Since this is Slashdot, it would help if you cited even a single enhancement or benefit that isn't already in XP.
Integrated Desktop Search that's fast and responsive.
Integrated media sharing with XBox 360
A calendar on the desktop.
The ability to 'dock' windows to the side of the screen.
Libraries handled at the OS level so that every application knows instinctively where all your music and videos are at without having to build its own database.
A video driver model that's better sand boxed so that your video driver can fail and the OS can restart it.
Alt-Tab that gives you a preview of the document or window beyond the icon of the application.
DX10 and 11. (No they can't be back ported.)
I like Jump lists! Handy for document related applications.
I like the "Free space" meters on drives.
Desktop search which works on a network with x64 computers.
Vastly improved home networking.
Reliable Wifi management.
Document previewing. With the preview pane you can read the contents of a document without opening it. HUGE time saver when looking for a specific document.
Vastly improved handwriting recognition and pen-computing UI enhancements.
"Breadcrumbs" in the explorer so that you can click on "computer" instead of hitting "Up" 10 times.
The ability to crop and realign a photo without an extra application (Now removed in Windows 7 by default but was included in Vista and therefore "after XP")
Easier configuration of rights between your PC and devices (Laptop, xbox, playstation etc).
Gamma calibration for your monitor out of the box.
Installation to RAIDs is actually easy.
Aero peek to glance at a document without actually switching to it (saves a lot of alt tabbing).
Integrated fingerprint management to use your fingerprint everywhere on the computer as your login (Great on laptops which have it.)
And let's not forget Windows XP SP2. They could have been assholes and left out all of the security enhancements being developed for Vista but instead they spent many months back porting the new Vista stuff to XP to keep XP as a viable and secure product. Imagine the opinion of Vista compared to XP if XP hadn't gotten all the security enhancements given for free in SP2.
Well that's all I can think of in 5 minutes of quickly browsing around my computer. I'm certain if I were to pay attention for a year of testing I could fill a Slashdot comments section with new things I like and find useful.
And let's not forget there was a HUGE backlash to XP when it came out. "It's too bloated!" "It's just windows 2000 but slower!" "Microsoft should have just sold Windows 2000!" "Microsoft is killing Windows 2000 while pushing its shittier cousin!" "Windows XP requires WAYYYY too much RAM!" "The new start menu is stupid!" "I can't stand the new Control Panel".
All of the Vista/Windows 7 complaints are the EXACT SAME complaints that Windows XP was getting when it came out 8 years ago.
I agree. I really really did try to use grouped icons without labels and simply couldn't do it. It just was slow and bothersome to me.
If I have 10 Slashdot pages open I have NO IDEA which is which just by looking at them. So I have to hover my mouse over each window to figure out what is what. Terrible.
And I'm someone who in general loves all the new stuff (Ribbons, Start Menu, peek, gesture etc etc.)
I think it's just BAD. It's not "new" or "different" it's empirically measurably worse for both new users and experienced users.
I would like to believe that since EVERY SINGLE BETA TESTER. ALL 2.5+ MILLION of them hate it they'll change the default.... I would like to believe this but am afraid it 'just aint so'. So oh well I guess it'll be a small setting I need to change each time I install a copy of Windows 7 at home and recommend friends and family do the same. But it's really the only thing I can find that Microsoft completely botched in windows 7.
I like to define philosophy as nothing more than logic. The natural sciences are absolutely important to Philosophers because they give us a "Most Likely True" basis for theories.
If you have a grown retarded human with the intelligence of a "statistical" 1 year old human and you have an ape with the intelligence of a "statistical" 2 year old human and you only have time to save one. Who do you save and why?
That's a philosophical question. But the only ways to really rigorously answer it require sufficient data. You could argue that in general intelligence and emotion should be the metrics. In which case the natural sciences need to answer how intelligent each individual is. Or you could argue based on "Pain of Loss" in which case you would need to empirically measure which scenario results in a greater net pain. Or you could argue on "potential" in which case you would need to determine the potential of each individual. Or you could argue it from a position of "Special ordination for humanity." In which case you would need to make an empirical argument for the specialness of humanity. Or you could argue that Aliens decided this millenia ago and that their psychic transmissions tell us to always save the ape--this too would require investigation should we believe it.
All philosophical theories are based on postulates and assumptions. All assumptions are testable. All assumptions are corruptible. The Scientific Method is the best method we've found so far to determine a fact to be true or false. Therefore if a philosopher wishes his philosophy to be useful to the world they would be wise to base it on our best understandings of science.
4. Market stabilization has no consideration for the emotional and physical consequences of its activities.
Maybe your mother dieing is necessary for a particular market to stabilize. While the economic costs of her death would be negligible to the system the emotional costs may be too great for you. You may prefer the economic hit to the emotional hit.
This is a point that many anti-global warming dissenters miss. They will argue: "The world has been around for billions of years and will regulate itself. We shouldn't interfere." Yes, but the world doesn't care if we live or die. Amoral forces do tend to stabilize and find equilibrium--but they don't care about people.
A perfect metaphor is the industrial robot which kills someone to complete its task. You have to force the human factor into any equation of efficiency.
Or save the money from the bill and offer it to anybody who wants to buy a domestically assembled hybrid.
Why go through some obscure bizarre song and dance to infuse money into domestic industry when you could just directly pay people to buy domestic vehicles that are fuel efficient!
"Here is a check. Pleeeeeeeeaaaaase buy a fuel efficient vehicle made in the US!"
When I was in China everybody I talked to was very proud of their country.
They would even object when I refered to it as a communist country. "We are not communist! We are a republic!"
These people as far as I could tell weren't bugged, monitored or in any way under observation by the government but were happy to proclaim the virtues of China.
Yeah but who loses the most when everybody returns a "5*" product because it doesn't work very well? Amazon.
Amazon is very generous in its return policy. To the point that I am under the assumption they are willing to eat actual losses in order to maintain a reputation of trustworthiness. "Buy it from us and you don't have to worry about buyer's regret" will increase sales far more than the cost of eating an out of warranty return.
Frys has a similar policy with laptops. "Keep it for 30 days! If you don't want it for any reason return it!" People feel safe. They buy it on the spot and then they get used to having it and don't want to return it.
There's an excellent chapter in "Predictably irrational" on "The Cost of Ownership". Essentially the observation is that we value things we own more highly than they're actually worth. You sell someone a laptop and it becomes "Theirs" and they don't want to return it.
If a product is truely bad people won't want to it and they're return it. Amazon does not want to sell 1 million bad routers that will just be returned, plug up customer service, damage their reputation and cost them money directly in shipping and restocking.
Seriously. Unless your students only need the computers for unimportant work what are you doing without a backup?
We have 5 people who use 2 AD servers (Windows 2008). If one goes down the other takes over and starts rebuilding the first. That's not all that expensive. If you have 300 students plus you have teachers who need to grade papers and upload assignments I would hate to see you get fired because you saved $2000 on an extra server.
Microblogging is wildly popular on facebook already. The only way microblogging will go away is for facebook to go away.
Even then... really microblogging has been going on for years. In people's Sigs and in people's custom status messages in AIM, MSN and ICQ.
"Username - Things people should stop eating pesticide ridden apples."
That's a microblog. It's just not posted on a site or medium dedicated to them.
What we're going to see is it go distributed. Your twitter feed will be part of your facebook page. Your facebook page will just be an amalgam of associated services centralized around contact information. It might not be facebook because we'll probably want to have our choice of associating this data. And it'll be p2p hosted services so that your wall, your email, your twitter, your IM and everything else is handled through a single identity.
Think Palm Pre. Palm evidently gets it. They're just doing it through the OS not a webpage.
I think it's because it's an easy place to slam Microsoft.
Silverlight handled the Olympics which is an amazing feat. People who make decisions like to have previous successes to look at when choosing between similar options.
"You have two options 1) You can use a proprietary Adobe Flash based system which will work on 99% of all computers and used used by companies like Youtube. or 2) you can use a proprietary Microsoft Silverlight based solution which will work on 98% of all computers. It was used in the US to stream all of the Olympics coverage live. Also it's been successfully used by Netflix to stream high quality footage to both Macs and PCs.
"Thanks...both look like good options but netflix is higher quality video than Youtube right?" "Yes." "Go with the netflix/olympics one then!"
This doesn't judge whether violence is good or bad for you. It judges whether or not violence is more or less enjoyable.
This is a study like those people who always complain "I don't see why they need to use so much bad language in movies! Shoot is just as good as shit! All of that language is completely unnecessary to the story."
They're also going to see their numbers get skewed very quickly with services like ZunePass and Rhapsody.
I had several gigs of pirated music and a dozen or so CDs ripped from over the last 10 years.
In less than a month I've downloaded more music than the last 4 years pirated.
I suspect a Zunepass would wildly inflate the number of legitimate downloads per person as well. This statistic won't stand up very long as the subscription model catches on.
I find this line of reasoning hillarious. I agree with it. But it's just so comical that it's the new mainstream solution.
The religious right have been argueing that if we let gays marry it will destroy the institution of marriage. I never understood how... but now I do. The anti gay-marriage movement is going to accomplish what gay marriage never could have or attempted to do legally redefine marriage as anything anybody wants to call it.
In a "civil union" nation I can marry a mug of water if I feel like it--and nobody can legally claim that they're "married". This is the nightmare scenario that anti-gay-marriage lobbiests have feared more than anything.
I hope we do move to a secular non-government enforced marriage system. If only because I'll be laughing at the irony the rest of my life.
Cut him some slack. At least he changed it from "Any group or individual" to just "a group or individual". Because we can all agree banning something obscene to any group is too broad. Banning anything obscene to a group or individual is far more responsible.
SECTION 3. Section 16-15-305(A)(3) of the 1976 Code is amended to read:
"(3) publishes \\orally or in writing\\, exhibits, or otherwise makes available anything obscene to \\any\\ a group or individual;"
I'm confused wouldn't an executive for clearwire be fighting tooth and nail to IMMEDIATELY OPEN the spectrum? Not fighting to keep the spectrum closed?
It seems as if this "conflict of interest" story is resulting in the obama advisor advising the exact course of action his other interest would desire.
OMG! CORRUPTION! He's... umm... doing something which would negatively affect his corporate interests.
I would say the money could be much better spent on R&D. Buying patents and opening up technology to the public to use.
FOSS projects might create... I actually don't have any idea what area they could invest in which would be useful... but opening up patents on the other hand allows both FOSS projects and commercial projects create jobs with a lot less overhead.
Let's say I open up a patent on an algorithm that's sitting idle. Now that' it's open you have people putting their own money on the line to in the hope of being the company or open source group which garners the most money. Instead of paying for the employees directly with federal grants you created an opportunity for people to create jobs from their own cash reserves. Leverage entrepeurs to kickstart the economy.
If you were really concerned about kickstarting the US economy specifically the US Government could license the patent to any US citizen whose operations and employees are local. (Ditto if you're in the UK, India, China France etc... nationalize patents and license them for free to your citizens.)
Person A makes $50k a year. Let's say they pay 15%. They pay $7.5k per year. Their apartment costs $800 per month. Their car costs $400 per month. Their food costs $300 per month. At the end of every month they have about $500 left over for spending money.
Person A gets a 50% raise. They now make $75k. Let's say their total tax burder is now 20%. They now pay $15k in taxes a year. They buy a house with their new found fortunes with a $1800 a month mortage. They ea tout more and their food costs $500 a month. They get a nicer car and their lease is now $500. Now they have a net debt of $200 a month. Suddenly they're broke. Obviously the government is holding them down. Before their raise they had money to spare. After their raise they are out of money. Taxes are to blame.
Slashdot Mirror
My UAC didn't flag Disk Defragmenter and I have it set to the default level of security ("Recommended").
Why is your UAC even triggering?
Windows 7 is Windows Vista with performance optimizations, visual tweaks and UI improvements.
What were they supposed to do? That sounds like what I expect from an OS upgrade.
Every OS upgrade--ever has been:
"Performance optimizations, visual tweaks and UI improvements." Oh yeah and security improvements.
Since this is Slashdot, it would help if you cited even a single enhancement or benefit that isn't already in XP.
Integrated Desktop Search that's fast and responsive.
Integrated media sharing with XBox 360
A calendar on the desktop.
The ability to 'dock' windows to the side of the screen.
Libraries handled at the OS level so that every application knows instinctively where all your music and videos are at without having to build its own database.
A video driver model that's better sand boxed so that your video driver can fail and the OS can restart it.
Alt-Tab that gives you a preview of the document or window beyond the icon of the application.
DX10 and 11. (No they can't be back ported.)
I like Jump lists! Handy for document related applications.
I like the "Free space" meters on drives.
Desktop search which works on a network with x64 computers.
Vastly improved home networking.
Reliable Wifi management.
Document previewing. With the preview pane you can read the contents of a document without opening it. HUGE time saver when looking for a specific document.
Vastly improved handwriting recognition and pen-computing UI enhancements.
"Breadcrumbs" in the explorer so that you can click on "computer" instead of hitting "Up" 10 times.
The ability to crop and realign a photo without an extra application (Now removed in Windows 7 by default but was included in Vista and therefore "after XP")
Easier configuration of rights between your PC and devices (Laptop, xbox, playstation etc).
Gamma calibration for your monitor out of the box.
Installation to RAIDs is actually easy.
Aero peek to glance at a document without actually switching to it (saves a lot of alt tabbing).
Integrated fingerprint management to use your fingerprint everywhere on the computer as your login (Great on laptops which have it.)
And let's not forget Windows XP SP2. They could have been assholes and left out all of the security enhancements being developed for Vista but instead they spent many months back porting the new Vista stuff to XP to keep XP as a viable and secure product. Imagine the opinion of Vista compared to XP if XP hadn't gotten all the security enhancements given for free in SP2.
Well that's all I can think of in 5 minutes of quickly browsing around my computer. I'm certain if I were to pay attention for a year of testing I could fill a Slashdot comments section with new things I like and find useful.
And let's not forget there was a HUGE backlash to XP when it came out. "It's too bloated!" "It's just windows 2000 but slower!" "Microsoft should have just sold Windows 2000!" "Microsoft is killing Windows 2000 while pushing its shittier cousin!" "Windows XP requires WAYYYY too much RAM!" "The new start menu is stupid!" "I can't stand the new Control Panel".
All of the Vista/Windows 7 complaints are the EXACT SAME complaints that Windows XP was getting when it came out 8 years ago.
You're both wrong! :p
Windows Vista failed because it required 2GB of RAM and a real video card.
Everybody and their mom tried to install Windows Vista on out of date Windows XP computers and found it slow and dodgy.
Vista needed beefier hardware because it wasn't tuned to run on a 1GB machine with integrated Intel graphics.
I agree. I really really did try to use grouped icons without labels and simply couldn't do it. It just was slow and bothersome to me.
If I have 10 Slashdot pages open I have NO IDEA which is which just by looking at them. So I have to hover my mouse over each window to figure out what is what. Terrible.
And I'm someone who in general loves all the new stuff (Ribbons, Start Menu, peek, gesture etc etc.)
I think it's just BAD. It's not "new" or "different" it's empirically measurably worse for both new users and experienced users.
I would like to believe that since EVERY SINGLE BETA TESTER. ALL 2.5+ MILLION of them hate it they'll change the default.... I would like to believe this but am afraid it 'just aint so'. So oh well I guess it'll be a small setting I need to change each time I install a copy of Windows 7 at home and recommend friends and family do the same. But it's really the only thing I can find that Microsoft completely botched in windows 7.
I like to define philosophy as nothing more than logic. The natural sciences are absolutely important to Philosophers because they give us a "Most Likely True" basis for theories.
If you have a grown retarded human with the intelligence of a "statistical" 1 year old human and you have an ape with the intelligence of a "statistical" 2 year old human and you only have time to save one. Who do you save and why?
That's a philosophical question. But the only ways to really rigorously answer it require sufficient data. You could argue that in general intelligence and emotion should be the metrics. In which case the natural sciences need to answer how intelligent each individual is. Or you could argue based on "Pain of Loss" in which case you would need to empirically measure which scenario results in a greater net pain. Or you could argue on "potential" in which case you would need to determine the potential of each individual. Or you could argue it from a position of "Special ordination for humanity." In which case you would need to make an empirical argument for the specialness of humanity. Or you could argue that Aliens decided this millenia ago and that their psychic transmissions tell us to always save the ape--this too would require investigation should we believe it.
All philosophical theories are based on postulates and assumptions. All assumptions are testable. All assumptions are corruptible. The Scientific Method is the best method we've found so far to determine a fact to be true or false. Therefore if a philosopher wishes his philosophy to be useful to the world they would be wise to base it on our best understandings of science.
- Gavin Greenwalt
I would add a Number 4 to that list:
4. Market stabilization has no consideration for the emotional and physical consequences of its activities.
Maybe your mother dieing is necessary for a particular market to stabilize. While the economic costs of her death would be negligible to the system the emotional costs may be too great for you. You may prefer the economic hit to the emotional hit.
This is a point that many anti-global warming dissenters miss. They will argue: "The world has been around for billions of years and will regulate itself. We shouldn't interfere." Yes, but the world doesn't care if we live or die. Amoral forces do tend to stabilize and find equilibrium--but they don't care about people.
A perfect metaphor is the industrial robot which kills someone to complete its task. You have to force the human factor into any equation of efficiency.
Or save the money from the bill and offer it to anybody who wants to buy a domestically assembled hybrid.
Why go through some obscure bizarre song and dance to infuse money into domestic industry when you could just directly pay people to buy domestic vehicles that are fuel efficient!
"Here is a check. Pleeeeeeeeaaaaase buy a fuel efficient vehicle made in the US!"
When I was in China everybody I talked to was very proud of their country.
They would even object when I refered to it as a communist country. "We are not communist! We are a republic!"
These people as far as I could tell weren't bugged, monitored or in any way under observation by the government but were happy to proclaim the virtues of China.
Yeah but who loses the most when everybody returns a "5*" product because it doesn't work very well? Amazon.
Amazon is very generous in its return policy. To the point that I am under the assumption they are willing to eat actual losses in order to maintain a reputation of trustworthiness. "Buy it from us and you don't have to worry about buyer's regret" will increase sales far more than the cost of eating an out of warranty return.
Frys has a similar policy with laptops. "Keep it for 30 days! If you don't want it for any reason return it!" People feel safe. They buy it on the spot and then they get used to having it and don't want to return it.
There's an excellent chapter in "Predictably irrational" on "The Cost of Ownership". Essentially the observation is that we value things we own more highly than they're actually worth. You sell someone a laptop and it becomes "Theirs" and they don't want to return it.
If a product is truely bad people won't want to it and they're return it. Amazon does not want to sell 1 million bad routers that will just be returned, plug up customer service, damage their reputation and cost them money directly in shipping and restocking.
Seriously. Unless your students only need the computers for unimportant work what are you doing without a backup?
We have 5 people who use 2 AD servers (Windows 2008). If one goes down the other takes over and starts rebuilding the first. That's not all that expensive. If you have 300 students plus you have teachers who need to grade papers and upload assignments I would hate to see you get fired because you saved $2000 on an extra server.
Which is why the summary is bad.
Microblogging is wildly popular on facebook already. The only way microblogging will go away is for facebook to go away.
Even then... really microblogging has been going on for years. In people's Sigs and in people's custom status messages in AIM, MSN and ICQ.
"Username - Things people should stop eating pesticide ridden apples."
That's a microblog. It's just not posted on a site or medium dedicated to them.
What we're going to see is it go distributed. Your twitter feed will be part of your facebook page. Your facebook page will just be an amalgam of associated services centralized around contact information. It might not be facebook because we'll probably want to have our choice of associating this data. And it'll be p2p hosted services so that your wall, your email, your twitter, your IM and everything else is handled through a single identity.
Think Palm Pre. Palm evidently gets it. They're just doing it through the OS not a webpage.
If you can't handle non-perfect hardware or firmware, then you don't make operating systems.
I don't know, quite a few companies in the past have made a pretty successful run of it.
No.
I think it's because it's an easy place to slam Microsoft.
Silverlight handled the Olympics which is an amazing feat. People who make decisions like to have previous successes to look at when choosing between similar options.
"You have two options
1) You can use a proprietary Adobe Flash based system which will work on 99% of all computers and used used by companies like Youtube.
or
2) you can use a proprietary Microsoft Silverlight based solution which will work on 98% of all computers. It was used in the US to stream all of the Olympics coverage live. Also it's been successfully used by Netflix to stream high quality footage to both Macs and PCs.
"Thanks...both look like good options but netflix is higher quality video than Youtube right?"
"Yes."
"Go with the netflix/olympics one then!"
This doesn't judge whether violence is good or bad for you. It judges whether or not violence is more or less enjoyable.
This is a study like those people who always complain "I don't see why they need to use so much bad language in movies! Shoot is just as good as shit! All of that language is completely unnecessary to the story."
They're also going to see their numbers get skewed very quickly with services like ZunePass and Rhapsody.
I had several gigs of pirated music and a dozen or so CDs ripped from over the last 10 years.
In less than a month I've downloaded more music than the last 4 years pirated.
I suspect a Zunepass would wildly inflate the number of legitimate downloads per person as well. This statistic won't stand up very long as the subscription model catches on.
I find this line of reasoning hillarious. I agree with it. But it's just so comical that it's the new mainstream solution.
The religious right have been argueing that if we let gays marry it will destroy the institution of marriage. I never understood how... but now I do. The anti gay-marriage movement is going to accomplish what gay marriage never could have or attempted to do legally redefine marriage as anything anybody wants to call it.
In a "civil union" nation I can marry a mug of water if I feel like it--and nobody can legally claim that they're "married". This is the nightmare scenario that anti-gay-marriage lobbiests have feared more than anything.
I hope we do move to a secular non-government enforced marriage system. If only because I'll be laughing at the irony the rest of my life.
Not really the greatest benchmark when it comes to things like being distracted by a cloud of chaff or flare.
Cut him some slack. At least he changed it from "Any group or individual" to just "a group or individual". Because we can all agree banning something obscene to any group is too broad. Banning anything obscene to a group or individual is far more responsible.
SECTION 3. Section 16-15-305(A)(3) of the 1976 Code is amended to read:
"(3) publishes \\orally or in writing\\, exhibits, or otherwise makes available anything obscene to \\any\\ a group or individual;"
I'm confused wouldn't an executive for clearwire be fighting tooth and nail to IMMEDIATELY OPEN the spectrum? Not fighting to keep the spectrum closed?
It seems as if this "conflict of interest" story is resulting in the obama advisor advising the exact course of action his other interest would desire.
OMG! CORRUPTION! He's... umm... doing something which would negatively affect his corporate interests.
I would say the money could be much better spent on R&D. Buying patents and opening up technology to the public to use.
FOSS projects might create... I actually don't have any idea what area they could invest in which would be useful... but opening up patents on the other hand allows both FOSS projects and commercial projects create jobs with a lot less overhead.
Let's say I open up a patent on an algorithm that's sitting idle. Now that' it's open you have people putting their own money on the line to in the hope of being the company or open source group which garners the most money. Instead of paying for the employees directly with federal grants you created an opportunity for people to create jobs from their own cash reserves. Leverage entrepeurs to kickstart the economy.
If you were really concerned about kickstarting the US economy specifically the US Government could license the patent to any US citizen whose operations and employees are local. (Ditto if you're in the UK, India, China France etc... nationalize patents and license them for free to your citizens.)
What we need is a counterpart to the GAO.
The GAO should be able to exact fines from any agency for waste, insecurity etc etc.
All of this fine money should be funneled into a Government Solutions Office whose task is to spend that money back into the program to fix it.
GAO finds improper encryptions. Fines IRS. GSO hires a security expert to create new policies and purchase needed training.
Just a thought.
This is simple.
Person A makes $50k a year. Let's say they pay 15%. They pay $7.5k per year.
Their apartment costs $800 per month. Their car costs $400 per month. Their food costs $300 per month.
At the end of every month they have about $500 left over for spending money.
Person A gets a 50% raise. They now make $75k. Let's say their total tax burder is now 20%. They now pay $15k in taxes a year.
They buy a house with their new found fortunes with a $1800 a month mortage. They ea tout more and their food costs $500 a month. They get a nicer car and their lease is now $500. Now they have a net debt of $200 a month.
Suddenly they're broke. Obviously the government is holding them down. Before their raise they had money to spare. After their raise they are out of money. Taxes are to blame.
My understanding of this specific MRI technology is that its applications are similar to that of an electron microscope.
Unless you plan on crawling into a pitri dish your precious little thoughts should be safe. You don't even need tinfoil!