Or, Put simply, "No matter how slow it is, at least it has Adblock"
The point is that with AdBlock Firefox is quick. Throw in NoScript and you can really control the "load" being thrown at the browser. Both of these mechanisms really give a superior browser experience compared to anything in IE8.
Why is it "human stupidity" to use Windows in the way it was meant to be used? People want to install stuff but they don't want the installed stuff to wreck their machine. People want to browse web pages and read email with out fear of picking up something heinous. It would be one thing if users where abusing Windows causing it to malfunction but that isn't what is happening. They are using Vista as designed and being pestered at too many steps.
I don't see why Windows doesn't provide a space to install anything a user wants in their own part of the file system. If more than one user needs to use the same software, then use a different installer and mode. And people make mistakes so they may install some trojan adware which at worst makes them lose their personal data but still doesn't wreck the machine.
There is a way to engineer multi-user systems where I believe "the original sin" was that Windows NT never really embraced that. Was it because Microsoft wanted NT to hang onto WfW or 95 behavior? That is probably a/. topic for another day but the side effects are what we have today. UAC is born out of this mess where it is literally that Windows can't figure out what is the safe thing to do any more so it must lean on the user who may or may not know any better either.
If you really believe that, then the correct way to handle a process trying to access something they don't have permissions to is to deny it but be clear why. Instead what we got is something else...
Although Mac and Linux have applications and applets that prompt for elevation in privileges this is different than what is going on in UAC: In Linux, the Network Manager applet knows it needs elevated privileges to modify wireless settings. In Vista, UAC doesn't necessarily know "why" any process wants access to anything so it asks the user instead. Why would the user know any better to be qualified to make the decision? UAC would have been a better diagnostic tool than a security measure.
They are learning the painful lessons music and movie "industry" have been seeing: The physical media isn't so valuable. When your business plan is tied to one and only one media, you will be in trouble when the next new thing comes along.
The last physical game I went to the store to buy was World of Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King. I know what game before that I went to the store to buy: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Any guess what the game before that I went to the store to buy? But I have been playing a lot of games on PC, more than I do on consoles. In that sense, the media for WoW is worthless. However having the access code in a timely manner is. In a few months, the data on the WoW:WotLK disks in those boxes will be nearly worthless since it will be patched and repatched but the sticker on the disk with the code will be as valuable as ever. Blizzard could handle this stuff online where they even provide an online way to buy/upgrade today but I suspect they are prevented from doing it at launch due to Activision wanting to satisfy retail/"brick + mortar" demands.
I think people are too enamored with the "collector" side of buying media. That is fine if they want the giant collection of stuff but to say it is valuable beyond looking at is crazy. My attitude changed on the last time I moved. I had a ton of just "games". Boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. Games from primordial (stuff like Apple or Commodore) to DOS era to more recent games. The problem is I bet a majority of it is doesn't work any more where either I lack the hardware or software or both to make it run again nor in most cases would I care to get them to work again. I'm sure someone will think it is neat to have a box with goodies for Ultima 4 for the Apple II family but as a game it is impossible for me to use. Even for recent games, it turns out once I'm done with a game I rarely come back and visit them so why operate under the illusions that holding onto the disk and box is value added? Even for a moderm game that I've finished, say Fallout 3, if it stopped working tomorrow I'd shrug and erase it and move on to the next game.
If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
Why would a voter in Des Moines, IA feel the need to register let alone vote when there is little chance they'll ever see either candidate? With this mechanism, all a candidate needs to do is focus on a fewer places and they win. It isn't worth their time going out of the way to places without much population.
Having Clinton and Obama visit nearly every state had an effect. It made them appear in many places.It seems that forcing competition on a state jurisdiction level seems to promote voter participation.
As for this movement, I'm not sure it is such a hot idea. The electoral college forces candidates to visit contested states. If a majority of states adopt measures like this, candidates then can focus on a fewer, higher populated places instead.
I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by making it cheaper and easier to campaign but then again I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by keeping it this convoluted either. The balance should be sought between representing a majority and making sure everyone had a chance to give their input where even dissenting votes are important. Measures like this always have me wondering if that defeats half of the equation.
The "Mozilla Brand" has been based upon "being the better browser because they are forced to compete since they aren't bunlded". If they suddenly go "Hell yah, bundle Firefox on everything!" then that goes away.
Beyond that I believe Conner's has a fundamental point that bundling in general has a negative effect on competition. It doesn't matter if if the the best or worst browser in the world was bundled with every desktop, phone, and widget. If it is everywhere, it becomes hard to compete against. That does not totally kill competition but it is a hurdle to jump over for anything new.
SELinux provides a consistent mechanism for runtime policy rules in terms of a execution context. That isn't to "provide the same granularity of Windows" so if you want that you need to look elsewhere.
The reason why SELinux is important is that it goes to the next step of control. For instance, assuming a system is configured correctly to access the Firefox binaries and necessary files, a problem still arises: The Firefox process, once launched, has access to everything the user that launched it has access too. There is no earthly reason why Firefox would load "libsmb.so" or any number of things in "common directories" by nefarious people may try. A way to protect that is start refining the system to "contexts" where it is recognize many processes shouldn't have such broad access. Under SELinux, one can create a policy for Samba enforcing only Samba tools can load Samba shared objects. Now it doesn't matter what user is running Firefox (even the all mighty "root"), the system won't allow Firefox to dynamically load "libsmb.so".
The trick is that creation of these polices takes time and a lot of tweaking and hard to keep generic. SELinux is very much a work in progress but I'm glad it is work being done. And importantly, this isn't done on Windows yet either. The analogous mechanism on Windows is an AV Scanner which isn't desirable due to be inconsistent (one AV vendor may handle Firefox loading "smb.dll" differently than another) and not as desirable since it is "watching and catching abuse" instead of preventing it by design.
Regardless of software and platform, supporting split screen is often trickier than network play. You are literally loading the system to perform twice as much work for half of the output. Two views with full scene transformations need to be calculated. Two rendering pipelines plus shader processing must be supported. And so on... It isn't that it is impossible but it is often more trouble than it is worth especially given the demands of gamers on modern graphics engines. They could spend a lot of time tweaking the game to perform at a certain frame rate at a certain resolution and have to come up with completely separate tweaks for split screen.
The way the demographics break down as well have been trending away from "couch multiplayer" to "network multiplayer". I'm disappointed if a game doesn't support online multiplayer but never surprised if they skip the split screen multiplayer.
I'm always a little irked by this supposition that the developer for an app that has nothing to do with security has to be aware of the details of the security subsystem.
Going back to the check book software example, we can probably agree there is nothing about such a software system that needs Admin privileges but we should also agree such a system shouldn't need to take any special consideration for the permission or security beyond the defaults. The data itself may need to be kept locked and private from other users but you don't do that by switching to Admin/elevating permissions.
So how did we end up with a situation where the check book balancing application has to be "aware" of roles and security? It is really all the fault of Windows design. Parts of the installer need to access other parts of the system that require elevation in privileges. Parts of the application often sit in restricted parts of the file system (C:\Program Files). Depending on what other facilities are being used working with Windows may restrict you. Add to this the system is tied up with AV and other security software which may interfere as well. At every level there may or may not be documentation on how to gain access. All of this is a PITA handle to program let alone support the user when it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place! Since Microsoft didn't see it fit to provide elegant systems to the developer to handle these case, developers came up with their own with the system available.
The people trying to sell a check book balancing software should be focused on writing the best damn check book balancing software instead of worrying about how to get the right "permission token" to run their app or cataloging thousands of possible error coming from outside of their application.
Expecting a user to go to TechNet or MSDN every time Windows does something weird or unexpected isn't user friendly. Its great you know these exist but it is pretty useless for a lot of other people. Microsoft should be constantly taking feedback and tweaking the UI instead of publishing more articles.
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
I'm sure that if I buy a Dell or HP today and sit people in front of Vista they will think it is pretty neat. The problem is when you give them the box and tell them to go home. Just letting a normal user install any version of Vista on any version of Windows on hardware that is who knows how old with any number of peripherals is fought with danger. There is no way to tell how compatible any particular home desktop is till you run through the upgrade where by then you may have something as functional as an Etch-a-sketch.
The second sin of Vista is that it hurt developers. Its bad enough when a user finds their "Old Bessy Printer + Scanner" but it is doubly damaging when the software developer at the vendor has to now jump through extra hoops to restore the functionality. Even for new development trivial tasks, for instance Control Panel and Service control, are now made more complex in Vista. In a lot of cases this is how it should have been from the start but the developer is forced to take the cost of that. This ends up with some cases where the driver is fine but is unconfigurable or uncontrollable.
So it annoys some users who have old or exotic software and hardware. And it annoys software developers who find simple tasks made impossible or more complex. Are we sure that some hatred isn't justified Yeah, Apple commercials really are to blame for that...
If you need an additional hint: It is fine and well for Microsoft to present Vista to users and developers as "The new way" but they never offered them legacy support for the interim. Even offering users and developers "jailed behavior" would be better than outright non-functional.
Tech companies always get hit hard when the economy goes cold. Cutting back on work force and projects is a normal reaction to the event so I'm not quite sure what the "news" exactly is in this.
It shouldn't be treated as a disaster though where instead it is an opportunity to trim things down and refocus.
Japan has always been like this. Take a look at the PS3 and Wii. Both offer highly proprietary, custom built, in ways convoluted technology to the same problem. But for some reason Sony is treated as idiots while the author sort of forgets Wii takes the prize. For whatever reason Japanese engineers like doing this: When there is no technology that exists that exactly fits to solve a problem, their engieneers tend to build a new one even if there are other pre-existing solutions that almost achieve it. Just like other capital projects, it sometimes pays off and sometimes fails.
Another thing not considered is the fact the XBox 360 is most conservative console out of the three. The software and hardware technology in the Wii and PS3 are dramatically different then their predecessors where they have features that simply don't exist in the ancestors. On the other hand the XBox 360 is more like a beefier XBox. I think the real story is that Sony gambled on some fundamental technology shifts and it didn't pan out. Microsoft on the other hand "played safe" and iterated. There is nothing wrong with that but to claim its some technology shift or special insight, especially given their production and software problems is a bit much.
Parent is right but its a little to late to discuss that when the child is already there. And not to mention the cost of health service and insurance "quirks" may make it unaffordable to some anyway.
Why not get the best of all worlds? It is possible to strive for better, cheaper prenatal care and better, cheaper incubators.
Its all well and good that Microsoft provides source code to special customers who demand an extra level of conformance and security but that still leaves a big question: Is code on the DVDs delivered on the DVD really the code that is on the install disk? The only way to be sure is to build it themselves.
This a real benefit to open source is and makes it somewhat valuable and something Shared Source continues to miss. If you have no confidence that there is something nefarious in Windows, just looking at the source code but then accepting another disk to install isn't exactly proving anything.
IE itself doesn't know it is out of date. Some other system is required to do that. This has been a perpetual problem for awhile now where a lot of software product out there depends on a "third party" to check for version status. If the "third party" malfunctions or is misconfiguration, the software doesn't update. Even if the software can't update it would be nice to notify the user there is a critical update to apply manually.
Firefox isn't perfect but one thing they do right is letting the user know when they use the software if an update is available. IE doesn't do this and probably can't due to the way it is tied into the OS and the way packaging works in Windows.
Parent is more correct than they realize about "The Second Issue". Not only was there "the lack of obvious improvements" for Users but it is true for the Developer. Parts of the system and subsystem seemed to be complicated and harder to work with but there appeared to be little to no improvements. If your software depended on a simple Windows Service and a Control Panel snap-in in XP, your work just got a lot harder to do exactly the same thing in Vista. Just like what happens with UAC with Users, Developers lament why they are pestered with hurdles for things that used to be consider trivial.
This creates a doubly toxic situation where users and developers why some things they used to do take a lot more or work and a lot longer to do. When both see this, neither are going to rush into the product.
An interesting thing to be noted in "Lich King" is the use of the "phasing technology". There are issues with the way it works as implemented now but I really see this as a jump in the technology of MMOs because it provides direct feedback to the player while doing quest progression.
With the way "phasing" works, players can now see results of their progress. For instance, a quest NPC can now say to players "I need help building a fortress here. I need you to..." and sort of mean it. As they work through the number of steps each time they come back they see a little more of the fort come together. What starts out as little more than some guys standing in an empty space can turn into a functioning town with vendors and new buildings and other facilities. There is a lot of "trickiery" used like sending you conveniently away to deliver or gather something so it can swap in stuff but in the end you really see the results of the work done. As horrible as grinding is, at least this is some big feed back to it which is better than the old fashion NPC who would say "thanks for the help" and never quite get around to building anything.
The problem is and forever will be concurrency. If you completed all of the quests to build up the fortress you will see the fortress. If your friend who hasn't been there before let alone completed any of these quests, at best will see nothing but the NPC asking him to help with building the fortress. At worst, you two maybe grouped and can't see each other. It sometimes gets hard to lend a helping hand to a friend if you aren't seeing what they see let alone particulate because they aren't even "there" with you.
Although it has issues, I really see this as having a lot of potential. I wonder if Blizzard could make an expansion with this stuff where an entire area/continent/world is overrun with bad guys but as you work through the content and quests you slowly but surely, and "heroically", fix the world. The end result with any MMO expansion is you fix whatever story/disaster/crisis that popped up. With this "phasing technology" they can start to approach that where people who "finish" the quests and content leave the area "evil free".
As the distributor of those movies, Sony has a right to distribute them in the way they see fit. If for some reason they don't think Netflix and Microsoft are treating their content properly then why can't Sony pull the plug on content they are responsible for? As long as Sony isn't forcing Netflix (or Microsoft by extension) with money to not distribute Sony content then that is fine. Illogical but fine. Sony shouldn't get paid for content they didn't deliver from Netflix by way of NXE.
Of course none of that has anything to do with consumers and what they want or desire where this is really a squabble about two mega-corporations who really give only passing thought about what their consumers really would like.
In all seriousness, this is "good research" in the sense it is an easy to identify condition with a harmless negative outcome. It is easy to identify someone who is bald or balding where you don't need extensive tests to confirm it. It is "easy" to identify if the treatment is working or not. Are they still bald? Did they have more or less hair? Importantly, baring "gene damage" if the treatment fails baldness is a fairly harmless to be stuck with unlike cancer, neurological, or any other things gene therapy may cure but fail to succeed.
So I'm all for baby steps. Although not a "plague of humanity", I would rather they perfect the techniques and treatments on simple stuff like balding before going after the big stuff.
The difference though is that the use cases are contrary. You invokes "sudo" because you/user know what the command that needs to be run. The OS invokes UAC but as the grandparent post correctly notes it doesn't clearly tell you why user intervention is necessary. That isn't enough information to allow the user to make an informed decision.
A lot of the issue is what my HMI professor in college would call "the false choice". A lot, but not all, the actions UAC prompts on are really not a choice and should never offer a "Cancel" anyway. If they went through and simply always disallowed those actions that would eliminate a lot of the prompting to help make UAC useful again. But even then as the grandparent correctly identifies, UAC needs to display useful information to the user to make informed decisions.
If Microsoft really wants to add a valuable feature to UAC, they should be "transacting" a lot of the shell interaction so that UAC can explain clearly why it is prompting the user for a "Yes/No" response. "A program downloaded from domain.com (x.x.x.x) wishes modify system settings Foo to Bar. Cancel or Allow?"
To Jeffery Kaplan: Is there any concern from your team that Achievements could have a negative effect on the game? I lament what has happened on consoles where people are buying and renting trashy games just for 1000 more imaginary points. This gives "life" to bad games which should be ignored because of their awfulness. I'm already seeing this happen at 70 but I am worried this could be a problem in where level 80 players are doing distracting if not stupid stuff just to have a check box checked.
Unfortunately Blizzard's hands are tied. If Blizzard didn't go after the real world company, their only recourse is to say "Stop! Or I'll say 'Stop!' again". On a semi-open platform like PC/Mac there is only so much one can do to "seal the system". At some point it touches open parts of the OS to do things outside the what is dictated by the rules. They've ratcheted up the technology side as far as they can go for PC/Mac. The next step beyond Warden is to do something DRM and we know how well that goes...
To stop Glider with just technology, they would have to abandon the PC/Mac platforms and retreat to DRM enforced, console style systems. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, Put simply, "No matter how slow it is, at least it has Adblock"
The point is that with AdBlock Firefox is quick. Throw in NoScript and you can really control the "load" being thrown at the browser. Both of these mechanisms really give a superior browser experience compared to anything in IE8.
Why is it "human stupidity" to use Windows in the way it was meant to be used? People want to install stuff but they don't want the installed stuff to wreck their machine. People want to browse web pages and read email with out fear of picking up something heinous. It would be one thing if users where abusing Windows causing it to malfunction but that isn't what is happening. They are using Vista as designed and being pestered at too many steps.
I don't see why Windows doesn't provide a space to install anything a user wants in their own part of the file system. If more than one user needs to use the same software, then use a different installer and mode. And people make mistakes so they may install some trojan adware which at worst makes them lose their personal data but still doesn't wreck the machine.
There is a way to engineer multi-user systems where I believe "the original sin" was that Windows NT never really embraced that. Was it because Microsoft wanted NT to hang onto WfW or 95 behavior? That is probably a /. topic for another day but the side effects are what we have today. UAC is born out of this mess where it is literally that Windows can't figure out what is the safe thing to do any more so it must lean on the user who may or may not know any better either.
If you really believe that, then the correct way to handle a process trying to access something they don't have permissions to is to deny it but be clear why. Instead what we got is something else...
Although Mac and Linux have applications and applets that prompt for elevation in privileges this is different than what is going on in UAC: In Linux, the Network Manager applet knows it needs elevated privileges to modify wireless settings. In Vista, UAC doesn't necessarily know "why" any process wants access to anything so it asks the user instead. Why would the user know any better to be qualified to make the decision? UAC would have been a better diagnostic tool than a security measure.
They are learning the painful lessons music and movie "industry" have been seeing: The physical media isn't so valuable. When your business plan is tied to one and only one media, you will be in trouble when the next new thing comes along.
The last physical game I went to the store to buy was World of Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King. I know what game before that I went to the store to buy: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Any guess what the game before that I went to the store to buy? But I have been playing a lot of games on PC, more than I do on consoles. In that sense, the media for WoW is worthless. However having the access code in a timely manner is. In a few months, the data on the WoW:WotLK disks in those boxes will be nearly worthless since it will be patched and repatched but the sticker on the disk with the code will be as valuable as ever. Blizzard could handle this stuff online where they even provide an online way to buy/upgrade today but I suspect they are prevented from doing it at launch due to Activision wanting to satisfy retail/"brick + mortar" demands.
I think people are too enamored with the "collector" side of buying media. That is fine if they want the giant collection of stuff but to say it is valuable beyond looking at is crazy. My attitude changed on the last time I moved. I had a ton of just "games". Boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. Games from primordial (stuff like Apple or Commodore) to DOS era to more recent games. The problem is I bet a majority of it is doesn't work any more where either I lack the hardware or software or both to make it run again nor in most cases would I care to get them to work again. I'm sure someone will think it is neat to have a box with goodies for Ultima 4 for the Apple II family but as a game it is impossible for me to use. Even for recent games, it turns out once I'm done with a game I rarely come back and visit them so why operate under the illusions that holding onto the disk and box is value added? Even for a moderm game that I've finished, say Fallout 3, if it stopped working tomorrow I'd shrug and erase it and move on to the next game.
If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
Why would a voter in Des Moines, IA feel the need to register let alone vote when there is little chance they'll ever see either candidate? With this mechanism, all a candidate needs to do is focus on a fewer places and they win. It isn't worth their time going out of the way to places without much population.
Having Clinton and Obama visit nearly every state had an effect. It made them appear in many places.It seems that forcing competition on a state jurisdiction level seems to promote voter participation.
As for this movement, I'm not sure it is such a hot idea. The electoral college forces candidates to visit contested states. If a majority of states adopt measures like this, candidates then can focus on a fewer, higher populated places instead.
I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by making it cheaper and easier to campaign but then again I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by keeping it this convoluted either. The balance should be sought between representing a majority and making sure everyone had a chance to give their input where even dissenting votes are important. Measures like this always have me wondering if that defeats half of the equation.
The "Mozilla Brand" has been based upon "being the better browser because they are forced to compete since they aren't bunlded". If they suddenly go "Hell yah, bundle Firefox on everything!" then that goes away.
Beyond that I believe Conner's has a fundamental point that bundling in general has a negative effect on competition. It doesn't matter if if the the best or worst browser in the world was bundled with every desktop, phone, and widget. If it is everywhere, it becomes hard to compete against. That does not totally kill competition but it is a hurdle to jump over for anything new.
SELinux provides a consistent mechanism for runtime policy rules in terms of a execution context. That isn't to "provide the same granularity of Windows" so if you want that you need to look elsewhere.
The reason why SELinux is important is that it goes to the next step of control. For instance, assuming a system is configured correctly to access the Firefox binaries and necessary files, a problem still arises: The Firefox process, once launched, has access to everything the user that launched it has access too. There is no earthly reason why Firefox would load "libsmb.so" or any number of things in "common directories" by nefarious people may try. A way to protect that is start refining the system to "contexts" where it is recognize many processes shouldn't have such broad access. Under SELinux, one can create a policy for Samba enforcing only Samba tools can load Samba shared objects. Now it doesn't matter what user is running Firefox (even the all mighty "root"), the system won't allow Firefox to dynamically load "libsmb.so".
The trick is that creation of these polices takes time and a lot of tweaking and hard to keep generic. SELinux is very much a work in progress but I'm glad it is work being done. And importantly, this isn't done on Windows yet either. The analogous mechanism on Windows is an AV Scanner which isn't desirable due to be inconsistent (one AV vendor may handle Firefox loading "smb.dll" differently than another) and not as desirable since it is "watching and catching abuse" instead of preventing it by design.
Regardless of software and platform, supporting split screen is often trickier than network play. You are literally loading the system to perform twice as much work for half of the output. Two views with full scene transformations need to be calculated. Two rendering pipelines plus shader processing must be supported. And so on... It isn't that it is impossible but it is often more trouble than it is worth especially given the demands of gamers on modern graphics engines. They could spend a lot of time tweaking the game to perform at a certain frame rate at a certain resolution and have to come up with completely separate tweaks for split screen.
The way the demographics break down as well have been trending away from "couch multiplayer" to "network multiplayer". I'm disappointed if a game doesn't support online multiplayer but never surprised if they skip the split screen multiplayer.
I'm always a little irked by this supposition that the developer for an app that has nothing to do with security has to be aware of the details of the security subsystem.
Going back to the check book software example, we can probably agree there is nothing about such a software system that needs Admin privileges but we should also agree such a system shouldn't need to take any special consideration for the permission or security beyond the defaults. The data itself may need to be kept locked and private from other users but you don't do that by switching to Admin/elevating permissions.
So how did we end up with a situation where the check book balancing application has to be "aware" of roles and security? It is really all the fault of Windows design. Parts of the installer need to access other parts of the system that require elevation in privileges. Parts of the application often sit in restricted parts of the file system (C:\Program Files). Depending on what other facilities are being used working with Windows may restrict you. Add to this the system is tied up with AV and other security software which may interfere as well. At every level there may or may not be documentation on how to gain access. All of this is a PITA handle to program let alone support the user when it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place! Since Microsoft didn't see it fit to provide elegant systems to the developer to handle these case, developers came up with their own with the system available.
The people trying to sell a check book balancing software should be focused on writing the best damn check book balancing software instead of worrying about how to get the right "permission token" to run their app or cataloging thousands of possible error coming from outside of their application.
Would you be happy if we "cdr Dell" instead?
Expecting a user to go to TechNet or MSDN every time Windows does something weird or unexpected isn't user friendly. Its great you know these exist but it is pretty useless for a lot of other people. Microsoft should be constantly taking feedback and tweaking the UI instead of publishing more articles.
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
I'm sure that if I buy a Dell or HP today and sit people in front of Vista they will think it is pretty neat. The problem is when you give them the box and tell them to go home. Just letting a normal user install any version of Vista on any version of Windows on hardware that is who knows how old with any number of peripherals is fought with danger. There is no way to tell how compatible any particular home desktop is till you run through the upgrade where by then you may have something as functional as an Etch-a-sketch.
The second sin of Vista is that it hurt developers. Its bad enough when a user finds their "Old Bessy Printer + Scanner" but it is doubly damaging when the software developer at the vendor has to now jump through extra hoops to restore the functionality. Even for new development trivial tasks, for instance Control Panel and Service control, are now made more complex in Vista. In a lot of cases this is how it should have been from the start but the developer is forced to take the cost of that. This ends up with some cases where the driver is fine but is unconfigurable or uncontrollable.
So it annoys some users who have old or exotic software and hardware. And it annoys software developers who find simple tasks made impossible or more complex. Are we sure that some hatred isn't justified Yeah, Apple commercials really are to blame for that...
If you need an additional hint: It is fine and well for Microsoft to present Vista to users and developers as "The new way" but they never offered them legacy support for the interim. Even offering users and developers "jailed behavior" would be better than outright non-functional.
Tech companies always get hit hard when the economy goes cold. Cutting back on work force and projects is a normal reaction to the event so I'm not quite sure what the "news" exactly is in this.
It shouldn't be treated as a disaster though where instead it is an opportunity to trim things down and refocus.
Japan has always been like this. Take a look at the PS3 and Wii. Both offer highly proprietary, custom built, in ways convoluted technology to the same problem. But for some reason Sony is treated as idiots while the author sort of forgets Wii takes the prize. For whatever reason Japanese engineers like doing this: When there is no technology that exists that exactly fits to solve a problem, their engieneers tend to build a new one even if there are other pre-existing solutions that almost achieve it. Just like other capital projects, it sometimes pays off and sometimes fails.
Another thing not considered is the fact the XBox 360 is most conservative console out of the three. The software and hardware technology in the Wii and PS3 are dramatically different then their predecessors where they have features that simply don't exist in the ancestors. On the other hand the XBox 360 is more like a beefier XBox. I think the real story is that Sony gambled on some fundamental technology shifts and it didn't pan out. Microsoft on the other hand "played safe" and iterated. There is nothing wrong with that but to claim its some technology shift or special insight, especially given their production and software problems is a bit much.
Parent is right but its a little to late to discuss that when the child is already there. And not to mention the cost of health service and insurance "quirks" may make it unaffordable to some anyway.
Why not get the best of all worlds? It is possible to strive for better, cheaper prenatal care and better, cheaper incubators.
Its all well and good that Microsoft provides source code to special customers who demand an extra level of conformance and security but that still leaves a big question: Is code on the DVDs delivered on the DVD really the code that is on the install disk? The only way to be sure is to build it themselves.
This a real benefit to open source is and makes it somewhat valuable and something Shared Source continues to miss. If you have no confidence that there is something nefarious in Windows, just looking at the source code but then accepting another disk to install isn't exactly proving anything.
IE itself doesn't know it is out of date. Some other system is required to do that. This has been a perpetual problem for awhile now where a lot of software product out there depends on a "third party" to check for version status. If the "third party" malfunctions or is misconfiguration, the software doesn't update. Even if the software can't update it would be nice to notify the user there is a critical update to apply manually.
Firefox isn't perfect but one thing they do right is letting the user know when they use the software if an update is available. IE doesn't do this and probably can't due to the way it is tied into the OS and the way packaging works in Windows.
Parent is more correct than they realize about "The Second Issue". Not only was there "the lack of obvious improvements" for Users but it is true for the Developer. Parts of the system and subsystem seemed to be complicated and harder to work with but there appeared to be little to no improvements. If your software depended on a simple Windows Service and a Control Panel snap-in in XP, your work just got a lot harder to do exactly the same thing in Vista. Just like what happens with UAC with Users, Developers lament why they are pestered with hurdles for things that used to be consider trivial.
This creates a doubly toxic situation where users and developers why some things they used to do take a lot more or work and a lot longer to do. When both see this, neither are going to rush into the product.
An interesting thing to be noted in "Lich King" is the use of the "phasing technology". There are issues with the way it works as implemented now but I really see this as a jump in the technology of MMOs because it provides direct feedback to the player while doing quest progression.
With the way "phasing" works, players can now see results of their progress. For instance, a quest NPC can now say to players "I need help building a fortress here. I need you to..." and sort of mean it. As they work through the number of steps each time they come back they see a little more of the fort come together. What starts out as little more than some guys standing in an empty space can turn into a functioning town with vendors and new buildings and other facilities. There is a lot of "trickiery" used like sending you conveniently away to deliver or gather something so it can swap in stuff but in the end you really see the results of the work done. As horrible as grinding is, at least this is some big feed back to it which is better than the old fashion NPC who would say "thanks for the help" and never quite get around to building anything.
The problem is and forever will be concurrency. If you completed all of the quests to build up the fortress you will see the fortress. If your friend who hasn't been there before let alone completed any of these quests, at best will see nothing but the NPC asking him to help with building the fortress. At worst, you two maybe grouped and can't see each other. It sometimes gets hard to lend a helping hand to a friend if you aren't seeing what they see let alone particulate because they aren't even "there" with you.
Although it has issues, I really see this as having a lot of potential. I wonder if Blizzard could make an expansion with this stuff where an entire area/continent/world is overrun with bad guys but as you work through the content and quests you slowly but surely, and "heroically", fix the world. The end result with any MMO expansion is you fix whatever story/disaster/crisis that popped up. With this "phasing technology" they can start to approach that where people who "finish" the quests and content leave the area "evil free".
As the distributor of those movies, Sony has a right to distribute them in the way they see fit. If for some reason they don't think Netflix and Microsoft are treating their content properly then why can't Sony pull the plug on content they are responsible for? As long as Sony isn't forcing Netflix (or Microsoft by extension) with money to not distribute Sony content then that is fine. Illogical but fine. Sony shouldn't get paid for content they didn't deliver from Netflix by way of NXE.
Of course none of that has anything to do with consumers and what they want or desire where this is really a squabble about two mega-corporations who really give only passing thought about what their consumers really would like.
In all seriousness, this is "good research" in the sense it is an easy to identify condition with a harmless negative outcome. It is easy to identify someone who is bald or balding where you don't need extensive tests to confirm it. It is "easy" to identify if the treatment is working or not. Are they still bald? Did they have more or less hair? Importantly, baring "gene damage" if the treatment fails baldness is a fairly harmless to be stuck with unlike cancer, neurological, or any other things gene therapy may cure but fail to succeed.
So I'm all for baby steps. Although not a "plague of humanity", I would rather they perfect the techniques and treatments on simple stuff like balding before going after the big stuff.
The difference though is that the use cases are contrary. You invokes "sudo" because you/user know what the command that needs to be run. The OS invokes UAC but as the grandparent post correctly notes it doesn't clearly tell you why user intervention is necessary. That isn't enough information to allow the user to make an informed decision.
A lot of the issue is what my HMI professor in college would call "the false choice". A lot, but not all, the actions UAC prompts on are really not a choice and should never offer a "Cancel" anyway. If they went through and simply always disallowed those actions that would eliminate a lot of the prompting to help make UAC useful again. But even then as the grandparent correctly identifies, UAC needs to display useful information to the user to make informed decisions.
If Microsoft really wants to add a valuable feature to UAC, they should be "transacting" a lot of the shell interaction so that UAC can explain clearly why it is prompting the user for a "Yes/No" response. "A program downloaded from domain.com (x.x.x.x) wishes modify system settings Foo to Bar. Cancel or Allow?"
To Jeffery Kaplan: Is there any concern from your team that Achievements could have a negative effect on the game? I lament what has happened on consoles where people are buying and renting trashy games just for 1000 more imaginary points. This gives "life" to bad games which should be ignored because of their awfulness. I'm already seeing this happen at 70 but I am worried this could be a problem in where level 80 players are doing distracting if not stupid stuff just to have a check box checked.
Unfortunately Blizzard's hands are tied. If Blizzard didn't go after the real world company, their only recourse is to say "Stop! Or I'll say 'Stop!' again". On a semi-open platform like PC/Mac there is only so much one can do to "seal the system". At some point it touches open parts of the OS to do things outside the what is dictated by the rules. They've ratcheted up the technology side as far as they can go for PC/Mac. The next step beyond Warden is to do something DRM and we know how well that goes...
To stop Glider with just technology, they would have to abandon the PC/Mac platforms and retreat to DRM enforced, console style systems. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.