Relearn Vista? For most computer users, this means launching IE to browse the internet or check their email. For most users, this means where to find Shut Down. I'm sorry, but for most average users, "relearning" Vista should be no issue at all, anymore than possibly an hour of playing around.
Now on the other hand, for experienced computer users and power users, Vista may be a bit more difficult of a transition. I know it was for me. However, as a power user, I had been running Vista off-and-on for over a year prior to its release from Betas and RC's. I can say now that I'm more proficient on a Vista system than an XP system.
Heck, I cringe when I have to use an XP system. Compared to Vista (once you know how to do things), it's actually more difficult to accomplish administrative or troubleshooting tasks in XP.
Agreed. However, as a college student and part-time worker, I really don't plan on spending the minimum $699 to become a full subscriber of MSDN. My original point is that Vista SP1 is already feature complete, compiled, sealed, finished. It's no longer a "developer's tool" for testing purposes. It's already gone through those phases for the MSDN subscribers. Why delay us technical enthusiasts for 6 weeks?
I love how they announce it then make us wait 6 weeks to actually download it. While I can perfectly understand not releasing it via Autoupdate immediately, at least give us a freaking place to get it manually from MSDN or the Download Center.
And I most certainly won't be trusting leaked torrent versions when it comes to Service Packs.
Imagine in five years a world where Microsoft handles 60% of search traffic. The screws start turning from that point and there's no going back, just like Windows.
How, exactly, is Microsoft having 60% of the search engine marketshare going to be a point of no return? Meanwhile, Google is sitting over there with the overwhelming majority, and 95% of all new PCs have Internet Explorer installed using MSN or Yahoo! as the default search engine, yet people still use Google. In order for Microsoft to get to that point of 60% marketshare, there's nothing they can buy out since it's as simple as typing another URL into the address bar. In order to get to that position, they will have had to have done something right (imagine that!) so that users are attracted to the services it provides.
It depends on what your idea of competition is. In the end, someone has to come out on top regardless of how many competitors there are. Couldn't we argue that within the field of Linux desktop computing, Ubuntu holds the overwhelming majority and therefore has close to a "monopoly" of that market? We can do the same thing with servers running Redhat or Debian? How about Apple and the multimedia creation field?
...I'm actually going to have to side with Microsoft on this one. On rather, I'm going to side with no one. The idea that this would make Microsoft a bigger "monopoly" is unfounded because neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has anywhere close to the highest marketshare of online searches or advertising. If we're so concerned about monopolies, competition in the field can only be a good thing. And at the rate it was going, unless something like this happened, no one would ever be able to stop Google.
The article writer basically used the following steps:
1) Try a program in Wine and discover that it doesn't work fully.
2) Try a program in Cedega and discover that it works... but with tweaks.
3) Try a program in Vista and adjust nothing. Discover it works halfway.
4) Call Vista crap.
5) Get Slashdotted and become a god among Linux fanboys.
Seriously. This article is hardly anything close to a fair comparison of the compatibility with each of these games. I'd personally debunk this using my x64 installation of Vista, but to be honest, I'm not going to waste my time. The previous comments already show how idiotic this guy really is to put forward his conclusion.
...because I'm running Vista on 4 machines in my house and I have yet to come across any significant issues. Two of these installations are 64-bit. I've only gotten a BSOD once on any one of them and that was because my memory timings were a bit too tight.
Seriously. Am I God? Because according to all the PR out there, you have to be in order to get Vista to work.
If anyone remembers (and how quickly we tend to forget in the world of technology), much of the same thing happened when XP launched. People that were running 9x kernels absolutely hated XP at first. Why? Because it was different and required you to "relearn" some stuff, most of which ultimately will make you far more productive (which I think everyone can agree XP did over any 9x version).
Working in retail I hear it all the time: "I hate this new Vista." When I ask why, the reply is always the same, "It's too different from XP." Not "it crashes all the time" or "won't let me do anything." I even had one lady tell me she hated Vista because it automatically made her monitor's resolution 1280x1024 instead of 800x600 which she wasn't used to. You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to even explain what the heck resolution was to her.
There's this overwhelming impression out there that Vista is utter garbage. And while I won't doubt that some people are having massive issues with Vista, I would wager that, for the most part if 1) they actually did more than 5 minutes of research they'd realize that Vista isn't the culprit and stop assuming it is, or 2) stop being so computer illiterate and learn to adapt to the changing technology industry.
Oh how quickly we forget about how horrible Windows 95 or ME actually was. I can't even get ME running properly in a virtual machine. Windows 95 keeps barking about system files missing. Comparing Vista to THAT is completely and utterly uncalled for and absolute ignorance to the true situation.
I'm a Windows Vista x64 user. And I have been since Beta 2. And I've not had a single issue. Call me lucky or call me a God, but I'd rather call myself educated in technology.
Knowing Apple, it probably is an exclusive contract on that particular motherboard. However, given the fact that Intel pretty much designed the thing, I think the could put out a different but similar form-factor motherboard in a couple months time. Knowing Intel, I can guarantee they'll be pursing that avenue.
- Adam
Don't get me wrong: I think the idea is great. But you're going to tell me that GM is "embracing" Open Source simply by creating a blog and a wiki by using the two most popular software titles in those categories?
All of a sudden GM is elevated to the Google or Sun status in terms of FOSS on Slashdot. Typical.
As a service tech myself, trust me, it is extremely easy to stumble upon customer's data that they probably didn't want you to see. If these techs were looking for files to burn, they could have possibly clicked on My Documents at which point they were presented with the thumbnails. Heck, I've seen computers so unorganized there are JPG and AVI files all in the root C:/ drive and WINDOWS/WINNT folders, not to mention the desktop. I've seen plenty share of porn on customer's computers even when I haven't been "looking" for it. It's all over the freaking place. And for some people here on/. suggest that every single service tech out there purposely goes looking for customer's data to view and exploit for their own entertainment is ludicrous.
Where I work, we're not allowed to carry flash drives. And I honor that. My coworkers honor that, and I hold them to it. We take customer's data privacy very seriously, and I've seen people terminated because of it.
Now I'm not saying that every single service tech out there respects customer's privacy...on the contrary. There's been numerous stories lately about how they haven't. But what really annoys me is that tons of people are just "assuming" that all service techs are corrupt. That near offends me, personally.
Without knowing further details as to how these techs found those images, I won't make any judgments or assumptions. What stands is the fact that this guy had possession of illegal child porn and should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. Period.
Anyone who's been on Facebook for more than 5 minutes realizes that when you use these "plug ins," they naturally show up to the public/your friends/your networks. That's the whole point. I honestly think Facebook users understand.
Now, if this was on Myspace...
The problem, however, is that music and video bought from the online Zune Marketplace won't play in their native format on other devices, including those that will carry the new logo
...because all the music I downloaded via subscription or purchasing on the Zune Marketplace works perfectly fine on my Creative Zen. Naturally, the Zune software doesn't recognize the device, but WMP11 syncs it perfectly fine.
Don't quote me on this as I was unable to find the source, but from what I last heard (back when the maximum was 30Mbps), Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time. They've since upgraded a lot of their equipment (to provide 50Mbps service), so I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't been upped as well. The article hints on this as well.
That's something that Comcast just can't guarantee given their current network. Everyone knows that cable services have always had bottlenecking issues. That's the problem that a fully fiber net solves at this point in time.
I agree with everything you said. However, I must agree with others and disagree with you that HTML is a programming language. It isn't. It can't manipulate data by itself. It can only display the data you put into and and react one way and only one way.
However, I see your point here. While HTML is not a programming language, it defiantely is an excellent gateway into real programming languages. I myself started with BASIC (why I was learning BASIC in 1999, I don't know. Probably because I saw my dad's old IBM PC BASIC 101 textbook and got interested). Sure, I made a few cool things, did some interesting stuff, and even learned to edit other BASIC programs (remember Gorilla?) to my liking, though I was certainly not capable of producing such things from scratch, but what it did do was teach me basic logic. I learned that typing different keywords and assigning variables did different things. I learned that you could manipulate data based on an input. Very few of "my" programs at the time were really mine, but more of the book's and tutorial's.
But past the simple stuff, I started to get confused as heck. I thought to myself, "I'm not capable of doing anything more advanced than this," so I slacked off. I've not touched BASIC for more than 10 minutes since, but I still value what I took away from it, even though it was so small. I then got into wanting to create my own web page, so I started with Frontpage, was quickly bored, and began writing HTML itself.
At that time, I was about 12. I sucked at HTML. I knew nothing about really making it coherent. As that improved with a few online resources and a few books from the library, I got much better, and they taught me that I could start doing dynamic content on websites by using other stuff than HTML. This dove me into JavaScript. I, honestly, hated it the first time I laid eyes on it. I pushed myself through it, began learning a lot of stuff, and it helped me more, I think, than BASIC in terms of just getting comfortable with WRITING the markup for long periods of time, and using logic, and such to figure out why the heck it wasn't working the way I wanted to it to. This brought in problem solving. But I soon backed away from JavaScript after realizing (around age 14-15) it really wasn't very compatible cross-browser and depended on the user's browser configuration, so it isn't fullproof.
So I went back to just HTML for awhile. I was happy with it. I then got into PHP around age 16, because it provided the dynamic stuff I was looking for, but made it just as compatible as HTML. This really was my meat into learning programming logic. This is where I spent most of my time, and only until recently (in the last 6 months), I've been doing nothing but PHP and web development, fine-tuning my valid markup and making the PHP code actually have structure to it.
Now I'm 17. Turning 18 in less than a week, and like I said, I'm now getting into more application-based programming, and the heavier stuff. Java, C++, and (please don't shoot me), C# and other.NET stuff.
I agree with you 99.9%. HTML is IMO the best way to get someone interested in programming and provides the best gateway to getting their hands dirty with making the computer do something its told by other means than clicking the mouse. There are those who are perfectly happy with just HTML (for example, my sister is pretty proficient in it, but I would consider her relatively iliterate otherwise), but for many, it leaves them wanting more and the "real" stuff.
I do admire Google for putting out open source stuff. Okay, cool beans. But when Google says it's not about money, I step back and think for a second. Google is about making money. Sorry to break it to you, folks.
While the performance of the card does take a nice step forward over the X1800, it's not really much to spend the extra $$ over. I'm still waiting for the "next generation" graphics card. Something that really takes a large step forward. Still, it really comes down to the application developers and how they design the programs. Most can't use the full capabilities of the card, so we're still left in the dark.
Not to mention the fight from other coroporations, but I'll tell you one thing: I know many, many people including myself who would give these telecommunications companies absolute hell for going through with this. And note that these are mainly the "major" corporations. There are other telecommuncations companies offering services. And those who are immensely opposed to the idea would instantly switch over.
I honestly forsee shareholders not going for this idea either because it'll lose customers in the long run.
I really hope my Wordpress has MovableType. I might need to get it out of the way quickly with all of those pigeon's flying around overhead!
Okay, bad joke.
Slashdot Mirror
Relearn Vista? For most computer users, this means launching IE to browse the internet or check their email. For most users, this means where to find Shut Down. I'm sorry, but for most average users, "relearning" Vista should be no issue at all, anymore than possibly an hour of playing around.
Now on the other hand, for experienced computer users and power users, Vista may be a bit more difficult of a transition. I know it was for me. However, as a power user, I had been running Vista off-and-on for over a year prior to its release from Betas and RC's. I can say now that I'm more proficient on a Vista system than an XP system.
Heck, I cringe when I have to use an XP system. Compared to Vista (once you know how to do things), it's actually more difficult to accomplish administrative or troubleshooting tasks in XP.
Agreed. However, as a college student and part-time worker, I really don't plan on spending the minimum $699 to become a full subscriber of MSDN. My original point is that Vista SP1 is already feature complete, compiled, sealed, finished. It's no longer a "developer's tool" for testing purposes. It's already gone through those phases for the MSDN subscribers. Why delay us technical enthusiasts for 6 weeks?
I love how they announce it then make us wait 6 weeks to actually download it. While I can perfectly understand not releasing it via Autoupdate immediately, at least give us a freaking place to get it manually from MSDN or the Download Center.
And I most certainly won't be trusting leaked torrent versions when it comes to Service Packs.
It depends on what your idea of competition is. In the end, someone has to come out on top regardless of how many competitors there are. Couldn't we argue that within the field of Linux desktop computing, Ubuntu holds the overwhelming majority and therefore has close to a "monopoly" of that market? We can do the same thing with servers running Redhat or Debian? How about Apple and the multimedia creation field?
...I'm actually going to have to side with Microsoft on this one. On rather, I'm going to side with no one. The idea that this would make Microsoft a bigger "monopoly" is unfounded because neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has anywhere close to the highest marketshare of online searches or advertising. If we're so concerned about monopolies, competition in the field can only be a good thing. And at the rate it was going, unless something like this happened, no one would ever be able to stop Google.
The article writer basically used the following steps:
... but with tweaks.
1) Try a program in Wine and discover that it doesn't work fully.
2) Try a program in Cedega and discover that it works
3) Try a program in Vista and adjust nothing. Discover it works halfway.
4) Call Vista crap.
5) Get Slashdotted and become a god among Linux fanboys.
Seriously. This article is hardly anything close to a fair comparison of the compatibility with each of these games. I'd personally debunk this using my x64 installation of Vista, but to be honest, I'm not going to waste my time. The previous comments already show how idiotic this guy really is to put forward his conclusion.
...because I'm running Vista on 4 machines in my house and I have yet to come across any significant issues. Two of these installations are 64-bit. I've only gotten a BSOD once on any one of them and that was because my memory timings were a bit too tight.
Seriously. Am I God? Because according to all the PR out there, you have to be in order to get Vista to work.
If anyone remembers (and how quickly we tend to forget in the world of technology), much of the same thing happened when XP launched. People that were running 9x kernels absolutely hated XP at first. Why? Because it was different and required you to "relearn" some stuff, most of which ultimately will make you far more productive (which I think everyone can agree XP did over any 9x version).
Working in retail I hear it all the time: "I hate this new Vista." When I ask why, the reply is always the same, "It's too different from XP." Not "it crashes all the time" or "won't let me do anything." I even had one lady tell me she hated Vista because it automatically made her monitor's resolution 1280x1024 instead of 800x600 which she wasn't used to. You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to even explain what the heck resolution was to her.
There's this overwhelming impression out there that Vista is utter garbage. And while I won't doubt that some people are having massive issues with Vista, I would wager that, for the most part if 1) they actually did more than 5 minutes of research they'd realize that Vista isn't the culprit and stop assuming it is, or 2) stop being so computer illiterate and learn to adapt to the changing technology industry.
Oh how quickly we forget about how horrible Windows 95 or ME actually was. I can't even get ME running properly in a virtual machine. Windows 95 keeps barking about system files missing. Comparing Vista to THAT is completely and utterly uncalled for and absolute ignorance to the true situation.
I'm a Windows Vista x64 user. And I have been since Beta 2. And I've not had a single issue. Call me lucky or call me a God, but I'd rather call myself educated in technology.
Knowing Apple, it probably is an exclusive contract on that particular motherboard. However, given the fact that Intel pretty much designed the thing, I think the could put out a different but similar form-factor motherboard in a couple months time. Knowing Intel, I can guarantee they'll be pursing that avenue. - Adam
Don't get me wrong: I think the idea is great. But you're going to tell me that GM is "embracing" Open Source simply by creating a blog and a wiki by using the two most popular software titles in those categories?
All of a sudden GM is elevated to the Google or Sun status in terms of FOSS on Slashdot. Typical.
As a service tech myself, trust me, it is extremely easy to stumble upon customer's data that they probably didn't want you to see. If these techs were looking for files to burn, they could have possibly clicked on My Documents at which point they were presented with the thumbnails. Heck, I've seen computers so unorganized there are JPG and AVI files all in the root C:/ drive and WINDOWS/WINNT folders, not to mention the desktop. I've seen plenty share of porn on customer's computers even when I haven't been "looking" for it. It's all over the freaking place. And for some people here on /. suggest that every single service tech out there purposely goes looking for customer's data to view and exploit for their own entertainment is ludicrous.
Where I work, we're not allowed to carry flash drives. And I honor that. My coworkers honor that, and I hold them to it. We take customer's data privacy very seriously, and I've seen people terminated because of it.
Now I'm not saying that every single service tech out there respects customer's privacy...on the contrary. There's been numerous stories lately about how they haven't. But what really annoys me is that tons of people are just "assuming" that all service techs are corrupt. That near offends me, personally.
Without knowing further details as to how these techs found those images, I won't make any judgments or assumptions. What stands is the fact that this guy had possession of illegal child porn and should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. Period.
Anyone who's been on Facebook for more than 5 minutes realizes that when you use these "plug ins," they naturally show up to the public/your friends/your networks. That's the whole point. I honestly think Facebook users understand. Now, if this was on Myspace ...
That's funny. I have PuTTY sitting on my desktop and I've never been prompted once by Windows. Hmm. /me scratches his head
Don't quote me on this as I was unable to find the source, but from what I last heard (back when the maximum was 30Mbps), Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time. They've since upgraded a lot of their equipment (to provide 50Mbps service), so I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't been upped as well. The article hints on this as well.
That's something that Comcast just can't guarantee given their current network. Everyone knows that cable services have always had bottlenecking issues. That's the problem that a fully fiber net solves at this point in time.
- Adam
I agree with everything you said. However, I must agree with others and disagree with you that HTML is a programming language. It isn't. It can't manipulate data by itself. It can only display the data you put into and and react one way and only one way.
.NET stuff.
However, I see your point here. While HTML is not a programming language, it defiantely is an excellent gateway into real programming languages. I myself started with BASIC (why I was learning BASIC in 1999, I don't know. Probably because I saw my dad's old IBM PC BASIC 101 textbook and got interested). Sure, I made a few cool things, did some interesting stuff, and even learned to edit other BASIC programs (remember Gorilla?) to my liking, though I was certainly not capable of producing such things from scratch, but what it did do was teach me basic logic. I learned that typing different keywords and assigning variables did different things. I learned that you could manipulate data based on an input. Very few of "my" programs at the time were really mine, but more of the book's and tutorial's.
But past the simple stuff, I started to get confused as heck. I thought to myself, "I'm not capable of doing anything more advanced than this," so I slacked off. I've not touched BASIC for more than 10 minutes since, but I still value what I took away from it, even though it was so small. I then got into wanting to create my own web page, so I started with Frontpage, was quickly bored, and began writing HTML itself.
At that time, I was about 12. I sucked at HTML. I knew nothing about really making it coherent. As that improved with a few online resources and a few books from the library, I got much better, and they taught me that I could start doing dynamic content on websites by using other stuff than HTML. This dove me into JavaScript. I, honestly, hated it the first time I laid eyes on it. I pushed myself through it, began learning a lot of stuff, and it helped me more, I think, than BASIC in terms of just getting comfortable with WRITING the markup for long periods of time, and using logic, and such to figure out why the heck it wasn't working the way I wanted to it to. This brought in problem solving. But I soon backed away from JavaScript after realizing (around age 14-15) it really wasn't very compatible cross-browser and depended on the user's browser configuration, so it isn't fullproof.
So I went back to just HTML for awhile. I was happy with it. I then got into PHP around age 16, because it provided the dynamic stuff I was looking for, but made it just as compatible as HTML. This really was my meat into learning programming logic. This is where I spent most of my time, and only until recently (in the last 6 months), I've been doing nothing but PHP and web development, fine-tuning my valid markup and making the PHP code actually have structure to it.
Now I'm 17. Turning 18 in less than a week, and like I said, I'm now getting into more application-based programming, and the heavier stuff. Java, C++, and (please don't shoot me), C# and other
I agree with you 99.9%. HTML is IMO the best way to get someone interested in programming and provides the best gateway to getting their hands dirty with making the computer do something its told by other means than clicking the mouse. There are those who are perfectly happy with just HTML (for example, my sister is pretty proficient in it, but I would consider her relatively iliterate otherwise), but for many, it leaves them wanting more and the "real" stuff.
All you need in life is determination and a little duct tape.
...
All you need in life is determination and a little bacterial glue.
Something doesn't seem right there
- Adam
No delays? I mean ... what if there's a puck malfunction or something?
I do admire Google for putting out open source stuff. Okay, cool beans. But when Google says it's not about money, I step back and think for a second. Google is about making money. Sorry to break it to you, folks.
- Adam
... Terry Tate 'Office Linebacker'.
... it's pain time, baby! WHOOOO!"
"When it's game time
I don't need no ultraviolet! I swear I saw something to the effect of a self cleaning bathroom on Tool Time, once.
- Adam
While the performance of the card does take a nice step forward over the X1800, it's not really much to spend the extra $$ over. I'm still waiting for the "next generation" graphics card. Something that really takes a large step forward. Still, it really comes down to the application developers and how they design the programs. Most can't use the full capabilities of the card, so we're still left in the dark.
- Adam
Not to mention the fight from other coroporations, but I'll tell you one thing: I know many, many people including myself who would give these telecommunications companies absolute hell for going through with this. And note that these are mainly the "major" corporations. There are other telecommuncations companies offering services. And those who are immensely opposed to the idea would instantly switch over.
I honestly forsee shareholders not going for this idea either because it'll lose customers in the long run.
- Adam
I really hope my Wordpress has MovableType. I might need to get it out of the way quickly with all of those pigeon's flying around overhead! Okay, bad joke.
We're one step away from Willy Wonka's elevator system. - Adam