In fact, PSN shouldn't really care who you are unless you're trying to buy something.
That is so true. It is very easy to setup multiple PSN accounts. The only thing you really need is to have a "valid?" email account and that email account is only useful if you have forgotten your password or people want to send you messages.
Well, I'm not giving them my credit card again, I'm not that dumb... but most of PSN is free, so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
I never give my credit card details to gaming companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony, since I prefer to purchase games that come on physical media and those I can get from a shop or via PayPal. In addition I do check my credit purchases.
Physical media may be considered old fashioned by some but I can lone it to friends and even trade it in if I want. Why would I pay for a downloadable game which is restricted to my console?
I don't often play on-line so I did not really miss PSN being down. I could still use my web browser although I would normally use a PC for that as well as other none PSN network access. I could still play Blu-ray and DVD movies as well as mp4 and avi shows although I would prefer if the PS3 could play mkv files. Still I do have a translator that can convert mkv to mp4 if I need to.
We don't kill them over nothing, we kill them because they're wrong, usually about incredibly important things like which side to butter your bread on.
Don't forget "My invisible friend is better than your invisible friend", that just slightly more important than which side of bread you put butter on:)
Have you factored the rotation of the earth into this plan of yours?
Not only the is Earth is revolving on its axis but it is also revolving around our sun in an elliptical orbit and our sun is actually revolving around our galactic hub. I think it would be allot more accurate to use a blindfold and pins on a galactic map rather then rely on crop circles of which many have been proved to be hoaxes :)
How many people copy music on SD cards? 99.9% of them are used in things like digital cameras. Other than a few VW owners (some models have a SD card slot in the dash connected to the music system) I don't know anyone who would.
I am surprised they did not mention USB sticks or Memory Stick or XD cards. You are right most people would use some sort of music player to copy music to rather than use a card. If I want to play recorded (ie ripped) music in my car all I do is copy the appropriate files to my Android phone and play via my AUX connection to my car radio. The same is true for the iPhone.
Go ahead and tax iPods, which actually *are* used for copying music - but don't try and kill off the photography industry by adding useless taxes.
Actually any smart phone (and some not so smart) as long as it has some storage can act as a music player. To me this tax is crazy since most people use cards in cameras rather than copying music to them.
As for the Sony crackers (lets get this right) would only get passwords in encrypted format and these would only be stolen from the database information not from the OS such as/etc/passwd and/etc/shadow or from a Linux/Unix trusted database (TCB) which would only show encrypted passwords anyway. Even if you had root privileges I would be surprised if users had their information in standard login files. Even in MS Windows you need to be the "administrator" to get the encrypted passwords and one would hope that server user names did not have admin privileges.
To allow PSN access Sony would most likely use LDAP or something equivalent which would check the users "rsh" (assumed) encrypted password with that encrypted password in the user database. It is not really that catastrophic to get a user's login password but getting their credit card and account details is since the later can be used for identity fraud which can be much more serious.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
The software you mentioned only includes backup methods to backup software. By themselves any backups are crude.
Setting up a backup solution for SAP or Oracle Financials should at the most take a few days although that is assuming your backup hardware and software is inplace. Even a recovery should if you have the appropriate backup hardware take a few hours in a worst case scenario. I won't de-nigh that the set-up of an enterprise database with appropriate computers, storage, backup hardware and software can take a while (a few months) but a few years? I would love to be on that type of project I could do with an extra mansion:) With SAP we have a 2, 5, 7 proportion that being "2" for the hardware, "5" for the software and "7" for the consulting and we will tell you when you can close your cheque book;)
One big problem I have found in the enterprise is security. With Oracle the DBA's don't like security software (example: SElinux) turned on since they need to arrange for ports to be opened and in the majority of cases this falls into the "too hard" category.
Actually with regard to Sony does anyone know what OS they were using with their database and what that database was? For crackers to get database information this would not really reflect on the OS since the blame in the majority of cases would fall on the DBA's.
And enterprise users are dumb. It's a bad combination.
No, many users only do what they are told and in the majority of cases the blame rests firmly with the managers. In the enterprise managers like to "de-skill" users (Management 101) by placing them into restricted rolls. Some Managers hate professional people since these people are usually multi-skilled and leave if they are forced down a narrow skill path. The consequence of de-skilling is you end up with people who are poorly trained, but of course Management covers itself by stating that the users are not skilled enough and more training is needed so after that training those people who are a little smarter leave for better pay and conditions and so the circle repeats itself.
Saying software is "Too complicated" is usually a cop-out by the users and the managers that are involved in purchase and/or use of that software. Most backup software while sophisticated is fairly user friendly however many managers don't really know (or care?) what is really required to set-up a backup and recovery solution.
On of the problems with setting up a reliable IT disaster recovery solution (I will stick to backup and recovery here) is for management to decide on the requirements. The most common solutions are basic spot and full recovery which could include multi petabytes of data and what could called base metal recovery in that only the basic OS is recovered after a system disk failure. Yes many companies still don't mirror their system disks although system disk or even data disk mirroring does not prevent deliberate or accidental corruption. Both of these backup and recovery techniques may require different software and this needs to be taken into account.
Another aspect of backup and recovery is on-site, near-site and off-site storage of backup media with costs varying from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars.
Even after careful backup and recovery design you still need to test the recovery otherwise the company may be extremely embarrassed when a failure occurs. I have actually seen backup software that was configured to back up all the database infrastructure but failed to actually backup the database so that when the hard disk containing the data failed the company lost all its database which proved to be very costly. The person concerned with implementing the backup never tested a recovery which would have immediately shown that he had failed to include the database data in his backup software. I am quite sure many people here can come up with more horror stories of this nature.
Windows 7 IS a worthy upgrade from XP - certainly from the security point of view.
Last time I looked you can only upgrade from XP to Vista then to Win 7. How many people want to do that since you have to purchase Vista then Win 7 upgrade licenses unless you want to put on your eye-patch, obligatory parrot, optional peg leg and yell "Arrr":).
From a security perspective Vista was much better it was just that the implementation was painful to the user since they were use to the slack security model of XP. The Win 7 update of Vista was actually dumbed down from the original Vista.
Given the choice, people preferred 7 for reasons of aesthetics, functionality and robustness.
Really? My Fedora KDE interface is much more ascetically pleasing, more highly functional and very robust when compared to Windows 7. Before Win 7 came out a group of people for a laugh showed numerous persons on the street KDE saying this was WIN 7. Actually everyone who saw KDE actually thought that this "new Win 7" was fantastic. You can look this up on Google if you don't believe me.
I don't think "old stuff works" is going to be much of a selling point.
How about "new stuff works" as well. i never had a problem with new or old printers on Linux although I cannot say the same for MS Windows. Even my new HP Wireless printer (brand new) works perfectly.
Chrome is excellent on Linux. FF definitely more sluggish.
I use both on Fedora depending on what I am doing. Personally I like Chrome's minimalistic display however my family prefer Firefox since it what they are use to.
Actually the desktop Linux market is much higher than 1% which was coined by ill informed journalists back in the early 2000's and even today we still see that quote carried forward. The Linux desktop market in most so called first world countries may be small but it is at least greater than 5% and in third world countries it much higher still, however the problem is how to come up with figures since most desktop PC's sold come with a MS OS (The Microsoft tax) and that makes it difficult to determine what number have had a Linux distribution put on them.
For those people who say that a Microsoft solution for the desktop is the a logical way for any company to go I would say "Bull" (actually I do have to tendency to use more colourfull speech) and have experience and knowledge to back that up. The basic reason why desktop Linux is behind MS Windows is 1) The Microsoft tax and 2) The intransigence of management (not willing to change). In addition "Games for Windows" locked the avid gamer into a Microsoft OS however that is only an acceptable excuse at the moment for the home user, not for the corporate user unless you count games as an important factor in choosing an OS for the corporate world.
I have been using Linux for home use and in business for over four years and really don't miss any of the Microsoft OS's.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Windows Phone is never going to eclipse iOS in the mobile space.
Sorry to have to put on my Captain Obvious cape.
My family, that is wife and two sons all have iPhones while I have the HTC Desire HD which suits me file since it is just like working on a Linux system. Copying and setting up Music is a snap since I just mount the phone as a USB device and copy files from my PC which is Linux however MS Windows or a Mac would work just as easily as well. As for the iPhone you really need the iTunes program which does not run under Linux (surprise, surprise.) to transfer and maintain files (unless you unlock it) and it annoys me having to bring up my virtual machine to maintain my wife's phone even though it only takes about 30 seconds to do so. Setting up a non standard ring tone IMHO is a real pain on an iPhone while it is simplicity itself to do this on an Android phone. As for the Win 7 phone I have not played with one so I cannot comment.
looking at the interfaces of the Android and iPhones there is allot of similarities so it is very easy to to switch between them since IMHO the both have really nice and intuitive interfaces even though they are different. Looking at the Win 7 phone (ie HTC desire) interface I am not impresses since it appears Microsoft thinks we all should have twitter, Xbox and Facebook accounts which is great for those that do but totally useless to people like myself who don't need or want that. In addition IMHO the interface appears childish however I am sure many people (at least those that would buy a phone with Win 7) will disagree with me.
Could not agree more on the Captain Obvious cape;)
Why would you care to see one on your desktop? Do you have any use for one? There's a point where except for supercomputers enough is enough. We've probably already passed it.
It depends on what you what to do with those cores. Just running an Office application will not tax more than one or two cores since these type of applications are effectively real time and are not cpu instensive. In may respects Games also fall into that category with many modern games making more use of the graphics processor than the cpu's.
Having multiple cores is very useful when your application is cpu intensive and can fork processes onto as many cores that are available. a simple example of this is a video format converter which is very cpu intensive rather than I/O intensve. I run the video converter called HandBreak under Fedora 14 which can easily hammer my Intel i7 processor. This raises my load average to over 9 with each core running at approx 90% and you can really feel the heat (approx 90 deg C on the cores) being extracted by the fan.
Actually the biggest problem with multiple cores is heat and how to get rid of it as well as latency between processors and memory although according to the article Intel researcher Timothy Mattson has suggested how to get around that problem in a white paper.
This is my biggest gripe with Linux. I love tinkering with it, and I would really like to use it, but I can understand why companies that would bring users over won't support it.
Actually the reasons why some companies won't support Linux on the desktop are many fold. All those reasons can easily be countered however most company managers view IT with suspicion and have a tendency to cling to the status-quo which normally means MS Windows. This is particularly the case in first world companies although that is slowly changing.
I personally use Fedora 13 as my work desktop and run a virtual MS Windows machine for those applications that are not supported or purchased for Linux. I even use Open Office in place of MS Office even when working on collaborative projects. Even at my work we have managers who even though aware of Linux still think you need to learn the command line. For home I only run Linux (Fedora 13 but will soon upgrade to Fedora 14). My wife is quite happy to work on Linux and so are the people on who's machines I have installed Linux on. In fact most people are pleased with the overall performance of the distributions I have put on their machines.
As for Linux being to fragmented. Linux is a kernel and that is not fragmented although you will see numerous revisions. Even the many distributions have a tendency to fall into two camps one being Redhat/Fedora and the other being Debian/Ubuntu. For a GUI you predominately have Gnome, KDE and Xfce and it is these Graphical packages that most people that use Linux see and perceive Linux.
Freezes, crashes and data losses are somewhat endemic. Each version is a little better, but it is years and years behind the iPhone for basic reliability
Care to provide references to that statement?
While I don't have a smart phone I have friends who have Android and iPhone phones (my two sons have iPhone's) and I have not heard any horror stories on either platform. As for reliability both appear too be quite reliable although the iPhone does have the most applications but then most Android phones are unlocked to begin with and it is only just recently that Telstra (Australia) is unlocking iPhones for free.
That is not cheap try this , although as I have said in previous posts you still need to shop around and decide on the best plan for your needs and if the service you are after is available in your area.
The topic was Australian ISP's and there aren't that many although there are enough to keep the main ISP's (ie. Optus, Telstra and Vodafone) honest. Most ISP's now offer at least 60GB peak with substantial off-peak with a reduced speeds (approx 1Mbs to 100Kbs) when you hit your limit and bit torrents can work very well at those speeds. You need shop around for what suits you with prices varying from AU$39 to AU$90 and even higher per month and it is very possible that you may not have the cheaper service in your area. Wireless connections are still expensive though, although if you are a mobile user (ie. laptop, notebook, smart phone...) then this is possibly the best solution.
In reality it does not matter which country you live in you should always check prices and availability and decide on which type of ISP package that suites what you require. A little basic knowledge can actually save you quit a lot of money. An example could be choosing a 60GB peak and 80GB off-peak with unlimited upload for those people who are mainly hosting services while 120GB peak with uploads counted may not be the best solution.
In Australia getting unlimited will be expensive and if your line is only capable of supporting 2 Mbs to 10 Mbs then unlimited could be a waste of money. Actually an important question to ask is what are you going to actually down load?
The file sizes of most Linux packages are simply not big enough to warrant the use of bittorrent.
KDE and Office software can be over 100 MB however you would normally use package management tools such as "apt-get", yum or yast depending on your distribution to install or update your packages. If your package manager software supports "delta" rpm's or debian packages then update downloads can be very much reduced. Where torrents are useful for Linux is in their distribution which can be in the order of 3 to 5 GB for the DVD and a few hundred MB for the Live CD.
At least with the jailbreak I can get more use out of my PS3. 3D gaming and blu-ray? Not really interested (I don't have a 3D TV, and because of technical limitations, it's 720p only...).
You are wrong on this the 3.5 firmware allows you to watch 3D in 1080p. As for 3D games you can also watch them in 1080p if the game is written to support 1080p. If you look at the specifications of 1.3a/b/c hdmi and compare to hdmi 1.4 the only difference is ethernet and audio return for 1.4.
The PS3 has 1.3a hdmi which means it supports 3D 1080p to "compatible" 1080p 3D TV's. Don't believe me then look at this or just do a Google search but make sure you limit yourself to last month. As far as sound goes you can still use the optical connector to your amplifier (if it support this) rather than use the poorer quality TV speakers.
When I bought the PS3, it had OtherOS and was not as locked down. They changed all that after purchase, which is ridiculous and I haven't bought any more PS3 games.
I have a BC FAT which has the other OS and I have not put any more firmware updates since however this is not because I am worried about loosing the other OS option it is just that the later firmware releases are not compelling for me to update. Yes I don't have access to the Store and some on-line features but that does not worry me although forcing an update for trying to auto update the time to me seems silly.
I would not use the other OS on my PS3 anyway preferring to run Linux on my PC's which is a much better way to run Linux, however just by removing the other OS opens up a can of worms in that it would not be that difficult for certain PC vendors and a software company I won't name to come out an state that the only a certified OS (and we all know which two that is) can run on a PC. Laugh if you want but there have been numerous attempts to do this already.
On a different note stating "I have not brough any more PS3 games" tells me a few things in that 1) There are no games you are interested in at the moment although there are some games (ie. Red Dead Redemption) that force an upgrade. 2) You have an Xbox or Wii and prefer their games which are more locked down than the PS3 (well they do try) but you have a better chance of ripping games or 3) You have a PC of which you prefer those games over console games (Steam is also coming to the PS3 as well).
Personally I will upgrade my firmware eventually when I get a 3D TV (at least a year away) since the latest firmware (3.5) does support 1080p 3D movies and 3D games (when they come out), however I don't see anything compelling in the latest firmware releases just yet. To say I won't buy anymore PS3 games is really silly since there are plenty of PS2 (if you have BC PS3) and PS3 games that could keep you entertained for years without you having to upgrade your firmware and lose the "Other OS" capability.
BTW my son has a 47 inch Samsung 3D TV and has played games like "Mirrors Edge" in pseudo 3D and found the experience extremely interesting although you really do need to be careful if you suffer from motion sickness since the 3D effect can be devastating. Note that the pseudo 3D is actually done in the TV not the PS3.
Loading military vehicles is not quite the same as loading private or even public vehicles although lets assume this can be done as quick but there is a major problem here. You have to have a centralized depot to do this and how are you going to design the road system to each depot as well? In addition how far between loading/un-loading depots do you require? Freighting vehicles only becomes viable when you are moving those vehicles between cities of say approx 500km or more and considering staying in that city for some time.
Intra city trains are passenger only and overall running costs for the trains are much more cheaper than if you assume that instead each passenger takes his/her car, however this does not mean that everyone should take a train or bus (see my previous post) since you as an individual needs to work out which is the best solution for yourself. For me even though I normally drive to work if I have to work in the City (Sydney/Australia) I will take the train since it is much more convenient (20 minutes by train and 45 minutes by car) however parking costs are very expensive, not to mention that some inner city roads in Sydney can be really bad, traffic and road wise.
Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.
It'd kill the airlines in a week.
Sigh! This is not practical for short distances although I do agree that it would work for interstate travel. i assume most people posting are from the US. I am from Australia which is almost the same size as the continental US. If I am traveling from Sydney (where I live) to Perth which is like traveling from New York to San Fransisco and staying for some time then freighting my car is more practical and cheaper however if I am only going to stay for a few days then flying and hiring a car is cheaper. For me traveling upto 1,400 km (approx Sydney to Adelaide) is not that big a problem since my car is very comfortable and runs on diesel and to travel 1,400 km would cost me approximately AU$100.00 (approx US$91.00) and would take me 12 hours of travel time. Flying 1400 km takes approx 1:30 hour and even train travel takes approx 12 hours and that is not counting the time to drive to the airport or station would cost me so much more and I would still have to hire a car or take taxi's or buses once I arrived.
Train travel is practical however you really need to determine your overall costs although convenience does play a part as well. If I am on a business trip then flying and taxi's is the best way to go especially since my time is valuable, in this scenario train and buses are not an option. On a holiday then taking your own car may be more practical. Moving interstate for an extended period then freighting your car and taking the train or flying may be the best solution.
There are lot's of "what-if's" however in a some cities train travel can be the best way of traveling although this does depend if you are close to a train line and the times between each train. This also applies to buses and if "bus lanes" have been built. Even taking your own car and using expressways can be the cheapest solution.
To give two examples. My son has to travel about 35 km each way to work and he takes his car (approx 10l/100km @ AU$1.40/liter). The reason for doing this is by car it takes approx 45 minutes one way but if he took public transport it would take over 2 hours one way and cost him so much more, so what should he do? The second example is my own and I only have to travel 22km but my car gets approx 5.9l/100km @AU1.25/liter. Total travel time for me in my car is approx 20 min via expressway. Taking public transport (bus and train) would take me over 1:30 hours one-way and cost over AU$20.00 for the round trip. Note: Both my son and myself have free parking at work so for people doing the math the cost of parking also needs to be taken into account.
Sometimes public transport is the best and cheapest solution for travel sometimes using your own transport is the best way to go although you still need to factor in convenience which for some is more important than cost.
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In fact, PSN shouldn't really care who you are unless you're trying to buy something.
That is so true. It is very easy to setup multiple PSN accounts. The only thing you really need is to have a "valid?" email account and that email account is only useful if you have forgotten your password or people want to send you messages.
Well, I'm not giving them my credit card again, I'm not that dumb... but most of PSN is free, so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
I never give my credit card details to gaming companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony, since I prefer to purchase games that come on physical media and those I can get from a shop or via PayPal. In addition I do check my credit purchases.
Physical media may be considered old fashioned by some but I can lone it to friends and even trade it in if I want. Why would I pay for a downloadable game which is restricted to my console?
I don't often play on-line so I did not really miss PSN being down. I could still use my web browser although I would normally use a PC for that as well as other none PSN network access. I could still play Blu-ray and DVD movies as well as mp4 and avi shows although I would prefer if the PS3 could play mkv files. Still I do have a translator that can convert mkv to mp4 if I need to.
We don't kill them over nothing, we kill them because they're wrong, usually about incredibly important things like which side to butter your bread on.
Don't forget "My invisible friend is better than your invisible friend", that just slightly more important than which side of bread you put butter on :)
Have you factored the rotation of the earth into this plan of yours?
Not only the is Earth is revolving on its axis but it is also revolving around our sun in an elliptical orbit and our sun is actually revolving around our galactic hub. I think it would be allot more accurate to use a blindfold and pins on a galactic map rather then rely on crop circles of which many have been proved to be hoaxes :)
It's not time to start ignoring the laws, it's time to start changing the laws.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to change laws no matter how stupid or unfair once they have been passed by politicians.
How many people copy music on SD cards? 99.9% of them are used in things like digital cameras. Other than a few VW owners (some models have a SD card slot in the dash connected to the music system) I don't know anyone who would.
I am surprised they did not mention USB sticks or Memory Stick or XD cards. You are right most people would use some sort of music player to copy music to rather than use a card. If I want to play recorded (ie ripped) music in my car all I do is copy the appropriate files to my Android phone and play via my AUX connection to my car radio. The same is true for the iPhone.
Go ahead and tax iPods, which actually *are* used for copying music - but don't try and kill off the photography industry by adding useless taxes.
Actually any smart phone (and some not so smart) as long as it has some storage can act as a music player. To me this tax is crazy since most people use cards in cameras rather than copying music to them.
As for the Sony crackers (lets get this right) would only get passwords in encrypted format and these would only be stolen from the database information not from the OS such as /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow or from a Linux/Unix trusted database (TCB) which would only show encrypted passwords anyway. Even if you had root privileges I would be surprised if users had their information in standard login files. Even in MS Windows you need to be the "administrator" to get the encrypted passwords and one would hope that server user names did not have admin privileges.
To allow PSN access Sony would most likely use LDAP or something equivalent which would check the users "rsh" (assumed) encrypted password with that encrypted password in the user database. It is not really that catastrophic to get a user's login password but getting their credit card and account details is since the later can be used for identity fraud which can be much more serious.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
The software you mentioned only includes backup methods to backup software. By themselves any backups are crude.
:) With SAP we have a 2, 5, 7 proportion that being "2" for the hardware, "5" for the software and "7" for the consulting and we will tell you when you can close your cheque book ;)
Setting up a backup solution for SAP or Oracle Financials should at the most take a few days although that is assuming your backup hardware and software is inplace. Even a recovery should if you have the appropriate backup hardware take a few hours in a worst case scenario. I won't de-nigh that the set-up of an enterprise database with appropriate computers, storage, backup hardware and software can take a while (a few months) but a few years? I would love to be on that type of project I could do with an extra mansion
One big problem I have found in the enterprise is security. With Oracle the DBA's don't like security software (example: SElinux) turned on since they need to arrange for ports to be opened and in the majority of cases this falls into the "too hard" category.
Actually with regard to Sony does anyone know what OS they were using with their database and what that database was? For crackers to get database information this would not really reflect on the OS since the blame in the majority of cases would fall on the DBA's.
And enterprise users are dumb. It's a bad combination.
No, many users only do what they are told and in the majority of cases the blame rests firmly with the managers. In the enterprise managers like to "de-skill" users (Management 101) by placing them into restricted rolls. Some Managers hate professional people since these people are usually multi-skilled and leave if they are forced down a narrow skill path. The consequence of de-skilling is you end up with people who are poorly trained, but of course Management covers itself by stating that the users are not skilled enough and more training is needed so after that training those people who are a little smarter leave for better pay and conditions and so the circle repeats itself.
Saying software is "Too complicated" is usually a cop-out by the users and the managers that are involved in purchase and/or use of that software. Most backup software while sophisticated is fairly user friendly however many managers don't really know (or care?) what is really required to set-up a backup and recovery solution.
On of the problems with setting up a reliable IT disaster recovery solution (I will stick to backup and recovery here) is for management to decide on the requirements. The most common solutions are basic spot and full recovery which could include multi petabytes of data and what could called base metal recovery in that only the basic OS is recovered after a system disk failure. Yes many companies still don't mirror their system disks although system disk or even data disk mirroring does not prevent deliberate or accidental corruption. Both of these backup and recovery techniques may require different software and this needs to be taken into account.
Another aspect of backup and recovery is on-site, near-site and off-site storage of backup media with costs varying from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars.
Even after careful backup and recovery design you still need to test the recovery otherwise the company may be extremely embarrassed when a failure occurs. I have actually seen backup software that was configured to back up all the database infrastructure but failed to actually backup the database so that when the hard disk containing the data failed the company lost all its database which proved to be very costly. The person concerned with implementing the backup never tested a recovery which would have immediately shown that he had failed to include the database data in his backup software. I am quite sure many people here can come up with more horror stories of this nature.
Windows 7 IS a worthy upgrade from XP - certainly from the security point of view.
Last time I looked you can only upgrade from XP to Vista then to Win 7. How many people want to do that since you have to purchase Vista then Win 7 upgrade licenses unless you want to put on your eye-patch, obligatory parrot, optional peg leg and yell "Arrr" :).
From a security perspective Vista was much better it was just that the implementation was painful to the user since they were use to the slack security model of XP. The Win 7 update of Vista was actually dumbed down from the original Vista.
Given the choice, people preferred 7 for reasons of aesthetics, functionality and robustness.
Really? My Fedora KDE interface is much more ascetically pleasing, more highly functional and very robust when compared to Windows 7. Before Win 7 came out a group of people for a laugh showed numerous persons on the street KDE saying this was WIN 7. Actually everyone who saw KDE actually thought that this "new Win 7" was fantastic. You can look this up on Google if you don't believe me.
I don't think "old stuff works" is going to be much of a selling point.
How about "new stuff works" as well. i never had a problem with new or old printers on Linux although I cannot say the same for MS Windows. Even my new HP Wireless printer (brand new) works perfectly.
Chrome is excellent on Linux. FF definitely more sluggish.
I use both on Fedora depending on what I am doing. Personally I like Chrome's minimalistic display however my family prefer Firefox since it what they are use to.
Actually the desktop Linux market is much higher than 1% which was coined by ill informed journalists back in the early 2000's and even today we still see that quote carried forward. The Linux desktop market in most so called first world countries may be small but it is at least greater than 5% and in third world countries it much higher still, however the problem is how to come up with figures since most desktop PC's sold come with a MS OS (The Microsoft tax) and that makes it difficult to determine what number have had a Linux distribution put on them.
For those people who say that a Microsoft solution for the desktop is the a logical way for any company to go I would say "Bull" (actually I do have to tendency to use more colourfull speech) and have experience and knowledge to back that up. The basic reason why desktop Linux is behind MS Windows is 1) The Microsoft tax and 2) The intransigence of management (not willing to change). In addition "Games for Windows" locked the avid gamer into a Microsoft OS however that is only an acceptable excuse at the moment for the home user, not for the corporate user unless you count games as an important factor in choosing an OS for the corporate world.
I have been using Linux for home use and in business for over four years and really don't miss any of the Microsoft OS's.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Windows Phone is never going to eclipse iOS in the mobile space.
Sorry to have to put on my Captain Obvious cape.
My family, that is wife and two sons all have iPhones while I have the HTC Desire HD which suits me file since it is just like working on a Linux system. Copying and setting up Music is a snap since I just mount the phone as a USB device and copy files from my PC which is Linux however MS Windows or a Mac would work just as easily as well. As for the iPhone you really need the iTunes program which does not run under Linux (surprise, surprise.) to transfer and maintain files (unless you unlock it) and it annoys me having to bring up my virtual machine to maintain my wife's phone even though it only takes about 30 seconds to do so. Setting up a non standard ring tone IMHO is a real pain on an iPhone while it is simplicity itself to do this on an Android phone. As for the Win 7 phone I have not played with one so I cannot comment.
;)
looking at the interfaces of the Android and iPhones there is allot of similarities so it is very easy to to switch between them since IMHO the both have really nice and intuitive interfaces even though they are different. Looking at the Win 7 phone (ie HTC desire) interface I am not impresses since it appears Microsoft thinks we all should have twitter, Xbox and Facebook accounts which is great for those that do but totally useless to people like myself who don't need or want that. In addition IMHO the interface appears childish however I am sure many people (at least those that would buy a phone with Win 7) will disagree with me.
Could not agree more on the Captain Obvious cape
Why would you care to see one on your desktop? Do you have any use for one? There's a point where except for supercomputers enough is enough. We've probably already passed it.
It depends on what you what to do with those cores. Just running an Office application will not tax more than one or two cores since these type of applications are effectively real time and are not cpu instensive. In may respects Games also fall into that category with many modern games making more use of the graphics processor than the cpu's.
Having multiple cores is very useful when your application is cpu intensive and can fork processes onto as many cores that are available. a simple example of this is a video format converter which is very cpu intensive rather than I/O intensve. I run the video converter called HandBreak under Fedora 14 which can easily hammer my Intel i7 processor. This raises my load average to over 9 with each core running at approx 90% and you can really feel the heat (approx 90 deg C on the cores) being extracted by the fan.
Actually the biggest problem with multiple cores is heat and how to get rid of it as well as latency between processors and memory although according to the article Intel researcher Timothy Mattson has suggested how to get around that problem in a white paper.
This is my biggest gripe with Linux. I love tinkering with it, and I would really like to use it, but I can understand why companies that would bring users over won't support it.
Actually the reasons why some companies won't support Linux on the desktop are many fold. All those reasons can easily be countered however most company managers view IT with suspicion and have a tendency to cling to the status-quo which normally means MS Windows. This is particularly the case in first world companies although that is slowly changing.
I personally use Fedora 13 as my work desktop and run a virtual MS Windows machine for those applications that are not supported or purchased for Linux. I even use Open Office in place of MS Office even when working on collaborative projects. Even at my work we have managers who even though aware of Linux still think you need to learn the command line. For home I only run Linux (Fedora 13 but will soon upgrade to Fedora 14). My wife is quite happy to work on Linux and so are the people on who's machines I have installed Linux on. In fact most people are pleased with the overall performance of the distributions I have put on their machines.
As for Linux being to fragmented. Linux is a kernel and that is not fragmented although you will see numerous revisions. Even the many distributions have a tendency to fall into two camps one being Redhat/Fedora and the other being Debian/Ubuntu. For a GUI you predominately have Gnome, KDE and Xfce and it is these Graphical packages that most people that use Linux see and perceive Linux.
Freezes, crashes and data losses are somewhat endemic. Each version is a little better, but it is years and years behind the iPhone for basic reliability
Care to provide references to that statement?
While I don't have a smart phone I have friends who have Android and iPhone phones (my two sons have iPhone's) and I have not heard any horror stories on either platform. As for reliability both appear too be quite reliable although the iPhone does have the most applications but then most Android phones are unlocked to begin with and it is only just recently that Telstra (Australia) is unlocking iPhones for free.
Yes and look at the new plans by Australian ISP's eg. Internode http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/bundles/easy_bundle/plans/ "Massive 'Any Time' monthly quota - measured as the total of downloads plus uploads. "
That is not cheap try this , although as I have said in previous posts you still need to shop around and decide on the best plan for your needs and if the service you are after is available in your area.
The topic was Australian ISP's and there aren't that many although there are enough to keep the main ISP's (ie. Optus, Telstra and Vodafone) honest. Most ISP's now offer at least 60GB peak with substantial off-peak with a reduced speeds (approx 1Mbs to 100Kbs) when you hit your limit and bit torrents can work very well at those speeds. You need shop around for what suits you with prices varying from AU$39 to AU$90 and even higher per month and it is very possible that you may not have the cheaper service in your area. Wireless connections are still expensive though, although if you are a mobile user (ie. laptop, notebook, smart phone ...) then this is possibly the best solution.
In reality it does not matter which country you live in you should always check prices and availability and decide on which type of ISP package that suites what you require. A little basic knowledge can actually save you quit a lot of money. An example could be choosing a 60GB peak and 80GB off-peak with unlimited upload for those people who are mainly hosting services while 120GB peak with uploads counted may not be the best solution.
In Australia getting unlimited will be expensive and if your line is only capable of supporting 2 Mbs to 10 Mbs then unlimited could be a waste of money. Actually an important question to ask is what are you going to actually down load?
The file sizes of most Linux packages are simply not big enough to warrant the use of bittorrent.
KDE and Office software can be over 100 MB however you would normally use package management tools such as "apt-get", yum or yast depending on your distribution to install or update your packages. If your package manager software supports "delta" rpm's or debian packages then update downloads can be very much reduced. Where torrents are useful for Linux is in their distribution which can be in the order of 3 to 5 GB for the DVD and a few hundred MB for the Live CD.
At least with the jailbreak I can get more use out of my PS3. 3D gaming and blu-ray? Not really interested (I don't have a 3D TV, and because of technical limitations, it's 720p only...).
You are wrong on this the 3.5 firmware allows you to watch 3D in 1080p. As for 3D games you can also watch them in 1080p if the game is written to support 1080p. If you look at the specifications of 1.3a/b/c hdmi and compare to hdmi 1.4 the only difference is ethernet and audio return for 1.4.
The PS3 has 1.3a hdmi which means it supports 3D 1080p to "compatible" 1080p 3D TV's. Don't believe me then look at this or just do a Google search but make sure you limit yourself to last month. As far as sound goes you can still use the optical connector to your amplifier (if it support this) rather than use the poorer quality TV speakers.
When I bought the PS3, it had OtherOS and was not as locked down. They changed all that after purchase, which is ridiculous and I haven't bought any more PS3 games.
I have a BC FAT which has the other OS and I have not put any more firmware updates since however this is not because I am worried about loosing the other OS option it is just that the later firmware releases are not compelling for me to update. Yes I don't have access to the Store and some on-line features but that does not worry me although forcing an update for trying to auto update the time to me seems silly.
I would not use the other OS on my PS3 anyway preferring to run Linux on my PC's which is a much better way to run Linux, however just by removing the other OS opens up a can of worms in that it would not be that difficult for certain PC vendors and a software company I won't name to come out an state that the only a certified OS (and we all know which two that is) can run on a PC. Laugh if you want but there have been numerous attempts to do this already.
On a different note stating "I have not brough any more PS3 games" tells me a few things in that 1) There are no games you are interested in at the moment although there are some games (ie. Red Dead Redemption) that force an upgrade. 2) You have an Xbox or Wii and prefer their games which are more locked down than the PS3 (well they do try) but you have a better chance of ripping games or 3) You have a PC of which you prefer those games over console games (Steam is also coming to the PS3 as well).
Personally I will upgrade my firmware eventually when I get a 3D TV (at least a year away) since the latest firmware (3.5) does support 1080p 3D movies and 3D games (when they come out), however I don't see anything compelling in the latest firmware releases just yet. To say I won't buy anymore PS3 games is really silly since there are plenty of PS2 (if you have BC PS3) and PS3 games that could keep you entertained for years without you having to upgrade your firmware and lose the "Other OS" capability.
BTW my son has a 47 inch Samsung 3D TV and has played games like "Mirrors Edge" in pseudo 3D and found the experience extremely interesting although you really do need to be careful if you suffer from motion sickness since the 3D effect can be devastating. Note that the pseudo 3D is actually done in the TV not the PS3.
Loading military vehicles is not quite the same as loading private or even public vehicles although lets assume this can be done as quick but there is a major problem here. You have to have a centralized depot to do this and how are you going to design the road system to each depot as well? In addition how far between loading/un-loading depots do you require? Freighting vehicles only becomes viable when you are moving those vehicles between cities of say approx 500km or more and considering staying in that city for some time.
Intra city trains are passenger only and overall running costs for the trains are much more cheaper than if you assume that instead each passenger takes his/her car, however this does not mean that everyone should take a train or bus (see my previous post) since you as an individual needs to work out which is the best solution for yourself. For me even though I normally drive to work if I have to work in the City (Sydney/Australia) I will take the train since it is much more convenient (20 minutes by train and 45 minutes by car) however parking costs are very expensive, not to mention that some inner city roads in Sydney can be really bad, traffic and road wise.
Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.
It'd kill the airlines in a week.
Sigh! This is not practical for short distances although I do agree that it would work for interstate travel. i assume most people posting are from the US. I am from Australia which is almost the same size as the continental US. If I am traveling from Sydney (where I live) to Perth which is like traveling from New York to San Fransisco and staying for some time then freighting my car is more practical and cheaper however if I am only going to stay for a few days then flying and hiring a car is cheaper. For me traveling upto 1,400 km (approx Sydney to Adelaide) is not that big a problem since my car is very comfortable and runs on diesel and to travel 1,400 km would cost me approximately AU$100.00 (approx US$91.00) and would take me 12 hours of travel time. Flying 1400 km takes approx 1:30 hour and even train travel takes approx 12 hours and that is not counting the time to drive to the airport or station would cost me so much more and I would still have to hire a car or take taxi's or buses once I arrived.
Train travel is practical however you really need to determine your overall costs although convenience does play a part as well. If I am on a business trip then flying and taxi's is the best way to go especially since my time is valuable, in this scenario train and buses are not an option. On a holiday then taking your own car may be more practical. Moving interstate for an extended period then freighting your car and taking the train or flying may be the best solution.
There are lot's of "what-if's" however in a some cities train travel can be the best way of traveling although this does depend if you are close to a train line and the times between each train. This also applies to buses and if "bus lanes" have been built. Even taking your own car and using expressways can be the cheapest solution.
To give two examples. My son has to travel about 35 km each way to work and he takes his car (approx 10l/100km @ AU$1.40/liter). The reason for doing this is by car it takes approx 45 minutes one way but if he took public transport it would take over 2 hours one way and cost him so much more, so what should he do? The second example is my own and I only have to travel 22km but my car gets approx 5.9l/100km @AU1.25/liter. Total travel time for me in my car is approx 20 min via expressway. Taking public transport (bus and train) would take me over 1:30 hours one-way and cost over AU$20.00 for the round trip. Note: Both my son and myself have free parking at work so for people doing the math the cost of parking also needs to be taken into account.
Sometimes public transport is the best and cheapest solution for travel sometimes using your own transport is the best way to go although you still need to factor in convenience which for some is more important than cost.