-NO BACKUP Utility (Even *NIX has tar/gzip) and crond Actually, Windows has integrated zip (as of XP) and an excellent backup/restore utility -An integrated Web browser, inseperable (or with great effort) from the core OS IE 7 has been unintegrated from the file explorer. Note that KDE and GNOME also integrate a web browser into the file browser utilties Nautilus and whatever the other one is.-NO Support for Firewall (I don't trust Microsoft's FireWall) Simply not trusting MS's firewall doesn't mean it's not a decent product. Also, there's several other software firewalls available on Windows for you to choose from. -NO NATIVE DVD Player (due to "licence" cost) Then Windows has been downgraded to linux status. No legal/native DVD compatability. -NO Ability to set permissions on files for multiple users I can do that in XP. What are you talking about here? -PISS-POOR Command Line Interface (try renaming 10 files, under Windows) I consider myself a very geeky person and I have no idea how to rename ten files at once in Bash... I could write a script to do it in bash, but I'd have to look it up the same way I'd do it in the Windows scripting language. In fact, the Windows Scripting language is very robust. I think you're still stuck in windows 98. -PISS-POOR User Management (try creating more than 10 accounts) Creating a bunch of users in a windows Server is trivial. Workstations should not have more than a hand full of users. Yes, complex administration is hidden in versions of windows dumbed down for the average user. Welcome to reality. -NO SECURE AUTOMATION of COMMON TASKS (user management, file management,etc ) User management on a workstation is not a COMMON TASK. Windows scheduling is fairly robust and security can be configured on it. I don't see what you're getting at. If you could be specific, perhaps I could point you towards a tutorial.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like M$ either. But you don't need to spread lies in order to discuss what's wrong with their products.
The short answer is that, as an end user, I can take a lot more control over what this VM is doing than I can my java VM is doing. I can allocate whatever level of processing I want and I can use my firewall/proxy server to control what your VM can see while still letting my main machine do whatever it wants.
So... with a little modification I could take take one of these appliance and have a nice pretty looking piece of hardware that is constantly on doing network analysis or IDS or whatever that sits on my rack. Guess what? I could sell the hardware + support for that hardware. Wee!
If Microsoft intends to have its own anti-virus software/mechanism they must feel they're capable of doing this without the kernel hooks requested by Norton and ilk. The only thing I would take issue with is if Microsoft uses an undocumented API in order to get an unfair advantage over the third party vendors. When that happens, wake me up and I'll get back up on my anti-Microsoft $oapbox. Until then... bleh.
[conspiracy theory]
I don't think you get it. Drugs are about social control, not about taxes or anything else. It wasn't that long ago that we intentionally flooded poor (black) neighborhoods with drugs to keep them down. The penal system is set up in order to keep the 'bad' people in their place. That's why I have to pay my speeding tickets but VP Cheney doesn't get charged with manslaughter when he gets drunk and shoots someone IN THE FACE. The government needs to come along and randomly stamp people as evil to keep the moderates scared and in check. It also needs to keep repressing them so that they don't get the gumption to take what's rightfully theirs (freedom).
[/conspiracy theory]
PC gaming is killing PC gaming. The entire gaming industry hasn't come up with anything new since Wolfenstein 3d. How many times can I run through a dark hallway and blast an alien/terrorist? Dreamcast had some interesting ideas with their fishing pole controller thing. I hope that Wii can take some of the mistakes of the past generations and turn them into something truly revolutionary in gaming because looking at their MS and Sony brethren is depressing.
There's a saying about money and employees. Money won't make people stay, but without the money nothing else matters. The same can be said to a certain extent about graphics. Without decent graphics people won't buy your game. At the same time, it won't make players stay. What makes players stay is game depth, interesting story line, gameplay, etc.
that the 'minimalist' install of Fedora Core has gone the way of the dodo. I'm not 'hard-core' enough to migrate to Gentoo, but I do like to cherry pick my packages for installation. Each release of the FC installer seems to make this more difficult. Is this intentional or is it a side-effect of making FC an all-in-one distribution for end users who want everything done for them (windows crowd)?
Evolution takes care of my outlook fix, but there are two programs that every bachelor should have and is sorely missing in Linux: TurboTax and Money (or Quicken, but I don't like their GUI).
Actually, you can do Turbo Tax on the web now. Linux++;
Interesting tidbit. I had a credit card stolen a few years back, which was consequently used at a McDonald's. Since the cops were being a bit slow, I went there in person to ask the manager not to re-use their security tapes until the cops could get around to using it. They DO in fact already record every car's driver's license as it pass to the drive-thru. I don't think they're data mining those tapes yet. The issue is that McDonald's doesn't have a way to tie your license plate to your address/zip code. So they can't know if their targeted advertising was effective. What they CAN determine is what the people in your vehicle ordered in which stores and what you tend to order. Welcome to marketing 2.0!
Listen folks. I know it's difficult to comprehend but the golden days of the Industrial Revolution are over. It's time for a lull. We will continue to see small incremental changes in our tech (computers getting smaller/faster) but nothing life-changing for some time. Look at the pervasiveness of e-mail, cellular phones, the home computer, high speed internet. We'll need a generation or two in this brave new world before we can make the next step. Anyways, I'm getting a little long winded so I'll just close by saying we're in the process of moving from the Industrial Revolution into the Energy Revolution.
A better analogy would be if you had to pay $15 for your cd at the local Tower Records but were not allowed to leave the building with it. You could leave, but the cd had to remain in the store at all times.
It depresses me that innovation in the processor market is adding additional cores. The geek in my loves it, but the consumer in me isn't impressed. What I (and I presume most other regular users) want is the ability to double-click on my Word/Evolution/Eclipse/Firefox/IE/etc icon and have it instantly display on the screen. What I don't need is to be able to run multiple programs just as slow as I could run one program 2 years ago. What's the holdup? Is it bus speed? Hard drive speed? Memory speed? Will I ever have zero (apparent) latency between running apps and seeing the result?
The problem with PC makers is that if they ever do reach the holy grail of zero (apparent) latency, then they will have to decrease the life expectancy of their products in order to continue to make a profit.
Maybe I'm slightly off topic and maybe I'm just bitter, but the latest and greatest PC today just doesn't seem to massively outperform the latest and greatest 3 years ago in any way meaningful to the end user. My compile times are faster, but for the most part, users simply can't/don't tax their processor.
My best friend is fairly computer literate. He surfs the web, uses Oracle at work (not an admin, uses the business products), whatever. He still wants to be able to download and run anything he wants to. He wants to be able to watch any video he pulls off Limewire. He wants to be able to rip and burn DVDs without having to think about it. He does NOT want to use a command line interface. This is the story common to the average joe home user. He doesn't have a firewall at home and he's connected directly to the internet via broadband. Yes, he gets spyware.
Business users don't really care because they have administrators who do nothing but sit around all day making sure bad things don't happen. They have security policies on the PC, they have firewalls, they have e-mail filters, etc. The fact of the matter is that Admins typically do an okay job. The number of infected PCs per capita in the business world is very good compared to the personal PC world (based purely on personal experience).
As an admin, you might think new security features or a complete overhaul of the security design in $operatingSystem will make your life easier. The odds are good your CIO who got hired because he is friends with the CEO doesn't really care. All he cares about is that $company took him out for a round of golf in Tahiti and he can communicate with other big business and government (i.e. Office products). Other than that, you're out of luck.
Cheers
but I already have a physical token from my bank. We call it a debit card. Mine was recently compromised and had a $600 charge on it. As long as there is money, there will be thieves. People are stupid/lazy/complacent and thieves will always overcome those minor hurdles.
While I think the copyright holders should have some say in the form in which their material is redistributed (that's how GPL works). At the same time I think Hollywood is missing the ball here by giving these guys a hard time. The financial big wigs are getting their money's worth. Leave them alone.
I can put products on multiple auction sites. Thanks to the joys of the internet, I can do this with relatively little effort compared to the old days of brick and mortar retailers. Even though I might make a smaller percentage by selling my products on bob's auction warehouse.com it will still increase my overall profitability. The issue is not that sellers need to completely drop ebay. It's that they need to diversify their offerings to maximize their total profit in the market.
Microsoft office products actually do have more features than the open source alternatives. These features include but are not limited to the support for the visually impaired which you yourself so graciously posted. Don't pretend either that OO.o is not completely bloated just like MS Office products. It's a great product that I use every day, but let's not kid ourselves. I can't believe you got modded insightful. I guess anything anti-M$ gets applaud around here.
A comparable Dell/Emachines/HP box is under $600. You can upgrade to Windows XP Pro for less than $100. Of course you could always upgrade to linux for free. I love the Mac as a commercial product. If anyone has a chance to create real competition for Microsoft, it's the Mac folks. I'm not one of those people who thinks that Macs are outrageously priced, but at the same time I don't think they should be making such a big deal out of their price point. They tend to lose that battle.
In Kentucky a few years ago it was time for the state police forces to replace their side-arms. They tested several models and chose some model of glock (I'm not a gun person, I dunno). At the same time, some government fancy pants worked out a deal with Smith and Wesson for a 7 year contract for S&W firearms. 1,000 of the guns were purchased. The first set were handed out to the SWAT and other special forces for testing. Their report was VERY poor. The guns were totally inaccurate. Anyways, to make a short story long several of the officers wrote the state legislature. When S&W refused to let them out of the contract the state legislature drew up a bill to not allow any law enforcement officer in the state to ever carry a S&W firearm. Three days later S&W withdrew the contract and now all the officers carry the glocks.
What's the point of this long stupid story? Don't discount the power of the government, even local government, to throw around very big weight in order to get the right thing done. They really just need one person who's up for election to get on a soap box.
[I am not affiliated with any gun manufacturing companies]
Slashdot Mirror
-NO BACKUP Utility (Even *NIX has tar/gzip) and crond ,etc )
Actually, Windows has integrated zip (as of XP) and an excellent backup/restore utility
-An integrated Web browser, inseperable (or with great effort) from the core OS
IE 7 has been unintegrated from the file explorer. Note that KDE and GNOME also integrate a web browser into the file browser utilties Nautilus and whatever the other one is. -NO Support for Firewall (I don't trust Microsoft's FireWall)
Simply not trusting MS's firewall doesn't mean it's not a decent product. Also, there's several other software firewalls available on Windows for you to choose from.
-NO NATIVE DVD Player (due to "licence" cost)
Then Windows has been downgraded to linux status. No legal/native DVD compatability.
-NO Ability to set permissions on files for multiple users
I can do that in XP. What are you talking about here?
-PISS-POOR Command Line Interface (try renaming 10 files, under Windows)
I consider myself a very geeky person and I have no idea how to rename ten files at once in Bash... I could write a script to do it in bash, but I'd have to look it up the same way I'd do it in the Windows scripting language. In fact, the Windows Scripting language is very robust. I think you're still stuck in windows 98.
-PISS-POOR User Management (try creating more than 10 accounts)
Creating a bunch of users in a windows Server is trivial. Workstations should not have more than a hand full of users. Yes, complex administration is hidden in versions of windows dumbed down for the average user. Welcome to reality.
-NO SECURE AUTOMATION of COMMON TASKS (user management, file management
User management on a workstation is not a COMMON TASK. Windows scheduling is fairly robust and security can be configured on it. I don't see what you're getting at. If you could be specific, perhaps I could point you towards a tutorial.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like M$ either. But you don't need to spread lies in order to discuss what's wrong with their products.
The short answer is that, as an end user, I can take a lot more control over what this VM is doing than I can my java VM is doing. I can allocate whatever level of processing I want and I can use my firewall/proxy server to control what your VM can see while still letting my main machine do whatever it wants.
My 'other' guess:
PC-104 board + vmware + vmware appliance = hardware appliance
So... with a little modification I could take take one of these appliance and have a nice pretty looking piece of hardware that is constantly on doing network analysis or IDS or whatever that sits on my rack. Guess what? I could sell the hardware + support for that hardware. Wee!
Getting all-in-one appliances is the first step.
If Microsoft intends to have its own anti-virus software/mechanism they must feel they're capable of doing this without the kernel hooks requested by Norton and ilk. The only thing I would take issue with is if Microsoft uses an undocumented API in order to get an unfair advantage over the third party vendors. When that happens, wake me up and I'll get back up on my anti-Microsoft $oapbox. Until then... bleh.
[conspiracy theory]
I don't think you get it. Drugs are about social control, not about taxes or anything else. It wasn't that long ago that we intentionally flooded poor (black) neighborhoods with drugs to keep them down. The penal system is set up in order to keep the 'bad' people in their place. That's why I have to pay my speeding tickets but VP Cheney doesn't get charged with manslaughter when he gets drunk and shoots someone IN THE FACE. The government needs to come along and randomly stamp people as evil to keep the moderates scared and in check. It also needs to keep repressing them so that they don't get the gumption to take what's rightfully theirs (freedom).
[/conspiracy theory]
And yes, I'm an upper middle class white person
The Freespire website is totally prettier than the MEPIS website.
PC gaming is killing PC gaming. The entire gaming industry hasn't come up with anything new since Wolfenstein 3d. How many times can I run through a dark hallway and blast an alien/terrorist? Dreamcast had some interesting ideas with their fishing pole controller thing. I hope that Wii can take some of the mistakes of the past generations and turn them into something truly revolutionary in gaming because looking at their MS and Sony brethren is depressing. There's a saying about money and employees. Money won't make people stay, but without the money nothing else matters. The same can be said to a certain extent about graphics. Without decent graphics people won't buy your game. At the same time, it won't make players stay. What makes players stay is game depth, interesting story line, gameplay, etc.
that the 'minimalist' install of Fedora Core has gone the way of the dodo. I'm not 'hard-core' enough to migrate to Gentoo, but I do like to cherry pick my packages for installation. Each release of the FC installer seems to make this more difficult. Is this intentional or is it a side-effect of making FC an all-in-one distribution for end users who want everything done for them (windows crowd)?
Evolution takes care of my outlook fix, but there are two programs that every bachelor should have and is sorely missing in Linux: TurboTax and Money (or Quicken, but I don't like their GUI). Actually, you can do Turbo Tax on the web now. Linux++;
for how long it takes these things to pop up on ebay? I bet those kids in Nigeria would MUCH rather have my $200 US than some laptop.
What if he loses?
Interesting tidbit. I had a credit card stolen a few years back, which was consequently used at a McDonald's. Since the cops were being a bit slow, I went there in person to ask the manager not to re-use their security tapes until the cops could get around to using it. They DO in fact already record every car's driver's license as it pass to the drive-thru. I don't think they're data mining those tapes yet. The issue is that McDonald's doesn't have a way to tie your license plate to your address/zip code. So they can't know if their targeted advertising was effective. What they CAN determine is what the people in your vehicle ordered in which stores and what you tend to order. Welcome to marketing 2.0!
Listen folks. I know it's difficult to comprehend but the golden days of the Industrial Revolution are over. It's time for a lull. We will continue to see small incremental changes in our tech (computers getting smaller/faster) but nothing life-changing for some time. Look at the pervasiveness of e-mail, cellular phones, the home computer, high speed internet. We'll need a generation or two in this brave new world before we can make the next step. Anyways, I'm getting a little long winded so I'll just close by saying we're in the process of moving from the Industrial Revolution into the Energy Revolution.
Cheers,
~b
A better analogy would be if you had to pay $15 for your cd at the local Tower Records but were not allowed to leave the building with it. You could leave, but the cd had to remain in the store at all times.
Microsoft needed to hire these fellows because they're probably the only people on the planet who could properly document the Windows API for the EU.
Be careful Google. Microsoft is heavily armed with office chairs and it knows how to use them! /sorry
It depresses me that innovation in the processor market is adding additional cores. The geek in my loves it, but the consumer in me isn't impressed. What I (and I presume most other regular users) want is the ability to double-click on my Word/Evolution/Eclipse/Firefox/IE/etc icon and have it instantly display on the screen. What I don't need is to be able to run multiple programs just as slow as I could run one program 2 years ago. What's the holdup? Is it bus speed? Hard drive speed? Memory speed? Will I ever have zero (apparent) latency between running apps and seeing the result? The problem with PC makers is that if they ever do reach the holy grail of zero (apparent) latency, then they will have to decrease the life expectancy of their products in order to continue to make a profit. Maybe I'm slightly off topic and maybe I'm just bitter, but the latest and greatest PC today just doesn't seem to massively outperform the latest and greatest 3 years ago in any way meaningful to the end user. My compile times are faster, but for the most part, users simply can't/don't tax their processor.
My best friend is fairly computer literate. He surfs the web, uses Oracle at work (not an admin, uses the business products), whatever. He still wants to be able to download and run anything he wants to. He wants to be able to watch any video he pulls off Limewire. He wants to be able to rip and burn DVDs without having to think about it. He does NOT want to use a command line interface. This is the story common to the average joe home user. He doesn't have a firewall at home and he's connected directly to the internet via broadband. Yes, he gets spyware. Business users don't really care because they have administrators who do nothing but sit around all day making sure bad things don't happen. They have security policies on the PC, they have firewalls, they have e-mail filters, etc. The fact of the matter is that Admins typically do an okay job. The number of infected PCs per capita in the business world is very good compared to the personal PC world (based purely on personal experience). As an admin, you might think new security features or a complete overhaul of the security design in $operatingSystem will make your life easier. The odds are good your CIO who got hired because he is friends with the CEO doesn't really care. All he cares about is that $company took him out for a round of golf in Tahiti and he can communicate with other big business and government (i.e. Office products). Other than that, you're out of luck. Cheers
but I already have a physical token from my bank. We call it a debit card. Mine was recently compromised and had a $600 charge on it. As long as there is money, there will be thieves. People are stupid/lazy/complacent and thieves will always overcome those minor hurdles.
While I think the copyright holders should have some say in the form in which their material is redistributed (that's how GPL works). At the same time I think Hollywood is missing the ball here by giving these guys a hard time. The financial big wigs are getting their money's worth. Leave them alone.
I can put products on multiple auction sites. Thanks to the joys of the internet, I can do this with relatively little effort compared to the old days of brick and mortar retailers. Even though I might make a smaller percentage by selling my products on bob's auction warehouse.com it will still increase my overall profitability. The issue is not that sellers need to completely drop ebay. It's that they need to diversify their offerings to maximize their total profit in the market.
Microsoft office products actually do have more features than the open source alternatives. These features include but are not limited to the support for the visually impaired which you yourself so graciously posted. Don't pretend either that OO.o is not completely bloated just like MS Office products. It's a great product that I use every day, but let's not kid ourselves. I can't believe you got modded insightful. I guess anything anti-M$ gets applaud around here.
A comparable Dell/Emachines/HP box is under $600. You can upgrade to Windows XP Pro for less than $100. Of course you could always upgrade to linux for free. I love the Mac as a commercial product. If anyone has a chance to create real competition for Microsoft, it's the Mac folks. I'm not one of those people who thinks that Macs are outrageously priced, but at the same time I don't think they should be making such a big deal out of their price point. They tend to lose that battle.
Google Sue(tm) will be in BETA for at least there years.
In Kentucky a few years ago it was time for the state police forces to replace their side-arms. They tested several models and chose some model of glock (I'm not a gun person, I dunno). At the same time, some government fancy pants worked out a deal with Smith and Wesson for a 7 year contract for S&W firearms. 1,000 of the guns were purchased. The first set were handed out to the SWAT and other special forces for testing. Their report was VERY poor. The guns were totally inaccurate. Anyways, to make a short story long several of the officers wrote the state legislature. When S&W refused to let them out of the contract the state legislature drew up a bill to not allow any law enforcement officer in the state to ever carry a S&W firearm. Three days later S&W withdrew the contract and now all the officers carry the glocks. What's the point of this long stupid story? Don't discount the power of the government, even local government, to throw around very big weight in order to get the right thing done. They really just need one person who's up for election to get on a soap box. [I am not affiliated with any gun manufacturing companies]
who read that as two dollars and eighteen cents?