Yeah I guess. But I think google is a little smarter than that. Their moves are more calculated. A mobile phone would need a platform and I doubt they'd use just another OS. It's the same way MS got into the server market. At the time the desktop was ripe for the taking. They took it. Once they controlled a sector they seeped into the server market because so many people were familiar with windows desktop. Once google controls the embedded market they could integrate it somehow with their web offerings. Once they control your phone and your browser, what's next? Taking on the Goliath in one swoop makes for great history, but you are more likely to be successful in winning important battles over the long term. Windows mobile sucks and is a piece of garbage and the others aren't a whole lot better. I think google could make a vastly superior product and take the market. Remember hotmail before gmail? Remember yahoo maps before google maps? They were awful products and google bitch slapped them and took their spoils.
Things like this frustrate me. I'm the last one at my workplace still using a system as simple as tar and gzip. But you know what? I'll be the only one that will be able to easily read my archived data in 5 years. We get these companies like HP coming in and trying to sell us extremely fragile technology and I just have to laugh. What is the point of a backup that lasts 100 years if you don't have the resources to read it. When it comes to archives and backups, simple is better. Human readable plaintext where possible, timeless standardized documented formats, and simple hardware you think you can store for a very long time. Not expensive fragile tape libraries that "eat" your data and you can only hope it will consistently throw it up.
I think the reason the media keeps reporting these things is they are trying their best to show the world internet sources may not be true; and wikipedia is their poster boy. There was a frontline special recently documenting traditional media and what's happened to it in the past few years. I think many in the traditional media are still trying to fight and discredit the internet as much as possible. They think it's a fad and people will return to traditional media. They don't understand that the internet is just as much a fundamental shift as the Gutenberg press. They need to embrace it correctly rather than fight it. I have yet to see a traditional outlet of information fully use the internet in the same way wikipedia has. Wikipedia has become the NY Times of the internet, while other media outlets have a bunch of homer simpson sites they use to throw their print stories on the web.
This is dumb. The fact that things on the internet might not be true is old news. Wikipedia is no more a reliable source than the rest of the internet and for some reason traditional media just don't get this. Traditional media don't understand the internet and try to apply their rules against it. There's much more information available than traditional sources, but you must be much more vigilant in confirming that information is true.
And knowing all that, wikipedia is still a damn good source. So what if vandalism occurs. They are doing a pretty good job at controlling it. All these people who bitch and whine that wikipedia might not be true obviously don't use it on a regular basis. There's more information on wikipedia than most libraries and the info is a hell of a lot more updated. I'd go as far as to say wikipedia has the most (and most accurate for its volume) information in one single source than any other site on the internet. Complain if you want, but once you find me a source with better, more up to date, free, and accurate information as wikipedia, let me know. Until then I'll support them with my money.
At least wikipedia has peer review processes in place. If a piece of information is wrong in a traditional source, good luck getting it changed. It could take years for it to be changed and up to the sole discretion of one source.
HAHA. No, that's not the way the world works. They will then ask why you chose the product because Microsoft is notorious for bugs. There's no winning. I've NEVER heard of someone blaming a vendor and their boss just going "ok, not your fault". It's "you get on the phone right now and tell them if they don't issue patch X this second we are going to sue" etc etc. This is really why administrators need to be programmers as well. I find real programmers less susceptible to be fooled by clever marketing material as opposed to administrators whom choose a product because they get fooled into buying a "solution" (btw, calling software a "solution" was the biggest insult to our industry's intelligence ever). I can bet most MS product installs out there rode solely on the name and have nothing to do with product quality.
People ALWAYS say this and it's crap. That's not how the real world works. Maybe that's how it works at burger king, but in almost every industry I've dealt with there are people whom aren't in their current positions because of merit. I work in government now and people constantly complain that "X person should be fired, that's the way it works in the private sector". News flash, I've worked extensively in both private and public sectors, and the same crap goes on in each. There really isn't a whole lot of difference. People know people and get promoted unfairly. Unions exist and make it hard to fire people. People sleep with their boss. People obtain cushy jobs where there work isn't noticed and do nothing all day. It happens everywhere. I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that's how the real world works. Not this fantasy land of moving people and salaries and resources like a commodity.
Pfft. imo google is less evil because of this because it's sticking it to the man. That's like getting mad at them because they found a way to play/hide their DS under their desk while watching the phones or found a way into their boss' private bathroom.
While I'm not defending any of these OEM's or Microsoft (this is a typical big screw up for them), if you buy a computer and believe any claims that come out of Dell, HP, whomever, you are dumb. Companies lie. Plain and simple. If you don't think so then I've got some tobacco to sell you. Anyone who actually believed they were going to get a quick seamless upgrade is out of their mind. If you buy an off the shelf PC today at the store with Vista you are crazy to believe it's going to work all that great. Marketing drones like to create a huge hype for the launch of a product but in reality most products with big launches aren't what was promised and the promises come months or years later (if those promises are fufilled). Don't hold out on your 200 dollar mail in rebate coming back soon either.
From an experience standpoint, I can almost assure you if they keep the same software, the level of quality will go downhill. I've had experience with this. The problem is, you have one type of programmer (a progress programmer normally used to a certain type of development environment) overnight told he has to become another type of programmer. There is a "catch-up" delay where you have a bunch of programmers trying to figure out new programming styles, new languages, new ways of thinking of problems. I'm sure they can do it, but what you have to ask yourself is: will they be able to program at exact same level of quality as the one they've consistently programmed in for the last 5 years? If not, then the quality will suffer. I'm sure they'll catch up eventually. But in the mean time, you are their guinea pig.
I've gone through this personally. It's not worth it. The salespeople will tell you any lie to get you to keep the software. Either keep your same version for the next few years, or dump it. You may also want to investigate the possibility of custom written software. General ledger software has been written 10,000 times over the years so it isn't hard finding someone skilled enough to do it. You also leave the door open to reselling the software to other similar organizations and referring them to the original programmer for a support contract.
I can say sitekey is the most useless piece of junk meant to make my life harder. It's one of those pieces of security that sound good to PHB's but is retarded in practice. Other banking notables? Linking your ip address to your bank account and activex controls that won't let you in until it's verified you have antivirus software installed. Get with the program guys. Half baked schemes to make online banking "safer" rarely do so and in many cases make it less safe.
Give me an online banking system with a good old fashioned username and password and I'm set.
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with
real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting
into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's
completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah,
good.
There are clock speeds and there are operations. I know what an operation is, but how are cpu clockspeeds rated? Is it just something as silly as their clock source? By defination it is "cycles per second", but what exactly is cycling? I've always been confused by this and I think I just don't understand how digital processors work enough.
I think you've pretty much described Atmel's product line. They design all their equipment to be programmed in C (and with heavy gcc support). They do have a good assembly language, but many people choose C. They have just come out with a 32-bit chip (though I want to say it does have an MMU). In fact, the Linux kernel already has support for the 32 bit chip. I think asking for on IC storage is a bit much and I doubt it will ever happen due to lack of demand.
The PIC line is notorious for being
1) Super cheap to produce once the code is written
2) Super high barrier of entry
3) Really expensive non-portable C tools
That I am against. The basic stamp II isn't much better and you lose low unit costs of hardware. I think the entire Atmel line is a great balance of everything.
There's like 4 levels of "embedded" systems. Depending on who you talk to, some of these don't qualify. But "embedded" has been unclear for the past few years.
Lowest level - True microcontroller. AVR or PIC. They can easily display LCD graphics, MP3 chips exist for sound. If you can get away with a true microcontroller, DO IT! It isn't Linux, but the AVR line is heavily supported by the open source community. Some of the best developer tools for it are GCC based. It can also easily do DAC and ADC. Super cheap per unit costs (some systems under a dollar in high enough bulk)..
Next level - Gumstix style system. Has a heavier OS, but much more hardware support. Also, you have the advantage of many premade libs for you to use. They usually use 200-400 mhz processors. Also have the advantage of much more storage. Can usually access CF and SD cards.
Mini itx / Nano itx / PC 104- The manufacturing industry uses these a lot. Still solid state, but basically a small PC. REALLY small PC. Many times 1/4 the size of a laptop motherboard.
PC - Some people consider limited resource PC's embedded. I generally don't, but that's me. The manufacturing industry uses these. Think shuttle pc or microatx.
As I said before, depending your programming experience, it's almost always best to start lowest and go up. Your unit costs are cheaper. Devices use less power and not as hot. Much smaller. Etc, etc. Basically, all these things mean more profit to you.
I've realised after all these years linux on the desktop for the masses probably will happen last. While some people have seen this as a goal to de-throne microsoft's desktop, others have been sneaking linux into our daily lives. This is the important frontier for linux. Everything but the desktop. Servers, embedded devices, control systems, etc, etc. There are MUCH more of these sorts of devies than there are desktops. The desktop goal has been important to many people because it's what they see everyday, but these sneaky devices are a much more important.
Good! HTML email is very annoying. Most of the time it doesn't display as intended anyway. Many clients will only support a safer reduced set of html thus only parts of the page will display properly. This makes the page even harder to decipher. HTML email is really only useful for spammers and advertisers usually anyway. If something needs to be that heavily formatted, attach it as a word processor document. If you can't get a basic idea across in plain-text, then the problem probably isn't because you are missing your bold tag.
The word "support" is so overused. What exactly does support mean these days anyway? Patches that don't work? Phone calls to someone out of the country that doesn't speak your language natively and has never actually used the program in a production environment? Hold times of 45 minutes? Security updates that break other parts?
Honestly, the word "support" to me has almost no meaning anymore. It's been thrown out there so many times as the deciding factor in a purchase, however I've yet to see really useful support. I've dealt with companies big and small and have never resolved a difficult issue in less than an hour with their supplied support.
All I care about anymore is whether they give you the proper tools to solve the problem yourself. Proper documentation and the source code (yes, smaller companies will give you source code if you are big enough and that's the deal breaker). I'll take that over a level I phone jockey any day!
Really, I'm fine with google taking over the world as long as someday they come out with a shipping technology. It will enable you to move 5000 G-units an hour.
Well, you can't exactly click ads in a magazine either. I think this policy is important because google is basically saying "we don't want our advertisers to attempt trick consumers". Whether or not these ads actually tricked anyone is moot, the point is they tried to trick consumers.
I'd set him up with a scenario such as a user calls with something generic like "I can't get to yahoo". Pretend you are the user and he'll need to ask you questions to try and narrow it down. Simple things like "can you go to any other websites?", "is your email working?", etc, etc. Nothing specific to your network, but generic.
You might want to throw in some trick questions as well. Things that come up in the real world like users lying. My favorite case of a user telling a flat out lie was "I can't print". I respond with "can you print anything at all? Is the printing moving or making noise when you hit the print button?". She responds with "No, nothing happens. Can't print at all". I get there and of course she lied and can print just fine. It was a dot matrix printer with pre-printed fields and they were using the wrong form so the fields wouldn't line up.
I'd throw out there stuff like that, but don't hold them too strongly to it because it's an interview and they probably would be too scared to call you out as a liar.
If that's the case, they shouldn't have included any outbound protection at all. It's just lazy to half-ass outbound protection then claim "well it was never meant for that use". Don't include it at all if it was never meant for that use. The outbound protection it has now is basically useless and is a hindrance more than anything.
You hit it on the head. Different people/demographics want different things. Different situations call for different things. When I use my toaster I just want it with a heat setting and that's it. I want my tools in the garage to be vast and as multi-function as possible. Some people are the complete opposite. Humans have great similarities, but the differences are so great we can't be lumped for things like this. Me and my mom want two different things in a search engine. I love google because it's simple and I'm not distracted. She likes to be distracted with news, weather, cartoons, etc, etc. We are two different people. If the world was really that unified in wants/needs, either google or yahoo wouldn't exist. But somehow they co-exist. Why? Because we are so vastly different!!
I have a hard time believing claims like this
on
Vista the End of An Era?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have a really hard time believing any claims like this. As far as I can remember everyone (on both sides) has claimed that this one will be different. That it will either be the greatest windows release ever or the worst. And everytime it's somewhere in the middle. Every release of windows since windows 95 has been marginally better. Tack on service packs and updates. Release next version that's marginally better and different than the last service pack of the previous release. The next version of windows probably will be more modular, but I don't think it will be radically different than the final service pack of Vista.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I guess. But I think google is a little smarter than that. Their moves are more calculated. A mobile phone would need a platform and I doubt they'd use just another OS. It's the same way MS got into the server market. At the time the desktop was ripe for the taking. They took it. Once they controlled a sector they seeped into the server market because so many people were familiar with windows desktop. Once google controls the embedded market they could integrate it somehow with their web offerings. Once they control your phone and your browser, what's next? Taking on the Goliath in one swoop makes for great history, but you are more likely to be successful in winning important battles over the long term. Windows mobile sucks and is a piece of garbage and the others aren't a whole lot better. I think google could make a vastly superior product and take the market. Remember hotmail before gmail? Remember yahoo maps before google maps? They were awful products and google bitch slapped them and took their spoils.
Things like this frustrate me. I'm the last one at my workplace still using a system as simple as tar and gzip. But you know what? I'll be the only one that will be able to easily read my archived data in 5 years. We get these companies like HP coming in and trying to sell us extremely fragile technology and I just have to laugh. What is the point of a backup that lasts 100 years if you don't have the resources to read it. When it comes to archives and backups, simple is better. Human readable plaintext where possible, timeless standardized documented formats, and simple hardware you think you can store for a very long time. Not expensive fragile tape libraries that "eat" your data and you can only hope it will consistently throw it up.
I think the reason the media keeps reporting these things is they are trying their best to show the world internet sources may not be true; and wikipedia is their poster boy. There was a frontline special recently documenting traditional media and what's happened to it in the past few years. I think many in the traditional media are still trying to fight and discredit the internet as much as possible. They think it's a fad and people will return to traditional media. They don't understand that the internet is just as much a fundamental shift as the Gutenberg press. They need to embrace it correctly rather than fight it. I have yet to see a traditional outlet of information fully use the internet in the same way wikipedia has. Wikipedia has become the NY Times of the internet, while other media outlets have a bunch of homer simpson sites they use to throw their print stories on the web.
This is dumb. The fact that things on the internet might not be true is old news. Wikipedia is no more a reliable source than the rest of the internet and for some reason traditional media just don't get this. Traditional media don't understand the internet and try to apply their rules against it. There's much more information available than traditional sources, but you must be much more vigilant in confirming that information is true.
And knowing all that, wikipedia is still a damn good source. So what if vandalism occurs. They are doing a pretty good job at controlling it. All these people who bitch and whine that wikipedia might not be true obviously don't use it on a regular basis. There's more information on wikipedia than most libraries and the info is a hell of a lot more updated. I'd go as far as to say wikipedia has the most (and most accurate for its volume) information in one single source than any other site on the internet. Complain if you want, but once you find me a source with better, more up to date, free, and accurate information as wikipedia, let me know. Until then I'll support them with my money.
At least wikipedia has peer review processes in place. If a piece of information is wrong in a traditional source, good luck getting it changed. It could take years for it to be changed and up to the sole discretion of one source.
HAHA. No, that's not the way the world works. They will then ask why you chose the product because Microsoft is notorious for bugs. There's no winning. I've NEVER heard of someone blaming a vendor and their boss just going "ok, not your fault". It's "you get on the phone right now and tell them if they don't issue patch X this second we are going to sue" etc etc. This is really why administrators need to be programmers as well. I find real programmers less susceptible to be fooled by clever marketing material as opposed to administrators whom choose a product because they get fooled into buying a "solution" (btw, calling software a "solution" was the biggest insult to our industry's intelligence ever). I can bet most MS product installs out there rode solely on the name and have nothing to do with product quality.
People ALWAYS say this and it's crap. That's not how the real world works. Maybe that's how it works at burger king, but in almost every industry I've dealt with there are people whom aren't in their current positions because of merit. I work in government now and people constantly complain that "X person should be fired, that's the way it works in the private sector". News flash, I've worked extensively in both private and public sectors, and the same crap goes on in each. There really isn't a whole lot of difference. People know people and get promoted unfairly. Unions exist and make it hard to fire people. People sleep with their boss. People obtain cushy jobs where there work isn't noticed and do nothing all day. It happens everywhere. I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that's how the real world works. Not this fantasy land of moving people and salaries and resources like a commodity.
Pfft. imo google is less evil because of this because it's sticking it to the man. That's like getting mad at them because they found a way to play/hide their DS under their desk while watching the phones or found a way into their boss' private bathroom.
While I'm not defending any of these OEM's or Microsoft (this is a typical big screw up for them), if you buy a computer and believe any claims that come out of Dell, HP, whomever, you are dumb. Companies lie. Plain and simple. If you don't think so then I've got some tobacco to sell you. Anyone who actually believed they were going to get a quick seamless upgrade is out of their mind. If you buy an off the shelf PC today at the store with Vista you are crazy to believe it's going to work all that great. Marketing drones like to create a huge hype for the launch of a product but in reality most products with big launches aren't what was promised and the promises come months or years later (if those promises are fufilled). Don't hold out on your 200 dollar mail in rebate coming back soon either.
From an experience standpoint, I can almost assure you if they keep the same software, the level of quality will go downhill. I've had experience with this. The problem is, you have one type of programmer (a progress programmer normally used to a certain type of development environment) overnight told he has to become another type of programmer. There is a "catch-up" delay where you have a bunch of programmers trying to figure out new programming styles, new languages, new ways of thinking of problems. I'm sure they can do it, but what you have to ask yourself is: will they be able to program at exact same level of quality as the one they've consistently programmed in for the last 5 years? If not, then the quality will suffer. I'm sure they'll catch up eventually. But in the mean time, you are their guinea pig.
I've gone through this personally. It's not worth it. The salespeople will tell you any lie to get you to keep the software. Either keep your same version for the next few years, or dump it. You may also want to investigate the possibility of custom written software. General ledger software has been written 10,000 times over the years so it isn't hard finding someone skilled enough to do it. You also leave the door open to reselling the software to other similar organizations and referring them to the original programmer for a support contract.
I can say sitekey is the most useless piece of junk meant to make my life harder. It's one of those pieces of security that sound good to PHB's but is retarded in practice. Other banking notables? Linking your ip address to your bank account and activex controls that won't let you in until it's verified you have antivirus software installed. Get with the program guys. Half baked schemes to make online banking "safer" rarely do so and in many cases make it less safe.
Give me an online banking system with a good old fashioned username and password and I'm set.
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with
real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting
into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's
completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah,
good.
There are clock speeds and there are operations. I know what an operation is, but how are cpu clockspeeds rated? Is it just something as silly as their clock source? By defination it is "cycles per second", but what exactly is cycling? I've always been confused by this and I think I just don't understand how digital processors work enough.
I think you've pretty much described Atmel's product line. They design all their equipment to be programmed in C (and with heavy gcc support). They do have a good assembly language, but many people choose C. They have just come out with a 32-bit chip (though I want to say it does have an MMU). In fact, the Linux kernel already has support for the 32 bit chip. I think asking for on IC storage is a bit much and I doubt it will ever happen due to lack of demand.
The PIC line is notorious for being
1) Super cheap to produce once the code is written
2) Super high barrier of entry
3) Really expensive non-portable C tools
That I am against. The basic stamp II isn't much better and you lose low unit costs of hardware. I think the entire Atmel line is a great balance of everything.
There's like 4 levels of "embedded" systems. Depending on who you talk to, some of these don't qualify. But "embedded" has been unclear for the past few years.
Lowest level - True microcontroller. AVR or PIC. They can easily display LCD graphics, MP3 chips exist for sound. If you can get away with a true microcontroller, DO IT! It isn't Linux, but the AVR line is heavily supported by the open source community. Some of the best developer tools for it are GCC based. It can also easily do DAC and ADC. Super cheap per unit costs (some systems under a dollar in high enough bulk)..
Next level - Gumstix style system. Has a heavier OS, but much more hardware support. Also, you have the advantage of many premade libs for you to use. They usually use 200-400 mhz processors. Also have the advantage of much more storage. Can usually access CF and SD cards.
Mini itx / Nano itx / PC 104- The manufacturing industry uses these a lot. Still solid state, but basically a small PC. REALLY small PC. Many times 1/4 the size of a laptop motherboard.
PC - Some people consider limited resource PC's embedded. I generally don't, but that's me. The manufacturing industry uses these. Think shuttle pc or microatx.
As I said before, depending your programming experience, it's almost always best to start lowest and go up. Your unit costs are cheaper. Devices use less power and not as hot. Much smaller. Etc, etc. Basically, all these things mean more profit to you.
One rep tells one lie to two people and two different times. The two people converse to confirm. The lie has "validity".
I've realised after all these years linux on the desktop for the masses probably will happen last. While some people have seen this as a goal to de-throne microsoft's desktop, others have been sneaking linux into our daily lives. This is the important frontier for linux. Everything but the desktop. Servers, embedded devices, control systems, etc, etc. There are MUCH more of these sorts of devies than there are desktops. The desktop goal has been important to many people because it's what they see everyday, but these sneaky devices are a much more important.
Good! HTML email is very annoying. Most of the time it doesn't display as intended anyway. Many clients will only support a safer reduced set of html thus only parts of the page will display properly. This makes the page even harder to decipher. HTML email is really only useful for spammers and advertisers usually anyway. If something needs to be that heavily formatted, attach it as a word processor document. If you can't get a basic idea across in plain-text, then the problem probably isn't because you are missing your bold tag.
The word "support" is so overused. What exactly does support mean these days anyway? Patches that don't work? Phone calls to someone out of the country that doesn't speak your language natively and has never actually used the program in a production environment? Hold times of 45 minutes? Security updates that break other parts?
Honestly, the word "support" to me has almost no meaning anymore. It's been thrown out there so many times as the deciding factor in a purchase, however I've yet to see really useful support. I've dealt with companies big and small and have never resolved a difficult issue in less than an hour with their supplied support.
All I care about anymore is whether they give you the proper tools to solve the problem yourself. Proper documentation and the source code (yes, smaller companies will give you source code if you are big enough and that's the deal breaker). I'll take that over a level I phone jockey any day!
Really, I'm fine with google taking over the world as long as someday they come out with a shipping technology. It will enable you to move 5000 G-units an hour.
Well, you can't exactly click ads in a magazine either. I think this policy is important because google is basically saying "we don't want our advertisers to attempt trick consumers". Whether or not these ads actually tricked anyone is moot, the point is they tried to trick consumers.
I'd set him up with a scenario such as a user calls with something generic like "I can't get to yahoo". Pretend you are the user and he'll need to ask you questions to try and narrow it down. Simple things like "can you go to any other websites?", "is your email working?", etc, etc. Nothing specific to your network, but generic.
You might want to throw in some trick questions as well. Things that come up in the real world like users lying. My favorite case of a user telling a flat out lie was "I can't print". I respond with "can you print anything at all? Is the printing moving or making noise when you hit the print button?". She responds with "No, nothing happens. Can't print at all". I get there and of course she lied and can print just fine. It was a dot matrix printer with pre-printed fields and they were using the wrong form so the fields wouldn't line up.
I'd throw out there stuff like that, but don't hold them too strongly to it because it's an interview and they probably would be too scared to call you out as a liar.
1 in 25 search queries is for bukkake. It's no wonder =P
If that's the case, they shouldn't have included any outbound protection at all. It's just lazy to half-ass outbound protection then claim "well it was never meant for that use". Don't include it at all if it was never meant for that use. The outbound protection it has now is basically useless and is a hindrance more than anything.
You hit it on the head. Different people/demographics want different things. Different situations call for different things. When I use my toaster I just want it with a heat setting and that's it. I want my tools in the garage to be vast and as multi-function as possible. Some people are the complete opposite. Humans have great similarities, but the differences are so great we can't be lumped for things like this. Me and my mom want two different things in a search engine. I love google because it's simple and I'm not distracted. She likes to be distracted with news, weather, cartoons, etc, etc. We are two different people. If the world was really that unified in wants/needs, either google or yahoo wouldn't exist. But somehow they co-exist. Why? Because we are so vastly different!!
I have a really hard time believing any claims like this. As far as I can remember everyone (on both sides) has claimed that this one will be different. That it will either be the greatest windows release ever or the worst. And everytime it's somewhere in the middle. Every release of windows since windows 95 has been marginally better. Tack on service packs and updates. Release next version that's marginally better and different than the last service pack of the previous release. The next version of windows probably will be more modular, but I don't think it will be radically different than the final service pack of Vista.