I'm not lucky. I love Ubuntu, but I've had 2 or 3 upgrades go less well than expected, requiring a little or a lot of work, or in some cases a clean install. I've also seen as many or more go off without a hitch.
The xp upgrade disks I've used will do a clean install, they just require that you insert the install media of a qualifying OS (98, ME) during the install. (Actually, late in the install. Idiots.) IIRC, you can even use an 98 or ME upgrade disk as proof.
If the Windows 7 upgrader works the same then a person won't be forced to install every version should a clean install be necessary. Although that would be kind of funny. Not for you, of course.
I install every time I need to use Windows, so twice a year or so. The balance of the time I have just one drive in my tower, and that's a 30GB SSD with 20+ free GB on it. No room for Windows there, and my office is plenty warm and noisy enough without it.
My spinning hard drives live in the file server or on the shelf in the basement. I suppose some of those might contain a Windows install, but why take a risk? There's probably some boxes down there with old underwear too. Although it's probably laundered, I ain't throwin' it on without at least a short cycle in the wash, thanks.
Strong passwords may not save you from keylogging, but that doesn't make them altogether useless. Rainbow tables, for example, will expose weak passwords but not strong ones on Windows machines. If you're using a boot disk to get into a computer that might store one of my strong passwords, well you can wipe it out or change stuff but at least my password is no less secure than before.
When I want to get rid of the cruft I use 'apt-get autoremove', perhaps in combination with 'deborphan -an'. A package manager is supposed to make all that crap reversible, which is why I shudder when I come across any software that doesn't use it.
Upgrades screwing up config files, on the other hand...
the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome
Really? Have they really become more difficult? Like jumping off the high board becomes more difficult after you've climbed up there? Or truly more difficult, like trying to sell tickets to the hockey pool after the playoffs have ended?
How about HAVP? Scans all your traffic in and out. It won't stop the bug catching a ride on a USB stick until it actually hits the wire, but heckuva thing being able to monitor the pipe from a single seat. Also available as a PFSense package.
I thought the point was about the current state. Saying it will get better in the future isn't really relevant now.
Especially when it's said about Microsoft, a corporation with a history of promising that the next Windows is the Best Windows Ever(TM), that Antivirus will become obsolete, that the future is all sunshine and lolipops.
Meanwhile, all the other implementations of ODF interoperate rather well. If ODF spec is not sufficiently well-defined at this point, it has only failed in holding MS accountable their claims of compliance.
""Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again."
After running a fire-breathing Celeron 2.5GHz as router/fileserver/torrentbox/freepbx for a few months, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a soekris net5501 and installed pfsense and freeswitch on it. My firewalling and phones run right at well under 20 watts.
Of course that leaves me without fileserver or torrentbox, but an inexpensive alix or fit pc running freenas will fill that role nicely.
I think it's time we bump the return rate on Windows machines by taking back our new laptops a few times. I'm tired of seeing this argument. As of right now my preferred recommendation for malware becomes "take it back to the store and exchange it for one that doesn't have that problem".
Amen to that. If capitalists vote with their dollars, and the screwed-up market we live in makes the Windows+crapware model appear to be less expensive than the linux model, then we the market have an obligation to respond by pushing some of the real costs of owning the Crap 6.1 model back onto the distributors and manufacturers.
A coworker was just telling me last week that a firmware update to his satellite receiver caused it to stop sending signal on the HDMI output because it didn't trust the surround receiver as a passthrough device.
Granted, that's not the same as the actual passthrough device failing to do passthrough, but the effect is the same and it could be interpreted as alike by the majority of the end-user population.
Yeah, the point being that there are two possible outcomes:
1. the implementation is effective and antivirus solutions become obsolete, or
2. the implementation is not effective and yet another MS antipiracy measure falls by the wayside.
The latter is by far the more obvious and more likely result, and Weaselmancer demonstrated a clever and subtle use of irony in acknowledging only the former.
Tune in next week for my introductory lesson on puns.
Or maybe, just possibly, because Microsoft's internet apps all sucked, and therefore no one used it
Are their desktop apps any better? In an absolute sense, no. In a relative sense, probably. In other words, people had no better alternative. Windows fell into a natural monopoly, while their cloud services have come up against the brick wall of competent competition.
Um, have you ever been to a kids movie in a theater? With all the distraction going on in there you would be lucky to ever even notice the guy with the PDA.
There are often very good reasons to have a usable and reasonably secure web browser installed on a server system.
And without Firefox 4.0 support on Windows 2000, we shall undoubtedly in short time see droves of Win2k sysadmins jumping ship for Internet Explorer 8. Oh wait...
Seriously though, my soon to be previous employer uses IE6 because "IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000". I don't think we're talking about the security-paranoid here.
What we need is more, and not less, of such an aggressive attitude. A real man can take it.
That depends if you're trying to construct a team of "real men" or a team of skilled developers.
People sometimes confuse the idea or the act with the person that is associated with. If I propose a stupid idea or commit a stupid act, then by all means call me out and tell me that it's stupid and why. But save the ad hominem attacks. Calling somebody a moron accomplishes no good thing, and doing it in public is an extremely quick and effective way of destroying team morale.
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I'm not lucky. I love Ubuntu, but I've had 2 or 3 upgrades go less well than expected, requiring a little or a lot of work, or in some cases a clean install. I've also seen as many or more go off without a hitch.
The xp upgrade disks I've used will do a clean install, they just require that you insert the install media of a qualifying OS (98, ME) during the install. (Actually, late in the install. Idiots.) IIRC, you can even use an 98 or ME upgrade disk as proof.
If the Windows 7 upgrader works the same then a person won't be forced to install every version should a clean install be necessary. Although that would be kind of funny. Not for you, of course.
I install every time I need to use Windows, so twice a year or so. The balance of the time I have just one drive in my tower, and that's a 30GB SSD with 20+ free GB on it. No room for Windows there, and my office is plenty warm and noisy enough without it.
My spinning hard drives live in the file server or on the shelf in the basement. I suppose some of those might contain a Windows install, but why take a risk? There's probably some boxes down there with old underwear too. Although it's probably laundered, I ain't throwin' it on without at least a short cycle in the wash, thanks.
Strong passwords may not save you from keylogging, but that doesn't make them altogether useless. Rainbow tables, for example, will expose weak passwords but not strong ones on Windows machines. If you're using a boot disk to get into a computer that might store one of my strong passwords, well you can wipe it out or change stuff but at least my password is no less secure than before.
FreeBSD-based FreeNAS, for one. Not sure about m0n0wall and its other derivatives.
When I want to get rid of the cruft I use 'apt-get autoremove', perhaps in combination with 'deborphan -an'. A package manager is supposed to make all that crap reversible, which is why I shudder when I come across any software that doesn't use it.
Upgrades screwing up config files, on the other hand...
Yeah, I know I'm behind the times, but when did striping become stripping?
the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome
Really? Have they really become more difficult? Like jumping off the high board becomes more difficult after you've climbed up there? Or truly more difficult, like trying to sell tickets to the hockey pool after the playoffs have ended?
How about HAVP? Scans all your traffic in and out. It won't stop the bug catching a ride on a USB stick until it actually hits the wire, but heckuva thing being able to monitor the pipe from a single seat. Also available as a PFSense package.
I thought the point was about the current state. Saying it will get better in the future isn't really relevant now.
Especially when it's said about Microsoft, a corporation with a history of promising that the next Windows is the Best Windows Ever(TM), that Antivirus will become obsolete, that the future is all sunshine and lolipops.
Meanwhile, all the other implementations of ODF interoperate rather well. If ODF spec is not sufficiently well-defined at this point, it has only failed in holding MS accountable their claims of compliance.
""Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again."
After running a fire-breathing Celeron 2.5GHz as router/fileserver/torrentbox/freepbx for a few months, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a soekris net5501 and installed pfsense and freeswitch on it. My firewalling and phones run right at well under 20 watts.
Of course that leaves me without fileserver or torrentbox, but an inexpensive alix or fit pc running freenas will fill that role nicely.
I think it's time we bump the return rate on Windows machines by taking back our new laptops a few times. I'm tired of seeing this argument. As of right now my preferred recommendation for malware becomes "take it back to the store and exchange it for one that doesn't have that problem".
Amen to that. If capitalists vote with their dollars, and the screwed-up market we live in makes the Windows+crapware model appear to be less expensive than the linux model, then we the market have an obligation to respond by pushing some of the real costs of owning the Crap 6.1 model back onto the distributors and manufacturers.
Or freeswitch. Show me a dual-port version of said wart and I'll make it into a router.
Same reason that right-handed people don't go around lobbying for more right-handed scissors and mice.
A coworker was just telling me last week that a firmware update to his satellite receiver caused it to stop sending signal on the HDMI output because it didn't trust the surround receiver as a passthrough device.
Granted, that's not the same as the actual passthrough device failing to do passthrough, but the effect is the same and it could be interpreted as alike by the majority of the end-user population.
Yeah, the point being that there are two possible outcomes:
1. the implementation is effective and antivirus solutions become obsolete, or
2. the implementation is not effective and yet another MS antipiracy measure falls by the wayside.
The latter is by far the more obvious and more likely result, and Weaselmancer demonstrated a clever and subtle use of irony in acknowledging only the former.
Tune in next week for my introductory lesson on puns.
AC obviously didn't read the article, which states clearly that Intel uses VT availbility as a market segregation tool.
A recent example would be the new Core 2 Quad Q8400, now with less VT!
Or maybe, just possibly, because Microsoft's internet apps all sucked, and therefore no one used it
Are their desktop apps any better? In an absolute sense, no. In a relative sense, probably. In other words, people had no better alternative. Windows fell into a natural monopoly, while their cloud services have come up against the brick wall of competent competition.
Um, have you ever been to a kids movie in a theater? With all the distraction going on in there you would be lucky to ever even notice the guy with the PDA.
Fourth, use an unpartitioned SSD, or block-align your partitions if you must.
Fifth, use the deadline scheduler.
Sixth, read the excellend anandtech articles on SSD then hit the ocz ssd forums.
There are often very good reasons to have a usable and reasonably secure web browser installed on a server system.
And without Firefox 4.0 support on Windows 2000, we shall undoubtedly in short time see droves of Win2k sysadmins jumping ship for Internet Explorer 8. Oh wait...
Seriously though, my soon to be previous employer uses IE6 because "IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000". I don't think we're talking about the security-paranoid here.
There's enough BS in your post to solve world hunger.
As if the problem of world hunger boils down to a lack of fertilizer and fuel alone. I like your optimism, but don't let it blind you.
Chocolate and Cheese. Ween had it right.
What we need is more, and not less, of such an aggressive attitude. A real man can take it.
That depends if you're trying to construct a team of "real men" or a team of skilled developers.
People sometimes confuse the idea or the act with the person that is associated with. If I propose a stupid idea or commit a stupid act, then by all means call me out and tell me that it's stupid and why. But save the ad hominem attacks. Calling somebody a moron accomplishes no good thing, and doing it in public is an extremely quick and effective way of destroying team morale.