There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.
Look at Spain's high-speed rail network for an example of how it can only pay for itself, but actually earn a decent profit too. The AVE in Spain is the perfect case-study government funded decent rail infrastructure can really work out really well for everyone except perhaps the airlines - they charge x2 what airlines charge because they know they can fill trains after train even without coming close to competing on price.
High speed rail really is the future if you have the vision to invest in it.
Assuming that losing license fees directly means profit gain is somewhat dubious logic to say the least. Sometimes it pays to invest in paid solutions; and rarely is any one software stack purely OSS or propriety.
Vista in my eyes brought about the changes to Windows that needed to happen. It was the adolescence stage of Windows IMO, and the result is a matured Windows 7 that's hit the ground running. Sure Vista was painful at the beginning, but it shaped up and turned into a respectable OS in the end, and now W7 is bearing the fruit of that as pretty much all the reviews have stated.
Before Vista; Windows really was quite immature (and I refer more to the "Windows way" of doing things more than the tech capability) . -Admin by default -Firewall barely a consideration -AV a bonus -Automatic updates a nicety -32bit mandatory (64bit XP was a joke) -No DEP/ASLR/Kernel protection
Admittedly most of those were tweaked with SP2; but Vista was the first OS to have all these fixes baked in from RTM, and surprise....it broke stuff
Yet for all the extra "security" it still is always the first to fall system to get owned at the Pwn2Own contest....and just lacks some basic security Windows has had for years; DEP, Network Access Protection, Kernel Patch Protection, and Address space layout randomization to name but a few that Windows has had for years. Security is always done in layers; and there's just more baked into Windows than Mac OS, period.
People see so many malware infested Windows machines because they see so many Windows machines. Why would you only target 10% of the computing world?
Nope; I just said that in my experience, roaming profiles should be backed up with a size limit - not that they are or need to be.
Group policies...I'm not sure you know what they are. For example, I setup the GPs for a small company once in a couple of hours so all machines would have Office installed + any departmental software needed; anyone not a developer was locked down to basic desktop and apps; laptops had all the wireless networks configured + firewall set on "block all incoming" when not on the company network, all machines branded with company screen-saver, etc, etc, and all machines 100% patched for all managed apps, all machines configured to run their maintenance plans every friday night; power-saving options applied network wide, and for all the sales guys execute rights denied for anything outside of "Program Files" and "Windows" folders as they were notorious for downloading crap.
And a whole load more.
I did it by setting up "group policies" in less than two hours - the machines then configured themselves/install whatever just by knowing what "group" they or their user was in, and the changes were rolled out to a couple of hundred machines while I smoked a cigarette or the next time they connected.
Requirements for how a PC should work changes for different groups of people. Everything you can do as root locally you can centralise in AD depending on the user/computer group, and therefore it's policy.
Sure you could do something similar by scripting absolutely everything (if user is in group X, run script X), but AD just makes it so much easier.
Oh yeah, that's really cool. Sorry but you can't get a profile larger than 100MB, yeah we have multi-terabyte systems but you can't use them conveniently. I have one user that currently has a home directory of 1.2TB on her Mac and it does it without complaining, the user doesn't even notice it's on the network.
There's nothing stopping you doing that on Windows either; i'm not sure what your point is here.
As far as the admin point, some software doesn't run without being an admin. Most non-mainstream software will require your user to be an admin. Most if not all research software will require your user to be an admin. For some or another reason, elevating privileges was not something that has been engrained into the operating system (most Unix-based software can elevate right from within the program when you need the functionality) but rather something that has been tacked on later and it's an all-or-nothing deal so you need it before starting a program and it's not trivial to do so either (if it works at all)
Name me a few. This problem has largely gone away with the exception of a few antique programs you'd probably virtualize them now anyway. Also, if any one program does require elevation you still don't need the entire user to be admin.
Mac's have something like Active Directory, it's called Open Directory (based on OpenLDAP) and it can do the same stuff AD does. It even integrates with AD if you really need it to augment AD.
AD and OD are comparable in that they both do authentication and that OD provides some basic resource management (mounting shares automatically, running scripts etc). It still pales into insignificance against what AD can provide; group policies; load balancing; network trusts, etc
Roaming profiles are a bad idea IMO unless you back them up with size limits...and virus outbreaks become a null-point the minute you don't make everyone a local admin.
And frankly I don't buy that Mac's are more reliable than PCs; point. Especially, as one AC said if you have an admin with half a brain. Not to mention Mac's have nothing in the way of Active Directory.
How about rock solid secure to the point I can deploy without special virus protection?
You can't really drive-by infect Windows 7/Vista so you can probably do away with virus protection. These days it's relegated to "directory of stuff you really shouldn't run at all".
What's gonna push people onto Windows 7 will be 4Gig ram+ which I predict will become far more of an issue with 32 bit OSs sooner than people think. XP has 64 bit, but it's only been niche at best. There'll come a time when your system will just need more than 4gig, and that won't fly on XP.
I thought it was a decent game; good graphics, excellent atmosphere and really well choreographed scenes & story telling. I've not played System Shock 2, but you can't deny it was good fun. Playing it the 2nd time round is worth doing too; noticing stuff that's explained later on is good fun too - a bit like watching The Matrix the 2nd time round; suddenly everything's much clearer.
...but you wouldn't think so looking through some of these comments. Office works real well with MOSS (Paid version of SharePoint); which works real nice on a Active Directory and SQL Server; which is only realistic on Windows Server. When I say works well, I mean your grandmother could get it running.
Office on it's own is missing the point really; documents should never stay on just one machine.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy this technically inferior rubbish either. Linux works differently; has a different design philosophy, and frankly isn't comparable to Windows if you ask me.
Linux is great for some things; Windows for others. I don't actually see much cross-over to be honest, and to say "omg $OS is so much better that $ALT_OS" is frankly little more than flamebait.
The case-sensitive names for example. That was a deliberate decision I think 99% of users are glad they did in Windows, save the hardened unix guys perhaps. I mean; how often would you want to keep "FILE" and "file" file-names in the same directory anyway?
I for one am glad there isn't just one way of doing everything.
I've used Windows 7 too. It's nothing like Vista and is actually incredibly advanced. I noticed my FPS rate in games doubled over XP & Vista. Also, I didn't have to even install it, it installed itself....and purchased itself, just by me thinking about it. Yeah, I had to sell my soul to Bill Gates as part of product activation, but now I've got Windows 7 I get laid 4 times a day, have been promoted to head of everything cool at work, and have lost the beer belly - all thanks to the "User Tuning Wizard" new feature of Windows 7.
The thing is, people have apps written before Linux was even invented they still want to run today; and in my opinion your best shot at that is on Windows; the 32-bit versions still can still run 16-bit apps compiled centuries ago.
Freedom & choice is great and all, no one denies that but practicality usually comes first.
I'm sure it'll only lead to only completely accurate portrays of true English culture, just like how America's Army does similar for the US army.
So expect:
- Restaurant Simulator - using entirely British food and cooking techniques; build a world-beating restaurant that makes Italians cry. - British Football 3D - play entirely respectful games of football winning with skill, but also good manners and complimenting the opponents to victory. - Railways on-line - improve an already perfect railway to be even more "perfecter". The more you make the French jealous, the more points you get.
...then use group policies to push out AV updates automatically & lock down the desktops remotely and automatically. Samba is a half-cut replacement for a proper Windows Server when it comes to Windows workstations (sorry samba guys; samba is good, but ultimately lags far behind what it's trying to imitate)
Windows XP is only really so vulnerable to viruses because normally it runs in "everything as root" mode; which, if you had a proper Windows server you could change in seconds (not that you couldn't do this manually, but with AD it's automatic network-wide).
this reminds me of an old phone I used to have that implemented perhaps the very opposite of this idea...
It would vibrate to tell me the battery was running low in silent mode. Problem was just by doing that it actually used up the last of the power it was supposed to warn me about being low, effectively making it some kind of ironic suicide warning.
...as it's gonna be called Windows 7 "E" and delivered/configured separately from the normal install, like the Windows Vista "N" version (minus media player)....which totally tanked, because real people actually don't care what browser / media player comes with their PC. Unless of course you have an iPod/iPhone which requires iTunes.
This is a dance around a formality that may or may not have a justified cause; looks like Microsoft are dealing with the problem before it causes a real problem later on.
It is more than that; first it syncs into the "cloud" - kinda like the best backup storage you'll ever have. Second; the remote desktop access from any device to any device is damned handy.
Are they even similar? Mesh is a tool for sharing files across multiple machines.....Wave is a tool for communication and collaboration?
For the record, Mesh is a damned fine service; I use it to backup all my critical data over all my machines as well as for it's remote desktop to any of the meshed machines.
Slashdot Mirror
There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.
Look at Spain's high-speed rail network for an example of how it can only pay for itself, but actually earn a decent profit too. The AVE in Spain is the perfect case-study government funded decent rail infrastructure can really work out really well for everyone except perhaps the airlines - they charge x2 what airlines charge because they know they can fill trains after train even without coming close to competing on price.
High speed rail really is the future if you have the vision to invest in it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8268003.stm
Assuming that losing license fees directly means profit gain is somewhat dubious logic to say the least. Sometimes it pays to invest in paid solutions; and rarely is any one software stack purely OSS or propriety.
Vista in my eyes brought about the changes to Windows that needed to happen. It was the adolescence stage of Windows IMO, and the result is a matured Windows 7 that's hit the ground running. Sure Vista was painful at the beginning, but it shaped up and turned into a respectable OS in the end, and now W7 is bearing the fruit of that as pretty much all the reviews have stated.
Before Vista; Windows really was quite immature (and I refer more to the "Windows way" of doing things more than the tech capability) .
-Admin by default
-Firewall barely a consideration
-AV a bonus
-Automatic updates a nicety
-32bit mandatory (64bit XP was a joke)
-No DEP/ASLR/Kernel protection
Admittedly most of those were tweaked with SP2; but Vista was the first OS to have all these fixes baked in from RTM, and surprise....it broke stuff
Yet for all the extra "security" it still is always the first to fall system to get owned at the Pwn2Own contest....and just lacks some basic security Windows has had for years; DEP, Network Access Protection, Kernel Patch Protection, and Address space layout randomization to name but a few that Windows has had for years. Security is always done in layers; and there's just more baked into Windows than Mac OS, period.
People see so many malware infested Windows machines because they see so many Windows machines. Why would you only target 10% of the computing world?
Client machines much be logged into the same domain (or have a a trust set up)
Untrue. You're either being ignorant or utterly disingenuous. I mean, it's a pretty basic detail and you got it wrong,
Nope; I just said that in my experience, roaming profiles should be backed up with a size limit - not that they are or need to be.
Group policies...I'm not sure you know what they are.
For example, I setup the GPs for a small company once in a couple of hours so all machines would have Office installed + any departmental software needed; anyone not a developer was locked down to basic desktop and apps; laptops had all the wireless networks configured + firewall set on "block all incoming" when not on the company network, all machines branded with company screen-saver, etc, etc, and all machines 100% patched for all managed apps, all machines configured to run their maintenance plans every friday night; power-saving options applied network wide, and for all the sales guys execute rights denied for anything outside of "Program Files" and "Windows" folders as they were notorious for downloading crap.
And a whole load more.
I did it by setting up "group policies" in less than two hours - the machines then configured themselves/install whatever just by knowing what "group" they or their user was in, and the changes were rolled out to a couple of hundred machines while I smoked a cigarette or the next time they connected.
Requirements for how a PC should work changes for different groups of people. Everything you can do as root locally you can centralise in AD depending on the user/computer group, and therefore it's policy.
Sure you could do something similar by scripting absolutely everything (if user is in group X, run script X), but AD just makes it so much easier.
Oh yeah, that's really cool. Sorry but you can't get a profile larger than 100MB, yeah we have multi-terabyte systems but you can't use them conveniently. I have one user that currently has a home directory of 1.2TB on her Mac and it does it without complaining, the user doesn't even notice it's on the network.
There's nothing stopping you doing that on Windows either; i'm not sure what your point is here.
As far as the admin point, some software doesn't run without being an admin. Most non-mainstream software will require your user to be an admin. Most if not all research software will require your user to be an admin. For some or another reason, elevating privileges was not something that has been engrained into the operating system (most Unix-based software can elevate right from within the program when you need the functionality) but rather something that has been tacked on later and it's an all-or-nothing deal so you need it before starting a program and it's not trivial to do so either (if it works at all)
Name me a few. This problem has largely gone away with the exception of a few antique programs you'd probably virtualize them now anyway. Also, if any one program does require elevation you still don't need the entire user to be admin.
Mac's have something like Active Directory, it's called Open Directory (based on OpenLDAP) and it can do the same stuff AD does. It even integrates with AD if you really need it to augment AD.
AD and OD are comparable in that they both do authentication and that OD provides some basic resource management (mounting shares automatically, running scripts etc). It still pales into insignificance against what AD can provide; group policies; load balancing; network trusts, etc
Roaming profiles are a bad idea IMO unless you back them up with size limits...and virus outbreaks become a null-point the minute you don't make everyone a local admin.
And frankly I don't buy that Mac's are more reliable than PCs; point. Especially, as one AC said if you have an admin with half a brain. Not to mention Mac's have nothing in the way of Active Directory.
How about rock solid secure to the point I can deploy without special virus protection?
You can't really drive-by infect Windows 7/Vista so you can probably do away with virus protection. These days it's relegated to "directory of stuff you really shouldn't run at all".
What's gonna push people onto Windows 7 will be 4Gig ram+ which I predict will become far more of an issue with 32 bit OSs sooner than people think. XP has 64 bit, but it's only been niche at best. There'll come a time when your system will just need more than 4gig, and that won't fly on XP.
I thought it was a decent game; good graphics, excellent atmosphere and really well choreographed scenes & story telling. I've not played System Shock 2, but you can't deny it was good fun. Playing it the 2nd time round is worth doing too; noticing stuff that's explained later on is good fun too - a bit like watching The Matrix the 2nd time round; suddenly everything's much clearer.
...but you wouldn't think so looking through some of these comments. Office works real well with MOSS (Paid version of SharePoint); which works real nice on a Active Directory and SQL Server; which is only realistic on Windows Server. When I say works well, I mean your grandmother could get it running.
Office on it's own is missing the point really; documents should never stay on just one machine.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Office.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy this technically inferior rubbish either. Linux works differently; has a different design philosophy, and frankly isn't comparable to Windows if you ask me.
Linux is great for some things; Windows for others. I don't actually see much cross-over to be honest, and to say "omg $OS is so much better that $ALT_OS" is frankly little more than flamebait.
The case-sensitive names for example. That was a deliberate decision I think 99% of users are glad they did in Windows, save the hardened unix guys perhaps. I mean; how often would you want to keep "FILE" and "file" file-names in the same directory anyway?
I for one am glad there isn't just one way of doing everything.
I know; now Apple and Linux have flooded the desktop market, it's nice to see good old Windows still trying to enter that elusive segment.
Hi FOSS Astroturfer,
I've used Windows 7 too. It's nothing like Vista and is actually incredibly advanced. I noticed my FPS rate in games doubled over XP & Vista. Also, I didn't have to even install it, it installed itself....and purchased itself, just by me thinking about it. Yeah, I had to sell my soul to Bill Gates as part of product activation, but now I've got Windows 7 I get laid 4 times a day, have been promoted to head of everything cool at work, and have lost the beer belly - all thanks to the "User Tuning Wizard" new feature of Windows 7.
Honestly, you must've run the beta or something.
The thing is, people have apps written before Linux was even invented they still want to run today; and in my opinion your best shot at that is on Windows; the 32-bit versions still can still run 16-bit apps compiled centuries ago.
Freedom & choice is great and all, no one denies that but practicality usually comes first.
I'm sure it'll only lead to only completely accurate portrays of true English culture, just like how America's Army does similar for the US army.
So expect:
- Restaurant Simulator - using entirely British food and cooking techniques; build a world-beating restaurant that makes Italians cry.
- British Football 3D - play entirely respectful games of football winning with skill, but also good manners and complimenting the opponents to victory.
- Railways on-line - improve an already perfect railway to be even more "perfecter". The more you make the French jealous, the more points you get.
I can't wait!
...then use group policies to push out AV updates automatically & lock down the desktops remotely and automatically. Samba is a half-cut replacement for a proper Windows Server when it comes to Windows workstations (sorry samba guys; samba is good, but ultimately lags far behind what it's trying to imitate)
Windows XP is only really so vulnerable to viruses because normally it runs in "everything as root" mode; which, if you had a proper Windows server you could change in seconds (not that you couldn't do this manually, but with AD it's automatic network-wide).
...and yet for all of that, nobody else had been able to make much inroad. Hmmm.
Failure to do so will result in deactivation and data loss.
Citation (badly) needed.
...the evidence: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1696/bing2.jpg
this reminds me of an old phone I used to have that implemented perhaps the very opposite of this idea...
It would vibrate to tell me the battery was running low in silent mode. Problem was just by doing that it actually used up the last of the power it was supposed to warn me about being low, effectively making it some kind of ironic suicide warning.
...as it's gonna be called Windows 7 "E" and delivered/configured separately from the normal install, like the Windows Vista "N" version (minus media player)....which totally tanked, because real people actually don't care what browser / media player comes with their PC. Unless of course you have an iPod/iPhone which requires iTunes.
This is a dance around a formality that may or may not have a justified cause; looks like Microsoft are dealing with the problem before it causes a real problem later on.
It is more than that; first it syncs into the "cloud" - kinda like the best backup storage you'll ever have. Second; the remote desktop access from any device to any device is damned handy.
Are they even similar? Mesh is a tool for sharing files across multiple machines.....Wave is a tool for communication and collaboration?
For the record, Mesh is a damned fine service; I use it to backup all my critical data over all my machines as well as for it's remote desktop to any of the meshed machines.
A key quote from that article was:
this accident brought to international attention the problem of jet lag as a contributing factor to pilot errors
Computers don't get jet-lag. The human vs computer argument always assumes that the human is in tip-top condition, which is a big assumption.