No need to touch the mouse even, just type <win>search term<enter>.
That convenience makes up for a multitude of Start Menu sins, like wtf organized by publisher by default like I care.
The whole idea of the Microsoft Window system was to avoid using the command line since it was felt that most users would find it too difficult. Looks like we have come full circle from the 1980's. Even then you could bring up a list of applications from a customisable menu or just type a command (mouse optional but preferred) and yes you could even search for a command if you wished. Of course once you run your graphical application you normally need some sort of pointing device to use it properly.
For example, KDE has a "start menu". So do several different window managers.
KDE has what is called an "Kickoff Application Launcher" which is related to the menu system in the Common Desktop Environment which goes back to 1993. Prior to that were single desktop session mangers (ie. Motif, NeWS, twm and uwm to name a few) some of which go back to the 1970's which allowed the users to bring up an application list. Microsoft only called the "Launcher" a "Start" menu.
BTW in KDE you can have more than one Launchers if you like or just create an program icon list, either way you have a huge amount of flexibility. As for Microsoft removing their start menu IMHO "who cares" since I have rarely used a Microsoft OS in over 2 years.
When you get any Linux distribution that is anyway related to Redhat such a Fedora you don't get any software which potentially infringes software patents however all you need to do is install the rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree yum repo files from here and you can do just about do anything that a Microsoft OS can do although if you have a Microsoft OS you may also have to hunt for software as well although considering the flexible and reliable installation/update tools that Linux has I know which one I would use.
For those using Ubuntu then apt-get will do the same as yum and if you don't like the command line each install/update tool has a very nice graphical interface that is very intuitive.
But what happens to your Playstation? You need to use PSN for updates or you can't play a lot of games, especially the download-only ones you bought. In the UK such a withdrawal of service that effectively bricks your PS3 would be grounds for a refund.
You can connect to the web site and download the update and apply it via a USB key although you do have to agree to the eula (sort of like all software today). Of course you can disagree and the update program stops (again like most software updates). If you don't want to update your machine no one is going to come round to your house and break your legs although your original software/firmware now runs in depreciated mode.
Like a new PC if you agree to the eula then you can use the preloaded software on it, however you don't have to and nothing will happen since I have never heard of any Software police come round and force you to agree. In fact if you want you can actually get a refund of your software although this may require you to jump through a few hoops. Likewise if you don't want to update your PS3, Xbox or Wii for matter then your machine will continue to run but with reduced functionality.
The impression I get from reading some of the comments is that Sony is definitely the bad guy here but all PC and Console software updates require you to agree to some sot of thing that may be unpalatable to user. However if you don't like the eula you don't have to agree to it and for those Sony haters why did you buy a PS3 in the first place after-all no one forced you. If you want to read a really scary eula then why not read the Microsoft Windows 7 one.
Windows 7 is a better Windows than Ubuntu, no doubt. However, Ubunutu is a way, way better *nix than Windows 7 can ever hope to be. If you limit yourself to the GUI tools available on an Ubuntu system, then you're only using a fraction of the power that exists there.
I don't use Ubuntu but Fedora 15 on my wife's and my laptops and I easily have a much better GUI or command line experience than MS Windows anything. before you say Troll I actually use my laptop in my professional capacity as an IT consultant and can easily work with people in the corporate sector who are using MS Windows XP, Vista, 7. and Office software.
Many people I work with have issues with their corporate (Fortune 500) laptops and have to recover them on a 3 to 5 monthly basis. I have even seen Windows 7 blue screen and no I was not hallucinating. For me I only have a downtime of 2 minutes when I get a new kernel (usually every 10 to 15 days) so it is not unusual for my laptop to have one to two weeks uptime (today is 2.5 days). When I go to work I open up my screen and connect the corporate LAN to get a DHCP IP address automatically. When I get home I open my screen and the OS connects to my wireless network automatically and the next day I close the screen and repeat the process.
Total cost of software for my laptop is $0 and I don't pirate software. The company I consult for does not supply software for me to be compatible with those people who do use MS Software yet strangely (to some) I can easily work with them.
You don't have OS install discs for your OS of choice squirreled away somewhere? I thought every slashdotter did...
Does a boot-able iso on a USB count?
I have not installed an OS from a DVD for a few years now and I don't even use DVD's for backups preferring portable hard drives which actually work out cheaper for the amount of data I backup.
Windows 7 is a nice operating system, and is selling well. If they don't do something stupid like stop selling it when Windows 8 is released, they will do fine.
I think the "selling well" is what we call the "Microsoft Tax" which has been around a very long time. Actually in some Asian/Indian countries it works out cheaper for the customer to buy a PC with a Linux distribution (normally Ubunto) pre-installed than with MS Windows.
When Windows 8 comes out Microsoft will still do well because of their "Tax". In fact until the "Tax" is abolished sales of PC's with a Microsoft OS will always dominate.
Why the sarcasm? Just wrap some spiffy design around the old crap and sell it as new. Hey, it worked before!
The problem with that is where do you put your waste when Joe Public in the first world wants his new sparkly PC, tablet, phone, etc and does not want his old but still functioning device that he is replacing. Well Big Business has the answer. Send all those devices functioning or not to third world countries where they are effectively turned to landfill with only a tiny percentage actually being of some use, but hay it's out of sight and we give those poor people technology for virtually nothing.
The problem is some of those third world countries are now preparing cases that will cost said multinational companies billions. It is only a matter of time and that time is actually shorter than some might think.
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
Yes I can do the math and a $0.99 game being sold to 500m people is the way to go however where do you come up with 500m people who will buy that particular $0.99 game? If you produce a good $0.99 game then you may if you are very lucky you may get say 10m purchases. Lets be honest here how many really good and even not so good games are available for the Android and iPhone and out of those games how many people will purchase that game?
Personally I am not really interested in hand held gaming machines nor am I interested in PC gaming. When I play games I prefer to play on a console that will display on a large HD Wide screen TV. I do have an Android phone and while I do play games on it when I am travelling I always go for the free games of which there are many and admittedly not many of those are much good but the same can be said for games that you pay for.
To make money in the smart phone market you really need to give your game away for free but with advertising. Even then the competition is cut throat and only exceptional games actually make money.
No Operating System is secure right out of the box. At least with Linix/Unix there is a huge difference between the System admin and an ordinary user and it is fairly common for most people who use *nix (this include Apple's OS) to login as a normal user. Were MS Windows differ's is the fact that most people grant themselves System admin privilege right out of the box and that makes a MS Windows OS less secure then a *nix OS. Any user who is logged into a *nix machine as a system admin for non system admin work is IMHO an idiot and that opinion has not changed for over 30 years.
It is possible to use MS Windows without virus protection and never get viruses if you are careful but since MS Windows is more targeted than any *nix OS this can be quite hard. As for Microsoft educating end users, really!
In Australia some companies allow their employees to have what is know as a Novated lease on a car although there are other types of leases. Basically if you purchased a car for say $40k you would have to pay a fringe benefit tax of 20% if you travel between 15,000 km and less than 25,000 km, if you travel over 25,000 km you only pay 11% (there are other rates but this is the most common) so if you have a fairly fuel efficient car (mine is a diesel) you really have no choice but to travel over 25,000 km a year.and it is far cheaper to do the extra 10,000 km and save $3,000
I am quite sure the armchair green lobby would say that's unfair but take that away and you destroy thousands of jobs and votes as well as most likely increasing pollution and accident rates since one of the requirements of a Novated Lease is to have your car properly maintained.
In Singapore if you drive into the city center during peak times you pay more then during the off peak times. This is done by cameras reading the registration plate or the vehicle has a sensor. At least this is a fairer scheme and it does lower congestion.
Raise taxes on petrol and only the motorist who drives a petrol car is affected. Raise taxes on diesel and you increase the cost of haulage and everyone pays for that. Raise taxes on heavy trucks and guess what everyone pays again. As for truckers not maintaining their vehicle I won't deny that some may do that but the majority do maintain their trucks since that extra bit of fuel economy translates to extra revenue for the the people or companies who run the trucks.
This proposal is made by politicians who need to spin the proposal in such a way so that it will win votes (hey look at us we are "green") at the next election. An idea like this can also rake in much needed revenue that is sorely needed for those junkets to foreign countries and chauffeured cars (fuel and distance tax exempt of course).
The battery life was dire at the start but only due to the number of default apps which were trying to sync every quarter of a second or so (stock, news, email, gmail, weather, shoes, plates, cups, saucers etc.). Once I'd tweaked a bit and scheduled wif-fi to switch off during work hours when I don't need it, the battery life is fine. Of course, I can use someone elses adroid, blackberry charger if I run low on juice.
Battery life is one of the minuses of the HTC Desire HD so I always carry a USB to micro USB cable which I plug into my laptop whenever my charge level drops below 50%. Basically I only get about an hour gaming on the train and my battery normally goes down to 50%. Other than that I am very happy with my phone.
Traveling by car takes me well over an hour in peak traffic to get to where I am currently working hence the reason I take a train (less stress) when traveling in the city. In addition I can also play a game, listen to music or the radio or even surf the web.
It does? Last I checked, I used KDE's own Dolphin file browser and the Chromium browser. Can't say I've ever used or even noticed Konqueror since KDE 4 came along.
It does. You and I may never explicitly launch it, but KDE relies on it for something (my Debian system lists it as a dependency of kdebase-apps).
KDE is a Session/Window manager and has a whole lot of applications associated with one of those applications being the Konqueror Web Browser. So What! if you don't like KDE then don't install it no one is forcing you, install Gnome instead or even xfce. In fact if you like KDE but don't like Konqueror you can install just about any browser (ie. Firefox, Chrome, Opera...) except for IE. Ok you can do this but why would you:)
What Microsoft did was tie IE to its OS and that landed it in court.
As for Dolphin once you customise it a little you can get IMHO an incredibly powerful file browser that leaves Microsoft's offering for dead.
While the MAC address burned into the network card is permanent it is possible to spoof a MAC address. See here . In fact this type of thing is commonly used in clustering and also when using multiple NIC's for redundancy although in this case you present a common MAC address to the network switch so that if a card fails the MAC address presented to the switch does not change.
I was coming home by train in Sydney Australia and checked my position via Google Maps. I was surprised to find that my map changed to a world map and it flipped me to Rome in Italy. I even tried switching on my GPS and still ended up in Rome so I switched to street views and they were of Rome and yes it was entertaining.
Destruction of evidence is a felony, especially if you get caught. Just conduct your own audit first THEN invite them in.
If you conduct an audit first (definitely agree here) and find software that you don't have a license for you should by law either buy a license or remove the software. It must be noted that removing unneeded software is not a felony, however leaving licensed software on a machine without a valid license is illegal.
The suggestion of installing a Linux distribution on all your machines is quite legal however preserving the original disks with possibly unlicensed software on can be construed as perverting the course of justice. To be safer still all backups would have to be destroyed however you would also have to be careful not to destroy backups that contain data that you are required by law to keep. I would assume only servers and user data (not applications) are backed up.
Only by having un-licensed software that requires a license on a machine can the person or business be found guilty in the eyes of the law.
Perhaps you should use an operating system which doesn't waste the user's time, and instead switch to an operating system that lets you get your work done.
Perhaps, but I've got a few computers all running different Linux distributions (as is common amongst Linux geeks), and as long as they can't sync, Ubuntu One will have to wait.
All you need to do is nominate a master machine in your environment and then use "rsynch" to synchronise all important data to it.
Well I use ASCII for my document and file format and I have never had any problems reading them even on files I created over 30 years ago, of course you could have put your files into pdf or even odf which you could still look at for as long as the human race exists without ever having to install an obsolete OS. however these formats are nubies compared to ASCII.
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No need to touch the mouse even, just type <win>search term<enter>.
That convenience makes up for a multitude of Start Menu sins, like wtf organized by publisher by default like I care.
The whole idea of the Microsoft Window system was to avoid using the command line since it was felt that most users would find it too difficult. Looks like we have come full circle from the 1980's. Even then you could bring up a list of applications from a customisable menu or just type a command (mouse optional but preferred) and yes you could even search for a command if you wished. Of course once you run your graphical application you normally need some sort of pointing device to use it properly.
For example, KDE has a "start menu". So do several different window managers.
KDE has what is called an "Kickoff Application Launcher" which is related to the menu system in the Common Desktop Environment which goes back to 1993. Prior to that were single desktop session mangers (ie. Motif, NeWS, twm and uwm to name a few) some of which go back to the 1970's which allowed the users to bring up an application list. Microsoft only called the "Launcher" a "Start" menu.
BTW in KDE you can have more than one Launchers if you like or just create an program icon list, either way you have a huge amount of flexibility. As for Microsoft removing their start menu IMHO "who cares" since I have rarely used a Microsoft OS in over 2 years.
When you get any Linux distribution that is anyway related to Redhat such a Fedora you don't get any software which potentially infringes software patents however all you need to do is install the rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree yum repo files from here and you can do just about do anything that a Microsoft OS can do although if you have a Microsoft OS you may also have to hunt for software as well although considering the flexible and reliable installation/update tools that Linux has I know which one I would use.
For those using Ubuntu then apt-get will do the same as yum and if you don't like the command line each install/update tool has a very nice graphical interface that is very intuitive.
But what happens to your Playstation? You need to use PSN for updates or you can't play a lot of games, especially the download-only ones you bought. In the UK such a withdrawal of service that effectively bricks your PS3 would be grounds for a refund.
You can connect to the web site and download the update and apply it via a USB key although you do have to agree to the eula (sort of like all software today). Of course you can disagree and the update program stops (again like most software updates). If you don't want to update your machine no one is going to come round to your house and break your legs although your original software/firmware now runs in depreciated mode.
Like a new PC if you agree to the eula then you can use the preloaded software on it, however you don't have to and nothing will happen since I have never heard of any Software police come round and force you to agree. In fact if you want you can actually get a refund of your software although this may require you to jump through a few hoops. Likewise if you don't want to update your PS3, Xbox or Wii for matter then your machine will continue to run but with reduced functionality.
The impression I get from reading some of the comments is that Sony is definitely the bad guy here but all PC and Console software updates require you to agree to some sot of thing that may be unpalatable to user. However if you don't like the eula you don't have to agree to it and for those Sony haters why did you buy a PS3 in the first place after-all no one forced you. If you want to read a really scary eula then why not read the Microsoft Windows 7 one.
because itunes doesn't run on linux
i tried to run ubuntu but gave up. it's slow and annoying. i'll probably just get a mac next year to run ^nix
Just run Windows XP/7 in a virtual machine if you need iTunes.
I can now say 'I don't know, I don't use it anymore'.
Me too. I just shrug my shoulders and say it's not something I'm prepared to help them with. Life is too short.
What that's silly. You should say "Show me the money" :)
The problem is many people will.
Windows 7 is a better Windows than Ubuntu, no doubt. However, Ubunutu is a way, way better *nix than Windows 7 can ever hope to be. If you limit yourself to the GUI tools available on an Ubuntu system, then you're only using a fraction of the power that exists there.
I don't use Ubuntu but Fedora 15 on my wife's and my laptops and I easily have a much better GUI or command line experience than MS Windows anything. before you say Troll I actually use my laptop in my professional capacity as an IT consultant and can easily work with people in the corporate sector who are using MS Windows XP, Vista, 7. and Office software.
Many people I work with have issues with their corporate (Fortune 500) laptops and have to recover them on a 3 to 5 monthly basis. I have even seen Windows 7 blue screen and no I was not hallucinating. For me I only have a downtime of 2 minutes when I get a new kernel (usually every 10 to 15 days) so it is not unusual for my laptop to have one to two weeks uptime (today is 2.5 days). When I go to work I open up my screen and connect the corporate LAN to get a DHCP IP address automatically. When I get home I open my screen and the OS connects to my wireless network automatically and the next day I close the screen and repeat the process.
Total cost of software for my laptop is $0 and I don't pirate software. The company I consult for does not supply software for me to be compatible with those people who do use MS Software yet strangely (to some) I can easily work with them.
You don't have OS install discs for your OS of choice squirreled away somewhere? I thought every slashdotter did...
Does a boot-able iso on a USB count? I have not installed an OS from a DVD for a few years now and I don't even use DVD's for backups preferring portable hard drives which actually work out cheaper for the amount of data I backup.
Windows 7 is a nice operating system, and is selling well. If they don't do something stupid like stop selling it when Windows 8 is released, they will do fine.
I think the "selling well" is what we call the "Microsoft Tax" which has been around a very long time. Actually in some Asian/Indian countries it works out cheaper for the customer to buy a PC with a Linux distribution (normally Ubunto) pre-installed than with MS Windows.
When Windows 8 comes out Microsoft will still do well because of their "Tax". In fact until the "Tax" is abolished sales of PC's with a Microsoft OS will always dominate.
Why the sarcasm? Just wrap some spiffy design around the old crap and sell it as new. Hey, it worked before!
The problem with that is where do you put your waste when Joe Public in the first world wants his new sparkly PC, tablet, phone, etc and does not want his old but still functioning device that he is replacing. Well Big Business has the answer. Send all those devices functioning or not to third world countries where they are effectively turned to landfill with only a tiny percentage actually being of some use, but hay it's out of sight and we give those poor people technology for virtually nothing.
The problem is some of those third world countries are now preparing cases that will cost said multinational companies billions. It is only a matter of time and that time is actually shorter than some might think.
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
Yes I can do the math and a $0.99 game being sold to 500m people is the way to go however where do you come up with 500m people who will buy that particular $0.99 game? If you produce a good $0.99 game then you may if you are very lucky you may get say 10m purchases. Lets be honest here how many really good and even not so good games are available for the Android and iPhone and out of those games how many people will purchase that game?
Personally I am not really interested in hand held gaming machines nor am I interested in PC gaming. When I play games I prefer to play on a console that will display on a large HD Wide screen TV. I do have an Android phone and while I do play games on it when I am travelling I always go for the free games of which there are many and admittedly not many of those are much good but the same can be said for games that you pay for.
To make money in the smart phone market you really need to give your game away for free but with advertising. Even then the competition is cut throat and only exceptional games actually make money.
.. the difference between 3.0 and 3.1 is the same as something like 2.6.24 to 2.6.25
Plus after 3.1 there will be "3.1 for Workgroups".
Well they could do the same numbering as Mozilla until they pass 8 or 9, that will show them :)
No Operating System is secure right out of the box. At least with Linix/Unix there is a huge difference between the System admin and an ordinary user and it is fairly common for most people who use *nix (this include Apple's OS) to login as a normal user. Were MS Windows differ's is the fact that most people grant themselves System admin privilege right out of the box and that makes a MS Windows OS less secure then a *nix OS. Any user who is logged into a *nix machine as a system admin for non system admin work is IMHO an idiot and that opinion has not changed for over 30 years.
It is possible to use MS Windows without virus protection and never get viruses if you are careful but since MS Windows is more targeted than any *nix OS this can be quite hard. As for Microsoft educating end users, really!
In Australia some companies allow their employees to have what is know as a Novated lease on a car although there are other types of leases. Basically if you purchased a car for say $40k you would have to pay a fringe benefit tax of 20% if you travel between 15,000 km and less than 25,000 km, if you travel over 25,000 km you only pay 11% (there are other rates but this is the most common) so if you have a fairly fuel efficient car (mine is a diesel) you really have no choice but to travel over 25,000 km a year.and it is far cheaper to do the extra 10,000 km and save $3,000
I am quite sure the armchair green lobby would say that's unfair but take that away and you destroy thousands of jobs and votes as well as most likely increasing pollution and accident rates since one of the requirements of a Novated Lease is to have your car properly maintained.
In Singapore if you drive into the city center during peak times you pay more then during the off peak times. This is done by cameras reading the registration plate or the vehicle has a sensor. At least this is a fairer scheme and it does lower congestion.
Raise taxes on petrol and only the motorist who drives a petrol car is affected. Raise taxes on diesel and you increase the cost of haulage and everyone pays for that. Raise taxes on heavy trucks and guess what everyone pays again. As for truckers not maintaining their vehicle I won't deny that some may do that but the majority do maintain their trucks since that extra bit of fuel economy translates to extra revenue for the the people or companies who run the trucks.
This proposal is made by politicians who need to spin the proposal in such a way so that it will win votes (hey look at us we are "green") at the next election. An idea like this can also rake in much needed revenue that is sorely needed for those junkets to foreign countries and chauffeured cars (fuel and distance tax exempt of course).
The battery life was dire at the start but only due to the number of default apps which were trying to sync every quarter of a second or so (stock, news, email, gmail, weather, shoes, plates, cups, saucers etc.). Once I'd tweaked a bit and scheduled wif-fi to switch off during work hours when I don't need it, the battery life is fine. Of course, I can use someone elses adroid, blackberry charger if I run low on juice.
Battery life is one of the minuses of the HTC Desire HD so I always carry a USB to micro USB cable which I plug into my laptop whenever my charge level drops below 50%. Basically I only get about an hour gaming on the train and my battery normally goes down to 50%. Other than that I am very happy with my phone.
Traveling by car takes me well over an hour in peak traffic to get to where I am currently working hence the reason I take a train (less stress) when traveling in the city. In addition I can also play a game, listen to music or the radio or even surf the web.
It does? Last I checked, I used KDE's own Dolphin file browser and the Chromium browser. Can't say I've ever used or even noticed Konqueror since KDE 4 came along.
It does. You and I may never explicitly launch it, but KDE relies on it for something (my Debian system lists it as a dependency of kdebase-apps).
KDE is a Session/Window manager and has a whole lot of applications associated with one of those applications being the Konqueror Web Browser. So What! if you don't like KDE then don't install it no one is forcing you, install Gnome instead or even xfce. In fact if you like KDE but don't like Konqueror you can install just about any browser (ie. Firefox, Chrome, Opera...) except for IE. Ok you can do this but why would you :)
What Microsoft did was tie IE to its OS and that landed it in court.
As for Dolphin once you customise it a little you can get IMHO an incredibly powerful file browser that leaves Microsoft's offering for dead.
While the MAC address burned into the network card is permanent it is possible to spoof a MAC address. See here . In fact this type of thing is commonly used in clustering and also when using multiple NIC's for redundancy although in this case you present a common MAC address to the network switch so that if a card fails the MAC address presented to the switch does not change.
I was coming home by train in Sydney Australia and checked my position via Google Maps. I was surprised to find that my map changed to a world map and it flipped me to Rome in Italy. I even tried switching on my GPS and still ended up in Rome so I switched to street views and they were of Rome and yes it was entertaining.
Destruction of evidence is a felony, especially if you get caught. Just conduct your own audit first THEN invite them in.
If you conduct an audit first (definitely agree here) and find software that you don't have a license for you should by law either buy a license or remove the software. It must be noted that removing unneeded software is not a felony, however leaving licensed software on a machine without a valid license is illegal.
The suggestion of installing a Linux distribution on all your machines is quite legal however preserving the original disks with possibly unlicensed software on can be construed as perverting the course of justice. To be safer still all backups would have to be destroyed however you would also have to be careful not to destroy backups that contain data that you are required by law to keep. I would assume only servers and user data (not applications) are backed up.
Only by having un-licensed software that requires a license on a machine can the person or business be found guilty in the eyes of the law.
I am quite sure the Hitler thought the same thing.
Perhaps you should use an operating system which doesn't waste the user's time, and instead switch to an operating system that lets you get your work done.
Oh you mean Linux ;)
it is also available on Windows and Android
Perhaps, but I've got a few computers all running different Linux distributions (as is common amongst Linux geeks), and as long as they can't sync, Ubuntu One will have to wait.
All you need to do is nominate a master machine in your environment and then use "rsynch" to synchronise all important data to it.
Well I use ASCII for my document and file format and I have never had any problems reading them even on files I created over 30 years ago, of course you could have put your files into pdf or even odf which you could still look at for as long as the human race exists without ever having to install an obsolete OS. however these formats are nubies compared to ASCII.