Here's why I use and love IE on Windows 7. And yes, I am a huge geek who hacks code for a living.
It's bloody secure, in every way. From the sandbox it runs in, to the fine-grained permissions system, to the address space randomization and NX support it enjoys as a Windows application, to the way it's made easy to delete cached information. Safari does not compare.
Full-text indexing of your history + web slices are a life saver for finding that one blog post that you read 3 days ago, or getting constant updates from a web page.
IE 8 has the best success rate for rendering web-pages, correct or not.
It is the most polished browser on Windows, by far. The tabs glow different colors depending on their status, the address-bar feels like proper Aero, different tabs can be previewed from the task-bar, the default font matches the default Windows 7 font.
For me, IE provides the best web experience. For you, Safari is the sweet spot. Why can't you just accept that people have differing priorities and requirements, instead of smugly deriding others for using a "web-damaging" browser? If you want to hate on a browser, hate on Opera. At least there's demonstrable evidence of how buying Opera is like buying bottled water when your house came with a tap. Us IE users are doing just fine.
I don't want any fucking Aero-transparent window bullshit. I want an os that is like a formula 1 car: fast as hell and without a single non-essential part.
Turn it off then?
Between win 2k and win7(~8 years) the memory footprint of the OS has grown from ~100mb to ~500mb. What real utility do I get for all that?
Larger caches resulting in faster startup of larger applications, services which mean less time tracking down files and getting hardware to work, improved APIs to allow developers to write better code, etc..
Are you one of those morons who thinks their computer is at its fastest/best when it's using none of the memory you paid so much for?
They still have not bought out winzip and winrar and integrated it in the OS, which is way more basic and useful than services to 'detect unused icons on my desktop'. Using ISO images is pretty much an accepted standard these days, and how much support is there for them in vista?
So first paragraph "I want nothing except the bare essentials", second paragraph "I want ZIP, RAR and ISO support, which are well supported by 3rd party applications"?
(And isn't ZIP well supported anyway?)
I don't have time to fuck around all day with pretty 'abc block' themes that make the desktop animate windows when they are closed.
Because that's what people who "use the OS for a living" do? "fuck around.. with themes"?
If people track you from a server they can only track your usage of their server, which seems fair enough. If you're being tracked from a browser I think it's personal information.
I am also in two minds about it though, and think privacy advocates go over the top regularly.
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons (and currently the method to bring them back doesn't work for me:D). Message boxes are done the right way -- (almost) no generic yes/no choices.
I'm sure Ubuntu uses balloons, just like Windows does.
6. If virtualization is good enough for videogames on a Mac (it is), then it is good enough for videogames on a Linux. (Non free; dunno about the free) versions of virtual box are able to use the processors' virtualization extensions and offer inbuilt OpenGL support. DirectX support is in the works. Hell, the (free) Ubuntu supported enterprise virtualization support doesn't even work without it.
If you read the help file you'll notice that you can only get direct OpenGL acceleration if you're virtualizing Windows from Windows; it doesn't work from Linux to Windows. (Also I wonder how Oracle obtaining Sun will affect VirtualBox updates, I wouldn't hold my breath for DirectX support.)
9. Codecs. It is surprising how well codecs work on Linux, when you consider the not so solid situation on sound reproduction. Just downloaded an flv from youtube? No need for external players or convertors -- totem plays it out of the box. Totem will automatically prompt you to install missing codecs (see 8) when needed. Oh, and generally speaking, if you can play it, you can convert it to free formats like ogg or ogv.
Windows 7 can play a much wider range of formats. They sure got there late (trying to stick to getting people to buy decoders), but they're finally there at least. Also it's easy to plug ffmpeg into Windows Media Player.
On Vista I used VLC exclusively, now I play everything with WMP (which also has a much better UI that gets out of your way when you're watching something).
10. Compiz. It's just too cool not to be mentioned, and AFAIK it predates the Windows and Mac equivalents.:D
It's also (in my experience) horribly unstable and glitchy, and the "wobbly windows" and rotating cube really isn't worth it. You have to admit Windows Aero effects are done much more professionally (as you'd expect).
Definitely got some good points there, but you're also misrepresenting some stuff.
It's called "reading comprehension," look into it.
What's called reading comprehension?
The point he was trying to make was, if you're going to have to go through all that pain anyway, why not look at alternatives instead of rewarding Microsoft for putting you through it by continuing to give them your money?
Because if you're trying to minimize the pain you'll stick with Windows. Switching to something completely different isn't a very good solution to having to switch to something slightly different.
And it's a very valid point. There are a lot of companies who stick with Windows simply because of inertia-- it's painful to migrate away from Windows, and Microsoft goes to great lengths to keep it that way.
Very valid point when posting to a site owned by the people who own Linux.com, not so valid when you're faced with rewriting a bunch of software for no good reason.
Hash functions have many uses, a hash function can be perfectly secure for one application but not for another. (In fact this is practically always the case for defects found in modern hash functions.)
I worked at Centrelink (Australia's welfare agency) and they do have pretty solid privacy laws. Also their smart card auth was remarkably high-tech for an agency which uses a 70's era IBM database, Lotus 1-2-3, etc..
The problem was always remembering to log out: When you always have to get up to get something it's hard to remember to lock your computer every time, when you know that you have to unlock your smart-card authenticator first, then type a password from that into your computer to unlock it. This makes it more tempting to leave without locking for short periods..
Internet is flat-rate, and should be, IMHO because it represents nothing real. Although it costs something to provide infrastructure for more demand, once that infrastructure is created, the cost of delivery is very near zero.
I'm not sure, you could say the same for non-fossil-fuel electricity. The cost of nuclear, wind, solar, hydro power is mostly in construction (and decommissioning) costs. Power-grid to internet comparisons are valid.
Right now I'm just about out of bandwidth for the month. For a few days now, and for the next few days, I've had to cut down on what I download to avoid getting scaled back to unusable dial-up speeds. There is no option to buy more bandwidth to see me through to the next month. That is insane!
Imagine if once you passed over 1000 kWh of electricity / made 100 phone calls / used 1000 gallons of water / burned 1000 units of gas you were out for the payment period.
The sad thing is that the reason seems to be about marketing more than anything.
Here in Australia the government owns just about all the last-mile copper, and the only difference is the sucky local phone monopoly is nation-wide, and there is no sucky local cable monopoly.
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For me, IE provides the best web experience. For you, Safari is the sweet spot. Why can't you just accept that people have differing priorities and requirements, instead of smugly deriding others for using a "web-damaging" browser? If you want to hate on a browser, hate on Opera. At least there's demonstrable evidence of how buying Opera is like buying bottled water when your house came with a tap. Us IE users are doing just fine.
To be fair a world-writable /tmp is pretty standard on unix
I don't want any fucking Aero-transparent window bullshit. I want an os that is like a formula 1 car: fast as hell and without a single non-essential part.
Turn it off then?
Between win 2k and win7(~8 years) the memory footprint of the OS has grown from ~100mb to ~500mb. What real utility do I get for all that?
Larger caches resulting in faster startup of larger applications, services which mean less time tracking down files and getting hardware to work, improved APIs to allow developers to write better code, etc..
Are you one of those morons who thinks their computer is at its fastest/best when it's using none of the memory you paid so much for?
They still have not bought out winzip and winrar and integrated it in the OS, which is way more basic and useful than services to 'detect unused icons on my desktop'. Using ISO images is pretty much an accepted standard these days, and how much support is there for them in vista?
So first paragraph "I want nothing except the bare essentials", second paragraph "I want ZIP, RAR and ISO support, which are well supported by 3rd party applications"?
(And isn't ZIP well supported anyway?)
I don't have time to fuck around all day with pretty 'abc block' themes that make the desktop animate windows when they are closed.
Because that's what people who "use the OS for a living" do? "fuck around .. with themes"?
My experience was the same.. Almost makes me want to try Vista SP0 because everyone I speak to who did use it seems to be scarred for life
Are you being sarcastic? You're not implying they use XP as more than a desktop OS are you?
Tomorrow: "Sunlight Labs cancels Data.gov competition because an AC doesn't consider the competition worthwhile."
Hypocrisy is the essence of pure evil.
Overreaction is the essence of pure evil.
How about "Wall Pustule"? No?.. "Wall Scab"?.. I don't understand the problem..
If people track you from a server they can only track your usage of their server, which seems fair enough. If you're being tracked from a browser I think it's personal information.
I am also in two minds about it though, and think privacy advocates go over the top regularly.
I donate $10 via PayPal to sites regularly, when they'd never raise that much via advertising, and use Plura rather than ads on my own site.
For me micropayments are fine, but having them earn 0.000001c off of me for annoying the hell out of me is something I have no guilt about stopping.
I bet none of the people that modded you up have tried to use TeX, because it's obsolete and all but unusable.
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons (and currently the method to bring them back doesn't work for me :D). Message boxes are done the right way -- (almost) no generic yes/no choices.
I'm sure Ubuntu uses balloons, just like Windows does.
6. If virtualization is good enough for videogames on a Mac (it is), then it is good enough for videogames on a Linux. (Non free; dunno about the free) versions of virtual box are able to use the processors' virtualization extensions and offer inbuilt OpenGL support. DirectX support is in the works. Hell, the (free) Ubuntu supported enterprise virtualization support doesn't even work without it.
If you read the help file you'll notice that you can only get direct OpenGL acceleration if you're virtualizing Windows from Windows; it doesn't work from Linux to Windows. (Also I wonder how Oracle obtaining Sun will affect VirtualBox updates, I wouldn't hold my breath for DirectX support.)
9. Codecs. It is surprising how well codecs work on Linux, when you consider the not so solid situation on sound reproduction. Just downloaded an flv from youtube? No need for external players or convertors -- totem plays it out of the box. Totem will automatically prompt you to install missing codecs (see 8) when needed. Oh, and generally speaking, if you can play it, you can convert it to free formats like ogg or ogv.
Windows 7 can play a much wider range of formats. They sure got there late (trying to stick to getting people to buy decoders), but they're finally there at least. Also it's easy to plug ffmpeg into Windows Media Player.
On Vista I used VLC exclusively, now I play everything with WMP (which also has a much better UI that gets out of your way when you're watching something).
10. Compiz. It's just too cool not to be mentioned, and AFAIK it predates the Windows and Mac equivalents. :D
It's also (in my experience) horribly unstable and glitchy, and the "wobbly windows" and rotating cube really isn't worth it. You have to admit Windows Aero effects are done much more professionally (as you'd expect).
Definitely got some good points there, but you're also misrepresenting some stuff.
Baahahahaha, good one! I'd love to see you litigate against Microsoft for trespassing..
It's called "reading comprehension," look into it.
What's called reading comprehension?
The point he was trying to make was, if you're going to have to go through all that pain anyway, why not look at alternatives instead of rewarding Microsoft for putting you through it by continuing to give them your money?
Because if you're trying to minimize the pain you'll stick with Windows. Switching to something completely different isn't a very good solution to having to switch to something slightly different.
And it's a very valid point. There are a lot of companies who stick with Windows simply because of inertia-- it's painful to migrate away from Windows, and Microsoft goes to great lengths to keep it that way.
Very valid point when posting to a site owned by the people who own Linux.com, not so valid when you're faced with rewriting a bunch of software for no good reason.
Another pattern has been found!
Because switching to Ubuntu or OS X won't have any problems regarding retraining, virtual machines, or in-house software change.. Keep dreaming
Hash functions have many uses, a hash function can be perfectly secure for one application but not for another. (In fact this is practically always the case for defects found in modern hash functions.)
I worked at Centrelink (Australia's welfare agency) and they do have pretty solid privacy laws. Also their smart card auth was remarkably high-tech for an agency which uses a 70's era IBM database, Lotus 1-2-3, etc..
The problem was always remembering to log out: When you always have to get up to get something it's hard to remember to lock your computer every time, when you know that you have to unlock your smart-card authenticator first, then type a password from that into your computer to unlock it. This makes it more tempting to leave without locking for short periods..
The main hurdle was getting through the IIS proxy with NTLM auth, but didn't get into it
Internet is flat-rate, and should be, IMHO because it represents nothing real. Although it costs something to provide infrastructure for more demand, once that infrastructure is created, the cost of delivery is very near zero.
I'm not sure, you could say the same for non-fossil-fuel electricity. The cost of nuclear, wind, solar, hydro power is mostly in construction (and decommissioning) costs. Power-grid to internet comparisons are valid.
Right now I'm just about out of bandwidth for the month. For a few days now, and for the next few days, I've had to cut down on what I download to avoid getting scaled back to unusable dial-up speeds. There is no option to buy more bandwidth to see me through to the next month. That is insane!
Imagine if once you passed over 1000 kWh of electricity / made 100 phone calls / used 1000 gallons of water / burned 1000 units of gas you were out for the payment period.
The sad thing is that the reason seems to be about marketing more than anything.
Because Apple does have server offerings but they're pretty weak, and on a more irrational note Sun always seemed like "the Apple of servers" to me..
I would have considered a Sun/Apple merger more likely
Prodding the government is a much less effective motivator for change than when someone is threatened with going out of business
Here in Australia the government owns just about all the last-mile copper, and the only difference is the sucky local phone monopoly is nation-wide, and there is no sucky local cable monopoly.
Fucking up computers. Reinvented.