I particularly liked when the A320 came down in the Hudson how, it was "all thanks to the pilot"...and yes, in part it was, but the minute another airbus falls out the sky and it's fatal this time (as crashes often are) it's clearly because of poor design philosophy?
Meh, this whole thing stinks of US vs EU chest-bashing.
It does, it just uses MOSS to do it; Word being the front-end. Same as Excel, PowerPoint, etc, etc. You can rollback versions; compare any two versions; pretty much everything you'd expect from a version-control system.
I mean; I would've thought hardware would be much more of a factor than software. Netbooks etc; and like, really, whatever OS floats your boat the most.
While I can't speak for the others, I know Microsoft are growing their online infrastructure hugely now; at approx rate of "one facebook worth of servers every month" as one guy told me.
Most of it's consumer Live stuff, but there are plans to expand corporate services too so I understand.
...I saw in one presentation their chief architect did. They had no complaints about it; apparently it scales brilliantly as long as the db schema is very simple.
For heavy-weight databases though, I gather it's not so good.
Actually, all of them; they all used keygens to install and after re-arming Vista every 30 days until the end of the 120 days or whatever it is; Vista in most cases had gone into "ok so you blatantly haven't paid for me" mode.
I know what you're getting at, and yes, it's possible to have a perfectly valid install source with WGA flag your system, but in my experience; if you have a valid DVD, you have a valid serial too & visa versa.
Anyway, this isn't trying to completely justify WGA as a "it's all about the customer" thing because at the end of the day it exists because it ultimately makes cash off pirates, but there is also some logic behind notifying people their OS clearly wasn't setup legitimately.
Believe it or not, there's actually something to say about ensuring Windows is "genuine" as such; and really this is new to Vista +...
I've seen a few Vista installs now where Windows was completely screwed (no laughing at the back) for no apparent reason, and more importantly would not update. On digging around a bit more, it turned out almost in every case they'd downloaded it off bittorrent/emule, burnt it to disc, and fired it up.
Thing is, Vista is more flexible than ever for OEMs and system builders to streamline their own stuff into the install process so this is a hackers dream; take most popular OS on the planet; "Customise" it with rootkit/trojan; release to downloaders via bittorent and tada...pre-rooted Windows for the pirating masses.
So that's why there is some value in knowing your Windows came from Microsoft direct (rather than some h4x0r)
Yeah that's perhaps the fairest critique I've seen on Slashdot of Vista in a while. I tend to find operations like that may give me the spinning blue doughnut of doom for a split second, but be instant thereafter.
Can't say for W7 on that; I've only used it in VMs for now, so probably not the fairest comparison. That said it did run reasonably on just 512Mb (no apps, just browsing).
That's a bit harsh; Vista's biggest downfall was that it took the bullet for things that needed to happen for a long time. Non-admin rights by default, a serious 64 bit version, an overhaul of many driver subsystems, and loads more. That combined with the fact the development of Vista was far from smooth (meaning OEMs just weren't ready for it) meant a bumpy landing when it finally touched-down. Vista was the medicine that nobody wanted to take, that was the only thing wrong with it.
Anyway it's 3 years on now; it's matured, and frankly the Windows universe is a far better place for Vista. Windows 7 just starts where the Vista transition pains ended basically, so of course it's going to be better.
First, if you want to talk about benchmarking tests speed, actually there's actually very little difference at all now between Vista and XP.
That leads us to "general user responsiveness" benchmarks...a user clicks something; how long before Windows finishes to do what the user said. Well, that's a more tricky one, but given a system has 2Gb RAM+ and has been used for a while Vista & Windows 7 will easily out-perform XP given how SuperFetch doesn't exist in XP. Any less and, well, who knows.
Finally, TFA linked suggesting Vista is slow is (unsurprisingly) dated Dec 27, 2006; probably not the most relevant material nowadays.
High-end graphics cards are rarely sold because of their real-world in game performance which is often insanely high; too high to notice in any game on release anyway. Nope, in my experience $600 graphics cards is all about bragging rights and benchmarks. It's the same category of people that buy water-cooling and ram chip heat-sinks & fans; they just want to squeeze that last 2% throughput out their probably insanely overclocked systems for the highest benchmarks possible.
It's actually good fun if you're into that; what you learn in overclocking is quite astonishing, but the super-high-end graphics cards are all part of that game.
To be honest, I don't see them as problems for most normal people & companies either. On the driver side though you have to remember that XP has 10 years of driver investment behind it; Vista has 2, so that's 8 years of discontinued hardware that will never work in Vista. For some that's a show-stopper, for most not a problem.
The 64-bit thing I mentioned just because the teething problems of the Vista gets lumped into one category from the 2 very different architectures. A bit like how some places still hang onto 16 bit + Win 3.11 apps now - ancient systems which have just never been updated.
And the IE6 thing is a hang-over from the browser-wars and the days of hugely varying HTML standards. Some apps were written for IE5, then to 5.5, and just made it into 6. It's changing now, but I remember even some MS stuff that had problems in IE7 until they patched it, so imagine for other big browser-based apps; they too will probably be forever incompatible until replaced completely, which doesn't happen overnight.
This is all stuff that's going to improve and hopefully will be a distant memory, but things move slowly in some (very small) circles; it's in these that Vista+ just isn't an option yet.
Spanners in the works: -New driver model meaning much older hardware just doesn't work. -UAC breaks lots of badly written apps. Causes huge annoyances at best in these instances. -64bit. First serious 64 bit consumer Windows. -No IE6. You wouldn't believe how many legacy apps require IE6 and/or ActiveX, it's quite sickening actually.
Any one of these can be a show-stopped for your app/system, and on older apps this can be a nightmare to have to work round that often isn't worth the investment until forced. I've seen many legacy business apps in particular that break because of Windows re-engineering (Vista). Same applies for Win7.
How about updating the front-page to work with IE8 now it's all standards compliant? It clearly doesn't think the page is standards-compliant so offers the "compatibility view"; both produce JavaScript errors and neither renders correctly.
Ahhh....
You hear that?
That was the sound of a thousand geeks exploding in rage at once.
I've always enjoyed Molyneux games for the new ideas he tries to pack in. Black & White for example; a great game in that it provided some genuinely different game-play to anything else ever. A few of us played that game for an entire weekend once; it's slow enough to leave running while eating/drinking/sleeping, but involving enough to play when and if you want. It was quite funny to wake up to find your creature had randomly taught itself to fling faeces at non-friendly villages and promptly eat all the villagers once this bizarre spectacle had converted the hearts and minds of an opposition village to your cause.
Anyway, the point is, the guy's trying to inject some originality into gameplay at least; some times it works, other times not.
I actually remember being told by management in a much previouser place to hook up our internet to the unsecured cafe wireless below us because no one could work until the ISP reconnected us (didn't pay the bills). They must've got one hell of a shock as 20 or so machines all started connecting out to the mail server through their wireless via one tablet PC dangling down below through an office window via the Ethernet to get the best connection possible.
And yeah, "management" (far too classy a word for these people) knew exactly what they were doing.
I find these reviews of "converting to linux" a bit pointless really; they're only ever one persons' perspective on what a conversion is, of which I often find I can't relate to much of what they go through.
I'd suggest if someone wants to do a "Linux conversion log" type write-up, they consider a target audience. In particular, i'd like to see:
- The web-user; email, web, and IM (99% of reviews fall into this category) - The business user; Exchange, blackberry, important Office data (spreadsheet, word), Wifi, power-saving management, enterprise facilities - The multimedia user: MP3, iPod sync, games, DVD, video editing.
That in my opinion makes up most computer users, and in particular most MacOS/Windows users...the target audience. Take a person from each category and see how they survive 2 weeks on Linux; that I'd be truly interested in.
Sorry if this comes across as rather elitist, but the all-encumbering anti-virus packages these days just seem so out of date. Norton has always sold itself on the basis it has every possible corner and hole of Windows plugged, checked, double-checked and clamped shut (that is...until your subscription ran out anyway)
Up until a few years ago, I would have really wanted that assurance...like there was a big Daddy Norton with a big fuck-off gun vigilantly checking all entrances; verifying all in & out; assuming guilt until proven innocent.
Thing is, as much as people here may dislike Vista, one thing I think no one will deny is that it's a version of Windows far more capable of taking care of itself; the effect being that AV really doesn't need to be the relentless and fearsome bouncer it was. Gone are the days when you could "just write in the system32 dir" etc; nay, even programs not rubber-stamped with a certificate that don't need root access will raise an eyebrow in the shell in Vista/W7.
My point is, AV now is nothing more than a "These programs are bad" list. The leaky sieve that was Windows past is diminishing every, and heavy security like Norton is becoming less and less relevant (thank god)...and they know it. Good riddance I say.
It's not just about "locking down" the desktop; this is quite easy in just about any OS, the real issue here is top-to-bottom manageability.
So yes, specific security requirements is part of that. Now say for example you want to push out the new OpenOffice to all of accounts department only...and assuming no deployment problems, sales, and R&D too.
Next, patching. Show me all machines that haven't patched $NameOfPatchHere you deployed to the company a few weeks after it was made available to the world (giving enough testing time to be sure there's no reports of anything breaking online first).
Next, branding. The company changes name; merges with another. You want all reference of $COMPANY_X changed to $COMPANY_Y; screensavers, wallpapers, etc, etc. Rebuilding each machine image isn't an option.
Next; security. You want to open an incoming port on every local firewall for a new teleconferencing system...but only for R&D. By default all non MS-AD ports are sealed off.
Windows AD does all of this in about 2 clicks per above need. Doesn't matter if you have 5 clients of 5000.
...the one's that nobody wants (i.e sans media player).
That way Microsoft can say they've complied, nobody will want it as it's not in Microsoft's best interest to push it, and the whole thing will be a shocking waste of money over nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
From where I'm sitting, it seems boeings fall out the sky with more often and with more devastating results than Airbuses - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2008892.stm
I particularly liked when the A320 came down in the Hudson how, it was "all thanks to the pilot"...and yes, in part it was, but the minute another airbus falls out the sky and it's fatal this time (as crashes often are) it's clearly because of poor design philosophy?
Meh, this whole thing stinks of US vs EU chest-bashing.
"-Editor's note: The original version of this story was amended to reflect the fact that the unit can be turned off by the driver."
It does, it just uses MOSS to do it; Word being the front-end. Same as Excel, PowerPoint, etc, etc. You can rollback versions; compare any two versions; pretty much everything you'd expect from a version-control system.
I mean; I would've thought hardware would be much more of a factor than software. Netbooks etc; and like, really, whatever OS floats your boat the most.
...if the OSS community was as honest (and constructive) as this guy it might have a chance on the general-purpose desktop against Windows.
Karma be damned; I thought that despite the provocative headline, it was a really refreshing criticism of Linux on the desktop.
While I can't speak for the others, I know Microsoft are growing their online infrastructure hugely now; at approx rate of "one facebook worth of servers every month" as one guy told me.
Most of it's consumer Live stuff, but there are plans to expand corporate services too so I understand.
...I saw in one presentation their chief architect did. They had no complaints about it; apparently it scales brilliantly as long as the db schema is very simple.
For heavy-weight databases though, I gather it's not so good.
Actually, all of them; they all used keygens to install and after re-arming Vista every 30 days until the end of the 120 days or whatever it is; Vista in most cases had gone into "ok so you blatantly haven't paid for me" mode.
I know what you're getting at, and yes, it's possible to have a perfectly valid install source with WGA flag your system, but in my experience; if you have a valid DVD, you have a valid serial too & visa versa.
Anyway, this isn't trying to completely justify WGA as a "it's all about the customer" thing because at the end of the day it exists because it ultimately makes cash off pirates, but there is also some logic behind notifying people their OS clearly wasn't setup legitimately.
Believe it or not, there's actually something to say about ensuring Windows is "genuine" as such; and really this is new to Vista +...
I've seen a few Vista installs now where Windows was completely screwed (no laughing at the back) for no apparent reason, and more importantly would not update. On digging around a bit more, it turned out almost in every case they'd downloaded it off bittorrent/emule, burnt it to disc, and fired it up.
Thing is, Vista is more flexible than ever for OEMs and system builders to streamline their own stuff into the install process so this is a hackers dream; take most popular OS on the planet; "Customise" it with rootkit/trojan; release to downloaders via bittorent and tada...pre-rooted Windows for the pirating masses.
So that's why there is some value in knowing your Windows came from Microsoft direct (rather than some h4x0r)
Yeah that's perhaps the fairest critique I've seen on Slashdot of Vista in a while. I tend to find operations like that may give me the spinning blue doughnut of doom for a split second, but be instant thereafter.
Can't say for W7 on that; I've only used it in VMs for now, so probably not the fairest comparison. That said it did run reasonably on just 512Mb (no apps, just browsing).
That's a bit harsh; Vista's biggest downfall was that it took the bullet for things that needed to happen for a long time. Non-admin rights by default, a serious 64 bit version, an overhaul of many driver subsystems, and loads more. That combined with the fact the development of Vista was far from smooth (meaning OEMs just weren't ready for it) meant a bumpy landing when it finally touched-down. Vista was the medicine that nobody wanted to take, that was the only thing wrong with it.
Anyway it's 3 years on now; it's matured, and frankly the Windows universe is a far better place for Vista. Windows 7 just starts where the Vista transition pains ended basically, so of course it's going to be better.
First, if you want to talk about benchmarking tests speed, actually there's actually very little difference at all now between Vista and XP.
That leads us to "general user responsiveness" benchmarks...a user clicks something; how long before Windows finishes to do what the user said. Well, that's a more tricky one, but given a system has 2Gb RAM+ and has been used for a while Vista & Windows 7 will easily out-perform XP given how SuperFetch doesn't exist in XP. Any less and, well, who knows.
Finally, TFA linked suggesting Vista is slow is (unsurprisingly) dated Dec 27, 2006; probably not the most relevant material nowadays.
No is the easy answer.
High-end graphics cards are rarely sold because of their real-world in game performance which is often insanely high; too high to notice in any game on release anyway. Nope, in my experience $600 graphics cards is all about bragging rights and benchmarks. It's the same category of people that buy water-cooling and ram chip heat-sinks & fans; they just want to squeeze that last 2% throughput out their probably insanely overclocked systems for the highest benchmarks possible.
It's actually good fun if you're into that; what you learn in overclocking is quite astonishing, but the super-high-end graphics cards are all part of that game.
Run for the hills
To be honest, I don't see them as problems for most normal people & companies either. On the driver side though you have to remember that XP has 10 years of driver investment behind it; Vista has 2, so that's 8 years of discontinued hardware that will never work in Vista. For some that's a show-stopper, for most not a problem.
The 64-bit thing I mentioned just because the teething problems of the Vista gets lumped into one category from the 2 very different architectures. A bit like how some places still hang onto 16 bit + Win 3.11 apps now - ancient systems which have just never been updated.
And the IE6 thing is a hang-over from the browser-wars and the days of hugely varying HTML standards.
Some apps were written for IE5, then to 5.5, and just made it into 6. It's changing now, but I remember even some MS stuff that had problems in IE7 until they patched it, so imagine for other big browser-based apps; they too will probably be forever incompatible until replaced completely, which doesn't happen overnight.
This is all stuff that's going to improve and hopefully will be a distant memory, but things move slowly in some (very small) circles; it's in these that Vista+ just isn't an option yet.
Same reasons many can't upgrade to Vista...
Spanners in the works:
-New driver model meaning much older hardware just doesn't work.
-UAC breaks lots of badly written apps. Causes huge annoyances at best in these instances.
-64bit. First serious 64 bit consumer Windows.
-No IE6. You wouldn't believe how many legacy apps require IE6 and/or ActiveX, it's quite sickening actually.
Any one of these can be a show-stopped for your app/system, and on older apps this can be a nightmare to have to work round that often isn't worth the investment until forced. I've seen many legacy business apps in particular that break because of Windows re-engineering (Vista). Same applies for Win7.
How about updating the front-page to work with IE8 now it's all standards compliant? It clearly doesn't think the page is standards-compliant so offers the "compatibility view"; both produce JavaScript errors and neither renders correctly.
Ahhh....
You hear that?
That was the sound of a thousand geeks exploding in rage at once.
*dons flameproof jacket and awaits IE rage*
I've always enjoyed Molyneux games for the new ideas he tries to pack in. Black & White for example; a great game in that it provided some genuinely different game-play to anything else ever. A few of us played that game for an entire weekend once; it's slow enough to leave running while eating/drinking/sleeping, but involving enough to play when and if you want.
It was quite funny to wake up to find your creature had randomly taught itself to fling faeces at non-friendly villages and promptly eat all the villagers once this bizarre spectacle had converted the hearts and minds of an opposition village to your cause.
Anyway, the point is, the guy's trying to inject some originality into gameplay at least; some times it works, other times not.
I actually remember being told by management in a much previouser place to hook up our internet to the unsecured cafe wireless below us because no one could work until the ISP reconnected us (didn't pay the bills). They must've got one hell of a shock as 20 or so machines all started connecting out to the mail server through their wireless via one tablet PC dangling down below through an office window via the Ethernet to get the best connection possible.
And yeah, "management" (far too classy a word for these people) knew exactly what they were doing.
Happy days :)
I find these reviews of "converting to linux" a bit pointless really; they're only ever one persons' perspective on what a conversion is, of which I often find I can't relate to much of what they go through.
I'd suggest if someone wants to do a "Linux conversion log" type write-up, they consider a target audience. In particular, i'd like to see:
- The web-user; email, web, and IM (99% of reviews fall into this category)
- The business user; Exchange, blackberry, important Office data (spreadsheet, word), Wifi, power-saving management, enterprise facilities
- The multimedia user: MP3, iPod sync, games, DVD, video editing.
That in my opinion makes up most computer users, and in particular most MacOS/Windows users...the target audience. Take a person from each category and see how they survive 2 weeks on Linux; that I'd be truly interested in.
Sorry if this comes across as rather elitist, but the all-encumbering anti-virus packages these days just seem so out of date. Norton has always sold itself on the basis it has every possible corner and hole of Windows plugged, checked, double-checked and clamped shut (that is...until your subscription ran out anyway)
Up until a few years ago, I would have really wanted that assurance...like there was a big Daddy Norton with a big fuck-off gun vigilantly checking all entrances; verifying all in & out; assuming guilt until proven innocent.
Thing is, as much as people here may dislike Vista, one thing I think no one will deny is that it's a version of Windows far more capable of taking care of itself; the effect being that AV really doesn't need to be the relentless and fearsome bouncer it was.
Gone are the days when you could "just write in the system32 dir" etc; nay, even programs not rubber-stamped with a certificate that don't need root access will raise an eyebrow in the shell in Vista/W7.
My point is, AV now is nothing more than a "These programs are bad" list. The leaky sieve that was Windows past is diminishing every, and heavy security like Norton is becoming less and less relevant (thank god)...and they know it. Good riddance I say.
It's not just about "locking down" the desktop; this is quite easy in just about any OS, the real issue here is top-to-bottom manageability.
So yes, specific security requirements is part of that.
Now say for example you want to push out the new OpenOffice to all of accounts department only...and assuming no deployment problems, sales, and R&D too.
Next, patching. Show me all machines that haven't patched $NameOfPatchHere you deployed to the company a few weeks after it was made available to the world (giving enough testing time to be sure there's no reports of anything breaking online first).
Next, branding. The company changes name; merges with another. You want all reference of $COMPANY_X changed to $COMPANY_Y; screensavers, wallpapers, etc, etc. Rebuilding each machine image isn't an option.
Next; security. You want to open an incoming port on every local firewall for a new teleconferencing system...but only for R&D. By default all non MS-AD ports are sealed off.
Windows AD does all of this in about 2 clicks per above need. Doesn't matter if you have 5 clients of 5000.
...that alone proves to me Windows coming with IE by default doesn't elbow any other browser off the desktop.
I don't even use IE myself for most sites, but this seems rather like the competition seeing a chance to bash Microsoft and taking full advantage.
...the one's that nobody wants (i.e sans media player).
That way Microsoft can say they've complied, nobody will want it as it's not in Microsoft's best interest to push it, and the whole thing will be a shocking waste of money over nothing.
*sigh*
So slashdot, what should it be?
Break standards and keep compatibility? Or break compatibility and be standards compliant?
Either way they'll be unpopular it appears. At least in the short-term.