She liked the clean Gnome menus, she liked how her printer could print, she liked that she didn't have to use an antivirus and she liked Ubuntu because it means "humanity towards others" -- so far all was well.
Then the bomb was dropped: she had asked a simple question -- "Where is Photoshop?" I quietly told her that there is nice replacement for it called GIMP. And headed over to the Graphics>GIMP menu to show her GIMP -- what I think is an excellent image manipulation program. But she told me to stop the whole thing and to give back her Photoshop. She didn't care that windows' security had more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese, she didn't care that her Windows machine would freeze once in a while, she didn't care about the "free" part and she definitely didn't give a damn anymore about "Humanity towards others" when she could not have her Photoshop. Just the fact that she would have to tell other professionals that she uses a program called "GIMP" was enough for her to not wanting to try it. In other words just the names and the "image" of some of the OS applications sound "goofy", childish or "geeky" and no matter how much we don't like it but appearances and first impression are important (the marketing folk know that too well).
Now, I know that GIMP is probably just as good and that with more or less effort one can achieve the same result with GIMP as one can with Photoshop. I have been using it for many years with success, BUT I am also a geek who likes to write device drivers and re-compile kernels. I love Linux and would never go back to Windows. I figured out a way to do everything I needed in Linux. But most people are not geeks like me. They want their computer to do a specific job. In other words the computer to them is a "tool" much like a monkey wrench -- just a means to an end, to me the computer is a "the end".
People falsely assume that Microsoft conquered the world because of its great operating system. It was not the operating system, it was Office (especially Excel and Word) and other applications, most written by a 3rd party, that made Windows into what it is. Most people who use Windows would probably agree that it sucks: bad security, blue screens and restarts -- everyone hates those things. But as long as Office along with Photoshop, Dreamweaver and other software that people spend hundreds and thousands of dollars is there -- they will be glued to Windows.
I realize that it is a "chicken and egg" problem: if Linux would be more popular the software companies would invest in porting their application to Linux (think Maya, Matlab and Mathematica...) but part of the reason that Linux is not that popular is because most of the applications will not work in Linux.
P.S. No, I didn't try running Photoshop with WINE because I heard it is not stable, and Linux also didn't have an easy way to calibrate and match the input/output color profiles and was missing some other software that my friend was using. I just used Photoshop as a prime example.
Exactly...Should have stuck to OpenGL. The "Open" part should have been a pretty good motivator.
see here
\begin{obligatory_overlord_quote}
I, for one, welcome our new furry and cuddly overlords
\end{obligatory_overlord_quote}
Once the sound is digitized, a software package can be used to edit and manipulate it. The only thing that should not happen inside a typical PC case as any A/D or D/A conversion. Only digital streams should be manipulated.
The reason I think the upgrade disasters happened is because most developers have been upgrading gradually, over time, just like me. After the release, they assumed upgrading works fine and focused most of the testing on fresh installs. This left the situation of a sudden dist-upgrade from Dapper to Eft un-tested.
In general testing upgrades is pretty difficult. One has to account for X possible previous versions (Dapper, Hoary, Breezy along with mixed software from universe repositories installed by hand) times Y possible hardware configurations. This results in a lot of testing scenarios....
My other take on the situation is that a lot more people are upgrading and therefore there is a total increase in upgrade problems. A year or more ago, there weren't that many Breezy users who upgraded to Dapper (just because there weren't that many Ubuntu users). Now there are a lot more users --- a lot more upgrades --- a lot more upgrade problems.