Funny, in this post everybody is quick to point to absentee ballot.
Why is that so disturbing to allow citizen to vote on internet instead of by mail? We spent the last 10 years explaining the internet revolution to people and that they should buy online - meet friends online - play online - find love online - work online -... But when they ask to vote online, however they are treated like a sort of ugly lazy bastard not taking voting seriously... go figure.
First, I don't have Vista and I don't plan to have it.
However, I assume that in a sane environment, the user should be asked when it install software ( at least the one that register some system-wide stuff - which is pretty much everything in windows world ), change firewall/antivir settings, network config,... unless it runs in administrative mode of course
When people talk about confirmation box, I suppose they run in user mode where that makes sense to elevate a process priviledge when running 'admin' stuff. Not the best feature, but a nice user-friendly transition option for people that have been using their computer in Admin mode since they have one.
If you are still running Vista in Administrator mode by default either you or Microsoft (for not defaulting that type of installation mode) screwed up somewhere. Warning boxes in Administrative mode are little more useful for security than a sign 'don't jump' next to a cliff.
Company mail system is also, believe it or not, used to send mail within the same company/building. Strangely the most confidential documents such as analysis, internal white papers, usecase for next product... even rarely travel outside.
Also, there is a difference between having the risk of being intercepted by a third party than storing your mail directly on the third party servers. Especially when the third party tells you upfront that they do content analysis of your mail.
The fact that most people get it backward is that they don't care if anybody else read the mail about their last vacations. However company don't like their trade secret being hosted by their competitor.
I don't know for Racing Game. That seem to me a little extreme since the realism of the racing are far away from the real life.
However,
I had the opportunity to do some karting from time to time with colleagues and after 2 hours of karting when you take back your car you really have to think twice while driving. More than one time I was close to naturally 'push' a slower car before me, or was driving more nervously than usual,... and I was not the only one to have such problem. So we bravely decided to always stay at least one more hour at the bar after the session, for safety of course:-)
But I repeat, that never happen to me with a video game, that's too different from the real thing.
"One of your customers sends you data in a Vista only format."
That's always the same thread of arguments:
1. Linux/OSX are better than Windows because they force you to upgrade to Vista 2. FUD - you don't upgrade if you don't want to 3. !FUD - you will receive Vista only document/spreadsheets from customer,... 4. !(!FUD) - if you receive Vista only document, you need Vista - so Linux, OSX ruled out 5. !(!(!FUD)) - Wine will be able to run DX10 games / OO will open be 100% compatible with new office format /... 6. !(!(!(!FUD))) - we are talking about work right / OO run on Windows /... 7.... 8. NO profit
JP2000 was not lossless. It was just giving beter quality than JPEG at the same size ( think MPEG2 -> H.264 ). However JPEG 2000 is a pain to compress and render and is not a 'free format'. (also try to encode/render JPEG2000 images: unless you have a new Intel QuadCore you will feel the suffering of your machine. )
With this HD Format, Microsoft says their algorithm comes close to JPEG2000 quality/size but with a very simple algo. Also Microsoft is making a lot of effort to standardise their stuff ( they tried first to license it for free, now they go to a standardisation process ). They also have the support of Adobe, which is not a bad thing when talking about image format.
A strong point for HD-Format is that it covers the quality and feature range from JPEG-2000 to TIFF-Losless. So camera manufacturer could benefit from unified chipset that works from pocket camera to SLR. Or a flexible SLR chipset that cover the whole range of quality the user wishes.
"It coudl cause a push for some companies to adopt cheap Macs on the desktop. Maybe if Apple can bring the price of the Mini back down."
It is not a question of cost. Mac are quite competitive compared to equivalent machine. The problem is the range of available machine. You have a *very* limited subset of hardware you can choose from Apple, and all of them are designed either for home ( cheap one ) or for very top of the range professional ( MacBook Pro, MacPro )
There is no average common machine. Example: The mac mini is slightly underspec for a developer ( mainly: harddisk sucks, only 2 GB memory max ) and the design is completely irrelevant: we have all plenty of lost space under the desk. My company buys beige ibm/dell boxes with the same spec as the mini and roughly the same price, but the fact that the dell/ibm come with standard disk in a standard ugly box is seen as a benefit, unlike in my livingroom. Off course, there is the mac pro, but it is completely overkill, both in cost and performance. ( Again, not saying it is not competitive against similar spec machine, but that's the equivalent of 'if a knife is not good enough for hunting, we also sell machine guns' )
Illusion or not, you still have to pay for the 2 years contract like for any subsidized phone, the contract price reflect the amount subsidized.
Sorry for my lack of faith, but I have the feeling that price for the iPhone contract will not be significantly cheaper, so the fact that other phone are subsidied or not change nothing to what you pay at the end.
But of course I can be wrong, the way Jobs will revolutionize the mobile world is maybe by selling an expensive phone but with a dead-cheap 2-year contract (I mean cheap as in 20$/month for unlimited data and good voice plan ). If that happen (I wonder what I did smoke), I may be willing to sacrifice thirdparty application and battery exchange.
Locked-in? Yes. Crippled? Well, that's just FUD. Locked-in == Crippled. I think you have been badly redirected from FreedomIsForTerrorists.gov We are on slashdot, a friendly community that value stuff like OpenSource, DRM-Free, Free porn and generally free everything.
It's why he's a billionaire and you're posting lies on Slashdot. Ah! so you knew ?? Oh you must be a troll, sorry, keep up the good work.
Unfortunately, it remains the case that Slashdot seriously believes that the RIAA is a massive, monopolistic, music publisher as opposed to an industry group that represents publishers.
And the difference is... what, exactly? The same as between you and your lawyer.
Remind me when the new CEO at my previous company went all the way accros the ocean to explain us how our department has been magnificent and how proud he was of every one of us. Thanks to us, he saw the great wisdom of Software development and how a proper team will lead his company from Stone Age to World Domination. In conclusion, one week later (or maybe more, but less than a month later) the department was closed, everybody fired and the software development was outsourced to a specialised development house in India: that would would bring to the company even more flexibility and satisfaction for a cheaper price than our brilliant team could ever provide, but the CEO has to thank us for all this new wisdom.
The first question they will ask: "Is the asteroid man-made"... Since the answer is "no" there is nothing to worry about, and anyway the cost would be too much to bear for the global economy.
Funny to note that the old CGA (320*200) is on the 'bleeding' edge ratio: 16/10 like all the modern LCD.
To answer your question, at that period, Amiga users were mocking the PC for their lame CGA resolution in games and were proud of the the Amiga standard 320*256 ( yep it is 5/4 ). Was not on the graph, though.
Windows has a sort of sudo in the form of 'RunAs...' With RunAs you can run a graphical application with a specified set of credential. Beside that, since NT you had ACL, Filesystem file permition,...
So really what was the trouble to configure Vista to run with limited privilege and require additional credential automatically when required ? If they didn't want to deal with caching (needed for copying stuff in explorer and not escalade everything), they could just start a new instance of Explorer the user can close when he likes. They could also have spent some time streamlining the user experience in non-admin mode ( like installing non-system application in you home, simplifying disk security,...)
But no... they tried a bastardised solution where the user had most of the rights but with a nany-program to monitor everything and try to second guess what happen on the system. My god they progress backward. UAC is a perfect solution for Windows 95-98 family (mono-user OS) not for a modern multiuser OS like NT family.
I disagree. As an Apple stockholder (basically my life savings, for the last 6 years) Spending 6 years of life savings into a company is not called Investment, that's Love, true real Love.
Anyway no worries, unlike women, even if the company you gave your life saving is only there to suck the world money dry, is controled by an evil CEO and slay ruthlessly all competitors in the race for World Domination... at the end of the day, that's called a clever investment:-)
"I find it unbelievable that a 'software consultant' cannot stomach a $25'000 fee for something he wanted so badly"
Maybe there was a lot of thing that he wanted so badly: like $200,000 sport car, $1,000,000 house,... Regarless of how much you earn, you goes into debt when your lifestyle cost you more that what you make.
Also the guy is 31. That means he started to work in the last years of the internet bubble yet, so there is also strong possibilty he had trouble adjusting. I have a colleague here at work that went from a 700GBP/day contract to nothing for a year followed by 300 GBP/day. This worked ok for him but at the same time, there are tons of stories of consultant buying 1,000,000 GBP houses that had a difficult reality check in 2001.
"8.3 filename? In two-thousand-fucking-seven? No wonder Vista sucks"
woo...
Remind me of an ex-college whose project has been delayed because, during the demo meeting, one of its manager was not happy with the name of the shortcut that launched the demo. ( It was an abbreviation instead of the full corporate name ).
Let's make some more 'professional' comments :
1. They still call their kernel, kernel. Fucking not original. 2. They still call their product Windows. The same name they have been using for 20 years ? How do they hope to look modern.
Remember, no custom application on the iPhone Somehow I doubt that Apple will allow VoIp to run on its iPhone for a while.
Also the fact that the phone is not subsidied, doesn't mean that is not locked in Cingular. And even if it is not, what about feature support on other networks ? For example, the graphical voicemail. If you take your iPhone to Europe, your voice mails are stored at the operator side, not in your phone, so giving random access to it needs cooperation between operator and the mobile, otherwise you are stuck calling the operator voicemail number like with any 20$ mobile.
Yes that may be possible if your VM application is a Trusted Application itself.
Before anybody else ask, as you may imagine, they have gone far enough with TPM so that making a trusted application is a bit more difficult than switching a property in the config file.
There is no *obvious* flaw in TPM ( there may be flaws, but nothing that you could think in 5 sec: like running a VM, changing the registry, blinking your eyes real fast ).
Actually in theory, TPM is really cool and could mean the end of viruses, trojan, phishing,... Unfortunalty that's not often the good guys that have the big guns.
"Apple is locking out other hardware makers from being able to play music purchased from iTunes with no extra effort."
The "no extra effort" is very important. You could always uses Netscape with Windows instead of IE with a little extra effort. In this case a heavy iTunes/iPod uses can have his entire collection in iTunes. If that's the case in order to use another player than the iPod the user need to burn its entire collection.
That would too bad for the user (and a common business practice) but when you reach a certain importance on a market, authorities can blame you for this "extra effort". They must do it for a monopoly, but they can also do it to achieve specific goals.
I think the EU (at least France and Germany ) has in mind to force portability of various DRM to open the market ( concurrency on product features instead of compatibility matrix ) In that case they go for the biggest player first and others will follow.
How Apple will do that? EU says nothing as far as I know. But if Apple doesn't comply they will simply follow Microsoft path: they will be fined millions euro per day until they release the complete documentation and keys of their DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
"And with Satan, you know you're not going to be inflicted with unspeakable suffering until after you die."
Before you buy and install SatanOS, think that you will be dead much much longer than alive. That's worth at least some free support.
I started to do a set of map of my old school and university for Quake ... Lucky for me I was lazy enough so I didn't finish it and skip prison !
God bless laziness !
Funny, in this post everybody is quick to point to absentee ballot.
... ... go figure.
Why is that so disturbing to allow citizen to vote on internet instead of by mail? We spent the last 10 years explaining the internet revolution to people and that they should buy online - meet friends online - play online - find love online - work online -
But when they ask to vote online, however they are treated like a sort of ugly lazy bastard not taking voting seriously
First, I don't have Vista and I don't plan to have it.
However, I assume that in a sane environment, the user should be asked when it install software ( at least the one that register some system-wide stuff - which is pretty much everything in windows world ), change firewall/antivir settings, network config,... unless it runs in administrative mode of course
When people talk about confirmation box, I suppose they run in user mode where that makes sense to elevate a process priviledge when running 'admin' stuff. Not the best feature, but a nice user-friendly transition option for people that have been using their computer in Admin mode since they have one.
If you are still running Vista in Administrator mode by default either you or Microsoft (for not defaulting that type of installation mode) screwed up somewhere. Warning boxes in Administrative mode are little more useful for security than a sign 'don't jump' next to a cliff.
Company mail system is also, believe it or not, used to send mail within the same company/building. ... even rarely travel outside.
Strangely the most confidential documents such as analysis, internal white papers, usecase for next product
Also, there is a difference between having the risk of being intercepted by a third party than storing your mail directly on the third party servers. Especially when the third party tells you upfront that they do content analysis of your mail.
The fact that most people get it backward is that they don't care if anybody else read the mail about their last vacations. However company don't like their trade secret being hosted by their competitor.
The important question: What do they taste ? ...
Maybe nature made them a favor after all
I don't know for Racing Game. That seem to me a little extreme since the realism of the racing are far away from the real life.
... and I was not the only one to have such problem. So we bravely decided to always stay at least one more hour at the bar after the session, for safety of course :-)
However,
I had the opportunity to do some karting from time to time with colleagues and after 2 hours of karting when you take back your car you really have to think twice while driving.
More than one time I was close to naturally 'push' a slower car before me, or was driving more nervously than usual,
But I repeat, that never happen to me with a video game, that's too different from the real thing.
"One of your customers sends you data in a Vista only format."
... ... ... ...
That's always the same thread of arguments:
1. Linux/OSX are better than Windows because they force you to upgrade to Vista
2. FUD - you don't upgrade if you don't want to
3. !FUD - you will receive Vista only document/spreadsheets from customer,
4. !(!FUD) - if you receive Vista only document, you need Vista - so Linux, OSX ruled out
5. !(!(!FUD)) - Wine will be able to run DX10 games / OO will open be 100% compatible with new office format /
6. !(!(!(!FUD))) - we are talking about work right / OO run on Windows /
7.
8. NO profit
Yes indeed, stupidely worked from memory for JPEG2000.
JP2000 was not lossless. It was just giving beter quality than JPEG at the same size ( think MPEG2 -> H.264 ).
c s_file_formats
However JPEG 2000 is a pain to compress and render and is not a 'free format'. (also try to encode/render JPEG2000 images: unless you have a new Intel QuadCore you will feel the suffering of your machine. )
With this HD Format, Microsoft says their algorithm comes close to JPEG2000 quality/size but with a very simple algo.
Also Microsoft is making a lot of effort to standardise their stuff ( they tried first to license it for free, now they go to a standardisation process ). They also have the support of Adobe, which is not a bad thing when talking about image format.
A strong point for HD-Format is that it covers the quality and feature range from JPEG-2000 to TIFF-Losless. So camera manufacturer could benefit from unified chipset that works from pocket camera to SLR. Or a flexible SLR chipset that cover the whole range of quality the user wishes.
But anyway, good source of information as usual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphi
"It coudl cause a push for some companies to adopt cheap Macs on the desktop. Maybe if Apple can bring the price of the Mini back down."
It is not a question of cost. Mac are quite competitive compared to equivalent machine. The problem is the range of available machine. You have a *very* limited subset of hardware you can choose from Apple, and all of them are designed either for home ( cheap one ) or for very top of the range professional ( MacBook Pro, MacPro )
There is no average common machine. Example: The mac mini is slightly underspec for a developer ( mainly: harddisk sucks, only 2 GB memory max ) and the design is completely irrelevant: we have all plenty of lost space under the desk. My company buys beige ibm/dell boxes with the same spec as the mini and roughly the same price, but the fact that the dell/ibm come with standard disk in a standard ugly box is seen as a benefit, unlike in my livingroom.
Off course, there is the mac pro, but it is completely overkill, both in cost and performance. ( Again, not saying it is not competitive against similar spec machine, but that's the equivalent of 'if a knife is not good enough for hunting, we also sell machine guns' )
Illusion or not, you still have to pay for the 2 years contract like for any subsidized phone, the contract price reflect the amount subsidized.
Sorry for my lack of faith, but I have the feeling that price for the iPhone contract will not be significantly cheaper, so the fact that other phone are subsidied or not change nothing to what you pay at the end.
But of course I can be wrong, the way Jobs will revolutionize the mobile world is maybe by selling an expensive phone but with a dead-cheap 2-year contract (I mean cheap as in 20$/month for unlimited data and good voice plan ). If that happen (I wonder what I did smoke), I may be willing to sacrifice thirdparty application and battery exchange.
I think you have been badly redirected from FreedomIsForTerrorists.gov
We are on slashdot, a friendly community that value stuff like OpenSource, DRM-Free, Free porn and generally free everything. It's why he's a billionaire and you're posting lies on Slashdot. Ah! so you knew ??
Oh you must be a troll, sorry, keep up the good work.
Remind me when the new CEO at my previous company went all the way accros the ocean to explain us how our department has been magnificent and how proud he was of every one of us.
Thanks to us, he saw the great wisdom of Software development and how a proper team will lead his company from Stone Age to World Domination.
In conclusion, one week later (or maybe more, but less than a month later) the department was closed, everybody fired and the software development was outsourced to a specialised development house in India: that would would bring to the company even more flexibility and satisfaction for a cheaper price than our brilliant team could ever provide, but the CEO has to thank us for all this new wisdom.
The first question they will ask: "Is the asteroid man-made" ... Since the answer is "no" there is nothing to worry about, and anyway the cost would be too much to bear for the global economy.
Funny to note that the old CGA (320*200) is on the 'bleeding' edge ratio: 16/10 like all the modern LCD.
To answer your question, at that period, Amiga users were mocking the PC for their lame CGA resolution in games and were proud of the the Amiga standard 320*256 ( yep it is 5/4 ). Was not on the graph, though.
Windows has a sort of sudo in the form of 'RunAs...' With RunAs you can run a graphical application with a specified set of credential. Beside that, since NT you had ACL, Filesystem file permition, ...
...)
... they tried a bastardised solution where the user had most of the rights but with a nany-program to monitor everything and try to second guess what happen on the system.
So really what was the trouble to configure Vista to run with limited privilege and require additional credential automatically when required ? If they didn't want to deal with caching (needed for copying stuff in explorer and not escalade everything), they could just start a new instance of Explorer the user can close when he likes. They could also have spent some time streamlining the user experience in non-admin mode ( like installing non-system application in you home, simplifying disk security,
But no
My god they progress backward. UAC is a perfect solution for Windows 95-98 family (mono-user OS) not for a modern multiuser OS like NT family.
Anyway no worries, unlike women, even if the company you gave your life saving is only there to suck the world money dry, is controled by an evil CEO and slay ruthlessly all competitors in the race for World Domination
Those days you can even update your BIOS from Windows !
My motherboard is a 2 years old MSI and I can update the BIOS from WinXP.
"I find it unbelievable that a 'software consultant' cannot stomach a $25'000 fee for something he wanted so badly"
... Regarless of how much you earn, you goes into debt when your lifestyle cost you more that what you make.
Maybe there was a lot of thing that he wanted so badly: like $200,000 sport car, $1,000,000 house,
Also the guy is 31. That means he started to work in the last years of the internet bubble yet, so there is also strong possibilty he had trouble adjusting. I have a colleague here at work that went from a 700GBP/day contract to nothing for a year followed by 300 GBP/day. This worked ok for him but at the same time, there are tons of stories of consultant buying 1,000,000 GBP houses that had a difficult reality check in 2001.
"8.3 filename? In two-thousand-fucking-seven? No wonder Vista sucks"
...
woo
Remind me of an ex-college whose project has been delayed because, during the demo meeting, one of its manager was not happy with the name of the shortcut that launched the demo. ( It was an abbreviation instead of the full corporate name ).
Let's make some more 'professional' comments :
1. They still call their kernel, kernel. Fucking not original.
2. They still call their product Windows. The same name they have been using for 20 years ? How do they hope to look modern.
For those reasons, Vista sucks...
Remember, no custom application on the iPhone
Somehow I doubt that Apple will allow VoIp to run on its iPhone for a while.
Also the fact that the phone is not subsidied, doesn't mean that is not locked in Cingular. And even if it is not, what about feature support on other networks ?
For example, the graphical voicemail. If you take your iPhone to Europe, your voice mails are stored at the operator side, not in your phone, so giving random access to it needs cooperation between operator and the mobile, otherwise you are stuck calling the operator voicemail number like with any 20$ mobile.
Yes that may be possible if your VM application is a Trusted Application itself.
...
Before anybody else ask, as you may imagine, they have gone far enough with TPM so that making a trusted application is a bit more difficult than switching a property in the config file.
There is no *obvious* flaw in TPM ( there may be flaws, but nothing that you could think in 5 sec: like running a VM, changing the registry, blinking your eyes real fast ).
Actually in theory, TPM is really cool and could mean the end of viruses, trojan, phishing,
Unfortunalty that's not often the good guys that have the big guns.
"Apple is locking out other hardware makers from being able to play music purchased from iTunes with no extra effort ."
The "no extra effort" is very important. You could always uses Netscape with Windows instead of IE with a little extra effort.
In this case a heavy iTunes/iPod uses can have his entire collection in iTunes. If that's the case in order to use another player than the iPod the user need to burn its entire collection.
That would too bad for the user (and a common business practice) but when you reach a certain importance on a market, authorities can blame you for this "extra effort". They must do it for a monopoly, but they can also do it to achieve specific goals.
I think the EU (at least France and Germany ) has in mind to force portability of various DRM to open the market ( concurrency on product features instead of compatibility matrix ) In that case they go for the biggest player first and others will follow.
How Apple will do that? EU says nothing as far as I know. But if Apple doesn't comply they will simply follow Microsoft path: they will be fined millions euro per day until they release the complete documentation and keys of their DRM.