Because unlike with other CxOs Steve Jobs has purposely built a cult of personality around him that will seriously affect the stock. A good example of the difference is MSFT, where if you ask the average Joe they still think Gates runs the thing. If Ballmer was hit by a car tomorrow nobody outside the tech world would take much notice and it is doubtful that the stock would take a nosedive.
Now compare that to Jobs where we HAVE seen the stock take a serious hit just from a phony death rumor. IMHO Steve Jobs has failed Apple by not pushing a successor the second he came back from the transplant. he should have been grooming his successor from day one and pushing them beside him in the spotlight wherever possible. instead you have had Steve take front and center (typical narcissist behavior) the SECOND he was able to get back to work and all talks about successors went the way of the Newton.
So honestly Steve deserves no privacy because he brought it upon himself by making himself the center of the Apple universe and not doing anything to stop the "cult of Steve" hell if anything he pumped it up. So just like any other business where rightly or wrongly success if believed to hinge on a key component or player, so too does Steve's health affect the bottom line and the shareholders have a right to know. If Steve didn't want it to be this way he could have been sharing the spotlight and grooming his replacement, but I guess Steve doesn't do well with sharing.
Not at all, not even close. Parker was "infected" by the venom suit that affected his personality and when removed became goodie goodie, so it was a classic "hooker redemption" story. Now compare that to a Snake Plisskin who just doesn't give a fuck if the world ends tomorrow as long as he gets what HE wants, and you'll see the difference.
A perfect example is the end of Escape from LA where he shut down the entire planet sending the world back to the dark ages, just because it was run by assholes. Now THAT is an anti-hero! You would NEVER catch a PG13 goodie goodie doing something that vicious. Lead a rebellion against the evil overlords? Sure, but fuck the entire planet just to take the leaders down? nope, not happening.
How does it help with the low end? Simple...WinMo 6.5. For all the MS hatred out there on low end devices WinMo 6.5 works pretty damned well, it just doesn't do any of the fancy UI and app switching gimmicks we have gotten used to in the west, but in the third world where they are just switching away from dumb phones WinMo with its huge number of apps already written and ready to go will be an easy sell. I actually have a cheap WinMo based pantec smartphone and you know what? it gets decent battery life, lets me check my mail or listen to tunes, it works just fine.
And if you believe there is gonna be no phones from Nokia in 2011 I have a bridge you might be interested in. those billions of dollars aren't gonna be for Nokia to make paper airplanes. I have NO doubt MSFT is packing up a team of WinPhone engineers on a plane and shipping them to Nokia ASAP. They will be writing drivers and custom building WinPhone builds on the floor if they have to, and I bet a late August early September rollout of the first line, with the second line in October. That will get them in for the vital Xmas release and they'll have it integrated with the X360 all nice and pretty. hell I wouldn't be surprised if MSFT sweetens the deal by offering an X360 bundle at a crazy low price for those that go Nokia WinPhone. this gets them more X360 users AND more users for their market. it just makes good business sense.
So despite all the "ZOMG M$!!" bs we have seen on this the CEO was 100% correct. Look up the reviews of MeeGo on Endgadget and you have an OS that is alpha quality at best and completely unimpressive, which against iPhone is suicide. The dumb phone is going the way of the 8 track, Nokia knows it, that is why they brought in the new CEO. Considering their choices were MSFT with billions invested in bringing them up to snuff or Android where all they would have gotten is the source and a thank you not from Brin and Page? I'm sure it wasn't a hard decision. Nokia is bleeding share, they have NO presence in the smartphone market and the dumbphone is quickly dying in the third world and is dead in the west. Hell even the bottom of the line Tracphones now have smartphone features. it was sink or swim, Nokia went with the best deal. It was just good business sense.
How is this ANY different that what Apple already does in their TOS? Everyone here has already read about what happened to Gnu Go and VLC when it came to the app store, so if anything I'd say this is just another MSFT "Me too!" copy Apple move.
Which I'm sorry FOSS guys, but it makes sense. For you to comply with GPL V3 (which you had BETTER be using GPL V3, otherwise any corp can just "TiVo trick" you right out of your code) you have to have access to ALL code signing and other DRM measures so you can exercise your four freedoms (because without it you've just been TiVo tricked, so what's the point?) and if they hand those out all the "evil M$! ZOMG!" hackers will "stick it to the man" by reverse engineering it and pass out an easy way around any and all DRM, thus rendering any Windows Market worthless for developers that actually want to get paid.
So while I support RMS's right to set whatever terms he likes in his license, and for a developer to choose any license that reflects his views, freedom is a two edged sword. On the one hand it gives you freedom to do good but to exercise those freedoms on something like a handset you have to also have the keys which will allow you to do ill. both Apple and MSFT have decided they'd rather do without FOSS than open their markets up, and that is their choice. If you don't like it the droid is open (although thanks to no GPL V3 is easily "TiVo tricked") so you are free to vote with your dollars there. Isn't choice nice?
Actually you just hit the nail on the head (even if you didn't mean to) as to why Sony is ultimately FUBAR. Did you catch it? "I'll be jailbreaking my PS3 to use it as a media center frontend". It is THIS, this right here, not the hacks, not Geohot, that will ultimately screw Sony.
They put everything into that stupid BD player and talking to my friends with PS3s they all use it for BD and they use the X360 for gaming. this to me is a perfect example of "be careful what you wish for" because by putting so much into BD and kinda forgetting that it is a game console first and foremost Sony screwed themselves. All the stink over screwing everyone out of OtherOS is just the icing on the not very moist at all fail cake.
They refused to learn from history (most notably 3DO) and concentrate on games above everything else and royally screwed themselves. if it were the other way around MSFT would be okay thanks to the twin sacred cows known as Windows and Office, but I honestly don't see where Sony is gonna come up with the billions in R&D it is gonna require to make a PS4. They were too expensive out the gate, too little focus on games, and now have pissed off the hackers which are bad mouthing the unit all over the place, and those that do have it end up preferring the X360 for XBL which means they aren't getting the critical game sales with so many using it only for media. Any way you look at it Sony screwed the pooch hard this round, the question is can they afford to even get in the arena next round.
Actually nearly all our oil comes from Canada and South America now, so that one is a myth. The ones getting most of the middle eastern oil is Europe and they are more than welcome to go fart around there and use up THEIR money for awhile!
It doesn't change the fact that we are creating and defending monsters, I'm talking truly vicious animals, true scum that rape and pillage and torture, and for what? So some multinational can score a better deal, like those contractors selling 9 year old boys in Afghanistan to get a better contract?
Well fuck them, I for one am tired of our money and our boys going to prop up their profits! When did we become God? When did the world elect us supreme ruler and decider of all things? How would we like it if someone "for stabilities sake" came in and threw out our government and replaced it with our very own version of Mugabe?
I'm sorry but we have been pulling this horseshit for decades and IT DOES NOT WORK, it has NEVER worked, not in Vietnam, not in Iran nor Iraq nor with the 50 other "el presidentes" we have propped up. ALL IT DOES is create legions of freedom fighters (because frankly that is what they are when you look at the monsters we support) that would be happy to die to bring us down. Is that in ANY way smart or intelligent? No, it is time for us to "Be Switzerland" and I'd argue the Tea Party or anyone else that ran on that platform could win the White House by a landslide. The American people are sick and tired of the Neocon bullshit and empire building. it is time to take our money and our troops and go the hell home.
And what EXACTLY were they supposed to do otherwise, hmmm? For all the big talk here nobody seems to want to accept reality. Nokia is bleeding to death, dumb phones are going the way of 8-tracks (even the third world is starting to have home grown smartphones which all predict will kill the dumb phone), android is beyond saturated, MeeGo is a turd, and Apple and HP won't sell iOS and WebOS respectively.
So where EXACTLY does that leave them an alternative? They need a product RIGHT NOW this very minute, they don't have time losing share as quickly as they are to dick around for who knows how long to get MeeGo up to snuff, and NOBODY like Symbian for anything other than dumb phones.
so lets hear it...where were they supposed to go? I'm sure the militants here would have rather they simply close their doors rather than make a deal with "teh evil M$!! ZOMG!" but where EXACTLY could they go? Nobody wants another android, hell there is so many droids on the market now it is frankly saturated. MSFT was willing to spend BILLIONS with a capital B to have Nokia be their hardware division and frees up Nokia to concentrate on hardware, so where EXACTLY is the bad here, other than the usual fanboy "teh evil M$!! ZOMG!!@" bullshit?
It wasn't like the company was hearts and flowers and then MSFT came along, the whole reason they got a new CEO was the company was bleeding out. You know, once upon a time/. was actually NEWS FOR NERDS not conspiracy theorists, and we had long discussions on the merits and disadvantages BASED ON THE TECH. Now the site is becoming Boycott Novell where everything is one giant conspiracy by Gates secretly running Redmond from a large tower that looks suspiciously like Mordor. More and more I'm starting to think the tech guys have been run out of here and been replaced by thousands of these guys.
Disliking WinPhone 7 because of the tech is one thing, from what I've read they still have several niggling bugs to iron out and app switching is hit or miss, but the ZOMG M$!!! ZOMG!" bullshit really is getting old. Is this/. or Boycott Novell?
Did the world not exist before the United States? Did the whole planet just run around drooling and bashing each other with clubs until we came along? Well if the answer is no what gives us the right to tell the rest of the world how to live, especially when we are torturing and doing evil nasty shit just like the bad guys?
And as for Israel, that too is none of our damned business. i live next to a conservative Christian college, where actual heads of state as well as mover and shakers come to lecture, and I've actually got to talk to a few on the subject. Ready to piss your pants in fear? You know what a very real and large portion of our middle east policy and attitude with/to Israel is based on? Ready for this? Jesus won't come back. i'm serious as fucking cancer, these people are basing our middle east policies on whether a guy that died 2000+ years ago has a place to park his fluffy cloud. No shit, I swear.
Now considering we have been fucking with everyone else for damned near a century, and pretty much constantly since WWII (in fact we haven't gone a whole 5 years without a war...errr..."police action" since) and have done nothing but cause trouble while enriching the pockets of a handful at the top I say....why not try something else?
We've been down this road for a century and it is obvious to anyone with eyes it isn't working, it is like the drug war only with worse body counts and even nastier human rights abuses. So why not listen to Beck and be Switzerland? You don't think the people of Egypt wouldn't have been better off had we STFU and stayed out? Or Iran?
To quote the late liar LBJ "We shouldn't be sending American boys to do what (insert name of county's boys) should be doing" and damn it he was right. We are NO better off and are doing nothing but creating the next generation of terrorists by pumping up dictators, while at the same time crushing our own children and destroying their future by piling on the debt for all these foreign thugs and the ever larger military required to "be the world's policeman" which frankly most of the world would rather we just stay the hell at home. So it is time for a change, it is time to "Be Switzerland". And if Ron Paul or anybody else wants to be president? Run on that platform. We The People are getting sick and tired of paying to support thugs and would prefer our boys home. It is time to be Switzerland!
Don't you just love it? Whether you are for the Anon guys or not you just gotta love a bunch that advises others on security that falls for every single bad practice in the book. They had badly coded CMS that didn't sanitize squat, no real rules when it came to passwords, passwords badly hashed, reuse of passwords, just on and on it is like a comedy of fail!
I have to agree with you that this should be a valuable life lesson for those that haven't paid attention before. Of course I figured that by the time SQL injection tricks had gotten so common XKCD was doing the "Bobby Drop Tables" bit that surely everyone had learned to sanitize? Apparently not and how sad but funny that it was a security group that was such a king of fail. Its like having the town drunk lecture you on responsible drinking while killing his second bottle of Jack! its just too funny!
Actually they were pissed about their heads getting cracked by Saudi guns with "Made in the USA" stamped on it, but don't let that stop a good rant.
You know, I hate to say it, and this is probably the ONLY time this will EVER be true, but I actually have to go with Glenn Beck on this one: He said "Look at our history in the middle east, for all our talk of freedom and democracy we have propped up one monster after another. The Shah, the trouble in Egypt, all because we pay billion of dollars to truly evil scum. So it is time for us to be Switzerland. it is time for us to walk away and let them sort it out for themselves. Because all we are doing is wasting money we don't have propping up monsters that foster ever more hatred towards us."
And you know what? he is 100% correct. We have propped up one "el presidente" after another because he kisses the right corporate ass and have bred legions of peasants that would be happy to slaughter every single one of us, and for what? So some multinational can get cheaper bananas? Fuck them, it is time to be Switzerland. Hell we don't have the money in the first place, and the last century has shown NOT A SINGLE SUCCESS and a whole host of failures, one dictator after another after another. Why the hell shouldn't they hate us when the boot stomping their face and kicking in their door has the American flag on it?
No problem. You'd be surprised how many customers I've built a new machine for that went "ZOMG! Windows is sucked up all my RAMs!" and I would have to explain that superfetch always has lowest priority so that ANY app that asks for that RAM is free to have it, it is ONLY when it isn't being used by anything else that superfetch uses it. Same as how Readyboost will ONLY use a flash drive if you specifically tell it to, otherwise it is just another flash stick.
That is why I have started giving them All CPU Meter that is a wonderful little free Windows gadget that tells them EXACTLY how much RAM they have "free" by simply not taking the superfetch cache (which as I said is free to any program that asks for it) into consideration. Folks like having a "car gauge" as one called it to easily see "what is going on" and it'll even integrate CoreTemp into All CPU Meter so you have a "one stop shop" that lets you know what is going on inside.
But that whole "must have free RAM!" myth is one that I will be happy when it finally dies. Sure you needed free RAM in Win9X because the 16/32 bit hybrid nature of Win9X made memory leaks common and the memory subsystem wasn't great to start with, but what is the point of having multiGb of RAM if all it does is just sit there doing nothing? one of the best improvements in Windows IMHO was when MSFT made having more RAM beneficial not only when you are running a heavy app, but for day to day usage as well.
Hear hear! Your posting is a perfect example of what I've been trying to get across for years here, in that the problem is never Windows and Office and that magically switching Windows for Linux and MS Office for OO.o will just get you fired because it is the 40 billion other programs that without which you have employees being paid to flick paper airplanes at each other and update their FB profile that bites you in the ass HARD.
For me with my customers the PITA that makes Linux a non option is QuickBooks. Here QuickBooks is God and anyone who has sat down with a small business owner and taken an overview of the situation will see why: With QB you can have the whole smash, from payroll and inventory to taxes and parts, all handled by a single "QuickBooks Girl" (and for some reason it is ALWAYS a "QuickBooks Girl". If I didn't know better I'd say they had a union rule or something) and everything "just works" and the QB Girl takes care of the paperwork and everything just runs smooth.
And I'm sorry Linux guys but I tried to learn and like GnuCash, i really did. but GnuCash is to QB what Gimp is to photoshop, there simply is NO comparison. And trying to get QB to run stable on Linux will make you pull your hair out and if QB is down you might as well send everyone home for all the work that'll get done.
So while there is nothing wrong with OO.o, in fact I hand it out to every single home user with new builds, it is never OO.o that is the problem. like others pointed out it is Outlook which has fifty plugins that make it a kick ass PIM, it is Exchange that ties everything together all nice and neat, it is those fifty bazillion mission critical apps that a company has come to depend on that simply have NO equivalent in Linux.
If Linux is gonna make inroads on the desktop it'll have to be in the home NOT in business where too much money and data is already tied up in solutions that get the job done. Sadly the only Linux I see being pushed to the home is Ubuntu, which is so bleeding edge the wallpaper should be a straight razor and which breaks more than it fixes with each release. But expecting you can convert businesses by simply replacing Windows and Office is not only naive and unrealistic, in most businesses it would be suicide. Without the apps and collaborative software to tie everything together work simply doesn't get done, and most of those apps are Windows only and a royal PITA to switch from. It would be nice if we could all just switch to any OS and still be able to work, but that just isn't reality for most ATM.
Hi MR AC! You have two problems there which is the source of your pain. One, you are running Vista, which having run both Vista and 7 X64 side by side I can say there is a BIG difference! Some here like to make the "Vista SP3" joke but they really did change a lot, especially when it comes to the memory subsystems. For me Vista no matter how much RAM you throw at it will end up causing thrashing sooner or later whereas with 7 I almost never seen my HDD indicator unless I'm booting or installing a new app. The rest of the time it is "good to go".
The second problem you have is killing the page file. Back when Windows was a shell on top of DOS it was a good idea to kill the swap when you had plenty of RAM so you could "rub Windows nose in it" and get it to use the memory. Nowadays it simply doesn't work like that anymore and the page file will be used as a long term cache for frequently accessed items that for one reason or another have to be paged out, otherwise it isn't used. So by killing the page file you are hurting yourself and not getting Windows to better utilize the memory.
My suggestion would be to switch to Win 7 X64 and barring that at least turn back on the page file. I'm sure you have metric tons of HDD space so there really is no reason to cripple your machine like that. If you do go Windows 7 I'd go ahead and pick up a cheap 4Gb flash (or SDHC if you are on a laptop) and leave it dedicated to Readyboost. While it isn't going to do a whole lot when you have plenty of RAM (I currently have 8Gb, you may have even more) what it DOES do is use the flash as a long term cache for small files such as DLLs. That way if you are running some heavy apps and have to page out normally often used programs Windows can load the random reads from the flash and the sequential from the HDD and it does help, especially on big apps.
So there you go, take it from me these new techs DO help if set up correctly. And just remember Vista was the test bed for the tech that went into 7 so a lot of the buggy behavior of the new tech like Readyboost and Superfetch is gone in 7. With the new 7 superfetch it even keeps up with what time of the day/week I use apps so that what I use when I use it is preloaded into memory and ready to go. And isn't that better than having large empty spots in RAM just doing nothing?
First of all, let me make this clear: nobody cares about the hardware because unless it is a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment like a laser cutter it just gets shitcanned after 3 years anyway, same as nearly noone buys Windows retail they get it with a new box, next!
Second, again another bullshit logical fallacy Linux guys continue to pull, so please pay attention: WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE DESKTOP: not the God damned server! Jesus, why is it Linux guys gotta bring in server into a totally unrelated conversation? Is it because they know it is the only place where it actually functions (and that is due to crazy hoop jumping by server hardware and software vendors to keep up with Linus twiddling with shit). It is like saying "I have a toaster!" when we are talking about truck design. I mean seriously WTF?
Now back to the subject at hand which is THE DESKTOP, and not cell phones, servers, embedded, or your toaster, the simple fact is that I have no trouble running decade old software on the latest and greatest. After installing Win 7 x64 for a ton of clients I ran into ONE app (a PITA version of QuickBooks) that refused to run, installed XP Mode and Tada! It "just works". Can you do that with even a 2 year old app? With Linux if the vendor doesn't jump through the hoops because Linus like twiddling with kernel guts you are well and truly fucked end of story.
To me Linux is a perfect example of why collaboration over the Internet just doesn't work, and this has NOTHING to do with FOSS, because from what I understand it isn't that way in BSD which is FOSS, nor is it this way in Solaris, where in both an app written years ago still "just works" and new apps will still run on the old.
With Linux instead of a cohesive vision and solid plans you have 50 million reinventing the wheel, 50 million little fiefdoms with bad attitudes and BOFH, and 50 million guys that don't care if they fuck everyone else up as long as THEIR itch is scratched, see Linus and his kernel twiddling as an example. Hell the man even says as a boast that Linus has NEVER been designed, it grows like a virus. Right, good plan there Linus, don't design squat just scratch your itches and let it grow like a fungus LOL!
So go ahead and waste modpoints while burying your collective heads in the sand, go ahead and call me names like shill and astroturfer, all for daring to point out your emperor is naked as a jay bird, it won't make 1+1=3 nor will it change reality. Reality is there is a damned good reason why Linux is at 1% and stagnant and it isn't a "conspiracy" and it isn't that people haven't tried, as Walmart and Best Buy and ASUS have all done. Nope it is because Linux is currently a fucking mess and anyone who dares to ask it be fixed is attacked by the mass of koolaid drinkers and zealots that treat it as a religion.
Constant driver breakage, the total mess that is audio with Pulse and ALSA and "update foo broke my" which leaves the user with a labyrinth of forums to navigate that if they are VERY lucky will give them some mess of CLI that A.-They are supposed to be able to understand well enough to "tweak" and B.-Be able to apply with making a single mistake for risk of boning the machine. And this isn't even bringing up my point that God help you if you base anything mission critical ON THE DESKTOP because it is just a mess.
So don't blame me that your OS has had FIFTEEN YEARS and gone exactly nowhere on the desktop. The only places it has gained is where a corp has been willing to either jump through the hoops (like in server, where Windows CALs make jumping through the hoops worthwhile) or in Embedded where they can just "TiVo trick" and only have to support a single device. But on the desktop it is frankly a mess and just isn't getting better, if anything its getting worse. Hell look at what EVERY Linux users trots out when someone says "Linux is too much of a PITA"? UBUNTU! Yes lets take the noob and stick him on an OS so bleeding edge the CD has stigmata, yeah, that's the ticket!
Uhhh...you DO realize you have fallen for a classic Windows urban legend, yes? Superfetch will automatically hand memory over to programs if they request it, so all you are doing is making sure you have a pile of empty RAM for...what exactly? Just to say you have it?
And Readyboost uses a flash drive for a cache and is completely optional so A.-You won't even have it if you don't specifically choose to use it, and B.-a flash drive has faster random reads than any HDD so you are just making sure your random reads take longer again...why?
I would suggest you read about SuperFetch and ReadyBoost rather than act like it is still 1998 and the only thing that matters is how much free RAM task manager says it has. Unless of course you just WANT your PC to be slow for some reason, and if that is the case carry on!
That is because like everyone else in the "gimmie gimmie" generation they think the world revolves around them and the universe should instantly stop and magically cater to them...give me a fricking break!
Do you even think for a second what you are talking about here? You are talking about an OS whose whole selling point is backwards compatibility and third party apps which people have billions of dollars invested in and you think they can just magically whip off a patch to some highly used by third parties subsystem without doing serious testing? WTF?
Yeah, imagine the absolute howling shitfit everyone here would be having if MSFT announced "Hey we fixed a major bug but FYI unless your Quickbooks or Photoshop is this year's version? Yeah you're fucked, because any older than 2010 will never work again. Have a nice day!"
You know why Linux can get away with that shit? it is because nobody is paying for it that's why! Nobody gives a fuck if last years Gimp runs or not, because you just get the new Gimp, whether you like it or not.
For the few people will actually spend a dime to have a Linux distro like those on Red Hat? You can damned well be sure there is some serious testing for any patches come flying out. That is why RHEL is what some would call "behind the curve" or as I call it "not running shitty alpha quality code". It is no different with Macs, as Steve knows they will toss their Mac in 3 years or less therefor he don't give a shit if anything older than 3 years old runs.
Must be nice to be able to not depend on anything, or just buy all new all over again like with Apple, but the rest of us have serious time and money invested in our programs and would like them to work, thank you VERY much! You can keep your Linux ways to yourself, the 90%+ of the population are quite happy where we are, where our apps still run when we upgrade.
Two problems with your scenario: 1.-You just cut out smartphones, netbooks/nettops, pads, and everything else that isn't an X86 PC with a CD player, and 2.-Almost no computer is set by default to boot CD first so you're gonna have to pay an army of support guys to walk all those grandmas through switching boot order, which for those with little PC experience would probably be about as daunting as diffusing a bomb.
The problem with all the ideas I've read here so far is there is a huge gap between "real security" and "grandma friendly" and it is doubtful those two will ever meet. Now since banks are a business like any other too many nasty hoops and everyone takes their business down the street, so you have to make it simple.
So far the only thing I've seen that might work might be something like this where you have a virtual OS running in the browser. Make a custom version that only goes to the bank site and connects with SSL and has a virtual keyboard for input and it should make it a real PITA for malware to get the data while making it relatively easy for the consumer.
Now I'm sure somebody will point out hacks to get around my idea, but that is the catch will ALL of these ideas, isn't it? No matter what you plan some hacker is gonna figure out a way around. As has been said many times the only secure system is one with all the wires cut embedded in concrete.
Because this will let them easily go from a bird's eye view to a street level view instantly and even let them run various scenarios based on the student's plan?
Imagine you have a flat computer table like that MSFT Surface demo shown awhile back with the tiny town running on it. The students cook up their route and the security measures required and when finished their plan can be ran at a street level view complete with simulated bad guys to show where the gaps are if any in their security plan, kind of like a computerized version of that robotic town the military uses to train soldiers and snipers.
This sounds like a great idea to me as not only would it allow easily changing the entire town to simulate various venues realistically it would allow the students to have their own tiny towns to work on in groups. Sounds like a smart move to me and will probably save money in the long run compared to the cost of building those highly detailed models, since assets in the computer can be easily cloned and altered.
Uhhhh...I hate to break the news to ya but Apple devices have always been more than 30% more expensive than devices with similar specs, so I really don't think a price increase for magazine subscriptions is gonna keep folks from getting an iShiny, do you? I mean if the price of the "low end" Macbooks didn't keep them away ($1000 dual cores? WTF?) then I doubt seriously a higher priced copy of Wired is gonna keep them away.
What amazes me is Apple seems to have this "douche proof" shield that makes ANYTHING they do completely okay and will have legions coming out to justify it (as we are seeing right here and now). I mean if ANY other big corp, IBM, Oracle, MSFT, Amazon, did this there would be screams and pitchforks but Steve Jobs could walk out on stage and moon the entire audience while flipping them the double bird and we'd probably read about how "Steve is just preserving his vision" or something, I just don't get it!
So how long before someone hits them with anti-trust? When it comes to content distribution whether the fanboys want to admit it or not Apple pretty much owns the market, with iTunes scoring so far above everyone else they may as well not be in the game. Antitrust doesn't say you have to be a monopoly, just that you have to be able to have significant effect or control of the market, which it would be hard to argue that with the success of the iDevices that Apple isn't king of portable media.
So it looks like it is getting time to drop the antitrust hammer on Apple the way the DOJ did with MSFT over their dirty dealing with IE. By using their control of the market they are trying to squeeze competition out (especially Amazon) and have the market to themselves, which is a BIG no no, at least when we had functioning laws. Maybe the EU which doesn't seem as tightly tied to the corporate teat will step in?
I'm waiting for them to ban model airplanes myself. After all if you mount a cam on one you could take pictures of....things! Terrorists could use pictures of things to plan...well...stuff!
Seriously while this is a cool hack it shows that all that is really needed is a good imagination and the will to tinker to turn just about any CPU into something that could be theoretically useful to a foreign power or terrorist. After all that is kinda the point of Turning complete, isn't it? That a Turning complete machine can simulate any other Turning complete given enough time and/or cycles?
The thing that always got me about cold fusion was this: If it actually works would they let you and your work be known or would they do whatever it took to make everyone think you were nuts and lock it up?
I'm not talking some oil/gas company conspiracy theory, I'm talking about how truly dangerous it would be if you can harness that much energy without needing some exotic McGuffin to make it work. I remember an episode of Outer Limits where a kid held a town hostage with a cold fusion bomb until they agreed to walk out and execute the 10 people that had treated him like dirt in his life. Can you imagine the danger if every nutball and loner could cook up a Hiroshima in his kitchen? You'd go from civilization to a Mad Max style free for all in about a month, if it took that long for everyone to go apeshit. I just don't think humans as a race are ready for that kind of instant power, good for the environment or not, do you?
As for TFA, anything that lets technology become cheap enough that everyone can enjoy it is alright in my book, and a big round of applause is in order for the Prof, good job man. Just look at how quick the cost of laptops went down after the EEE came out (yes I know the OLPC did it first, but by refusing to sell to the first world and get economies of scale going they pretty much kept it from reaching critical mass) and now we are seeing the same thing in smartphones and mobile devices thanks to powerful ARM chips being cheap and plentiful.
Hell your average bottom of the line desktop or laptop is more powerful than my first dozen PCs put together and cost less than a fifth of the first one alone. So anything that makes decent tech at low cost is a big and resounding yay in my book. Now if we can get this guy to figure out how to make TB SSDs out of recycled plastic at 50c a pop and an 8 core CPUs out of beer cans for a dollar I'll be a happy camper!
Thank you! Notice how I got labeled flamebait for daring to point out hypocrisy in the "Apple and FOSSie yay, MSFT boo!" groupthink circle jerk?
Trying to blame a mobile phone OS which is about as different as one could possibly get from a desktop OS and call it shit because there were bugs in the fricking desktop doesn't make a damned bit of sense! And then to top it off they don't even hold the other OSes by the same standards because if they did you would hear them screaming about webkit which is just as tight in OSX and KDE as IE is in Windows!
But it still misses the gist which was the entire TFA is about a mobile phone OS and bringing up old Windows desktop IE bugs makes about as much damned sense as saying "Apple laptops are expensive!" when we are talking about routers. I mean seriously WTF has one got to do with the other? Windows Mobile has never used Windows desktop code in any meaningful way, which is you can't run Diablo 2 on your WinMo phone. That would be like saying because some distro have a WinXP theme it must have the Windows thumbnail preview bug?
In conclusion the only thing WinPhone has in common with the desktop is the name. Hell they didn't even rip off the theme of Windows 7 to go with the name like they did with WinCE and WinXP, they have a task based grid thing like everybody else.
Trying to bring Windows desktop vulnerabilities into this discussion, no matter how badly as of late this site has been aping Boycott Novell in its rampart fanboyism, is not only hypocritical when you don't hold the others to the same standard, more than it it just doesn't make sense. You want to judge WinPhone (or Droid, or iOS for that matter) then judge it compared to similar products and not something that has fuck all to do with the topic at hand but lets everyone jump on another "Apple and FOSS yay, MSFT boo!" bandwagon when it isn't even relevant. All I've read here is talk about the desktop when it has nothing to do with the fricking article!
Actually you better check more than one source for the information anyway because as others have pointed out just because they give AN answer does mean you get the RIGHT answer.
I had a customer ask advice on one of the eAnswers style sites before he brought it to me and the advice he was given was like some sort of WinXP urban legends handbook or something. They had him throw out all the Windows prefetch files "to speed things up", set prefetch to 4, make a separate partition for the page file, just total BS.
So I'd agree with you but I don't even think the helpful part is real big on their todo list, just more of a nice side effect but no hard and fast perquisite. The only thing they really really REALLY care about is cranking up those page views to max, everything else be damned. It reminds me of those SEOs where they fill fill the comments section of a blog with the same set of keywords over and over and over.
But if this gets content farms off the top 10 I'm all for it, but sadly it will probably be more like spam and SEOs where the little twerps just keep figuring ways around it.
Well then shouldn't we be pointing out the history of vulnerabilities on OSX and Linux too? After all ALL OSES have had numerous serious vulnerabilities (like the X-Server hole that lasted for six years unpatched or the "OSX DNS Changer" trojan just to name a couple) so we should all be following your "good advice" and be staying away from iPhone and Android like the clap, right?
Oh wait a tick, it just occurred to me that we are talking about MOBILE OSes which have about as much in common with a desktop as a Kia does with a Mac truck! Mobile OSes are a VERY stripped down and minimalist platform that does a single job, the other is a huge monolithic complex platform designed to run a huge amount of wildly differing jobs.
See the difference there friend? One thing I hate above all is hypocrisy, and trying to label a mobile OS as defective because a desktop OS has vulnerabilities is not only the height of hypocrisy, since you aren't holding the others to the same standards, it is just stupid. A mobile phone OS is a highly specialized platform that frankly has more in common with your router than it does a desktop OS. So despite the increasing complexity of smartphones the underlying OS was and probably always will be a highly customized embedded platform designed around supporting a very limited amount of hardware with extremely tight controls and tolerances.
So why not instead of the hate and fanboyism (which I noticed I again got modded down for daring not to bow to groupthink and blind hatred. Slashdot is becoming so far left militant FOSS as of late it isn't even funny anymore, it is starting to read more like Boycott Novell in the comments than/.) we judge mobile phone OSes on the strengths and weaknesses compared to other mobile phone OSes instead of dragging out increasingly irrelevant insults just so you can jump on the "FOSSie yay, MSFT boo!" groupthink wagon, okay? As another pointed out you can already do the same thing with iPhone and AppleTV so does that make it bad too?
Slashdot Mirror
Because unlike with other CxOs Steve Jobs has purposely built a cult of personality around him that will seriously affect the stock. A good example of the difference is MSFT, where if you ask the average Joe they still think Gates runs the thing. If Ballmer was hit by a car tomorrow nobody outside the tech world would take much notice and it is doubtful that the stock would take a nosedive.
Now compare that to Jobs where we HAVE seen the stock take a serious hit just from a phony death rumor. IMHO Steve Jobs has failed Apple by not pushing a successor the second he came back from the transplant. he should have been grooming his successor from day one and pushing them beside him in the spotlight wherever possible. instead you have had Steve take front and center (typical narcissist behavior) the SECOND he was able to get back to work and all talks about successors went the way of the Newton.
So honestly Steve deserves no privacy because he brought it upon himself by making himself the center of the Apple universe and not doing anything to stop the "cult of Steve" hell if anything he pumped it up. So just like any other business where rightly or wrongly success if believed to hinge on a key component or player, so too does Steve's health affect the bottom line and the shareholders have a right to know. If Steve didn't want it to be this way he could have been sharing the spotlight and grooming his replacement, but I guess Steve doesn't do well with sharing.
Not at all, not even close. Parker was "infected" by the venom suit that affected his personality and when removed became goodie goodie, so it was a classic "hooker redemption" story. Now compare that to a Snake Plisskin who just doesn't give a fuck if the world ends tomorrow as long as he gets what HE wants, and you'll see the difference.
A perfect example is the end of Escape from LA where he shut down the entire planet sending the world back to the dark ages, just because it was run by assholes. Now THAT is an anti-hero! You would NEVER catch a PG13 goodie goodie doing something that vicious. Lead a rebellion against the evil overlords? Sure, but fuck the entire planet just to take the leaders down? nope, not happening.
How does it help with the low end? Simple...WinMo 6.5. For all the MS hatred out there on low end devices WinMo 6.5 works pretty damned well, it just doesn't do any of the fancy UI and app switching gimmicks we have gotten used to in the west, but in the third world where they are just switching away from dumb phones WinMo with its huge number of apps already written and ready to go will be an easy sell. I actually have a cheap WinMo based pantec smartphone and you know what? it gets decent battery life, lets me check my mail or listen to tunes, it works just fine.
And if you believe there is gonna be no phones from Nokia in 2011 I have a bridge you might be interested in. those billions of dollars aren't gonna be for Nokia to make paper airplanes. I have NO doubt MSFT is packing up a team of WinPhone engineers on a plane and shipping them to Nokia ASAP. They will be writing drivers and custom building WinPhone builds on the floor if they have to, and I bet a late August early September rollout of the first line, with the second line in October. That will get them in for the vital Xmas release and they'll have it integrated with the X360 all nice and pretty. hell I wouldn't be surprised if MSFT sweetens the deal by offering an X360 bundle at a crazy low price for those that go Nokia WinPhone. this gets them more X360 users AND more users for their market. it just makes good business sense.
So despite all the "ZOMG M$!!" bs we have seen on this the CEO was 100% correct. Look up the reviews of MeeGo on Endgadget and you have an OS that is alpha quality at best and completely unimpressive, which against iPhone is suicide. The dumb phone is going the way of the 8 track, Nokia knows it, that is why they brought in the new CEO. Considering their choices were MSFT with billions invested in bringing them up to snuff or Android where all they would have gotten is the source and a thank you not from Brin and Page? I'm sure it wasn't a hard decision. Nokia is bleeding share, they have NO presence in the smartphone market and the dumbphone is quickly dying in the third world and is dead in the west. Hell even the bottom of the line Tracphones now have smartphone features. it was sink or swim, Nokia went with the best deal. It was just good business sense.
How is this ANY different that what Apple already does in their TOS? Everyone here has already read about what happened to Gnu Go and VLC when it came to the app store, so if anything I'd say this is just another MSFT "Me too!" copy Apple move.
Which I'm sorry FOSS guys, but it makes sense. For you to comply with GPL V3 (which you had BETTER be using GPL V3, otherwise any corp can just "TiVo trick" you right out of your code) you have to have access to ALL code signing and other DRM measures so you can exercise your four freedoms (because without it you've just been TiVo tricked, so what's the point?) and if they hand those out all the "evil M$! ZOMG!" hackers will "stick it to the man" by reverse engineering it and pass out an easy way around any and all DRM, thus rendering any Windows Market worthless for developers that actually want to get paid.
So while I support RMS's right to set whatever terms he likes in his license, and for a developer to choose any license that reflects his views, freedom is a two edged sword. On the one hand it gives you freedom to do good but to exercise those freedoms on something like a handset you have to also have the keys which will allow you to do ill. both Apple and MSFT have decided they'd rather do without FOSS than open their markets up, and that is their choice. If you don't like it the droid is open (although thanks to no GPL V3 is easily "TiVo tricked") so you are free to vote with your dollars there. Isn't choice nice?
Actually you just hit the nail on the head (even if you didn't mean to) as to why Sony is ultimately FUBAR. Did you catch it? "I'll be jailbreaking my PS3 to use it as a media center frontend". It is THIS, this right here, not the hacks, not Geohot, that will ultimately screw Sony.
They put everything into that stupid BD player and talking to my friends with PS3s they all use it for BD and they use the X360 for gaming. this to me is a perfect example of "be careful what you wish for" because by putting so much into BD and kinda forgetting that it is a game console first and foremost Sony screwed themselves. All the stink over screwing everyone out of OtherOS is just the icing on the not very moist at all fail cake.
They refused to learn from history (most notably 3DO) and concentrate on games above everything else and royally screwed themselves. if it were the other way around MSFT would be okay thanks to the twin sacred cows known as Windows and Office, but I honestly don't see where Sony is gonna come up with the billions in R&D it is gonna require to make a PS4. They were too expensive out the gate, too little focus on games, and now have pissed off the hackers which are bad mouthing the unit all over the place, and those that do have it end up preferring the X360 for XBL which means they aren't getting the critical game sales with so many using it only for media. Any way you look at it Sony screwed the pooch hard this round, the question is can they afford to even get in the arena next round.
Actually nearly all our oil comes from Canada and South America now, so that one is a myth. The ones getting most of the middle eastern oil is Europe and they are more than welcome to go fart around there and use up THEIR money for awhile!
It doesn't change the fact that we are creating and defending monsters, I'm talking truly vicious animals, true scum that rape and pillage and torture, and for what? So some multinational can score a better deal, like those contractors selling 9 year old boys in Afghanistan to get a better contract?
Well fuck them, I for one am tired of our money and our boys going to prop up their profits! When did we become God? When did the world elect us supreme ruler and decider of all things? How would we like it if someone "for stabilities sake" came in and threw out our government and replaced it with our very own version of Mugabe?
I'm sorry but we have been pulling this horseshit for decades and IT DOES NOT WORK, it has NEVER worked, not in Vietnam, not in Iran nor Iraq nor with the 50 other "el presidentes" we have propped up. ALL IT DOES is create legions of freedom fighters (because frankly that is what they are when you look at the monsters we support) that would be happy to die to bring us down. Is that in ANY way smart or intelligent? No, it is time for us to "Be Switzerland" and I'd argue the Tea Party or anyone else that ran on that platform could win the White House by a landslide. The American people are sick and tired of the Neocon bullshit and empire building. it is time to take our money and our troops and go the hell home.
And what EXACTLY were they supposed to do otherwise, hmmm? For all the big talk here nobody seems to want to accept reality. Nokia is bleeding to death, dumb phones are going the way of 8-tracks (even the third world is starting to have home grown smartphones which all predict will kill the dumb phone), android is beyond saturated, MeeGo is a turd, and Apple and HP won't sell iOS and WebOS respectively.
So where EXACTLY does that leave them an alternative? They need a product RIGHT NOW this very minute, they don't have time losing share as quickly as they are to dick around for who knows how long to get MeeGo up to snuff, and NOBODY like Symbian for anything other than dumb phones.
so lets hear it...where were they supposed to go? I'm sure the militants here would have rather they simply close their doors rather than make a deal with "teh evil M$!! ZOMG!" but where EXACTLY could they go? Nobody wants another android, hell there is so many droids on the market now it is frankly saturated. MSFT was willing to spend BILLIONS with a capital B to have Nokia be their hardware division and frees up Nokia to concentrate on hardware, so where EXACTLY is the bad here, other than the usual fanboy "teh evil M$!! ZOMG!!@" bullshit?
It wasn't like the company was hearts and flowers and then MSFT came along, the whole reason they got a new CEO was the company was bleeding out. You know, once upon a time /. was actually NEWS FOR NERDS not conspiracy theorists, and we had long discussions on the merits and disadvantages BASED ON THE TECH. Now the site is becoming Boycott Novell where everything is one giant conspiracy by Gates secretly running Redmond from a large tower that looks suspiciously like Mordor. More and more I'm starting to think the tech guys have been run out of here and been replaced by thousands of these guys.
Disliking WinPhone 7 because of the tech is one thing, from what I've read they still have several niggling bugs to iron out and app switching is hit or miss, but the ZOMG M$!!! ZOMG!" bullshit really is getting old. Is this /. or Boycott Novell?
Did the world not exist before the United States? Did the whole planet just run around drooling and bashing each other with clubs until we came along? Well if the answer is no what gives us the right to tell the rest of the world how to live, especially when we are torturing and doing evil nasty shit just like the bad guys?
And as for Israel, that too is none of our damned business. i live next to a conservative Christian college, where actual heads of state as well as mover and shakers come to lecture, and I've actually got to talk to a few on the subject. Ready to piss your pants in fear? You know what a very real and large portion of our middle east policy and attitude with/to Israel is based on? Ready for this? Jesus won't come back. i'm serious as fucking cancer, these people are basing our middle east policies on whether a guy that died 2000+ years ago has a place to park his fluffy cloud. No shit, I swear.
Now considering we have been fucking with everyone else for damned near a century, and pretty much constantly since WWII (in fact we haven't gone a whole 5 years without a war...errr..."police action" since) and have done nothing but cause trouble while enriching the pockets of a handful at the top I say....why not try something else?
We've been down this road for a century and it is obvious to anyone with eyes it isn't working, it is like the drug war only with worse body counts and even nastier human rights abuses. So why not listen to Beck and be Switzerland? You don't think the people of Egypt wouldn't have been better off had we STFU and stayed out? Or Iran?
To quote the late liar LBJ "We shouldn't be sending American boys to do what (insert name of county's boys) should be doing" and damn it he was right. We are NO better off and are doing nothing but creating the next generation of terrorists by pumping up dictators, while at the same time crushing our own children and destroying their future by piling on the debt for all these foreign thugs and the ever larger military required to "be the world's policeman" which frankly most of the world would rather we just stay the hell at home. So it is time for a change, it is time to "Be Switzerland". And if Ron Paul or anybody else wants to be president? Run on that platform. We The People are getting sick and tired of paying to support thugs and would prefer our boys home. It is time to be Switzerland!
Don't you just love it? Whether you are for the Anon guys or not you just gotta love a bunch that advises others on security that falls for every single bad practice in the book. They had badly coded CMS that didn't sanitize squat, no real rules when it came to passwords, passwords badly hashed, reuse of passwords, just on and on it is like a comedy of fail!
I have to agree with you that this should be a valuable life lesson for those that haven't paid attention before. Of course I figured that by the time SQL injection tricks had gotten so common XKCD was doing the "Bobby Drop Tables" bit that surely everyone had learned to sanitize? Apparently not and how sad but funny that it was a security group that was such a king of fail. Its like having the town drunk lecture you on responsible drinking while killing his second bottle of Jack! its just too funny!
Actually they were pissed about their heads getting cracked by Saudi guns with "Made in the USA" stamped on it, but don't let that stop a good rant.
You know, I hate to say it, and this is probably the ONLY time this will EVER be true, but I actually have to go with Glenn Beck on this one: He said "Look at our history in the middle east, for all our talk of freedom and democracy we have propped up one monster after another. The Shah, the trouble in Egypt, all because we pay billion of dollars to truly evil scum. So it is time for us to be Switzerland. it is time for us to walk away and let them sort it out for themselves. Because all we are doing is wasting money we don't have propping up monsters that foster ever more hatred towards us."
And you know what? he is 100% correct. We have propped up one "el presidente" after another because he kisses the right corporate ass and have bred legions of peasants that would be happy to slaughter every single one of us, and for what? So some multinational can get cheaper bananas? Fuck them, it is time to be Switzerland. Hell we don't have the money in the first place, and the last century has shown NOT A SINGLE SUCCESS and a whole host of failures, one dictator after another after another. Why the hell shouldn't they hate us when the boot stomping their face and kicking in their door has the American flag on it?
No problem. You'd be surprised how many customers I've built a new machine for that went "ZOMG! Windows is sucked up all my RAMs!" and I would have to explain that superfetch always has lowest priority so that ANY app that asks for that RAM is free to have it, it is ONLY when it isn't being used by anything else that superfetch uses it. Same as how Readyboost will ONLY use a flash drive if you specifically tell it to, otherwise it is just another flash stick.
That is why I have started giving them All CPU Meter that is a wonderful little free Windows gadget that tells them EXACTLY how much RAM they have "free" by simply not taking the superfetch cache (which as I said is free to any program that asks for it) into consideration. Folks like having a "car gauge" as one called it to easily see "what is going on" and it'll even integrate CoreTemp into All CPU Meter so you have a "one stop shop" that lets you know what is going on inside.
But that whole "must have free RAM!" myth is one that I will be happy when it finally dies. Sure you needed free RAM in Win9X because the 16/32 bit hybrid nature of Win9X made memory leaks common and the memory subsystem wasn't great to start with, but what is the point of having multiGb of RAM if all it does is just sit there doing nothing? one of the best improvements in Windows IMHO was when MSFT made having more RAM beneficial not only when you are running a heavy app, but for day to day usage as well.
Hear hear! Your posting is a perfect example of what I've been trying to get across for years here, in that the problem is never Windows and Office and that magically switching Windows for Linux and MS Office for OO.o will just get you fired because it is the 40 billion other programs that without which you have employees being paid to flick paper airplanes at each other and update their FB profile that bites you in the ass HARD.
For me with my customers the PITA that makes Linux a non option is QuickBooks. Here QuickBooks is God and anyone who has sat down with a small business owner and taken an overview of the situation will see why: With QB you can have the whole smash, from payroll and inventory to taxes and parts, all handled by a single "QuickBooks Girl" (and for some reason it is ALWAYS a "QuickBooks Girl". If I didn't know better I'd say they had a union rule or something) and everything "just works" and the QB Girl takes care of the paperwork and everything just runs smooth.
And I'm sorry Linux guys but I tried to learn and like GnuCash, i really did. but GnuCash is to QB what Gimp is to photoshop, there simply is NO comparison. And trying to get QB to run stable on Linux will make you pull your hair out and if QB is down you might as well send everyone home for all the work that'll get done.
So while there is nothing wrong with OO.o, in fact I hand it out to every single home user with new builds, it is never OO.o that is the problem. like others pointed out it is Outlook which has fifty plugins that make it a kick ass PIM, it is Exchange that ties everything together all nice and neat, it is those fifty bazillion mission critical apps that a company has come to depend on that simply have NO equivalent in Linux.
If Linux is gonna make inroads on the desktop it'll have to be in the home NOT in business where too much money and data is already tied up in solutions that get the job done. Sadly the only Linux I see being pushed to the home is Ubuntu, which is so bleeding edge the wallpaper should be a straight razor and which breaks more than it fixes with each release. But expecting you can convert businesses by simply replacing Windows and Office is not only naive and unrealistic, in most businesses it would be suicide. Without the apps and collaborative software to tie everything together work simply doesn't get done, and most of those apps are Windows only and a royal PITA to switch from. It would be nice if we could all just switch to any OS and still be able to work, but that just isn't reality for most ATM.
Hi MR AC! You have two problems there which is the source of your pain. One, you are running Vista, which having run both Vista and 7 X64 side by side I can say there is a BIG difference! Some here like to make the "Vista SP3" joke but they really did change a lot, especially when it comes to the memory subsystems. For me Vista no matter how much RAM you throw at it will end up causing thrashing sooner or later whereas with 7 I almost never seen my HDD indicator unless I'm booting or installing a new app. The rest of the time it is "good to go".
The second problem you have is killing the page file. Back when Windows was a shell on top of DOS it was a good idea to kill the swap when you had plenty of RAM so you could "rub Windows nose in it" and get it to use the memory. Nowadays it simply doesn't work like that anymore and the page file will be used as a long term cache for frequently accessed items that for one reason or another have to be paged out, otherwise it isn't used. So by killing the page file you are hurting yourself and not getting Windows to better utilize the memory.
My suggestion would be to switch to Win 7 X64 and barring that at least turn back on the page file. I'm sure you have metric tons of HDD space so there really is no reason to cripple your machine like that. If you do go Windows 7 I'd go ahead and pick up a cheap 4Gb flash (or SDHC if you are on a laptop) and leave it dedicated to Readyboost. While it isn't going to do a whole lot when you have plenty of RAM (I currently have 8Gb, you may have even more) what it DOES do is use the flash as a long term cache for small files such as DLLs. That way if you are running some heavy apps and have to page out normally often used programs Windows can load the random reads from the flash and the sequential from the HDD and it does help, especially on big apps.
So there you go, take it from me these new techs DO help if set up correctly. And just remember Vista was the test bed for the tech that went into 7 so a lot of the buggy behavior of the new tech like Readyboost and Superfetch is gone in 7. With the new 7 superfetch it even keeps up with what time of the day/week I use apps so that what I use when I use it is preloaded into memory and ready to go. And isn't that better than having large empty spots in RAM just doing nothing?
First of all, let me make this clear: nobody cares about the hardware because unless it is a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment like a laser cutter it just gets shitcanned after 3 years anyway, same as nearly noone buys Windows retail they get it with a new box, next!
Second, again another bullshit logical fallacy Linux guys continue to pull, so please pay attention: WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE DESKTOP: not the God damned server! Jesus, why is it Linux guys gotta bring in server into a totally unrelated conversation? Is it because they know it is the only place where it actually functions (and that is due to crazy hoop jumping by server hardware and software vendors to keep up with Linus twiddling with shit). It is like saying "I have a toaster!" when we are talking about truck design. I mean seriously WTF?
Now back to the subject at hand which is THE DESKTOP, and not cell phones, servers, embedded, or your toaster, the simple fact is that I have no trouble running decade old software on the latest and greatest. After installing Win 7 x64 for a ton of clients I ran into ONE app (a PITA version of QuickBooks) that refused to run, installed XP Mode and Tada! It "just works". Can you do that with even a 2 year old app? With Linux if the vendor doesn't jump through the hoops because Linus like twiddling with kernel guts you are well and truly fucked end of story.
To me Linux is a perfect example of why collaboration over the Internet just doesn't work, and this has NOTHING to do with FOSS, because from what I understand it isn't that way in BSD which is FOSS, nor is it this way in Solaris, where in both an app written years ago still "just works" and new apps will still run on the old.
With Linux instead of a cohesive vision and solid plans you have 50 million reinventing the wheel, 50 million little fiefdoms with bad attitudes and BOFH, and 50 million guys that don't care if they fuck everyone else up as long as THEIR itch is scratched, see Linus and his kernel twiddling as an example. Hell the man even says as a boast that Linus has NEVER been designed, it grows like a virus. Right, good plan there Linus, don't design squat just scratch your itches and let it grow like a fungus LOL!
So go ahead and waste modpoints while burying your collective heads in the sand, go ahead and call me names like shill and astroturfer, all for daring to point out your emperor is naked as a jay bird, it won't make 1+1=3 nor will it change reality. Reality is there is a damned good reason why Linux is at 1% and stagnant and it isn't a "conspiracy" and it isn't that people haven't tried, as Walmart and Best Buy and ASUS have all done. Nope it is because Linux is currently a fucking mess and anyone who dares to ask it be fixed is attacked by the mass of koolaid drinkers and zealots that treat it as a religion.
Constant driver breakage, the total mess that is audio with Pulse and ALSA and "update foo broke my" which leaves the user with a labyrinth of forums to navigate that if they are VERY lucky will give them some mess of CLI that A.-They are supposed to be able to understand well enough to "tweak" and B.-Be able to apply with making a single mistake for risk of boning the machine. And this isn't even bringing up my point that God help you if you base anything mission critical ON THE DESKTOP because it is just a mess.
So don't blame me that your OS has had FIFTEEN YEARS and gone exactly nowhere on the desktop. The only places it has gained is where a corp has been willing to either jump through the hoops (like in server, where Windows CALs make jumping through the hoops worthwhile) or in Embedded where they can just "TiVo trick" and only have to support a single device. But on the desktop it is frankly a mess and just isn't getting better, if anything its getting worse. Hell look at what EVERY Linux users trots out when someone says "Linux is too much of a PITA"? UBUNTU! Yes lets take the noob and stick him on an OS so bleeding edge the CD has stigmata, yeah, that's the ticket!
Uhhh...you DO realize you have fallen for a classic Windows urban legend, yes? Superfetch will automatically hand memory over to programs if they request it, so all you are doing is making sure you have a pile of empty RAM for...what exactly? Just to say you have it?
And Readyboost uses a flash drive for a cache and is completely optional so A.-You won't even have it if you don't specifically choose to use it, and B.-a flash drive has faster random reads than any HDD so you are just making sure your random reads take longer again...why?
I would suggest you read about SuperFetch and ReadyBoost rather than act like it is still 1998 and the only thing that matters is how much free RAM task manager says it has. Unless of course you just WANT your PC to be slow for some reason, and if that is the case carry on!
That is because like everyone else in the "gimmie gimmie" generation they think the world revolves around them and the universe should instantly stop and magically cater to them...give me a fricking break!
Do you even think for a second what you are talking about here? You are talking about an OS whose whole selling point is backwards compatibility and third party apps which people have billions of dollars invested in and you think they can just magically whip off a patch to some highly used by third parties subsystem without doing serious testing? WTF?
Yeah, imagine the absolute howling shitfit everyone here would be having if MSFT announced "Hey we fixed a major bug but FYI unless your Quickbooks or Photoshop is this year's version? Yeah you're fucked, because any older than 2010 will never work again. Have a nice day!"
You know why Linux can get away with that shit? it is because nobody is paying for it that's why! Nobody gives a fuck if last years Gimp runs or not, because you just get the new Gimp, whether you like it or not.
For the few people will actually spend a dime to have a Linux distro like those on Red Hat? You can damned well be sure there is some serious testing for any patches come flying out. That is why RHEL is what some would call "behind the curve" or as I call it "not running shitty alpha quality code". It is no different with Macs, as Steve knows they will toss their Mac in 3 years or less therefor he don't give a shit if anything older than 3 years old runs.
Must be nice to be able to not depend on anything, or just buy all new all over again like with Apple, but the rest of us have serious time and money invested in our programs and would like them to work, thank you VERY much! You can keep your Linux ways to yourself, the 90%+ of the population are quite happy where we are, where our apps still run when we upgrade.
Two problems with your scenario: 1.-You just cut out smartphones, netbooks/nettops, pads, and everything else that isn't an X86 PC with a CD player, and 2.-Almost no computer is set by default to boot CD first so you're gonna have to pay an army of support guys to walk all those grandmas through switching boot order, which for those with little PC experience would probably be about as daunting as diffusing a bomb.
The problem with all the ideas I've read here so far is there is a huge gap between "real security" and "grandma friendly" and it is doubtful those two will ever meet. Now since banks are a business like any other too many nasty hoops and everyone takes their business down the street, so you have to make it simple.
So far the only thing I've seen that might work might be something like this where you have a virtual OS running in the browser. Make a custom version that only goes to the bank site and connects with SSL and has a virtual keyboard for input and it should make it a real PITA for malware to get the data while making it relatively easy for the consumer.
Now I'm sure somebody will point out hacks to get around my idea, but that is the catch will ALL of these ideas, isn't it? No matter what you plan some hacker is gonna figure out a way around. As has been said many times the only secure system is one with all the wires cut embedded in concrete.
Because this will let them easily go from a bird's eye view to a street level view instantly and even let them run various scenarios based on the student's plan?
Imagine you have a flat computer table like that MSFT Surface demo shown awhile back with the tiny town running on it. The students cook up their route and the security measures required and when finished their plan can be ran at a street level view complete with simulated bad guys to show where the gaps are if any in their security plan, kind of like a computerized version of that robotic town the military uses to train soldiers and snipers.
This sounds like a great idea to me as not only would it allow easily changing the entire town to simulate various venues realistically it would allow the students to have their own tiny towns to work on in groups. Sounds like a smart move to me and will probably save money in the long run compared to the cost of building those highly detailed models, since assets in the computer can be easily cloned and altered.
Uhhhh...I hate to break the news to ya but Apple devices have always been more than 30% more expensive than devices with similar specs, so I really don't think a price increase for magazine subscriptions is gonna keep folks from getting an iShiny, do you? I mean if the price of the "low end" Macbooks didn't keep them away ($1000 dual cores? WTF?) then I doubt seriously a higher priced copy of Wired is gonna keep them away.
What amazes me is Apple seems to have this "douche proof" shield that makes ANYTHING they do completely okay and will have legions coming out to justify it (as we are seeing right here and now). I mean if ANY other big corp, IBM, Oracle, MSFT, Amazon, did this there would be screams and pitchforks but Steve Jobs could walk out on stage and moon the entire audience while flipping them the double bird and we'd probably read about how "Steve is just preserving his vision" or something, I just don't get it!
So how long before someone hits them with anti-trust? When it comes to content distribution whether the fanboys want to admit it or not Apple pretty much owns the market, with iTunes scoring so far above everyone else they may as well not be in the game. Antitrust doesn't say you have to be a monopoly, just that you have to be able to have significant effect or control of the market, which it would be hard to argue that with the success of the iDevices that Apple isn't king of portable media.
So it looks like it is getting time to drop the antitrust hammer on Apple the way the DOJ did with MSFT over their dirty dealing with IE. By using their control of the market they are trying to squeeze competition out (especially Amazon) and have the market to themselves, which is a BIG no no, at least when we had functioning laws. Maybe the EU which doesn't seem as tightly tied to the corporate teat will step in?
I'm waiting for them to ban model airplanes myself. After all if you mount a cam on one you could take pictures of....things! Terrorists could use pictures of things to plan...well...stuff!
Seriously while this is a cool hack it shows that all that is really needed is a good imagination and the will to tinker to turn just about any CPU into something that could be theoretically useful to a foreign power or terrorist. After all that is kinda the point of Turning complete, isn't it? That a Turning complete machine can simulate any other Turning complete given enough time and/or cycles?
The thing that always got me about cold fusion was this: If it actually works would they let you and your work be known or would they do whatever it took to make everyone think you were nuts and lock it up?
I'm not talking some oil/gas company conspiracy theory, I'm talking about how truly dangerous it would be if you can harness that much energy without needing some exotic McGuffin to make it work. I remember an episode of Outer Limits where a kid held a town hostage with a cold fusion bomb until they agreed to walk out and execute the 10 people that had treated him like dirt in his life. Can you imagine the danger if every nutball and loner could cook up a Hiroshima in his kitchen? You'd go from civilization to a Mad Max style free for all in about a month, if it took that long for everyone to go apeshit. I just don't think humans as a race are ready for that kind of instant power, good for the environment or not, do you?
As for TFA, anything that lets technology become cheap enough that everyone can enjoy it is alright in my book, and a big round of applause is in order for the Prof, good job man. Just look at how quick the cost of laptops went down after the EEE came out (yes I know the OLPC did it first, but by refusing to sell to the first world and get economies of scale going they pretty much kept it from reaching critical mass) and now we are seeing the same thing in smartphones and mobile devices thanks to powerful ARM chips being cheap and plentiful.
Hell your average bottom of the line desktop or laptop is more powerful than my first dozen PCs put together and cost less than a fifth of the first one alone. So anything that makes decent tech at low cost is a big and resounding yay in my book. Now if we can get this guy to figure out how to make TB SSDs out of recycled plastic at 50c a pop and an 8 core CPUs out of beer cans for a dollar I'll be a happy camper!
Thank you! Notice how I got labeled flamebait for daring to point out hypocrisy in the "Apple and FOSSie yay, MSFT boo!" groupthink circle jerk?
Trying to blame a mobile phone OS which is about as different as one could possibly get from a desktop OS and call it shit because there were bugs in the fricking desktop doesn't make a damned bit of sense! And then to top it off they don't even hold the other OSes by the same standards because if they did you would hear them screaming about webkit which is just as tight in OSX and KDE as IE is in Windows!
But it still misses the gist which was the entire TFA is about a mobile phone OS and bringing up old Windows desktop IE bugs makes about as much damned sense as saying "Apple laptops are expensive!" when we are talking about routers. I mean seriously WTF has one got to do with the other? Windows Mobile has never used Windows desktop code in any meaningful way, which is you can't run Diablo 2 on your WinMo phone. That would be like saying because some distro have a WinXP theme it must have the Windows thumbnail preview bug?
In conclusion the only thing WinPhone has in common with the desktop is the name. Hell they didn't even rip off the theme of Windows 7 to go with the name like they did with WinCE and WinXP, they have a task based grid thing like everybody else.
Trying to bring Windows desktop vulnerabilities into this discussion, no matter how badly as of late this site has been aping Boycott Novell in its rampart fanboyism, is not only hypocritical when you don't hold the others to the same standard, more than it it just doesn't make sense. You want to judge WinPhone (or Droid, or iOS for that matter) then judge it compared to similar products and not something that has fuck all to do with the topic at hand but lets everyone jump on another "Apple and FOSS yay, MSFT boo!" bandwagon when it isn't even relevant. All I've read here is talk about the desktop when it has nothing to do with the fricking article!
Actually you better check more than one source for the information anyway because as others have pointed out just because they give AN answer does mean you get the RIGHT answer.
I had a customer ask advice on one of the eAnswers style sites before he brought it to me and the advice he was given was like some sort of WinXP urban legends handbook or something. They had him throw out all the Windows prefetch files "to speed things up", set prefetch to 4, make a separate partition for the page file, just total BS.
So I'd agree with you but I don't even think the helpful part is real big on their todo list, just more of a nice side effect but no hard and fast perquisite. The only thing they really really REALLY care about is cranking up those page views to max, everything else be damned. It reminds me of those SEOs where they fill fill the comments section of a blog with the same set of keywords over and over and over.
But if this gets content farms off the top 10 I'm all for it, but sadly it will probably be more like spam and SEOs where the little twerps just keep figuring ways around it.
Well then shouldn't we be pointing out the history of vulnerabilities on OSX and Linux too? After all ALL OSES have had numerous serious vulnerabilities (like the X-Server hole that lasted for six years unpatched or the "OSX DNS Changer" trojan just to name a couple) so we should all be following your "good advice" and be staying away from iPhone and Android like the clap, right?
Oh wait a tick, it just occurred to me that we are talking about MOBILE OSes which have about as much in common with a desktop as a Kia does with a Mac truck! Mobile OSes are a VERY stripped down and minimalist platform that does a single job, the other is a huge monolithic complex platform designed to run a huge amount of wildly differing jobs.
See the difference there friend? One thing I hate above all is hypocrisy, and trying to label a mobile OS as defective because a desktop OS has vulnerabilities is not only the height of hypocrisy, since you aren't holding the others to the same standards, it is just stupid. A mobile phone OS is a highly specialized platform that frankly has more in common with your router than it does a desktop OS. So despite the increasing complexity of smartphones the underlying OS was and probably always will be a highly customized embedded platform designed around supporting a very limited amount of hardware with extremely tight controls and tolerances.
So why not instead of the hate and fanboyism (which I noticed I again got modded down for daring not to bow to groupthink and blind hatred. Slashdot is becoming so far left militant FOSS as of late it isn't even funny anymore, it is starting to read more like Boycott Novell in the comments than /.) we judge mobile phone OSes on the strengths and weaknesses compared to other mobile phone OSes instead of dragging out increasingly irrelevant insults just so you can jump on the "FOSSie yay, MSFT boo!" groupthink wagon, okay? As another pointed out you can already do the same thing with iPhone and AppleTV so does that make it bad too?