What you believe cannot be proven, period, therefore it is imaginary. Whilst the parent's statement was certainly flawed, yours is not that much better from a purely logical sense: it does not follow that something that cannot be proven must be imaginary (Godel's incompleteness theorem comes to mind: it can never be proven that Mathematics is logically consistant; but that hardly reduces it's usefulness).
Quite apart from the problems with your implication that evolution implies lack of "faith in a higher power" and vice versa, your last statement:
What I believe in cannot be proved correct scientifically, therefore it cannot be proven wrong scientifically. simply does not logically follow. It is perfectly possible to have a proposition that can never be conclusively proven, but can be conclusively disproven (for example, in mathamatics, an unproveable conjecture about the natural numbers that a single counterexample could disprove). There also exist propositions that can never be conclusively disproven, but can be conclusively proven; and others which can neither be conclusively proven nor disproven, and ones which can be both. Knowledge alone of whether something can be proven tells you nothing about whether that thing can be disproven.
You don't have to pay extra, it's included in all versions. Prior to Office 2007, though, it was a load of crap; but the one in 2007 is waaay improved -- it lets you type an equation linearly, e.g. "1/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))", and then formats it properly for you, which is pretty nice.
1. Future apps will require Vista. They wouldn't have required Vista if there was no Vista, and we'd be happy. As it is, if we want to use these apps (which may be perfectly good or desirable), we are forced to upgrade. I would be quite astounded if there are any Vista-only (non-game) applications for a very long time (2014 at the very earliest). The main reason is that, although Vista does certainly bring in loads of new developer technologies (most notably the WPF API); MS allows you to install them on XP and Server 2003 as well. They get installed as part of the.NET 3.0 framework. So whilst there's already a surprisingly long list of WPF applications, they'll all run on XP or 2003 after you've installed the.NET 3 framework.
For games, I imagine that game companies will do what they've always done in the past -- probe your DX version and graphics card to discover what's supported, and enable the graphical niceties that your graphics card / DirectX combo supports.
2. When companies begin rolling out Vista, people are going to be forced to use it at work. Developers are going to be forced to develop for it. A lot of them are not going to like it. The GP was saying that they don't see any particular reason to upgrade, and so don't see why they should spend the money for what, for them, seems little return. That's hardly the same as having some kind of aversion to using it! To use the same analogy I used before, I'm not planning to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 (because the improvements for me don't justify the price), but if my workplace switches to it, I wouldn't exactly complain.
Um.. unless i'm missing something the only way that could be true is if the blurring is done by the image on the screen not being constant, but changing to create a blur effect. In which case an animated image would be needed. Otherwise if it was static it would be prefectly possible to get a bitmap showing said effect as in someway. I'm afraid I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. In Vista, both the transparancy and blurring is done by the desktop window manager. But in a bitmap screenshot, there's obviously no way to make a bitmap that blurs whatever it's in front of. So the screenshot utility emulates the transparancy effect by setting the alpha channel on the bitmap to the appropriate value, but does not emulate the blurring effect.
I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP I'm fairly sure that all of Vista's built in applications use WPF and are thus DPI-independant. If you're running at the default 96dpi, I'm not sure in what way you expect them to look different to in XP. I think the point is that when you change the dpi, they scale smoothly and unblockily (I assume you don't see it with magnifier because it just enlarges the pixels, it doesn't redraw everything). IStartedSomething has a nice gadget where you can see the same screenshot at different DPIs, if you want to compare them.
What I don't understand is why MS went through so much trouble to implement Aero, only to leave the functionality which sits on top of Aero so lacking. That 3D window-flip thing is just nowhere near as useful as Expose, or something like it You're right that they didn't bundle much useful DWM stuff in Vista, but the important thing is that the API is now there for anyone to harness. As I said in my other post, people have already started using it to write DWM extensions, including an Expose clone, and the FrontRow-like SmartFlip.
You probably already know this, but if you want anything that needs admin priveleges to be automatically granted them (without showing a UAC prompt), without losing all the other good features of UAC such as file and registry virtualization, use the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) to set User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode to Elevate without prompting.
Other than the pretty new theme, are there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone? Obviously I can't know which (if any) new features you, or anyone else in particular, will find relevant; so I'll refer you to Wikipedia:
If I had to highlight one or two particular features, I'd say the one that I find most useful is the much quicker, Quicksilver like way of launching applications, files etc. -- press the windows key, type a couple of letters from the application, and press enter. Also, per-application volume control; and the much better native support for wireless networks and encryption.
Why the New API will not help for years. [...] It will be a long time before people write a lot of code that ONLY runs on Vista. Uh, you can install the WPF API on Windows XP SP2 and 2003 Server: it's installed as part of the.NET 3.0 framework.
Even that given, though; considering it isn't yet installed on most XP machines, there are already a surprisingly large number of WPF-only applications. Copying-and-pasting from here:
Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista - New IM client (SCREENCAST).
New York Times Reader - Next-generation online reading experience for the NY Times (MSI).
Microsoft Calendar Printing Assistant - Generate printed calendars from your Outlook schedule (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Blend - Designer tool for building WPF experiences (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Design - illustration and graphic design tool (MSI).
Microsoft Windows Live for TV - 3D access to Messenger contacts from Media Center or IE (MSI).
Electric Rain Standout - High-end custom presentation software (SCREENCAST).
Wikipedia Explorer - 3D exploration of related articles from Wikipedia (APPLICATION).
iBloks - Mashup application for creating 3D movies (MSI).
RikReader - RSS Reader that integrates with Internet Explorer 7 (APPLICATION).
Nostalgia - Yahoo! Flickr browser and photo manager (APPLICATION).
Cine.View - Netflix movie queue manager (APPLICATION).
Cool Text Vector Draw - A vector drawing program with 1200 fonts available via a web service (XBAP).
Forbes.com Reader - News Reader Application from Forbes.com (APPLICATION).
Actipro Wizard - A control for building wizard dialogs in WPF (XBAP).
UniveRSS - A 3D Vista RSS reader (APPLICATION).
Xceed Datagrid for WPF Live Explorer - Hands-on demo of Xceed's free new Datagrid for WPF (XBAP).
DominoKen - Artistic 3D XBAP demonstration from Microsoft Japan (XBAP).
Denounce - Stand-alone podcast listener and blog reader (APPLICATION).
British Library Turning the Pages - British Library's 'virtual viewer' for some of their most precious books (XBAP).
ITN Hub Player - Video clips and news stories from ITN (APPLICATION).
Evolution Media Center - HTPC Front-end with stunning animations and dynamic XAML-skinning (ZIP).
OTTO - Online clothing shopping (APPLICATION).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer PI Reader - News Reader Application from Seattle P.I. (APPLICATION).
Roxio Central - Windows Vista Technology Preview - CD and DVD Burning application (APPLICATION).
Metaliq - Snowboarding data visualization (ZIP).
WeatherNews - 3D Weather visualization (XBAP).
Shiseido - Make up online shopping (XBAP).
DOSV - Computer Configuration (XBAP).
Warner - Movie Previews and Showtimes (XBAP).
Notescraps - Random information manager (MSI).
Valil.Chess.WinFX - Chess game (XBAP, APPLICATION).
NetAdvantage for WPF - Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 controls (APPLICATION).
fnac.com - French retailer shopping experience (set system to French locale to run) (APPLICATION).
DevComponents WPF Ribbon - DevComponents Office 2007 Ribbon for WPF (APPLICATION).
Daily Mail eReader - On line reading experience for UK Newspaper Daily Mail (APPLICATION).
The North Face In-Store Explorer - Retail kiosk (MUST GO TO STORE TO EXPERIENCE).
Windows Vista Magazine - Using the same viewer as the British Library app (XBAP).
TempWorks fx - Staffing industry line of business application (SCREENSHOT).
Ricciolo PaperBoy - A complete RSS Feed Aggregator (APPLICATION).
Rather than use OpenGL, MS has developed DirectX. Rather than use Adobe's PDF printing subsystem, they developed XPS Whilst I completely agree with you about OpenGL; with PDF they did have the pretty good excuse that Adobe refused to license it to them for use in Office 2007 (which they were understandably pretty ticked off about, considering Adobe had freely granted it to every other office suite on the planet).
If I want a folder, I can just say "accounting files" and the computer can get it for me instead of me having to go get it myself. With the full start-menu search, and speech recognition; as long as the folder with accounting files in it is named "accounting" (or all the files have "accounting" in their name) I'm pretty sure this is already possible in Vista. You may have to wait for the next version of Windows for eye-tracking, though:)
I don't know if Vista is a "train wreck" but I don't see any reason what-so-ever to upgrade.
I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing? I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. No-one's suggesting that you specifically should upgrade. If you don't have any reason to upgrade, then don't. But that doesn't mean it's necessary to comment on every single story about any aspect of Vista "I don't see any reason for me to upgrade". I'm not going to upgrade to Photoshop CS3, but I don't go on forums, search for topics about CS3, and post "I'm not going to upgrade!", because it adds very, very little to the discussion. If there are no new features that are relevent to you, and there's no reason for you to upgrade, just -- don't upgrade. Simple as that.
May I suggest Kenny Kerr's Window Clippings, a (freeware) screenshot utility that "generates a transparent image - the shadow and glass have their alpha channel set".
From a review: "This isn't a perfect simulation of what real Glass does - it won't blur the area behind the title bar. This is because there's no way of building a bitmap file that will have such an effect. But given the limitations of what you can do with existing bitmap formats, Kenny's utility is as good as it's possible to get".
There already is an Expose clone for Vista using the Desktop Windows Manager (though of course not an official Microsoft one), here (performance is apparently rather poor on that version, but there's a new version coming out soon that improves this).
If you want something a bit different, there's another Vista DWM addon called Smartflip that presents the windows similarly to Apple's FrontRow.
I imagine as more and more people switch to Vista (or, more likely, get new PCs with Vista preloaded) we'll see more and more third-party addons to the DWM. Fancy-Effects-Eye-Candy war between DWM addons and Beryl, anyone?:)
The article you linked to is a load of crap. If you put a search term, not preceded by an "http://" , into the address bar, IE first adds an "http://" and tries to resolve it; if it doesn't resolve, it plugs it into your default search engine. The vast majority of people use Google as their default search engine, so it will search Google. And yes, a Google search (as with all the major search engines) has sponsored results (and Microsoft certainly doesn't make any money off you searching Google).
(BTW, browser and OS upgrades both preserve the default search engine).
I hadn't heard that quote before, so I've just tried to track it down: it's apparently something that Robert X Cringely claimed (without evidence) that 3Com's founder claimed (without evidence) an unnamed Microsoft employee once said to him. I'll stay sceptical for now, thank you, especially considering Cringely's famed love for the sensationalistic -- and that quote is nothing if not sensationalistic.
I wasn't replying to you specifically; I was just trying to keep all the "itsatrap" tag talk in one thread -- Apologies if I was misleading. Happy very belated real pi day!
AFAIK, Bitlocker can operate in a mode where the encryption key is kept in a USB flash drive, so it won't boot unless that's plugged in (obviously it still needs a password as well). If you kept that around your neck or something, that could some way to solving that particular problem.
What happens when the flash drive is lost / damaged / worn out may be a problem, though; I hope you can make a backup drive...
There seems to be rash of unscientific, uninformed articles being posted lately. What's up? Yeah, you're right -- I've just glanced through the archives, and the trend seems to have started around September 1997...
However, because of the history of Windows detailed above, almost anything you can think of - even just removing a shortcut from your desktop - requires extra privileges. In the interests of completeness, I should point out that, no, removing a shortcut from your desktop does not trigger a UAC prompt -- in the RTM code at least. It was much worse in RC1 -- the winsupersite review you linked to was of RC1 -- but was much improved in RC2, and then improved again in the RTM code (which is actually a bit of a WTF since it kinda misses the point of having a Release Candidate, but that's another issue). In the RTM code, no operations in the logged-in user's home directory (by default c:\users\username) will trigger a UAC prompt.
According to Ed Bott, in the final release:
The types of actions that require elevation to administrator status (and therefore display a UAC elevation prompt) include those that make changes to system-wide settings or to files in %SystemRoot% or %ProgramFiles%. Among the actions that require elevation:
Installing and uninstalling applications
Installing device drivers
Installing ActiveX controls
Installing Windows Updates
Changing settings for Windows Firewall
Changing UAC settings
Configuring Windows Update
Adding or removing user accounts
Changing a users account type
Configuring Parental Controls
Running Task Scheduler
Restoring backed-up system files
Viewing or changing another users folders and files
Which are broadly the same types of actions that require root privelages in Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to pay extra, it's included in all versions. Prior to Office 2007, though, it was a load of crap; but the one in 2007 is waaay improved -- it lets you type an equation linearly, e.g. "1/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))", and then formats it properly for you, which is pretty nice.
For games, I imagine that game companies will do what they've always done in the past -- probe your DX version and graphics card to discover what's supported, and enable the graphical niceties that your graphics card / DirectX combo supports. 2. When companies begin rolling out Vista, people are going to be forced to use it at work. Developers are going to be forced to develop for it. A lot of them are not going to like it. The GP was saying that they don't see any particular reason to upgrade, and so don't see why they should spend the money for what, for them, seems little return. That's hardly the same as having some kind of aversion to using it! To use the same analogy I used before, I'm not planning to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 (because the improvements for me don't justify the price), but if my workplace switches to it, I wouldn't exactly complain.
There's a list of WPF-based applications here.
You probably already know this, but if you want anything that needs admin priveleges to be automatically granted them (without showing a UAC prompt), without losing all the other good features of UAC such as file and registry virtualization, use the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) to set User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode to Elevate without prompting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
And to a lesser extent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_n
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_
If I had to highlight one or two particular features, I'd say the one that I find most useful is the much quicker, Quicksilver like way of launching applications, files etc. -- press the windows key, type a couple of letters from the application, and press enter.
Also, per-application volume control; and the much better native support for wireless networks and encryption.
Even that given, though; considering it isn't yet installed on most XP machines, there are already a surprisingly large number of WPF-only applications. Copying-and-pasting from here:
Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista - New IM client (SCREENCAST).
New York Times Reader - Next-generation online reading experience for the NY Times (MSI).
Microsoft Calendar Printing Assistant - Generate printed calendars from your Outlook schedule (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Blend - Designer tool for building WPF experiences (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Design - illustration and graphic design tool (MSI).
Microsoft Windows Live for TV - 3D access to Messenger contacts from Media Center or IE (MSI).
Electric Rain Standout - High-end custom presentation software (SCREENCAST).
Wikipedia Explorer - 3D exploration of related articles from Wikipedia (APPLICATION).
iBloks - Mashup application for creating 3D movies (MSI).
RikReader - RSS Reader that integrates with Internet Explorer 7 (APPLICATION).
Nostalgia - Yahoo! Flickr browser and photo manager (APPLICATION).
Cine.View - Netflix movie queue manager (APPLICATION).
Cool Text Vector Draw - A vector drawing program with 1200 fonts available via a web service (XBAP).
Forbes.com Reader - News Reader Application from Forbes.com (APPLICATION).
Actipro Wizard - A control for building wizard dialogs in WPF (XBAP).
UniveRSS - A 3D Vista RSS reader (APPLICATION).
Xceed Datagrid for WPF Live Explorer - Hands-on demo of Xceed's free new Datagrid for WPF (XBAP).
DominoKen - Artistic 3D XBAP demonstration from Microsoft Japan (XBAP).
Denounce - Stand-alone podcast listener and blog reader (APPLICATION).
British Library Turning the Pages - British Library's 'virtual viewer' for some of their most precious books (XBAP).
ITN Hub Player - Video clips and news stories from ITN (APPLICATION).
Evolution Media Center - HTPC Front-end with stunning animations and dynamic XAML-skinning (ZIP).
OTTO - Online clothing shopping (APPLICATION).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer PI Reader - News Reader Application from Seattle P.I. (APPLICATION).
Roxio Central - Windows Vista Technology Preview - CD and DVD Burning application (APPLICATION).
Metaliq - Snowboarding data visualization (ZIP).
WeatherNews - 3D Weather visualization (XBAP).
Shiseido - Make up online shopping (XBAP).
DOSV - Computer Configuration (XBAP).
Warner - Movie Previews and Showtimes (XBAP).
Notescraps - Random information manager (MSI).
Valil.Chess.WinFX - Chess game (XBAP, APPLICATION).
NetAdvantage for WPF - Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 controls (APPLICATION).
fnac.com - French retailer shopping experience (set system to French locale to run) (APPLICATION).
DevComponents WPF Ribbon - DevComponents Office 2007 Ribbon for WPF (APPLICATION).
Daily Mail eReader - On line reading experience for UK Newspaper Daily Mail (APPLICATION).
The North Face In-Store Explorer - Retail kiosk (MUST GO TO STORE TO EXPERIENCE).
Windows Vista Magazine - Using the same viewer as the British Library app (XBAP).
TempWorks fx - Staffing industry line of business application (SCREENSHOT).
Ricciolo PaperBoy - A complete RSS Feed Aggregator (APPLICATION).
I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing? I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. No-one's suggesting that you specifically should upgrade. If you don't have any reason to upgrade, then don't. But that doesn't mean it's necessary to comment on every single story about any aspect of Vista "I don't see any reason for me to upgrade". I'm not going to upgrade to Photoshop CS3, but I don't go on forums, search for topics about CS3, and post "I'm not going to upgrade!", because it adds very, very little to the discussion. If there are no new features that are relevent to you, and there's no reason for you to upgrade, just -- don't upgrade. Simple as that.
May I suggest Kenny Kerr's Window Clippings, a (freeware) screenshot utility that "generates a transparent image - the shadow and glass have their alpha channel set".
From a review: "This isn't a perfect simulation of what real Glass does - it won't blur the area behind the title bar. This is because there's no way of building a bitmap file that will have such an effect. But given the limitations of what you can do with existing bitmap formats, Kenny's utility is as good as it's possible to get".
There already is an Expose clone for Vista using the Desktop Windows Manager (though of course not an official Microsoft one), here (performance is apparently rather poor on that version, but there's a new version coming out soon that improves this).
:)
If you want something a bit different, there's another Vista DWM addon called Smartflip that presents the windows similarly to Apple's FrontRow.
I imagine as more and more people switch to Vista (or, more likely, get new PCs with Vista preloaded) we'll see more and more third-party addons to the DWM. Fancy-Effects-Eye-Candy war between DWM addons and Beryl, anyone?
The article you linked to is a load of crap. If you put a search term, not preceded by an "http://" , into the address bar, IE first adds an "http://" and tries to resolve it; if it doesn't resolve, it plugs it into your default search engine. The vast majority of people use Google as their default search engine, so it will search Google. And yes, a Google search (as with all the major search engines) has sponsored results (and Microsoft certainly doesn't make any money off you searching Google).
(BTW, browser and OS upgrades both preserve the default search engine).
I hadn't heard that quote before, so I've just tried to track it down: it's apparently something that Robert X Cringely claimed (without evidence) that 3Com's founder claimed (without evidence) an unnamed Microsoft employee once said to him. I'll stay sceptical for now, thank you, especially considering Cringely's famed love for the sensationalistic -- and that quote is nothing if not sensationalistic.
I wasn't replying to you specifically; I was just trying to keep all the "itsatrap" tag talk in one thread -- Apologies if I was misleading. Happy very belated real pi day!
Come on, just for a change.
Or at least RTFA before deciding whether to tag: itsatrap...
AFAIK, Bitlocker can operate in a mode where the encryption key is kept in a USB flash drive, so it won't boot unless that's plugged in (obviously it still needs a password as well). If you kept that around your neck or something, that could some way to solving that particular problem.
What happens when the flash drive is lost / damaged / worn out may be a problem, though; I hope you can make a backup drive...
May I refer you to the third sentence of the summary?
...And the Lib Dems?
According to Ed Bott, in the final release: The types of actions that require elevation to administrator status (and therefore display a UAC elevation prompt) include those that make changes to system-wide settings or to files in %SystemRoot% or %ProgramFiles%. Among the actions that require elevation:
- Installing and uninstalling applications
- Installing device drivers
- Installing ActiveX controls
- Installing Windows Updates
- Changing settings for Windows Firewall
- Changing UAC settings
- Configuring Windows Update
- Adding or removing user accounts
- Changing a users account type
- Configuring Parental Controls
- Running Task Scheduler
- Restoring backed-up system files
- Viewing or changing another users folders and files
Which are broadly the same types of actions that require root privelages in Linux.