Besides seriously, who is gonna want WinServer without a GUI? If you are gonna do that you might as well run Linux and save a ton on CALs. The whole point of WinServer, with the exception of a few niches where you'd need every last drop of resources which i would argue if that's the case again a stripped down Linux would be better, is that with snap-ins and GPO frankly I can teach my 19 year old whose never run a server how to do most roles that your average SMB has in a few weeks. They've spent years making their domain trees VERY intuitive IMHO and the concepts are easy to grasp without having to do a bunch of memorization unlike CLI where if you don't have the syntax memorized you are pretty well screwed without a way to Google the answers.
Most likely this is just their way of putting a check in the checkbox so their sales staff can go "Yup we do that too" but again other than a few niches I honestly don't see the default on WinServer being no GUI, it just kills the point of running Windows.
That is the way it was done in my area last election and I have to say it was a pleasant experience. Nice easy to read touchscreen that when you chose printed your choice on a nice easy to read ballot, when you were done they took the electronic votes to give the media for early election results and counted the paper ballots with a scanner. the nicest part to me is there was NO disenfranchisement of voters, not at all. While I was in line (which took less than 10 minutes) there were two ahead of me that were in the wrong place. Rather than make them try to find the correct place the officials simply whipped out their cell and had them switched over to that precinct for that election. Took less than 3 minutes to get both straightened out and back in line, just had the whole things smooth as a Swiss watch. Before with the ballots you punched yourself there was ALWAYS hangups and screwups and it was about as pleasant as a trip to the DMV (and just about as long) but now its all in and out, just as pretty as you please.
So I don't even see why there is any debate anymore. With that system you still get a paper ballots which they hand you to check and since its printed by machine no "voter intent" crap, it was plain as day and quite easily read. I'd say that was about as perfect a compromise as i can think of with the security of paper and the ease of electronic.
Well I'd say this BS is just part of the greater lie which is "education will fix the economy" like you can take millions of 104 IQ workers, wave a magical education wand, and BAM! Suddenly they are all engineers. In the end we have to face the fact that we have millions of low skilled workers and no low skilled jobs that can actually feed and house a person in the USA, much less a family like in the days of the factory. Did you know we lost 42,400 factories since 2001? That's NOT a typo folks, that's millions of your fellow Americans that most likely will never work at anywhere close to that pay again and will frankly be lucky, depending on where they are, not to end up in a tent.
We are just gonna have to face the fact we can't educate our way out of losses like that, nor can tax breaks to so called "job creators' make up for anywhere near those kinds of numbers. what do we do with all these people? put them in camps? I'd argue the only reason we didn't have our own Arab spring is the dems throwing benefits at the unemployed but we simply can't keep that up without rampant inflation.
I have a feeling though as it wears on we'll see more total horseshit ideas like this simply because politicians don't want to bite the bullet and face the facts that our years of giving tax breaks for offshoring and running the whole country on credit has run us into the ground and there is NO way to get out that isn't gonna hurt everybody, 1% and 99% alike.
Name ONE program, just one mind you, that consumers use that is written in either.NET or JAVA. I service and sell them machines 6 days a week and I don't even bother installing either one anymore as they don't need it since AMD tossed.NET for Visual C++. I personally haven't had Java installed since 2004, never run into anything that needed it, and while I have.NET simply because Win 7 came with it there isn't a single app actually using it.
You want to know what they ARE using I'll be happy to tell ya, they are using all the programs you get on CDs at Walmart, they are using some video editing app that came with their camera, some photo app that came with their printer (usually Roxio or EasyShare) and a ton of flash gaming like Farmville. notice that NONE of those run on ARM?
What's gonna slaughter Windows 8 is calling the ARM version Windows 8 so nobody knows which is the "good" version and which is the "don't run shit" version. Mark my words its gonna be WinNT for MIPS all over again, where you get a desktop that LOOKS like Windows, ACTS like Windows, but won't actually RUN Windows programs. And lets face it, nobody buys Windows to run IE and MS Office, they buy it because they have a drawer full of program discs that are for Windows. that's why MSFT has to kill themselves with backwards compatibility because if folks can't run their programs then what is the point? The lovely Windows wallpapers?
But Apple is a different beast entirely, because thanks to the high resale value many just upgrade when the next model comes out, just like those that lease a new car every year. And nearly ALL the major programs people buy Apple for, iTunes, iMovie, garageband, are all made BY APPLE, which is 180 degrees opposite of the Windows way. Mark my words Win 8 is gonna make Vista look like Win95, with OEMs downgrading every box and laptop before it ever leaves the floor and users going out of their way NOT to buy it. MSFT just doesn't seem to grasp that all it takes is a few horror stories to turn the entire public off but I saw it first hand, i had to downgrade new builds before i could sell them because the second I said "Vista" they walked on by, never gave it a second thought. While I can understand them wanting to have "one code to run them all" unless they can design an ARM chip with close to native speed emulation of x86 its just doomed to fail.
You are completely free to go to USPTO and look up every single patent MSFT has ever filed, just as they are free to ask for treble damages if you do so and are found later to infringe. It isn't unethical to follow the rules, its the rules that are frankly beyond broken and need a good shitcanning. I mean when the first thing a lawyer will tell you is NEVER look up patents as the courts will ding you with treble damages? that just shows the system is broken.
But they ALL play by the same rules, MSFT, Intel, Apple, IBM, even google has gotten in on it by not shutting down the Motorola patent trolling when they bought the company. what makes one "right" and the other following the exact same rules" wrong"? As I pointed out if you changed the name from google Android to MSFT Android you'd have every geek here screaming "Its IE all over again!" and screaming for an antitrust investigation, yet Google dumps a billion dollar a year product for FREE how can you call that anything BUT dumping? Its not like they just stuck a skin on Linux you know, its a billion dollars a year in development being given away for $0, how is that ANY different than MSFT? In BOTH cases you have one company leveraging their massive income in one arena to product dump in another to try to corner the market.; I just wish all this "treat corps like ballclubs' bullshit would end, then maybe the folks would see that google is no different than Apple, MSFT or IBM, they ALL play dirty as the rules allow.
If you like having control you'll LOVE Comodo, as it lets you customize to your hearts content. Don't get me wrong, its defaults work just fine, but if you want fine grain control over your AV and firewall you really can't beat it, its got some of the best UIs for making AV and firewall rules I've ever seen. it also has REAL fine grain controls on its sandbox, you can decide not only which apps are included or excluded but set up conditions such as this app will ALWAYS be in the sandbox or this one should ask you before launch whether you wish to sandbox, really nice.
Basically I give Avast to the grandma types as its UI is VERY simple and easy for the clueless to grasp, anybody with any knowledge I give Comodo as its finer grained control makes it most excellent for those that don't mind spending a little time. I've even used it for years on a gaming PC and found it didn't affect my FPS at all simply by custom tailoring the rules such as tell it which folder a game is allowed read/write access to and which its not. Give it a try, its 100% free for home AND business (which is nice) and it doesn't bug you to buy their enterprise version. It'll take about a week to learn your programs and ask you questions but after that its completely silent unless it detects something, it just stays out of the way and lets you work safely.
How is it unethical? One company says "Here is an NDA, sign it and we can negotiate, don't and we can hash this out in court" and you have the choice, A or B. Don't act like this is Peter Pudfucker in his basement getting a knock on his door from Ballmer in a Darth helmet outfit, these are multinational conglomerations, I think they are big enough boys to ask their legal teams what they should do, don't you?
While I still think software patents are too broad and shouldn't have been allowed in the first place as you end up arguing over which math is "allowed" and which math "infringes" you got to admire the brass balls on MSFT, their product bombs (And Ballmer is gonna torpedo Windows this fall with Win 8 because he refuses to accept he's lost) so the lawyers figure out a way to make a profit even out of a loss. Maybe MSFT should adopt the old SCO meme "Pay your $699 license fee, you cocksmoking teabaggers!" as it does seem appropriate.
Oh and just to REALLY piss off the fanboius, why does Google get a pass for product dumping when they spend a billion a year on Android only to give it away and MSFT gets nailed for IE? As was brought up in the MSFT case people are lazy and stick with the defaults and Android by default is a Google datamining gift from the Gods, so why no outrage? Could it be because you treat corporations like ballclubs and cheer and boo like wrestlers instead of realizing they ALL would throw you into a lion's pit wrapped in chops if it would give them an extra 30% profit for the year?
Not if you have even half a brain it don't. I use a WinPE to boot into RAM and run a scan from there to ensure that the data being recovered isn't infected and i'm sure he did something similar. That said if its just a security tool variant once you know where the reg keys are its really not that hard to kill it dead. boot into WinPE, remove reg keys, scan with Spybot and HouseCall, boot and you're done. And since we are again talking about running a WinPE from RAM it isn't like there is anyplace they can hide the malware since the drive isn't running the infected OS.
Maybe he just likes their products? So far I've been accused of being a shill for, in no particular order, MSFT, AMD, Comodo, and one who accused me of being a shill for Apple which I thought was particularly funny as the only Apple product I've ever owned is a B&W G3 I have sitting in the closet. If the guy is a shill he'll be modbombed off the planet and that will be that but you can't say for sure someone is a shill just because they like certain products. I mean I've never gotten so much as a sticker from AMD (Come on assholes, at least send me some stickers!) but I've had nothing but good luck with their CPUs and chipsets and think they give the best bang for the buck, so now that's all I ever use in new builds. Comodo is nice enough to give their AV free to business as well as home users and they make some kick ass free stuff like Comodo Time Machine which allows me to walk a customer through fixing a PC so badly broken by their kid the thing wouldn't even boot in under 10 minutes flat so i'm all "Yay Comodo!" but again not so much as a T-shirt.
So instead of spewing the "nigger cocksucker faggot' constantly, aka Troll, shill astroturfer why not simply judge each individual post on its own merits or lack thereof? As I posted earlier while i don't think MSE is a good product for those risky surfers or those on XP it is a decent product and it does seem to always be in the top five so he's speaking the truth there. Now if this were a post on FOSS and he was saying "Use Win 7 and MSE!" that would be a troll, but this is a post about windows AVs so I don't see where his post is anything but on topic.
Personally I think its nice when we can stop with the name calling and simply be geeks, isn't that nice? If what he is posting is bullshit give us some links, tear apart his arguments with rational arguments of your own, this way we can ALL learn and be better informed, isn't that a better way to go?
The problem I have with MSE is thus: As someone who actually has to clean up the machines when they get infected I've found MSE to frankly not be great on anything but Windows 7, on XP its especially horrid as it doesn't seem to catch drivebys until its too late and the code has been loaded on the page which means its shutting the barn after the horse has done left. On Win 7 its good, low resource, and quiet, but on XP it just doesn't do the drivebys well at all. Kicks ass on downloads, not great anywhere else. Now with MSFT concentrating on Win 7/8 that's understandable but not something an XP owner wants to hear. Maybe its because it was never supposed to be an AV, it was originally Giant AntiSpy before getting bought by MSFT, whatever the reason it just doesn't seem to stop real world threats like it does in those tests.
What I've found with my real world customers is either Comodo CIS or Avast free both seem to do the trick and stop bugs cold in ALL the currently supported versions of Windows. Comodo is better if you want to tweak as it has much deeper controls than Avast, i also prefer it on XP because its built in firewall is a hell of a lot better than the default XP one, whereas Avast is better on Vista/7 if you know the person and can tweak the user case on initial install. By that I mean if you have someone that ONLY surfs, but doesn't use P2P or IM? You can easily kill the P2P and IM shields and thus lower its footprint. Its also better for the more clueless customers as its UI is a lot simpler than Comodo.
That said on my gamer box and my netbook I use MSE simply because i'm not going anywhere where it will actually be used since i'm not running P2P or IM or going to anywhere other than a handful of well known sites such as Slashdot so its a security blanket more than anything and since i've found it does less it uses less when it comes to resources. But in my own personal tests with some off lease office boxes 6 months ago when i purposely went to some "Hey look at teh titties!" topsites both MSE and AVG got pwned, while Comodo and Avast didn't. So I'd say it depends on the user, if you are like me and practice safe computing? MSE is the lowest resource and doesn't cause a speed hit when gaming. you got users that are more likely to click things or just wander around the web? Then Avast or Comodo either one will be a better fit. I've been using Comodo on XP and Avast on Vista/7 for nearly 3 years now and knock on wood not a single box brought back infected, which is saying something when you have those "Punch the clown win an iPhone" click happy users.
Dude that was 19 fucking 96, get a life, seriously. I doubt you'd even be able to find 10 people still there from that era and all the main guys have been gone the better part of a decade. And if you are delusional enough to think that Steve "Whatever Apple is doing make a half assed copy NOW" Ballmer is some Darth Vader type get some help, okay? you are a perfect example of treating corporations as ballclubs to cheer or boo like its pro wrestling, but newsflash, they're just companies. And everyone that was at that company then is long gone now. What's next, you gonna go bitch at Steve jobs headstone for killing the newton back in 97? Maybe complain about CueCats and Comet Cursors?
Actually I wouldn't call it marketing bullshit as the vast majority of my customers i find have that set as their start page. What I've found talking to them is that yahoo has taken the place of the morning paper for them, they check their mail, read the headlines, some check their horoscope or play one of the yahoo games before work. the funny part is how few know they can actually search on the same page. I have sat there and watched them go right past yahoo search at the top of the Yahoo page to type in Google, not because they don't like Yahoo Search but because they don't realize that is a WWW search engine!
So what the new CEO needs to do is make sure his users know that there is a search engine there and it actually searches the whole web and not just their email because if my average Joes are any indication they think its just a mail search.
Uhhh you DO realize there is both a Windows embedded and now an ARM version of Windows, yes? i don't think leaving out a PCI bus is gonna stop MSFT from waving a check and getting anything they want put on the things. hell they would be just following Intel's lead who had the entire OEM market bribed from 2002-2009 with one CEO calling Intel bribes "like cocaine".
But think about this logically: Why would they use x86 if not for Windows? not for Linux, it runs on ARM, not Android, not iOS, the ONLY reason to buy x86 is to run Windows because in mobile devices frankly ARM sips power while even a crippled chip like Atom gulps it compared to something like Tegra. it just doesn't make any sense unless this is for WinTablet and WinPhone.
The problem I've found with cheaper players is they often have a file and/or size limit and simply won't go over that. For example there is a car MP3 player that is popular in this area which i always keep a couple of 8Gb SD cards for because anything bigger than 8Gb simply throws up a read error. it never fails somebody will buy the thing and pick up some 32gb SD card and then find out the hard way their shit don't play.
As for TFA anybody who pays $3000 for a thumbstick really needs their head examined. if its one thing that Moore's law has taught us is storage capacity grows like a weed while the price drops like a stone,so the smart money stays a step or two behind cutting edge and saves a ton of money. I have no doubt you give it another two years, maybe even less, and 1tb SSDs will be down to the prices a 3Tb HDD is currently at if not less. hell the 60Gb and 90Gb models have dropped so fast tiger is throwing them into their $300 barebone specials instead of HDDs anymore and just a year ago anything above 32gb was insanely overpriced. While this might be nice for those with more money than sense, or for a VERY small niche of use cases where having a hidden Tb might be desirable for everybody else its just nuts.
Newsflash: Anything done repetitively that puts the body at unnatural angles causes injury, now with the weather here is Suzy "Rain is wet Bill, back to you!". I mean I can understand this for like Google News, but Slashdot? Hell my back bugs me every time it rains thanks to hunkering over PCs all damned day and I have the middle finger on my left hand stuck at around a 30 degree angle thanks to getting it cracked in a bike wreck and refusing to quit playing bass. the doc said "That finger will most likely either lock straight or lock crooked thanks to the joint damage, your choice" so I chose crooked so i could still use it to mute strings.
Anything you do over and over is most likely gonna cause SOME damage, the only question is what kind. Hell guys that play Les Pauls are more likely to have a stroke thanks to the weight pressing down on the neck and slowly but surely causing damage to the artery, but I don't think they'd be willing to give up that tone and sustain even if they knew, do you? TINSSAAFL and EVERYTHING has a cost, the only question is are you willing to pay the price. I put up with the back aches because i like computers and i'm not giving up my 30 pound Swamp Ash P-Bass, but I know what i'm getting into. Its like that old joke "Doc it hurts when I do this" Doc: Well don't do that!" but its nuts that an article like this ends up on slashdot, slow news day i take it?
The problem with that theory is twofold: One SMBs and the other gaming which if you'll remember at that time gaming allowed a much more "bare metal' approach that those other arches either didn't allow do to thanks to their memory models or would have required major hoop jumping and in SMBs MSFT has never had a credible product to compete with Quickbooks/Quicken and they would have been screwed trying to get the bazillion and one VB apps converted to a completely different arch as VB simply wasn't written to be portable. Money competed more with Turbo Tax and other home finance software, it wasn't anywhere close to QB where a single girl (and its ALWAYS a girl, you'd think they had a union or something) could run an entire SMB from payroll to inventory to taxes, all from a single workstation, and on the home front once DOOM came out it was all over, with everyone trying to squeeze that last FPS out of the hardware and trying to convert that entire hardware/software marriage to a completely different arch would have been hell. It isn't like today where they'd have tons of exp coding for PowerPC based chips you know, all the tools, the hardware, the entire gaming ecosystem which popped up virtually overnight was based around the x86 chip.
So I honestly don't think the outcome would have been any different as the entire ecosystem would have had to change with it and instead somebody would have come out with a better x86 and that would have been the end of that. Just look at Intel who've tried to kill x86 three times now, the last time with Itanium all it took was AMD to say "Hey we'll sell you x64 which will run all your old stuff AND let you have tons of RAM!" and Intel was screwed. if the mighty chipzilla can't get the market to change what makes you think a software vendor like MSFT could do any better?
You seem to be an insider so answer me something: WTF is it with FF and AMD CPUs? Are they using the ICC? Are they using Intel based profiling in their builds? Because in my own tests I've found you get more consistent performance on a first gen Pentium 4 than you get on the latest AMD which makes me believe its something in the build process. I've found it to be particularly bad on AMD single cores and the bobcats as it'll spike at 100% CPU on page load and just seem to hang there for quite awhile. I put the exact same version of FF on a 2.3GHz Intel Celeron and I don't see that, same OS, same RAM, only difference is the CPU.
Its not trolling Hedwards its different arches. I bet you are on Intel, yes? For some reason memory and CPU spiking is MUCH worse on AMD and is different even on different sockets. For example socket 754? runs like shit, socket 939? Little better. socket AMD2? Shit, socket AM2+ or AM3 chips? Better. Their build quality is frankly all over the place and its quite maddening and since version 5 a first gen Pentium 4 will often do better with FF than the latest AMD chip. That is the reason why i had to switch all my users over to Comodo Dragon, as i got tired of the "Hey now my PC is acting slow and jerking!" which is what you call the freezing problem.
BTW launch task manager or get AnVir Task Manager or any other manager that will allow you to monitor CPU and mem load in real time and launch FF and watch what happens. Those 'freezes" are FF slamming the CPU at 100% and causing the whole system to stall as FF grinds the hell out of the CPU, which considering it'll sometimes do it on pages that are pretty plain jane and boring I have to wonder WTF is FF doing that it needs 100% CPU time just to process a static page. Maybe its their JS engine, maybe they have a parser issue, fuck if i know but I can tell you that even typing in a textbox I can watch the CPU jumping like a frog on a hot plate with FF.
I hear ya brother and I'd be happy to donate to the "Give FF devs a clue' billboard fund. one of the things that got to me (besides the "FF uses twice as much resources on AMD" which drove me up a fucking wall) was the "Hey we'll just let anyone drop anything in FF and not say shit" problem which I'd say is a symptom of a much larger problem which is FF doesn't know jack shit when it comes to permissions. I don't know how many times I've fired up FF only to find I'd be Binged or Google toolbarred and have to go get that shit out of there. You should look up "Firefox low rights mode" for a giggle, there on one of the FF forums is a step by step which simply disables low rights mode protections for Firefox which just shows their permission management is a bad joke when the only correct answer is make FF an admin. I mean for the love of Pete there is NO reason why a browser, the source of 90% of the malware out there, should have to run at HIGHER permissions than the user!
So while I fire it up with every new release in the vain hope things will get better, the UI won't be a mess, the CPU spiking and memory issues on AMD will be gone, etc I now use Comodo dragon for my day to day which if you haven't tried it is quite nice. i've gone from version 8 to version 16 and there has been NO wild UI changes or wildly varied consistency when it comes to CPU or memory usage, in fact the only real "change" is the dragon's eye option button is now on the left instead of the right, big whoop. Oh and on the performance front its actually managed to get LIGHTER and more responsive with each release NOT less. i can now open 8 or 9 tabs while having a video downloading on a Sempron 1.8Ghz that I use for a nettop at the shop and still have a good 30% CPU free! Hell I can't manage more than 3 in FF and that is if I don't open any video tabs, I open even an SD flash video in FF and its go make a sandwich because the CPU is just gonna grind. Its not flash player either as I have both dragon and FF using the same flash install, its just lousy management on behalf of FF.
I miss Moz but it looks like they got infected by the same disease that infected the Gnome and KDE guys, the "We know better than you so STFU" disease. kinda funny how LXDE and XFCE usage is growing like crazy just like how Moz's numbers are falling like a stone, guess them users just won't STFU and take it huh?
I believe you are talking about the old 815 series which was real shite on a crusty roll so IIRC Intel tried to shove 'em out the door by selling them cheaper by the pair and most just chunked the chipset and paired it with an AMD or Nvidia nforce. Meh if its one thing Intel still hasn't figured out how to do its making decent chipsets with awesome graphics. the best you can usually say is "Well its not total shit, just mostly" when it comes to Intel chipsets. great for business users but with this market the consumer and not the businessman is what's driving it.
I just have to wonder how big a market there is gonna be for these things. i mean lets face it the reason we are talking X86 on cell phones is Windows, and even the most stripped down pirate version of Win 7 clocks in at about a Gb of space and then you have to figure in the size of the apps. What are they gonna do, but 60Gb mini drives in all the phones? But its pointless to run Windows without Windows programs so i just don't see the point, its not like Android and Chrome don't already run just fine on ARM, and even if this is for Windows 8 which is touch screen heavy you are still talking about a need for a shitload of storage space into a thing that thanks to iPhone has to be slim and sleek and sexy. To get enough space in the thing to make it useful its gonna have to be fatter than those brown Zunes!
It wouldn't have worked friend because unlike apple its the third parties that make or break Windows and they are all on x86. That is why MSFT has to jump through flaming hoops for compatibility, because without the third party apps Windows is dead dead dead. Sure there may be a few offices that only buy Windows to run MS Office and an IE intranet but there are a hell of a lot more running Quicken/Quickbooks, sure there may be a few home users that only run IE on their desktop but again a HELL of a lot more have "must have' third party apps, be it some game, or tool, its ALWAYS something which is why Linux can't gain traction on the desktop because of the tens of thousands of windows apps folks use every day. I can tell you working SMB and consumer that on average there is about 30 apps installed on the average Windows desktop and with the exception of Office it ain't MSFT software they are using, its everything from some picture app they got with their camera to some game they bought at Wally world, even my customer that never likes to install anything has to have his Corel and Solidworks along with a couple of video transcoders and a DVD maker app that he's had for years because for him those are "must have".
But this is of course ignoring the elephant's corpse in the room stinking up the joint which is They are calling both ARM and x86 Win 8 "Windows 8" which somebody needs to put in a call to captain obvious because who can't see the fail there? From what has been leaked the MOST they are gonna do is put "Win 8 tablet Edition" or some such which as i illustrated with the "Windows tablet" people don't have a fucking clue what the difference between ARM and X86 is, much less know that one CPU doesn't run software written for another and frankly why should they? For 30 damned years with the exception of the niche OSes you named which were NEVER sold to the public at large "Windows is Windows" and even XP X64 had WoW compatibility layer so as far as the user was concerned it was just WinXP, no different than the other one. this is gonna cause massive confusion because people won't know which is the "safe" Windows and which is "the one that won't run shit" so when in doubt they simply won't buy at all.
Mark my words the OEMs will see their numbers crater and will demand downgrade rights, just like they did with Vista, and people will be buying "Windows 8" machines that come with Windows 7 and a "hey if you're stupid enough to try it here's the disc' just like they did with Vista. There was a time when i had Vista discs piled up on a spindle simply from people saying "You want this shit?" and having me use their downgrade rights if they got a machine with Vista. this will be even worse because the retailers are gonna have shitloads of Win 8 ARM tablets returned en masse when the users find they got the "don't run shit' version and will take a bath on it. the ONLY ones that will make out on this deal is geeks like us, simply because we'll be able to snatch these ARM tablets up like Touchpads all over again but I doubt it'll make the OEMs very happy and MSFT stock is gonna tank. Mark my words 3 months after Win 8 is released their stock will be down a good 15%, possibly more. it'll be Vista all over again but even worse.
I don't use Chrome so your comparison is kinda pointless isn't it? I use Comodo dragon which doesn't have any bling and to which I choose to add Adblock plus and ForecasetFox. As far as NoScript while i personally miss that level of control since i've just about completed switching to Windows 7 which means Dragon runs in low rights mode I have to wonder how much it would help security anyway. BTW unlike FF Dragon has remained consistent both in performance and in support of different CPUs across releases which i can NOT say for Firefox since 3.x. Dragon is 100% CPU agnostic, so if a page takes X amount of CPU and memory in Intel it takes the same in AMD, but in FF you'll get better numbers from a first generation Pentium 4 than you will a brand new multicore AMD. That tells me there is something seriously fucked up in the Mozilla build process and when its bad enough that you gain 30% battery life on a new AMD netbook simply by switching to ANY other browser than Firefox? To quote the old K's choice song "Something's wrong".
FF USED to be consistent, it USED to be predictable and while it wasn't the greatest on CPU or memory usage at least you knew with each release things were getting better, sometimes a little better, sometimes a lot. Now its completely unpredictable with extensions breaking and CPU spiking and memory usage all over the place and inconsistent usage based on CPU arch. I hope they fix it but frankly i'm not holding my breath, but the simple fact you automatically assume that i must be using Chrome just shows what I've been saying for years, this treating corporations like fucking ballclubs to be cheered or booed REALLY needs to stop. We have a wealth of choices now and if Mozilla refuses to listen folks vote with their feet, full stop. the fact that Mozilla has been going down every single month for quite awhile tells me they are on the wrong track, whether they will heed those numbers or keep ignoring the users is the question.
What you are advocating is basically the "shit sandwich" approach to programming, where someone lays a hot steaming turd sandwich on your plate and says 'Don't complain because its free!" which kinda ignores the fact its...well shit. if the ESR gets massive downloads while nobody touches the "regular" release, doesn't that tell you something? Like maybe the DEVS ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK and aren't listening to the users? This seems to be a real problem with FOSS in general, just look at KDE 4 and Gnome 3 and how many are working to keep the old version working because hey! Its vetted and solid and not buggy as shit, who'd a thunk it?
in the end numbers don't lie and after years of steadily increasing numbers FF has been nosediving for nearly two years now and I'd argue it AIN'T because of Chrome, because i can tell you supporting consumers 6 days a week we humans are lazy creatures and don't like to change unless we have to. No their numbers have been bombing because the devs are going off on a track where the users don't want to go! The new UI sucks and feels like a chrome ripoff, I don't know if others are seeing the same but in my case FF runs like shit on AMD CPUs, the memory usage if anything is worse, CPU spiking has gotten a tiny bit better in 9 but not much and it still slams the CPU when opening new tabs, but since the devs don't listen to the users its all "itch scratching' and "fuck you because we're going THIS way" and the numbers show what the result of that attitude is. Its not like the bad old days when we had IE or a shitty broken netscape, we have a myriad of choices now, Chrome/Chromium/Dragon/SWIron, QTWeb, Safari, Opera, Kmeleon, IE, just a ton of choices so if the devs don't listen we vote with our feet. I'd say the numbers do the talking better than I ever could and if they were on the right track they'd be going up instead of down.
I don't think its "improvements" folks are complaining about friend, its the constantly breaking shit. For example I have 9 tabs open in Dragon (Chromium based) ATM AND a video downloading on a 1.8GHz Sempron nettop and I still have a good 30% CPU free. I USED to be able to do the same on FF but once it hit FF 4 I found FF was completely unusable on any AMD short of a dual core and at FF 9 its barely functional at all. Oh they improved, if you call going from 100% to 95% CPU with one tab an improvement, but I don't.
Mozilla has been all over the place with regards to QA and don't pretend like you don't know what i'm talking about as you ALL do, the Linux version? Its okay. The Windows version? Shite on a crusty roll. If they just want to be the browser for Linux not a problem just say so but when I gain 30% battery life on my AMD netbook just by switching away from FF to quote the old K's Choice song "Something's Wrong". Now i'm not a coder so i can't tell you why but I CAN tell you that using AnVir Task Manager to monitor CPU and memory usage FF runs better with less resources on a first generation Pentium 4 than on a brand new AMD multicore which tells me they have a problem in their build somewhere. The 3.x versions weren't like that, they seemed to be about equal, but something they did after 4 made FF take a massive dump on any non Intel CPU and I've been told they don't use the Intel cripple compiler but it sure as hell don't act like it. Opera, dragon, Safari, I don't see this weird CPU preference with ANY other browser I've tried, just FF.
As someone who was on FF before it was called FF and the Moz suite before that I vainly try each release hoping they'll fix the problem but so far its been 5 versions and no dice. In the same period Dragon went from version 8 to version 16 and the only change was it actually uses less memory now...oh and the little Dragon Eye button is on the left instead of the right. Man I miss NoScript so I truly hope things get better but I'm not tossing a machine just because the browser is a piggy, not when it works perfectly fine with more than a half a dozen tabs open in dragon and opera.
As for TFA businesses won't use FF after they got burnt with their number jumping stunt and they still can't get proper GPO support except through a third party which just won't cut it. you have to give admin rights to Mozilla and good luck keeping the users from installing any damned thing they want in FF, so I doubt we'll see businesses use it. The business market will be split between IE and Chrome which gives GPO support and doesn't need admin rights. Sadly the numbers don't lie and if FF was on the right tracks their numbers wouldn't be taking a nosedive.
I really wish the devs would just sit down with some focus groups and ask their opinions instead of aping chrome, if I had wanted Chrome I would have been using Chrome, yes? Cut out the bling, strip it to the bone and let the USERS decide through extensions what is in there and what ain't, and work to be the fastest, lightest, most nimble browser out there, remember when that was your mission statement? Back before you went nuts with adding crap and trying to copy chrome, back when you first split off from the suite, remember? Come back Mozilla, we miss you and don't want to see you crater okay? there are many of us that would be happy to come back if you'd just make a product we could use, so come on back Mozilla and start being the best Firefox you can be instead of a Chrome ripoff.
The problem is that under gates MSFT knew what they were, they were a consumer and business OS manufacturer. But then here came Ballmer and his entire strategy, if you can call it that, as CEO has been "What's Apple doing? Ohh me too!" and its been a disaster. if he wants to go after the consumer market on mobile he needs to split that group off from the core OS and office group so they can innovate without being tied to selling Windows and Office.
I mean have you TRIED windows 8? you really should as its very revealing, it totally sucks ass on anything that isn't a touchscreen! Its a fricking WinPhone desktop! So what you have is a desktop designed for an interface 99% of their customers WON'T have so that's a massive fail, they are porting it to an arch that is the EXACT opposite of X86 which means all their software, the ONLY thing that gives Windows a lock on the desktop, is completely gone, and finally just to really fuck up their market they are calling BOTH the X86 AND the ARM versions the same damned thing! Now how in the fuck is the average windows consumer, who doesn't know a CPU from a HDD, gonna know which one runs what? Answer, they won't which is why this is gonna be a fail of truly titanic proportions folks.
If I didn't know better I'd swear apple had snuck in a ringer as this is gonna torpedo Windows sales better than anything they could dream of! people WILL be afraid to buy it after their friends tell them horror stories about "ZOMFG I bought Windows and it wouldn't run Windows stuff ZOMFG!" and for business tying a boat anchor to the entire OS by adding a ton of little always running "craplets" as i call them will be right out not to mention since the whole thing is tied into IE you might as well call it the second coming of ActiveX so they'll be staying on win 7, this is gonna make their stock nosedive and make the OEMs so pissed you mark my words they'll DEMAND downgrade rights and it'll be Vista all over again!
But if this braindead idea isn't proof that MSFT needs a new CEO badly i don't know what is, I mean how damned obvious does the stench of failure have to be before Ballmer gets a whiff? Who in the hell thinks having a version of Windows called Windows that doesn't actually run programs for Windows is a smart idea? The saddest part is Ballmer thinks developers are so retarded they will fall for it and write all these apps for Win 8 after ignoring WinPhone and WinMo, BWA HA HA HA HA developers aren't that stupid and they'll just ignore this like WinPhone and keeping writing for droid and iOS, so its all for nothing! They are gonna blow all that money for absolutely fricking nothing!
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Besides seriously, who is gonna want WinServer without a GUI? If you are gonna do that you might as well run Linux and save a ton on CALs. The whole point of WinServer, with the exception of a few niches where you'd need every last drop of resources which i would argue if that's the case again a stripped down Linux would be better, is that with snap-ins and GPO frankly I can teach my 19 year old whose never run a server how to do most roles that your average SMB has in a few weeks. They've spent years making their domain trees VERY intuitive IMHO and the concepts are easy to grasp without having to do a bunch of memorization unlike CLI where if you don't have the syntax memorized you are pretty well screwed without a way to Google the answers.
Most likely this is just their way of putting a check in the checkbox so their sales staff can go "Yup we do that too" but again other than a few niches I honestly don't see the default on WinServer being no GUI, it just kills the point of running Windows.
That is the way it was done in my area last election and I have to say it was a pleasant experience. Nice easy to read touchscreen that when you chose printed your choice on a nice easy to read ballot, when you were done they took the electronic votes to give the media for early election results and counted the paper ballots with a scanner. the nicest part to me is there was NO disenfranchisement of voters, not at all. While I was in line (which took less than 10 minutes) there were two ahead of me that were in the wrong place. Rather than make them try to find the correct place the officials simply whipped out their cell and had them switched over to that precinct for that election. Took less than 3 minutes to get both straightened out and back in line, just had the whole things smooth as a Swiss watch. Before with the ballots you punched yourself there was ALWAYS hangups and screwups and it was about as pleasant as a trip to the DMV (and just about as long) but now its all in and out, just as pretty as you please.
So I don't even see why there is any debate anymore. With that system you still get a paper ballots which they hand you to check and since its printed by machine no "voter intent" crap, it was plain as day and quite easily read. I'd say that was about as perfect a compromise as i can think of with the security of paper and the ease of electronic.
Well I'd say this BS is just part of the greater lie which is "education will fix the economy" like you can take millions of 104 IQ workers, wave a magical education wand, and BAM! Suddenly they are all engineers. In the end we have to face the fact that we have millions of low skilled workers and no low skilled jobs that can actually feed and house a person in the USA, much less a family like in the days of the factory. Did you know we lost 42,400 factories since 2001? That's NOT a typo folks, that's millions of your fellow Americans that most likely will never work at anywhere close to that pay again and will frankly be lucky, depending on where they are, not to end up in a tent.
We are just gonna have to face the fact we can't educate our way out of losses like that, nor can tax breaks to so called "job creators' make up for anywhere near those kinds of numbers. what do we do with all these people? put them in camps? I'd argue the only reason we didn't have our own Arab spring is the dems throwing benefits at the unemployed but we simply can't keep that up without rampant inflation.
I have a feeling though as it wears on we'll see more total horseshit ideas like this simply because politicians don't want to bite the bullet and face the facts that our years of giving tax breaks for offshoring and running the whole country on credit has run us into the ground and there is NO way to get out that isn't gonna hurt everybody, 1% and 99% alike.
Name ONE program, just one mind you, that consumers use that is written in either .NET or JAVA. I service and sell them machines 6 days a week and I don't even bother installing either one anymore as they don't need it since AMD tossed .NET for Visual C++. I personally haven't had Java installed since 2004, never run into anything that needed it, and while I have .NET simply because Win 7 came with it there isn't a single app actually using it.
You want to know what they ARE using I'll be happy to tell ya, they are using all the programs you get on CDs at Walmart, they are using some video editing app that came with their camera, some photo app that came with their printer (usually Roxio or EasyShare) and a ton of flash gaming like Farmville. notice that NONE of those run on ARM?
What's gonna slaughter Windows 8 is calling the ARM version Windows 8 so nobody knows which is the "good" version and which is the "don't run shit" version. Mark my words its gonna be WinNT for MIPS all over again, where you get a desktop that LOOKS like Windows, ACTS like Windows, but won't actually RUN Windows programs. And lets face it, nobody buys Windows to run IE and MS Office, they buy it because they have a drawer full of program discs that are for Windows. that's why MSFT has to kill themselves with backwards compatibility because if folks can't run their programs then what is the point? The lovely Windows wallpapers?
But Apple is a different beast entirely, because thanks to the high resale value many just upgrade when the next model comes out, just like those that lease a new car every year. And nearly ALL the major programs people buy Apple for, iTunes, iMovie, garageband, are all made BY APPLE, which is 180 degrees opposite of the Windows way. Mark my words Win 8 is gonna make Vista look like Win95, with OEMs downgrading every box and laptop before it ever leaves the floor and users going out of their way NOT to buy it. MSFT just doesn't seem to grasp that all it takes is a few horror stories to turn the entire public off but I saw it first hand, i had to downgrade new builds before i could sell them because the second I said "Vista" they walked on by, never gave it a second thought. While I can understand them wanting to have "one code to run them all" unless they can design an ARM chip with close to native speed emulation of x86 its just doomed to fail.
You are completely free to go to USPTO and look up every single patent MSFT has ever filed, just as they are free to ask for treble damages if you do so and are found later to infringe. It isn't unethical to follow the rules, its the rules that are frankly beyond broken and need a good shitcanning. I mean when the first thing a lawyer will tell you is NEVER look up patents as the courts will ding you with treble damages? that just shows the system is broken.
But they ALL play by the same rules, MSFT, Intel, Apple, IBM, even google has gotten in on it by not shutting down the Motorola patent trolling when they bought the company. what makes one "right" and the other following the exact same rules" wrong"? As I pointed out if you changed the name from google Android to MSFT Android you'd have every geek here screaming "Its IE all over again!" and screaming for an antitrust investigation, yet Google dumps a billion dollar a year product for FREE how can you call that anything BUT dumping? Its not like they just stuck a skin on Linux you know, its a billion dollars a year in development being given away for $0, how is that ANY different than MSFT? In BOTH cases you have one company leveraging their massive income in one arena to product dump in another to try to corner the market.; I just wish all this "treat corps like ballclubs' bullshit would end, then maybe the folks would see that google is no different than Apple, MSFT or IBM, they ALL play dirty as the rules allow.
If you like having control you'll LOVE Comodo, as it lets you customize to your hearts content. Don't get me wrong, its defaults work just fine, but if you want fine grain control over your AV and firewall you really can't beat it, its got some of the best UIs for making AV and firewall rules I've ever seen. it also has REAL fine grain controls on its sandbox, you can decide not only which apps are included or excluded but set up conditions such as this app will ALWAYS be in the sandbox or this one should ask you before launch whether you wish to sandbox, really nice.
Basically I give Avast to the grandma types as its UI is VERY simple and easy for the clueless to grasp, anybody with any knowledge I give Comodo as its finer grained control makes it most excellent for those that don't mind spending a little time. I've even used it for years on a gaming PC and found it didn't affect my FPS at all simply by custom tailoring the rules such as tell it which folder a game is allowed read/write access to and which its not. Give it a try, its 100% free for home AND business (which is nice) and it doesn't bug you to buy their enterprise version. It'll take about a week to learn your programs and ask you questions but after that its completely silent unless it detects something, it just stays out of the way and lets you work safely.
How is it unethical? One company says "Here is an NDA, sign it and we can negotiate, don't and we can hash this out in court" and you have the choice, A or B. Don't act like this is Peter Pudfucker in his basement getting a knock on his door from Ballmer in a Darth helmet outfit, these are multinational conglomerations, I think they are big enough boys to ask their legal teams what they should do, don't you?
While I still think software patents are too broad and shouldn't have been allowed in the first place as you end up arguing over which math is "allowed" and which math "infringes" you got to admire the brass balls on MSFT, their product bombs (And Ballmer is gonna torpedo Windows this fall with Win 8 because he refuses to accept he's lost) so the lawyers figure out a way to make a profit even out of a loss. Maybe MSFT should adopt the old SCO meme "Pay your $699 license fee, you cocksmoking teabaggers!" as it does seem appropriate.
Oh and just to REALLY piss off the fanboius, why does Google get a pass for product dumping when they spend a billion a year on Android only to give it away and MSFT gets nailed for IE? As was brought up in the MSFT case people are lazy and stick with the defaults and Android by default is a Google datamining gift from the Gods, so why no outrage? Could it be because you treat corporations like ballclubs and cheer and boo like wrestlers instead of realizing they ALL would throw you into a lion's pit wrapped in chops if it would give them an extra 30% profit for the year?
Not if you have even half a brain it don't. I use a WinPE to boot into RAM and run a scan from there to ensure that the data being recovered isn't infected and i'm sure he did something similar. That said if its just a security tool variant once you know where the reg keys are its really not that hard to kill it dead. boot into WinPE, remove reg keys, scan with Spybot and HouseCall, boot and you're done. And since we are again talking about running a WinPE from RAM it isn't like there is anyplace they can hide the malware since the drive isn't running the infected OS.
Maybe he just likes their products? So far I've been accused of being a shill for, in no particular order, MSFT, AMD, Comodo, and one who accused me of being a shill for Apple which I thought was particularly funny as the only Apple product I've ever owned is a B&W G3 I have sitting in the closet. If the guy is a shill he'll be modbombed off the planet and that will be that but you can't say for sure someone is a shill just because they like certain products. I mean I've never gotten so much as a sticker from AMD (Come on assholes, at least send me some stickers!) but I've had nothing but good luck with their CPUs and chipsets and think they give the best bang for the buck, so now that's all I ever use in new builds. Comodo is nice enough to give their AV free to business as well as home users and they make some kick ass free stuff like Comodo Time Machine which allows me to walk a customer through fixing a PC so badly broken by their kid the thing wouldn't even boot in under 10 minutes flat so i'm all "Yay Comodo!" but again not so much as a T-shirt.
So instead of spewing the "nigger cocksucker faggot' constantly, aka Troll, shill astroturfer why not simply judge each individual post on its own merits or lack thereof? As I posted earlier while i don't think MSE is a good product for those risky surfers or those on XP it is a decent product and it does seem to always be in the top five so he's speaking the truth there. Now if this were a post on FOSS and he was saying "Use Win 7 and MSE!" that would be a troll, but this is a post about windows AVs so I don't see where his post is anything but on topic.
Personally I think its nice when we can stop with the name calling and simply be geeks, isn't that nice? If what he is posting is bullshit give us some links, tear apart his arguments with rational arguments of your own, this way we can ALL learn and be better informed, isn't that a better way to go?
The problem I have with MSE is thus: As someone who actually has to clean up the machines when they get infected I've found MSE to frankly not be great on anything but Windows 7, on XP its especially horrid as it doesn't seem to catch drivebys until its too late and the code has been loaded on the page which means its shutting the barn after the horse has done left. On Win 7 its good, low resource, and quiet, but on XP it just doesn't do the drivebys well at all. Kicks ass on downloads, not great anywhere else. Now with MSFT concentrating on Win 7/8 that's understandable but not something an XP owner wants to hear. Maybe its because it was never supposed to be an AV, it was originally Giant AntiSpy before getting bought by MSFT, whatever the reason it just doesn't seem to stop real world threats like it does in those tests.
What I've found with my real world customers is either Comodo CIS or Avast free both seem to do the trick and stop bugs cold in ALL the currently supported versions of Windows. Comodo is better if you want to tweak as it has much deeper controls than Avast, i also prefer it on XP because its built in firewall is a hell of a lot better than the default XP one, whereas Avast is better on Vista/7 if you know the person and can tweak the user case on initial install. By that I mean if you have someone that ONLY surfs, but doesn't use P2P or IM? You can easily kill the P2P and IM shields and thus lower its footprint. Its also better for the more clueless customers as its UI is a lot simpler than Comodo.
That said on my gamer box and my netbook I use MSE simply because i'm not going anywhere where it will actually be used since i'm not running P2P or IM or going to anywhere other than a handful of well known sites such as Slashdot so its a security blanket more than anything and since i've found it does less it uses less when it comes to resources. But in my own personal tests with some off lease office boxes 6 months ago when i purposely went to some "Hey look at teh titties!" topsites both MSE and AVG got pwned, while Comodo and Avast didn't. So I'd say it depends on the user, if you are like me and practice safe computing? MSE is the lowest resource and doesn't cause a speed hit when gaming. you got users that are more likely to click things or just wander around the web? Then Avast or Comodo either one will be a better fit. I've been using Comodo on XP and Avast on Vista/7 for nearly 3 years now and knock on wood not a single box brought back infected, which is saying something when you have those "Punch the clown win an iPhone" click happy users.
Dude that was 19 fucking 96, get a life, seriously. I doubt you'd even be able to find 10 people still there from that era and all the main guys have been gone the better part of a decade. And if you are delusional enough to think that Steve "Whatever Apple is doing make a half assed copy NOW" Ballmer is some Darth Vader type get some help, okay? you are a perfect example of treating corporations as ballclubs to cheer or boo like its pro wrestling, but newsflash, they're just companies. And everyone that was at that company then is long gone now. What's next, you gonna go bitch at Steve jobs headstone for killing the newton back in 97? Maybe complain about CueCats and Comet Cursors?
Actually I wouldn't call it marketing bullshit as the vast majority of my customers i find have that set as their start page. What I've found talking to them is that yahoo has taken the place of the morning paper for them, they check their mail, read the headlines, some check their horoscope or play one of the yahoo games before work. the funny part is how few know they can actually search on the same page. I have sat there and watched them go right past yahoo search at the top of the Yahoo page to type in Google, not because they don't like Yahoo Search but because they don't realize that is a WWW search engine!
So what the new CEO needs to do is make sure his users know that there is a search engine there and it actually searches the whole web and not just their email because if my average Joes are any indication they think its just a mail search.
Uhhh you DO realize there is both a Windows embedded and now an ARM version of Windows, yes? i don't think leaving out a PCI bus is gonna stop MSFT from waving a check and getting anything they want put on the things. hell they would be just following Intel's lead who had the entire OEM market bribed from 2002-2009 with one CEO calling Intel bribes "like cocaine".
But think about this logically: Why would they use x86 if not for Windows? not for Linux, it runs on ARM, not Android, not iOS, the ONLY reason to buy x86 is to run Windows because in mobile devices frankly ARM sips power while even a crippled chip like Atom gulps it compared to something like Tegra. it just doesn't make any sense unless this is for WinTablet and WinPhone.
The problem I've found with cheaper players is they often have a file and/or size limit and simply won't go over that. For example there is a car MP3 player that is popular in this area which i always keep a couple of 8Gb SD cards for because anything bigger than 8Gb simply throws up a read error. it never fails somebody will buy the thing and pick up some 32gb SD card and then find out the hard way their shit don't play.
As for TFA anybody who pays $3000 for a thumbstick really needs their head examined. if its one thing that Moore's law has taught us is storage capacity grows like a weed while the price drops like a stone,so the smart money stays a step or two behind cutting edge and saves a ton of money. I have no doubt you give it another two years, maybe even less, and 1tb SSDs will be down to the prices a 3Tb HDD is currently at if not less. hell the 60Gb and 90Gb models have dropped so fast tiger is throwing them into their $300 barebone specials instead of HDDs anymore and just a year ago anything above 32gb was insanely overpriced. While this might be nice for those with more money than sense, or for a VERY small niche of use cases where having a hidden Tb might be desirable for everybody else its just nuts.
Newsflash: Anything done repetitively that puts the body at unnatural angles causes injury, now with the weather here is Suzy "Rain is wet Bill, back to you!". I mean I can understand this for like Google News, but Slashdot? Hell my back bugs me every time it rains thanks to hunkering over PCs all damned day and I have the middle finger on my left hand stuck at around a 30 degree angle thanks to getting it cracked in a bike wreck and refusing to quit playing bass. the doc said "That finger will most likely either lock straight or lock crooked thanks to the joint damage, your choice" so I chose crooked so i could still use it to mute strings.
Anything you do over and over is most likely gonna cause SOME damage, the only question is what kind. Hell guys that play Les Pauls are more likely to have a stroke thanks to the weight pressing down on the neck and slowly but surely causing damage to the artery, but I don't think they'd be willing to give up that tone and sustain even if they knew, do you? TINSSAAFL and EVERYTHING has a cost, the only question is are you willing to pay the price. I put up with the back aches because i like computers and i'm not giving up my 30 pound Swamp Ash P-Bass, but I know what i'm getting into. Its like that old joke "Doc it hurts when I do this" Doc: Well don't do that!" but its nuts that an article like this ends up on slashdot, slow news day i take it?
The problem with that theory is twofold: One SMBs and the other gaming which if you'll remember at that time gaming allowed a much more "bare metal' approach that those other arches either didn't allow do to thanks to their memory models or would have required major hoop jumping and in SMBs MSFT has never had a credible product to compete with Quickbooks/Quicken and they would have been screwed trying to get the bazillion and one VB apps converted to a completely different arch as VB simply wasn't written to be portable. Money competed more with Turbo Tax and other home finance software, it wasn't anywhere close to QB where a single girl (and its ALWAYS a girl, you'd think they had a union or something) could run an entire SMB from payroll to inventory to taxes, all from a single workstation, and on the home front once DOOM came out it was all over, with everyone trying to squeeze that last FPS out of the hardware and trying to convert that entire hardware/software marriage to a completely different arch would have been hell. It isn't like today where they'd have tons of exp coding for PowerPC based chips you know, all the tools, the hardware, the entire gaming ecosystem which popped up virtually overnight was based around the x86 chip.
So I honestly don't think the outcome would have been any different as the entire ecosystem would have had to change with it and instead somebody would have come out with a better x86 and that would have been the end of that. Just look at Intel who've tried to kill x86 three times now, the last time with Itanium all it took was AMD to say "Hey we'll sell you x64 which will run all your old stuff AND let you have tons of RAM!" and Intel was screwed. if the mighty chipzilla can't get the market to change what makes you think a software vendor like MSFT could do any better?
You seem to be an insider so answer me something: WTF is it with FF and AMD CPUs? Are they using the ICC? Are they using Intel based profiling in their builds? Because in my own tests I've found you get more consistent performance on a first gen Pentium 4 than you get on the latest AMD which makes me believe its something in the build process. I've found it to be particularly bad on AMD single cores and the bobcats as it'll spike at 100% CPU on page load and just seem to hang there for quite awhile. I put the exact same version of FF on a 2.3GHz Intel Celeron and I don't see that, same OS, same RAM, only difference is the CPU.
Its not trolling Hedwards its different arches. I bet you are on Intel, yes? For some reason memory and CPU spiking is MUCH worse on AMD and is different even on different sockets. For example socket 754? runs like shit, socket 939? Little better. socket AMD2? Shit, socket AM2+ or AM3 chips? Better. Their build quality is frankly all over the place and its quite maddening and since version 5 a first gen Pentium 4 will often do better with FF than the latest AMD chip. That is the reason why i had to switch all my users over to Comodo Dragon, as i got tired of the "Hey now my PC is acting slow and jerking!" which is what you call the freezing problem.
BTW launch task manager or get AnVir Task Manager or any other manager that will allow you to monitor CPU and mem load in real time and launch FF and watch what happens. Those 'freezes" are FF slamming the CPU at 100% and causing the whole system to stall as FF grinds the hell out of the CPU, which considering it'll sometimes do it on pages that are pretty plain jane and boring I have to wonder WTF is FF doing that it needs 100% CPU time just to process a static page. Maybe its their JS engine, maybe they have a parser issue, fuck if i know but I can tell you that even typing in a textbox I can watch the CPU jumping like a frog on a hot plate with FF.
I hear ya brother and I'd be happy to donate to the "Give FF devs a clue' billboard fund. one of the things that got to me (besides the "FF uses twice as much resources on AMD" which drove me up a fucking wall) was the "Hey we'll just let anyone drop anything in FF and not say shit" problem which I'd say is a symptom of a much larger problem which is FF doesn't know jack shit when it comes to permissions. I don't know how many times I've fired up FF only to find I'd be Binged or Google toolbarred and have to go get that shit out of there. You should look up "Firefox low rights mode" for a giggle, there on one of the FF forums is a step by step which simply disables low rights mode protections for Firefox which just shows their permission management is a bad joke when the only correct answer is make FF an admin. I mean for the love of Pete there is NO reason why a browser, the source of 90% of the malware out there, should have to run at HIGHER permissions than the user!
So while I fire it up with every new release in the vain hope things will get better, the UI won't be a mess, the CPU spiking and memory issues on AMD will be gone, etc I now use Comodo dragon for my day to day which if you haven't tried it is quite nice. i've gone from version 8 to version 16 and there has been NO wild UI changes or wildly varied consistency when it comes to CPU or memory usage, in fact the only real "change" is the dragon's eye option button is now on the left instead of the right, big whoop. Oh and on the performance front its actually managed to get LIGHTER and more responsive with each release NOT less. i can now open 8 or 9 tabs while having a video downloading on a Sempron 1.8Ghz that I use for a nettop at the shop and still have a good 30% CPU free! Hell I can't manage more than 3 in FF and that is if I don't open any video tabs, I open even an SD flash video in FF and its go make a sandwich because the CPU is just gonna grind. Its not flash player either as I have both dragon and FF using the same flash install, its just lousy management on behalf of FF.
I miss Moz but it looks like they got infected by the same disease that infected the Gnome and KDE guys, the "We know better than you so STFU" disease. kinda funny how LXDE and XFCE usage is growing like crazy just like how Moz's numbers are falling like a stone, guess them users just won't STFU and take it huh?
I believe you are talking about the old 815 series which was real shite on a crusty roll so IIRC Intel tried to shove 'em out the door by selling them cheaper by the pair and most just chunked the chipset and paired it with an AMD or Nvidia nforce. Meh if its one thing Intel still hasn't figured out how to do its making decent chipsets with awesome graphics. the best you can usually say is "Well its not total shit, just mostly" when it comes to Intel chipsets. great for business users but with this market the consumer and not the businessman is what's driving it.
I just have to wonder how big a market there is gonna be for these things. i mean lets face it the reason we are talking X86 on cell phones is Windows, and even the most stripped down pirate version of Win 7 clocks in at about a Gb of space and then you have to figure in the size of the apps. What are they gonna do, but 60Gb mini drives in all the phones? But its pointless to run Windows without Windows programs so i just don't see the point, its not like Android and Chrome don't already run just fine on ARM, and even if this is for Windows 8 which is touch screen heavy you are still talking about a need for a shitload of storage space into a thing that thanks to iPhone has to be slim and sleek and sexy. To get enough space in the thing to make it useful its gonna have to be fatter than those brown Zunes!
It wouldn't have worked friend because unlike apple its the third parties that make or break Windows and they are all on x86. That is why MSFT has to jump through flaming hoops for compatibility, because without the third party apps Windows is dead dead dead. Sure there may be a few offices that only buy Windows to run MS Office and an IE intranet but there are a hell of a lot more running Quicken/Quickbooks, sure there may be a few home users that only run IE on their desktop but again a HELL of a lot more have "must have' third party apps, be it some game, or tool, its ALWAYS something which is why Linux can't gain traction on the desktop because of the tens of thousands of windows apps folks use every day. I can tell you working SMB and consumer that on average there is about 30 apps installed on the average Windows desktop and with the exception of Office it ain't MSFT software they are using, its everything from some picture app they got with their camera to some game they bought at Wally world, even my customer that never likes to install anything has to have his Corel and Solidworks along with a couple of video transcoders and a DVD maker app that he's had for years because for him those are "must have".
But this is of course ignoring the elephant's corpse in the room stinking up the joint which is They are calling both ARM and x86 Win 8 "Windows 8" which somebody needs to put in a call to captain obvious because who can't see the fail there? From what has been leaked the MOST they are gonna do is put "Win 8 tablet Edition" or some such which as i illustrated with the "Windows tablet" people don't have a fucking clue what the difference between ARM and X86 is, much less know that one CPU doesn't run software written for another and frankly why should they? For 30 damned years with the exception of the niche OSes you named which were NEVER sold to the public at large "Windows is Windows" and even XP X64 had WoW compatibility layer so as far as the user was concerned it was just WinXP, no different than the other one. this is gonna cause massive confusion because people won't know which is the "safe" Windows and which is "the one that won't run shit" so when in doubt they simply won't buy at all.
Mark my words the OEMs will see their numbers crater and will demand downgrade rights, just like they did with Vista, and people will be buying "Windows 8" machines that come with Windows 7 and a "hey if you're stupid enough to try it here's the disc' just like they did with Vista. There was a time when i had Vista discs piled up on a spindle simply from people saying "You want this shit?" and having me use their downgrade rights if they got a machine with Vista. this will be even worse because the retailers are gonna have shitloads of Win 8 ARM tablets returned en masse when the users find they got the "don't run shit' version and will take a bath on it. the ONLY ones that will make out on this deal is geeks like us, simply because we'll be able to snatch these ARM tablets up like Touchpads all over again but I doubt it'll make the OEMs very happy and MSFT stock is gonna tank. Mark my words 3 months after Win 8 is released their stock will be down a good 15%, possibly more. it'll be Vista all over again but even worse.
I don't use Chrome so your comparison is kinda pointless isn't it? I use Comodo dragon which doesn't have any bling and to which I choose to add Adblock plus and ForecasetFox. As far as NoScript while i personally miss that level of control since i've just about completed switching to Windows 7 which means Dragon runs in low rights mode I have to wonder how much it would help security anyway. BTW unlike FF Dragon has remained consistent both in performance and in support of different CPUs across releases which i can NOT say for Firefox since 3.x. Dragon is 100% CPU agnostic, so if a page takes X amount of CPU and memory in Intel it takes the same in AMD, but in FF you'll get better numbers from a first generation Pentium 4 than you will a brand new multicore AMD. That tells me there is something seriously fucked up in the Mozilla build process and when its bad enough that you gain 30% battery life on a new AMD netbook simply by switching to ANY other browser than Firefox? To quote the old K's choice song "Something's wrong".
FF USED to be consistent, it USED to be predictable and while it wasn't the greatest on CPU or memory usage at least you knew with each release things were getting better, sometimes a little better, sometimes a lot. Now its completely unpredictable with extensions breaking and CPU spiking and memory usage all over the place and inconsistent usage based on CPU arch. I hope they fix it but frankly i'm not holding my breath, but the simple fact you automatically assume that i must be using Chrome just shows what I've been saying for years, this treating corporations like fucking ballclubs to be cheered or booed REALLY needs to stop. We have a wealth of choices now and if Mozilla refuses to listen folks vote with their feet, full stop. the fact that Mozilla has been going down every single month for quite awhile tells me they are on the wrong track, whether they will heed those numbers or keep ignoring the users is the question.
What you are advocating is basically the "shit sandwich" approach to programming, where someone lays a hot steaming turd sandwich on your plate and says 'Don't complain because its free!" which kinda ignores the fact its...well shit. if the ESR gets massive downloads while nobody touches the "regular" release, doesn't that tell you something? Like maybe the DEVS ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK and aren't listening to the users? This seems to be a real problem with FOSS in general, just look at KDE 4 and Gnome 3 and how many are working to keep the old version working because hey! Its vetted and solid and not buggy as shit, who'd a thunk it?
in the end numbers don't lie and after years of steadily increasing numbers FF has been nosediving for nearly two years now and I'd argue it AIN'T because of Chrome, because i can tell you supporting consumers 6 days a week we humans are lazy creatures and don't like to change unless we have to. No their numbers have been bombing because the devs are going off on a track where the users don't want to go! The new UI sucks and feels like a chrome ripoff, I don't know if others are seeing the same but in my case FF runs like shit on AMD CPUs, the memory usage if anything is worse, CPU spiking has gotten a tiny bit better in 9 but not much and it still slams the CPU when opening new tabs, but since the devs don't listen to the users its all "itch scratching' and "fuck you because we're going THIS way" and the numbers show what the result of that attitude is. Its not like the bad old days when we had IE or a shitty broken netscape, we have a myriad of choices now, Chrome/Chromium/Dragon/SWIron, QTWeb, Safari, Opera, Kmeleon, IE, just a ton of choices so if the devs don't listen we vote with our feet. I'd say the numbers do the talking better than I ever could and if they were on the right track they'd be going up instead of down.
I don't think its "improvements" folks are complaining about friend, its the constantly breaking shit. For example I have 9 tabs open in Dragon (Chromium based) ATM AND a video downloading on a 1.8GHz Sempron nettop and I still have a good 30% CPU free. I USED to be able to do the same on FF but once it hit FF 4 I found FF was completely unusable on any AMD short of a dual core and at FF 9 its barely functional at all. Oh they improved, if you call going from 100% to 95% CPU with one tab an improvement, but I don't.
Mozilla has been all over the place with regards to QA and don't pretend like you don't know what i'm talking about as you ALL do, the Linux version? Its okay. The Windows version? Shite on a crusty roll. If they just want to be the browser for Linux not a problem just say so but when I gain 30% battery life on my AMD netbook just by switching away from FF to quote the old K's Choice song "Something's Wrong". Now i'm not a coder so i can't tell you why but I CAN tell you that using AnVir Task Manager to monitor CPU and memory usage FF runs better with less resources on a first generation Pentium 4 than on a brand new AMD multicore which tells me they have a problem in their build somewhere. The 3.x versions weren't like that, they seemed to be about equal, but something they did after 4 made FF take a massive dump on any non Intel CPU and I've been told they don't use the Intel cripple compiler but it sure as hell don't act like it. Opera, dragon, Safari, I don't see this weird CPU preference with ANY other browser I've tried, just FF.
As someone who was on FF before it was called FF and the Moz suite before that I vainly try each release hoping they'll fix the problem but so far its been 5 versions and no dice. In the same period Dragon went from version 8 to version 16 and the only change was it actually uses less memory now...oh and the little Dragon Eye button is on the left instead of the right. Man I miss NoScript so I truly hope things get better but I'm not tossing a machine just because the browser is a piggy, not when it works perfectly fine with more than a half a dozen tabs open in dragon and opera.
As for TFA businesses won't use FF after they got burnt with their number jumping stunt and they still can't get proper GPO support except through a third party which just won't cut it. you have to give admin rights to Mozilla and good luck keeping the users from installing any damned thing they want in FF, so I doubt we'll see businesses use it. The business market will be split between IE and Chrome which gives GPO support and doesn't need admin rights. Sadly the numbers don't lie and if FF was on the right tracks their numbers wouldn't be taking a nosedive.
I really wish the devs would just sit down with some focus groups and ask their opinions instead of aping chrome, if I had wanted Chrome I would have been using Chrome, yes? Cut out the bling, strip it to the bone and let the USERS decide through extensions what is in there and what ain't, and work to be the fastest, lightest, most nimble browser out there, remember when that was your mission statement? Back before you went nuts with adding crap and trying to copy chrome, back when you first split off from the suite, remember? Come back Mozilla, we miss you and don't want to see you crater okay? there are many of us that would be happy to come back if you'd just make a product we could use, so come on back Mozilla and start being the best Firefox you can be instead of a Chrome ripoff.
The problem is that under gates MSFT knew what they were, they were a consumer and business OS manufacturer. But then here came Ballmer and his entire strategy, if you can call it that, as CEO has been "What's Apple doing? Ohh me too!" and its been a disaster. if he wants to go after the consumer market on mobile he needs to split that group off from the core OS and office group so they can innovate without being tied to selling Windows and Office.
I mean have you TRIED windows 8? you really should as its very revealing, it totally sucks ass on anything that isn't a touchscreen! Its a fricking WinPhone desktop! So what you have is a desktop designed for an interface 99% of their customers WON'T have so that's a massive fail, they are porting it to an arch that is the EXACT opposite of X86 which means all their software, the ONLY thing that gives Windows a lock on the desktop, is completely gone, and finally just to really fuck up their market they are calling BOTH the X86 AND the ARM versions the same damned thing! Now how in the fuck is the average windows consumer, who doesn't know a CPU from a HDD, gonna know which one runs what? Answer, they won't which is why this is gonna be a fail of truly titanic proportions folks.
If I didn't know better I'd swear apple had snuck in a ringer as this is gonna torpedo Windows sales better than anything they could dream of! people WILL be afraid to buy it after their friends tell them horror stories about "ZOMFG I bought Windows and it wouldn't run Windows stuff ZOMFG!" and for business tying a boat anchor to the entire OS by adding a ton of little always running "craplets" as i call them will be right out not to mention since the whole thing is tied into IE you might as well call it the second coming of ActiveX so they'll be staying on win 7, this is gonna make their stock nosedive and make the OEMs so pissed you mark my words they'll DEMAND downgrade rights and it'll be Vista all over again!
But if this braindead idea isn't proof that MSFT needs a new CEO badly i don't know what is, I mean how damned obvious does the stench of failure have to be before Ballmer gets a whiff? Who in the hell thinks having a version of Windows called Windows that doesn't actually run programs for Windows is a smart idea? The saddest part is Ballmer thinks developers are so retarded they will fall for it and write all these apps for Win 8 after ignoring WinPhone and WinMo, BWA HA HA HA HA developers aren't that stupid and they'll just ignore this like WinPhone and keeping writing for droid and iOS, so its all for nothing! They are gonna blow all that money for absolutely fricking nothing!