>I thought part of the point of UAC was to virtualize many of the filesystem parts of being an administrator so you could install programs without actually being administrator
No, it's the other way around. UAC removes lots of privileges of an administrator from the administrator until they explicitly approve them.
So, if a normal user tries to install some system software, they won't be allowed to. If an administrator tries to install it, they will be prompted 'are you sure this is OK?' first.
It's essentially Microsoft's way around the problem of lots of Windows users always running as administrator. Now, they can run as administrator and be reasonably safe, as long as they don't blindly accept any UAC prompts...
> They allow me to decide what I want to install, and what I want to do with it. That is something MS has long ago taken away away from their customer base, and people like you see nothing wrong it.
What? When?
I can install anything I want, and do anything with it that it can do. I'm not sure what you think Microsoft have done, but, although they may have done quite a few dubious things, they haven't restricted what you can install and what you can do with it.
Microsoft haven't made Windows so you can't install Oracle, or Domino Server, or Firefox. They could if they wanted, and THAT would be bad, but you can install anything you want, even if it's a competitor to Microsoft.
In fact, it may be 'safer for the world' if Microsoft DID restrict what you could install.... (less viruses/trojans:) )
The main thing that people seem to complain about with Microsoft is that they charge money for their software, and they try to stop people pirating their software. ZOMG!
(PS - If you are complaining about an Adobe nag screen, complain to Adobe, not about Microsoft...)
I'm not sure what this 'software' is that you're talking about.
All DRM is is a way of encrypting data and restricting who can decrypt it. The 'software' (like Media Player/whatever) is the decrypting software. It can't decrypt the data (the music/videos) unless it has the key. It's not Microsoft's fault you haven't got the key. If they didn't supply you with the decrypter (WMP), people would quite rightly complain.
You may as well say that if you have encrypted your disk, you can't read it unless you use the decryption software and have the key.
All DRM is doing is saying telling the computer who has the right to access (decrypt) certain files which have been 'DRMed' by the content creator.
If content has not been DRMed then even the most DRM-aware OS would not restrict you from doing something with it.
Hacking a DLL and expecting the app to work is nothing to do with DRM, it's either Adobe's copy protection scheme or a buggy DLL. The whole article is just 'dumb user' nonsense. Whoever wrote that obviously thinks they know about computers, but really haven't got a clue.
In the UK, our local RSPCA branch will sell you a domesticated rescue cat, but they'll GIVE you an 'stable & farm cat' (ie a feral cat) for you to keep in your farmyard. Feral cats are much harder to house, so they are glad to give them to anyone who has the space, and wants them as pest controllers and will take care of them.
http://www.rspca-huddersfield.org.uk/cats.html "The deal - Permanent rodent control of barns & outbuildings in exchange for a cosy corner to sleep, daily food & water, regular worming & a humane end when the time comes.
There is no charge for these cats."
Basically, with feral cats they have two choices, kill them or give them to someone who wants a mousetrap and will look after it accordingly. If you cared about cats, which would you do?
But most cats don't want to kill on the initial pounce, that's boring, they want to play for three hours as various limbs drop off, and innards start trailing outside, until eventually the poor thing gives up the ghost (or its head gets ripped off). That's much more fun (except for the owner who has to find all the bits left all over the house, hopefully before babies start putting them in their mouths... BTDTGTT...)
One of our cats killed a stoat once, I'm pretty sure they're more vicious than rats. The cat was injured afterwards, but nothing too serious, the vet just cleaned up the wound and let it heal itself.
However, just having cats who chase mice will help to keep rats & mice away as they don't like the stress and will go elsewhere unless there's something really tempting near your cabling (eg old pizzas). (If the cats are too lazy to chase mice, they don't have any effect at all). If you got chased by a tiger every time you went out of your house, you'd probably want to move as well!
We got two kittens about 9 years ago, their mother was a feral cat who died while the kittens were still VERY small. (All the kittens except the two we got had starved). I seriously doubt they had been taught anything by their mother.
They were wonderful mousers (and 'molers', and, on one occasion 'stoaters' as well).
The drawback was, as has previously been mentioned by other people, they did like bringing mice into the house. Sometimes they were dead, as presents for us, other times they obviously thought we didn't get enough exercise and brought us a nice live one for us to play with...
We have just got a new kitten, and that has a wonderful instinct for catching mice as well although it lived in a cat rescue (sans mice) from birth. Just this last week we managed to bring a mouse into the house in a bag of logs, and although it didn't catch it (I think it was 'supermouse', it moved so darned quickly!) we could always tell where it was (the kitten would sit for hours staring at the piece of furniture that the mouse was behind), and if it moved (by the mad rush as the kitten would chase after it as it shot down the stairs at 300 miles an hour). (We caught the mouse in a mousetrap this morning, phew)
It's different from a monopoly's position in that you can just go out and buy a different phone. One that does essentially the same thing. (Or a different MP3 player or a different computer). You can't just go out and buy a non-Microsoft version of Windows.
So, if you don't like the product tying, do what I do, and stay clear of Apple. You don't lose out (except from iTunes trashing your computer, and a more rapidly decreasing bank balance). I wouldn't say that product tying is 'bad', but I do think it's stupid (Apple obviously disagree, and they may be in a strong enough position for it to work for them). I'd be more willing to consider Apple products if there wasn't the tying, but I don't think they'll be losing sleep because of a few people who choose what to buy based on that rather than visual appeal or keeping in with the crowd.
(You could say that Windows isn't a monopoly, there's Linux and MacOS in competition - but the courts don't see it that way)
In many hot countries, house design is influenced by the climate. For instance, we go to Portugal on holiday a lot. There, you can be in a house when it's 90+ degrees outside for weeks on end, and inside it's in the 'cool -> comfortable' range - with no air conditioning or fans. The reasons are design features such as light coloured exteriors to reflect the sunlight, tile floors, lots of windows for airflow and verandas/shutters to keep sunlight out of the windows.
Of course, if there is no wind at all, it can get uncomfortably hot, but where we go there's nearly always a slight breeze from the sea or the mountains, so everything is pleasantly cool in the house except for the couple of weeks a year when the wind goes on holiday.
There is the other argument that tropical swamps and deserts are not necessarily good places to live when there are lots of alternative places with more hospitable climates in the same country... Hopefully when energy prices soar over the next 10-20 years, people will start considering the more temperate regions!
The one I can see as working is a horizontal multi-touch touch-screen - not as a replacement to your monitor, but as an addition. You could use it with your finger for "approximate" movement like a mouse, or with a stylus for detailed movement (drawing etc). The screen could display things, so you could have menu items on the borders, with the centre being for cursor movement, or you could draw directly on it etc. If you could make a rugged-ish, portable 1/4" thick, A5 size touch screen, that would be ideal. It wouldn't need a lot of the features of monitors (eg grey-scale or 64 colours, long display persistence etc (eg ePaper) would all be fine for this, and it could even be displayed on over USB - it wouldn't need a high-speed raster graphics capability).
Some laptops might even be able to get away with not having a keyboard at all, just two screens, one for viewing, and a touch-sensitive one which can act as a keyboard/mouse/pen input/etc rolled into one (like a tablet PC & ordinary laptop combined).
At least you don't need to break out GCC and recompile the kernel at random intervals... Again, this is an issue of Microsoft having to cater for 'dumb users'. Linux users will generally be the sort of people who keep track of all the bugs which come out that mean they need to update (yes, it happens just as much for Linux as it does for Windows) and do the updates themselves, and schedule a restart.
Windows USED to do that, but no one updated, so there were lots of unpatched versions of Windows which meant there were lots of hacked versions of Windows around. So, Microsoft changed this to strongly try to encourage users to update. Windows will never force an reboot on you. It will say there are updates and it's going to reboot in 5 minutes, but you can postpone the reboot if you're in the middle of something. This happens regularly to me. If you don't like it, then just turn off the autoupdates, you have the choice. Then you need to work 'the linux way' and regularly check for updates and manually download them.
Updates often need reboots because they are updating files that are in use. Even Linux needs a reboot then. If the disk driver needs updating, or the kernel needs updating or the TCP stack needs updating etc, you'll either need to do a reboot or do some esoteric things to do the updates without a reboot. Even if something less 'core' such as the gzip libraries etc needs updating, you'll probably either need to do a reboot, or close down lots of the programs to do the update. For an average user, a reboot is simpler than working out what you need to close down to do the update without doing a reboot.
Issues like this are the same for everyone, but if Windows does it, then it's Microsoft's incompetence, and if Linux does it, then obviously that's the way it's got to be.
OK, maybe early versions of Windows didn't encourage strict setting of access permissions - and that has allowed bad games developers to get away with it for too long. Versions of Windows for the past 8 years or so are much better at this, but Microsoft are really between a rock and a hard place with it. With Vista, they've started essentially FORCING people not to run with admin rights all the time (with UAC etc), because the gentle encouragement since W2k hasn't worked, but lots of people moan about that. So, what are they to do?
AFAIAA, all the Windows applications made by Microsoft will run with the appropriate level of user permissions. The problem is with everyone else's applications.
The only reason Linux is 'more secure' than Windows is because all the dumb Windows users are using Windows. If they all moved over to Linux, there'd be millions of Linux boxes logged in as root all the time, with thousands of viruses being written for Linux, Linux based botnets etc etc.
A lot of the reasons people state for why 'Linux rules' are primarily BECAUSE it's not widely used. If you want Linux to keep its good rep, don't encourage average home users to use it!
Even the NSA would have to devote a significant part of their resources. 95^12 is over 500 sextillion combinations. So, say you've got a really really fast CPU that can do 1 billion test decrypts a second (which is unfeasibly fast at the current time). It would take that computer over 17 million years to find the password.
So, let's say that the NSA has a million CPUs at their disposal, it would still take over 17 years to decrypt. So, they'd have to be pretty sure that you have some seriously cool porn on your PC before they start devoting 100,000,000 impossibly fast CPUs to the task of cracking your password in a couple of months.
The Storm Botnet would take centuries to hack a random 12 character password (it would cut down on spam though).
Of course, if you choose 'password' as your password it might not take quite as long.
If they are a web application development house, then they could, feasibly, decide on PHP, or Java, (or C#/ASP if their clients all use IIS) or whatever and all would be fine. If the company has a narrow range like that, then I'd say you'd probably be better choosing one set (eg PHP) than having several, with each developer choosing their favourite (one uses PHP, one uses Java, one uses ASP, one uses Python, one uses C++ etc)
But if they are a general purpose software house which does all sorts, then, try writing device drivers in Java, or web applications in C/assembler and good luck with that... Pretty much the only language which could do almost 'everything' would be C (you might need assembler for some things, but that might be going too far) and using that for everything would drive productivity through the floor.
OTOH, to a degree, slavishly using the 'best' language for the job can cause problems. Sometimes the weighting of developer familiarity & experience into the 'what is best' equation is ignored. For instance, if you need to write a quick utility, and the only developer you have handy is a web developer, then it may be best just to use PHP, rather than teach that developer how to write in C++.
Each job really has a range of languages that could be used for it, the actual "best" to be used to do that job by one group of developers may be different from the "best" used by a different set of developers (assuming "best" means "getting the best productivity, accuracy and reliability" rather than "having the language features which most closely match the job requirements")
Part of terrorism is the 'if you don't go along with our demands, we'll do it again' aspect as well.
One person going into a mall and shooting everyone isn't terrorism. One person planting a little bomb in a mall, then sending a message 'if you don't all worship the Sith I'll plant a nuke next time', IS terrorism. Using the nuke isn't necessary to be a terrorist, but *threatening* to *is*. It's the *fear* of danger which makes terrorism work. The point of terrorism isn't to kill people, it's to frighten the people who weren't killed.
On that thinking, the USA should still be 'punished' for slavery, as they are still profiting from it, and the mess caused by that offense perpetuates to this day....
Of course, this depends on what you mean by 'better'.
For some people, speed might equal 'better', for others, functionality, or ease of use, or low memory usage, or accuracy (eg for mathematical programs) etc. A lot of Windows development has been aimed at improving ease of use (whether it's achieved it or not is debatable), but that will, almost necessarily, slow it down.
If you compare, say, LaTeX with Word 2007 for writing documents, I'd bet Word wastes more CPU cycles, and uses more memory, but, for most people, it's far easier to use. Which is "better"? Ask a typical bank manager, and you'll get one answer, ask a mathematician and you might get a different answer.
Is DOS 3.2 "better" than Windows XP? Well, again, it depends. If you have a 256kB 286 PC, the chances are you'd say DOS 3.2, if you have a 1GB P4, most people would say Windows XP.
Most people don't run CPU intensive software (ie they use email, web browsing, Solitaire and, maybe, word processing). So, for them, you may as well use all those abundant CPU cycles for making things pretty or easier to use, rather than just 'wasting' them.
With Creative (and other HDD manufacturers), you totally get what you pay for. You just don't get what you THOUGHT you'd paid for. There is a difference.
As other people have said, RAM is about the only thing where it makes sense to measure it in 2^n numbers. That's because it is nowadays generally addressed using a certain number of binary address lines, so it will nearly always going to be a power of 2. Hard disks on the other hand can be any number of 512 byte sectors. There is no binary addressing involved, so using standard 10^n numbering is best. I suppose you COULD sue Microsoft & Linus for displaying file sizes in 2^n sizes rather than 10^n sizes - that would make more sense..
If HDD purchasers can't be bothered to find this out, it's not the HDD manufacturer's fault.
BTW, How big is your car engine? A lot of '2 litre' engines are just 1968cc, and so on. Are you going to sue Ford?
On that assumption, an 8 bit 'OS' would only be able to address 256 bytes.. Now, we all know that most 8 bit PCs could access up to 64kb (2^16 address space). Similarly a 16 bit 'OS' (eg Windows 3.1) could access 1MiB (2^20 address space)
The 'bitness' of the processor doesn't determine the size of the address space that can be used, but the size of the 'normal' word of data which is processed. It just so happens that for 32 bit Windows & Linux, they can access a 2^32 address space.
BTW - 64 bit processors can't access a 64 bit address space. Currently, 64 bit Intel processors can access a 2^40 address space.
So, address space is only related very loosely to 'bitness' of processor/OS
Theoretically, a 32 bit processor could have an address space of may TiB - they don't, but it's possible in the same way that 8 bit processors could easily access 64kiB, and that didn't involve trickery like swappable blocks of memory (such as OS9 level 2 had)
For new builds it'd be OK. They will generally install tubes for various things, such as gas, water, sewage etc into most houses anyway, so just add another one.
Sorry, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean there should be 5 million different timezones, one for each locality, but that there shouldn't be timezones at all (except for the one *everyone( uses).
I think, for example New York being "5 hours behind" London is a dumb idea. If everyone was working to UTC, then things would be a lot easier all around, once people got used to going to work at 14:00 and coming home at 22:00 or whatever, depending on where they lived.
Train/plane timetables would be simpler (you wouldn't have planes landing before they've taken off if they're flying west, for instance), and global communication systems would have to keep having to do timezone conversion. Everything like this already works in UTC (or some other chosen fixed timezone) and converts to a timezone at time of display, so if people got used to it, it'd be simpler all round.
The problem is that everyone is used to timezones, and it would take a paradigm shift in people's minds to switch to a timezone free world, and people don't like change.
Well, I was going to argue that it wouldn't be that hard, and start times would self regulate as everyone did it - you'd essentially have a 'change work start time' day instead of a 'change clocks day'.
But, then I thought, no, that would mean that all your TV/radio programs would have to change their start times as well, any "peak/offpeak" times would change, trains, buses, planes etc would all have to change their timetables etc.
So, now I think I think that DST is a good idea (if we have to change 'times' at all, which I'm not totally convinced about). I still think timezones are a dumb idea, but that's a different issue (what universal rule is there that everyone has to work "9 to 5"? I wonder if the beings orbiting Alpha Centauri work 9 to 5 as well?)
I think if you could get manufacturers to standardise on standard voltages (+/- 12V/5V) and standard power connectors, then you could use either option. People in existing houses would probably use localised PSUs (eg one by the TV, one by the PC etc). New builds may include bus bars (you'd need 5, one for each voltage)
All manufacturers really need to do is to have an option to disable their own PSU (if it's internal) and feed DC power in directly. Devices with external PSUs would just need the standard connectors instead of proprietary ones.
However, I doubt this will happen in the near future without legislation, because there's no motive from the manufacturer's point of view.
(BTW, I get 85% efficiency PSUs for PCs I build or for replacements when the manufacturers' ones go, so you can get good PC PSUs - the 'bargain' ones are almost certainly a lot worse though).
I'm not entirely sure how you get the power loss there to be under 2 watts.
16 gauge wire has a resistance of about 0.013 ohms/metre, or 0.13 ohms for 10 metres. So, power = I^2 * R, so 10 amps is a 13 watt power loss. For a 12V power supply that's about 11% power loss.
Even with 12 gauge wire, you'd lose over 5 watts.
This ignores all the extra losses you'd get because you'd have to have the DC supply producing a higher voltage to handle the voltage drops. If you want to run a high-end PC off it, you may need it to produce, say a kilowatt - that's 83 amps at 12V. You lose half a volt per metre cable run at those currents with 12 gauge wire (never mind the cable melting:) ) so for a relatively short 10 metre run, you need to generate at least 17 V at the supply. Now, for anything closer, you have to throw away the extra 5V (using a linear voltage converter, which is cheap, but very inefficient), or use a switched mode DC-DC converter (which is more expensive, and will still have some losses in it). If you're going to need switched mode DC-DC converters everywhere, then why not use a higher voltage so you have less power/voltage loss in the cables? Oh, we're back where we started...
To actually carry your 83 amps at 12V, you'd actually need 3 gauge (preferably 2 gauge) copper wire. That's 6mm diameter - good luck with routing that around your house. If you want to run two PCs and a TV, you'll need 0000 gauge, that's 11mm diameter!
OK, with 0000 gauge wire, you'll only lose 16W with a 100A current (1.3% loss at 12V) so it's quite efficient, but it won't be fun sourcing and then installing a couple of 11mm diameter 'cables' in your house, while maintaining cable integrity every time you go around a corner.
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>I thought part of the point of UAC was to virtualize many of the filesystem parts of being an administrator so you could install programs without actually being administrator
No, it's the other way around. UAC removes lots of privileges of an administrator from the administrator until they explicitly approve them.
So, if a normal user tries to install some system software, they won't be allowed to. If an administrator tries to install it, they will be prompted 'are you sure this is OK?' first.
It's essentially Microsoft's way around the problem of lots of Windows users always running as administrator. Now, they can run as administrator and be reasonably safe, as long as they don't blindly accept any UAC prompts...
> They allow me to decide what I want to install, and what I want to do with it. That is something MS has long ago taken away away from their customer base, and people like you see nothing wrong it.
What? When?
I can install anything I want, and do anything with it that it can do. I'm not sure what you think Microsoft have done, but, although they may have done quite a few dubious things, they haven't restricted what you can install and what you can do with it.
Microsoft haven't made Windows so you can't install Oracle, or Domino Server, or Firefox. They could if they wanted, and THAT would be bad, but you can install anything you want, even if it's a competitor to Microsoft.
In fact, it may be 'safer for the world' if Microsoft DID restrict what you could install.... (less viruses/trojans :) )
The main thing that people seem to complain about with Microsoft is that they charge money for their software, and they try to stop people pirating their software. ZOMG!
(PS - If you are complaining about an Adobe nag screen, complain to Adobe, not about Microsoft...)
I'm not sure what this 'software' is that you're talking about.
All DRM is is a way of encrypting data and restricting who can decrypt it. The 'software' (like Media Player/whatever) is the decrypting software. It can't decrypt the data (the music/videos) unless it has the key. It's not Microsoft's fault you haven't got the key. If they didn't supply you with the decrypter (WMP), people would quite rightly complain.
You may as well say that if you have encrypted your disk, you can't read it unless you use the decryption software and have the key.
All DRM is doing is saying telling the computer who has the right to access (decrypt) certain files which have been 'DRMed' by the content creator.
If content has not been DRMed then even the most DRM-aware OS would not restrict you from doing something with it.
Hacking a DLL and expecting the app to work is nothing to do with DRM, it's either Adobe's copy protection scheme or a buggy DLL. The whole article is just 'dumb user' nonsense. Whoever wrote that obviously thinks they know about computers, but really haven't got a clue.
Really?
In the UK, our local RSPCA branch will sell you a domesticated rescue cat, but they'll GIVE you an 'stable & farm cat' (ie a feral cat) for you to keep in your farmyard. Feral cats are much harder to house, so they are glad to give them to anyone who has the space, and wants them as pest controllers and will take care of them.
http://www.rspca-huddersfield.org.uk/cats.html
"The deal - Permanent rodent control of barns & outbuildings in exchange for a cosy corner to sleep, daily food & water, regular worming & a humane end when the time comes.
There is no charge for these cats."
Basically, with feral cats they have two choices, kill them or give them to someone who wants a mousetrap and will look after it accordingly. If you cared about cats, which would you do?
But most cats don't want to kill on the initial pounce, that's boring, they want to play for three hours as various limbs drop off, and innards start trailing outside, until eventually the poor thing gives up the ghost (or its head gets ripped off). That's much more fun (except for the owner who has to find all the bits left all over the house, hopefully before babies start putting them in their mouths... BTDTGTT...)
One of our cats killed a stoat once, I'm pretty sure they're more vicious than rats. The cat was injured afterwards, but nothing too serious, the vet just cleaned up the wound and let it heal itself.
However, just having cats who chase mice will help to keep rats & mice away as they don't like the stress and will go elsewhere unless there's something really tempting near your cabling (eg old pizzas). (If the cats are too lazy to chase mice, they don't have any effect at all). If you got chased by a tiger every time you went out of your house, you'd probably want to move as well!
Nonsense.
We got two kittens about 9 years ago, their mother was a feral cat who died while the kittens were still VERY small. (All the kittens except the two we got had starved). I seriously doubt they had been taught anything by their mother.
They were wonderful mousers (and 'molers', and, on one occasion 'stoaters' as well).
The drawback was, as has previously been mentioned by other people, they did like bringing mice into the house. Sometimes they were dead, as presents for us, other times they obviously thought we didn't get enough exercise and brought us a nice live one for us to play with...
We have just got a new kitten, and that has a wonderful instinct for catching mice as well although it lived in a cat rescue (sans mice) from birth. Just this last week we managed to bring a mouse into the house in a bag of logs, and although it didn't catch it (I think it was 'supermouse', it moved so darned quickly!) we could always tell where it was (the kitten would sit for hours staring at the piece of furniture that the mouse was behind), and if it moved (by the mad rush as the kitten would chase after it as it shot down the stairs at 300 miles an hour). (We caught the mouse in a mousetrap this morning, phew)
It's different from a monopoly's position in that you can just go out and buy a different phone. One that does essentially the same thing. (Or a different MP3 player or a different computer). You can't just go out and buy a non-Microsoft version of Windows.
So, if you don't like the product tying, do what I do, and stay clear of Apple. You don't lose out (except from iTunes trashing your computer, and a more rapidly decreasing bank balance). I wouldn't say that product tying is 'bad', but I do think it's stupid (Apple obviously disagree, and they may be in a strong enough position for it to work for them). I'd be more willing to consider Apple products if there wasn't the tying, but I don't think they'll be losing sleep because of a few people who choose what to buy based on that rather than visual appeal or keeping in with the crowd.
(You could say that Windows isn't a monopoly, there's Linux and MacOS in competition - but the courts don't see it that way)
In many hot countries, house design is influenced by the climate. For instance, we go to Portugal on holiday a lot. There, you can be in a house when it's 90+ degrees outside for weeks on end, and inside it's in the 'cool -> comfortable' range - with no air conditioning or fans. The reasons are design features such as light coloured exteriors to reflect the sunlight, tile floors, lots of windows for airflow and verandas/shutters to keep sunlight out of the windows.
Of course, if there is no wind at all, it can get uncomfortably hot, but where we go there's nearly always a slight breeze from the sea or the mountains, so everything is pleasantly cool in the house except for the couple of weeks a year when the wind goes on holiday.
There is the other argument that tropical swamps and deserts are not necessarily good places to live when there are lots of alternative places with more hospitable climates in the same country... Hopefully when energy prices soar over the next 10-20 years, people will start considering the more temperate regions!
The one I can see as working is a horizontal multi-touch touch-screen - not as a replacement to your monitor, but as an addition. You could use it with your finger for "approximate" movement like a mouse, or with a stylus for detailed movement (drawing etc). The screen could display things, so you could have menu items on the borders, with the centre being for cursor movement, or you could draw directly on it etc. If you could make a rugged-ish, portable 1/4" thick, A5 size touch screen, that would be ideal. It wouldn't need a lot of the features of monitors (eg grey-scale or 64 colours, long display persistence etc (eg ePaper) would all be fine for this, and it could even be displayed on over USB - it wouldn't need a high-speed raster graphics capability).
Some laptops might even be able to get away with not having a keyboard at all, just two screens, one for viewing, and a touch-sensitive one which can act as a keyboard/mouse/pen input/etc rolled into one (like a tablet PC & ordinary laptop combined).
At least you don't need to break out GCC and recompile the kernel at random intervals... Again, this is an issue of Microsoft having to cater for 'dumb users'. Linux users will generally be the sort of people who keep track of all the bugs which come out that mean they need to update (yes, it happens just as much for Linux as it does for Windows) and do the updates themselves, and schedule a restart.
Windows USED to do that, but no one updated, so there were lots of unpatched versions of Windows which meant there were lots of hacked versions of Windows around. So, Microsoft changed this to strongly try to encourage users to update. Windows will never force an reboot on you. It will say there are updates and it's going to reboot in 5 minutes, but you can postpone the reboot if you're in the middle of something. This happens regularly to me. If you don't like it, then just turn off the autoupdates, you have the choice. Then you need to work 'the linux way' and regularly check for updates and manually download them.
Updates often need reboots because they are updating files that are in use. Even Linux needs a reboot then. If the disk driver needs updating, or the kernel needs updating or the TCP stack needs updating etc, you'll either need to do a reboot or do some esoteric things to do the updates without a reboot. Even if something less 'core' such as the gzip libraries etc needs updating, you'll probably either need to do a reboot, or close down lots of the programs to do the update. For an average user, a reboot is simpler than working out what you need to close down to do the update without doing a reboot.
Issues like this are the same for everyone, but if Windows does it, then it's Microsoft's incompetence, and if Linux does it, then obviously that's the way it's got to be.
Wouldn't flaky drivers cause problems on any OS.
If the Linux driver for the heart monitor device crashes, your Linux heart monitor system might not crash, but it'll still be as useful as a brick.
But that's not Microsoft's/Windows' fault.
It's the games developers' fault.
OK, maybe early versions of Windows didn't encourage strict setting of access permissions - and that has allowed bad games developers to get away with it for too long. Versions of Windows for the past 8 years or so are much better at this, but Microsoft are really between a rock and a hard place with it. With Vista, they've started essentially FORCING people not to run with admin rights all the time (with UAC etc), because the gentle encouragement since W2k hasn't worked, but lots of people moan about that. So, what are they to do?
AFAIAA, all the Windows applications made by Microsoft will run with the appropriate level of user permissions. The problem is with everyone else's applications.
The only reason Linux is 'more secure' than Windows is because all the dumb Windows users are using Windows. If they all moved over to Linux, there'd be millions of Linux boxes logged in as root all the time, with thousands of viruses being written for Linux, Linux based botnets etc etc.
A lot of the reasons people state for why 'Linux rules' are primarily BECAUSE it's not widely used. If you want Linux to keep its good rep, don't encourage average home users to use it!
Even the NSA would have to devote a significant part of their resources. 95^12 is over 500 sextillion combinations. So, say you've got a really really fast CPU that can do 1 billion test decrypts a second (which is unfeasibly fast at the current time). It would take that computer over 17 million years to find the password.
So, let's say that the NSA has a million CPUs at their disposal, it would still take over 17 years to decrypt. So, they'd have to be pretty sure that you have some seriously cool porn on your PC before they start devoting 100,000,000 impossibly fast CPUs to the task of cracking your password in a couple of months.
The Storm Botnet would take centuries to hack a random 12 character password (it would cut down on spam though).
Of course, if you choose 'password' as your password it might not take quite as long.
I think it all depends on what the company does.
If they are a web application development house, then they could, feasibly, decide on PHP, or Java, (or C#/ASP if their clients all use IIS) or whatever and all would be fine. If the company has a narrow range like that, then I'd say you'd probably be better choosing one set (eg PHP) than having several, with each developer choosing their favourite (one uses PHP, one uses Java, one uses ASP, one uses Python, one uses C++ etc)
But if they are a general purpose software house which does all sorts, then, try writing device drivers in Java, or web applications in C/assembler and good luck with that... Pretty much the only language which could do almost 'everything' would be C (you might need assembler for some things, but that might be going too far) and using that for everything would drive productivity through the floor.
OTOH, to a degree, slavishly using the 'best' language for the job can cause problems. Sometimes the weighting of developer familiarity & experience into the 'what is best' equation is ignored. For instance, if you need to write a quick utility, and the only developer you have handy is a web developer, then it may be best just to use PHP, rather than teach that developer how to write in C++.
Each job really has a range of languages that could be used for it, the actual "best" to be used to do that job by one group of developers may be different from the "best" used by a different set of developers (assuming "best" means "getting the best productivity, accuracy and reliability" rather than "having the language features which most closely match the job requirements")
Part of terrorism is the 'if you don't go along with our demands, we'll do it again' aspect as well.
One person going into a mall and shooting everyone isn't terrorism. One person planting a little bomb in a mall, then sending a message 'if you don't all worship the Sith I'll plant a nuke next time', IS terrorism. Using the nuke isn't necessary to be a terrorist, but *threatening* to *is*. It's the *fear* of danger which makes terrorism work. The point of terrorism isn't to kill people, it's to frighten the people who weren't killed.
On that thinking, the USA should still be 'punished' for slavery, as they are still profiting from it, and the mess caused by that offense perpetuates to this day....
Of course, this depends on what you mean by 'better'.
For some people, speed might equal 'better', for others, functionality, or ease of use, or low memory usage, or accuracy (eg for mathematical programs) etc. A lot of Windows development has been aimed at improving ease of use (whether it's achieved it or not is debatable), but that will, almost necessarily, slow it down.
If you compare, say, LaTeX with Word 2007 for writing documents, I'd bet Word wastes more CPU cycles, and uses more memory, but, for most people, it's far easier to use. Which is "better"? Ask a typical bank manager, and you'll get one answer, ask a mathematician and you might get a different answer.
Is DOS 3.2 "better" than Windows XP? Well, again, it depends. If you have a 256kB 286 PC, the chances are you'd say DOS 3.2, if you have a 1GB P4, most people would say Windows XP.
Most people don't run CPU intensive software (ie they use email, web browsing, Solitaire and, maybe, word processing). So, for them, you may as well use all those abundant CPU cycles for making things pretty or easier to use, rather than just 'wasting' them.
Do they give you free fruit juice, apples, bananas, grapes etc as well, or do you HAVE to have "junk" food if you want to use their free kitchen?
If not, you need to be asking why? Are they *trying* to kill off their staff?
Not quite
With Creative (and other HDD manufacturers), you totally get what you pay for. You just don't get what you THOUGHT you'd paid for. There is a difference.
As other people have said, RAM is about the only thing where it makes sense to measure it in 2^n numbers. That's because it is nowadays generally addressed using a certain number of binary address lines, so it will nearly always going to be a power of 2. Hard disks on the other hand can be any number of 512 byte sectors. There is no binary addressing involved, so using standard 10^n numbering is best. I suppose you COULD sue Microsoft & Linus for displaying file sizes in 2^n sizes rather than 10^n sizes - that would make more sense..
If HDD purchasers can't be bothered to find this out, it's not the HDD manufacturer's fault.
BTW, How big is your car engine? A lot of '2 litre' engines are just 1968cc, and so on. Are you going to sue Ford?
Not really..
On that assumption, an 8 bit 'OS' would only be able to address 256 bytes.. Now, we all know that most 8 bit PCs could access up to 64kb (2^16 address space). Similarly a 16 bit 'OS' (eg Windows 3.1) could access 1MiB (2^20 address space)
The 'bitness' of the processor doesn't determine the size of the address space that can be used, but the size of the 'normal' word of data which is processed. It just so happens that for 32 bit Windows & Linux, they can access a 2^32 address space.
BTW - 64 bit processors can't access a 64 bit address space. Currently, 64 bit Intel processors can access a 2^40 address space.
So, address space is only related very loosely to 'bitness' of processor/OS
Theoretically, a 32 bit processor could have an address space of may TiB - they don't, but it's possible in the same way that 8 bit processors could easily access 64kiB, and that didn't involve trickery like swappable blocks of memory (such as OS9 level 2 had)
For new builds it'd be OK. They will generally install tubes for various things, such as gas, water, sewage etc into most houses anyway, so just add another one.
Sorry, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean there should be 5 million different timezones, one for each locality, but that there shouldn't be timezones at all (except for the one *everyone( uses).
I think, for example New York being "5 hours behind" London is a dumb idea. If everyone was working to UTC, then things would be a lot easier all around, once people got used to going to work at 14:00 and coming home at 22:00 or whatever, depending on where they lived.
Train/plane timetables would be simpler (you wouldn't have planes landing before they've taken off if they're flying west, for instance), and global communication systems would have to keep having to do timezone conversion. Everything like this already works in UTC (or some other chosen fixed timezone) and converts to a timezone at time of display, so if people got used to it, it'd be simpler all round.
The problem is that everyone is used to timezones, and it would take a paradigm shift in people's minds to switch to a timezone free world, and people don't like change.
Well, I was going to argue that it wouldn't be that hard, and start times would self regulate as everyone did it - you'd essentially have a 'change work start time' day instead of a 'change clocks day'.
But, then I thought, no, that would mean that all your TV/radio programs would have to change their start times as well, any "peak/offpeak" times would change, trains, buses, planes etc would all have to change their timetables etc.
So, now I think I think that DST is a good idea (if we have to change 'times' at all, which I'm not totally convinced about). I still think timezones are a dumb idea, but that's a different issue (what universal rule is there that everyone has to work "9 to 5"? I wonder if the beings orbiting Alpha Centauri work 9 to 5 as well?)
I think if you could get manufacturers to standardise on standard voltages (+/- 12V/5V) and standard power connectors, then you could use either option. People in existing houses would probably use localised PSUs (eg one by the TV, one by the PC etc). New builds may include bus bars (you'd need 5, one for each voltage)
All manufacturers really need to do is to have an option to disable their own PSU (if it's internal) and feed DC power in directly. Devices with external PSUs would just need the standard connectors instead of proprietary ones.
However, I doubt this will happen in the near future without legislation, because there's no motive from the manufacturer's point of view.
(BTW, I get 85% efficiency PSUs for PCs I build or for replacements when the manufacturers' ones go, so you can get good PC PSUs - the 'bargain' ones are almost certainly a lot worse though).
I'm not entirely sure how you get the power loss there to be under 2 watts.
:) ) so for a relatively short 10 metre run, you need to generate at least 17 V at the supply. Now, for anything closer, you have to throw away the extra 5V (using a linear voltage converter, which is cheap, but very inefficient), or use a switched mode DC-DC converter (which is more expensive, and will still have some losses in it). If you're going to need switched mode DC-DC converters everywhere, then why not use a higher voltage so you have less power/voltage loss in the cables? Oh, we're back where we started...
16 gauge wire has a resistance of about 0.013 ohms/metre, or 0.13 ohms for 10 metres. So, power = I^2 * R, so 10 amps is a 13 watt power loss. For a 12V power supply that's about 11% power loss.
Even with 12 gauge wire, you'd lose over 5 watts.
This ignores all the extra losses you'd get because you'd have to have the DC supply producing a higher voltage to handle the voltage drops. If you want to run a high-end PC off it, you may need it to produce, say a kilowatt - that's 83 amps at 12V. You lose half a volt per metre cable run at those currents with 12 gauge wire (never mind the cable melting
To actually carry your 83 amps at 12V, you'd actually need 3 gauge (preferably 2 gauge) copper wire. That's 6mm diameter - good luck with routing that around your house. If you want to run two PCs and a TV, you'll need 0000 gauge, that's 11mm diameter!
OK, with 0000 gauge wire, you'll only lose 16W with a 100A current (1.3% loss at 12V) so it's quite efficient, but it won't be fun sourcing and then installing a couple of 11mm diameter 'cables' in your house, while maintaining cable integrity every time you go around a corner.