[...]leaving the many users of their videocards on popular UN*X systems such as Linux with only the option of using a 2d only driver or using nvidia' notorious proprietary driver.
What is wrong with using nVidia's drivers for nVidia's cards? Is there some issue with the nVidia 3D driver implementation that would encourage an open-source reverse-engineering effort? What does "notorious proprietary" mean? I'm all for open-source, but this just seems to be OSFOSS (open-source for open-sources sake).
I am all for making sure a fair price is paid for goods, but we should all beware the "think of the children" appeal without giving due-diligence to the facts. Starbucks typically pays higher than market prices for Ethiopian coffee. Am I missing something or is there some reason they should have to pay even more? Also, America's National Coffee Association was responsible for requesting that the trademarks not be honored, not Starbucks.
How? Do you mean by pressing F8 at each restart? How will end users take to that? And by "certification" do you mean WHQL or just Authenticode? Authenticode is less expensive than WHQL but still too expensive for many smaller shops
Pressing F8 is one way. It can also be turned off using BCEdit. From a cmd prompt:
Bcdedit.exe/set nointegritychecks ON
This will disable the requirement to have all drivers digitally signed.
The fundamental difference is that OS/2 was good and Vista is a DRM encrusted piece of crap.
If by good you mean a huge failure that died a quick death, then yeah. It was good. However, I have to agree that Vista is DRMed to death. I don't think any end-user appreciates having DRM that forces itself upon you like it does in Vista.
The argument that older apps didn't work on Vista was correct at the time. For instance, SQL Server 2005 didn't work for me.
I think you understand the difference between an OS not supporting an application and an application not working correctly because the OS was, at the time, beta, yes? Your implication was that generally apps that work with XP will not work with Vista. That is false.
Perhaps I didn't go a good job of explaining how powerful tags are? Tags are at the file level. Each file can have multiple tags. As such, each file can be a member of as many member sets as needed. Moving my pictures to a folder named Rome will not gain me anything. What about the pictures I took in Florence or Cinque Terre? A different folder? What if I want to see all the pictures from Rome that have roman architecture? Or ones that have my fiance in it? Or ones that have roman architecture and my fiance in it? I think you get the idea. Tags are way powerful and they are ubiquitous throughout the Vista filesystem.
Search? Since when has searched worked?
Not very well in XP and very well indeed in Vista. They are two different animals completely. Search is an integral part of the OS and not the simple search mechanism found in XP. In addition Vista's instant search mechanism will display the results matching your search as you type.
Sort by name? This is a new feature?
No, of course sorting by name is not a new feature, but once again, sorting in Vista is a completely different beastie than in XP. For example, when sorting by name you can also have the files grouped together in a virtual folder so that all files which start with the letters A-L appear in one folder, etc. You can sort on multiple columns at once. You can sort on custom metadata within the file, including tags. None of which can be done in XP.
Ten years ago Apple switched from Motorola to PowerPC. The Motorola Macs could never run Mac OSX, even though they were only five years old when the OS was released.
I wish I could mod you up for this insightful bit of info, but I can't since I also posted here previously. Although I really didn't want people to get stuck on splitting hairs on how well an OS will run on an outdated computer, I think you make a very interesting point about how Vista will run, however poorly, on an older system and it isn't really an option for a Mac. I'm not Mac bashing here, I dig 'em, I just didn't realize this was the case.
I agree with the point that from an end-users perspective the UI is the OS. Having said that, though, I don't think any of the items I mentioned can be considered to be strictly UI improvements. The user may experience the improvements, such as tagging and searching, via the UI but the improvements that allow this functionality are OS improvements.
I find very few similarities between the launches of the two operating systems, or at least none of which can't be also attributed to the launch of any new OS. Vista does not require new hardware to run. Sure, if you have a 10 year old computer the odds of you getting it up and running is unlikely, but the same could be said if you had a 10 year old Mac and tried to run OS X on it. Of course, I will leave Linux out of this particular point because it probably would run on a 10-year-old computer;).
The argument that older apps won't work on Vista is false. Vista is backwards compatible with older software, including DOS apps.
What is the compelling reason to upgrade? If you are already running Windows I think it is very compelling to upgrade. Vista gets a lot of bad press, deservedly so some of it, because the UI borrows from other successful operating systems and some functionality too, but there is a lot to love under its hood if you are willing to look at the OS as a new one are willing to learn rather than trying to use it just as you do XP. Here are a few of my favorites new pieces of functionality:
The new copy functionality that pushes all copy issues to the end of the queue so that all "are you sure?", "unable to copy file, rety?", etc come after every copyable file has been done rather than randomly as in XP.
Speaking of copying...you can see additional useful information when copying files such as the xfer speed in mb/s.
We are finally done with the C:\Documents and Settings directory structure and have a more reasonable C:\Users directory. The Documents and Settings folder always annoyed the hell out of me.
Bread-crumb-like links for directory paths when browsing through folders. So, I can type C:\User\Administrator\My Documents\Backups\2005\Expenses\IBM\Clients in a folder URI and be taken to that folder. Then be able to click on any word in the URI, like "Administrator" and be taken to that folder.
64 bit everything! All Vista versions except for Basic come in 32 and 64-bit versions. You get both versions when you buy Vista. So, everyone will have access to the 64-bit version at no extra charge. To pass driver certifications venders must supply both 32 and 64-bit versions of the driver. Being able to have a fully supported 64-bit OS will be nice.
Security is completely revamped and includes offline and boot-level protection via BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Searching is thoroughly integrated into the OS. For example, open any folder and you'll see a google-like search toolbar alongside the URI which allows you to instantly filter what you see in that folder. I said any folder and meant it. Open control panel and there is the same Instant Search toolbar on that folder. Or open the "Searches" folder from anywhere and see a bunch of pre-configured searches. Looking at mine I have instant searches for "Shared By Me", "Recently Changed", "Recent Pictures and Videos", "Recent Email", "Recent Documents", "Recent Email Attachments" and "Recent Music". You can of course customize new searches.
Tags! Tag your pictures with useful information. After a recent trip to Italy I added metadata tags to all the pictures I took there. Now I can do a filter on "Rome" and see all the pics from Rome or "Florence" and see all the pics from there or even search for Rome museums and see all the pictures in Rome that were taken in museums. Tagging metadata is integrated into the OS and any file can be tagged with metadata, not just pictures. Tagging rocks.
Many new column header controls for folders. For example, looking at my Documents folder I can click on the dropdown for the "Name" column header and choose "Stack By Name". I now see three document stack icons: A-H, I-P, and Q-Z. Clicking on these will take you to those stacks.
I'm sure there will be replies that say this or that OS had had that functionality for years, which is fine...there are some great OSes out there. I doubt Vista will win over very many people who are using other OSes anyway. My contention is that if you are running XP, Vista offers everything XP does plus a host of new features (that aren't eye-candy related) that make this OS very much worth the upgrade.
WTF would this post be modded +5 informative? Could we all please apply at least a modicum of common sense when modding? Please?? The above troll is completely off-topic.
1. Didn't even read the article
2. What does the design of the tcp/ip stack in any other OS have anything to do with this?
3. Ditto for Network Access control. So companies have it? This is relevant how?
4. Congratulations. Vista isn't special. It has design patterns that other OSes have. Thanks for pointing that irrelevant piece of information out.
One of the best downloads I have ever made is the MVPs HOSTS file. This is a free hosts file which includes all spammers, spyware, parasites, and adware URLs. The version I am using has over 11,000 entries. Good stuff.
One nice fringe benefit of this file is that ads will no longer appear in web pages or applications which host ads, like MSN Messenger.
1. Pirate obtains a copy of Windows Vista image
2. Pirate slipstreams malware into pirated image
3. Pirate distributes malware enhanced image to other pirates.
4. Pirate submits article to slashdot claiming "Vista is designed to make malware easy."
In my experience it isn't true at all that non-tech managers try to "stay out of development." They still try to understand what is going on, they just generally have a less successful time doing it. That lack of knowledge will hurt the teams he manages more than if he had some tech background.
A good manager is there to shield his people from being bothered from outside distractions and to make sure they have what they need. If he has a firm grasp of what goes on in his teams, he will be able to better anticipate when and where problems might arise in a project and plan for it.
A lot of the issues discussed about the architecture are true for any RFID implementation. I don't understand how they could not have realized these beforehand. RFID is generally an insecure medium.
From the report one particularly aggregious security flaw that struck me was:
The key to access data on the RFID tag is stored on the passport itself and can be read by humans and machine scanners.
Actually, I think the point they were making is that until your max out your resolution to above 1920x1200 both the nVidia and the the ATI it was being compared to are so fast that the bottleneck is always the CPU and not the GPU.
Although I agree in theory with a lot of the reasons posted for still wanting a DSLR, I still say in practice most people just wouldn't respond the same way. The expensive camera would end up sitting in a closet somewhere gathering dust. Or, take the scenario where the average person does generally take the camera with them, I would be willing to bet that in nearly all photos for the average user there will be no discernable difference in the quality of pictures taken with a nice DSLR vs a nice digicam. I can hear the angry keys pounding responses already, but consider the fact that as someone pointed out previously most people will use the automatic settings on any camera. Of the ones that will try the manual settings most of those won't know what they are doing or only know enough to get a picture no-better than when using the automatic settings. And the specialized scenarios where automatic settings would not be able to capture the scene properly, I assert that it would be just these scenes where the novice's attempts at manual adjustments would come out at a disadvantage to automatic settings.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the higher quality photos that can be achieved with good hardware, but at the end of the day the photographer has more control over how good a photo is than the camera.
For the vast majority of us not only is a DSLR overkill, but it will actually result in less pictures being taken because of an unwillingness to lug it around. If you primarily take pictures for vacations, picnics and such then you will likely be more bothered by a DSLR than you will be enamored by its superior picture quality or manual adjustments. Don't buy into the hype: DSLRs are great technology but only useful for the one-percenters who consider themselves photographers and not picture takers.
Slow initials sales are a possibility. But, that will last exactly as long as it takes for the first great game written only for DirectX 10.0 to be released.
Interesting, but not promising.
on
A GUI For Books
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While the "ooooh aaaaaah" factor is there, I don't see this technology as being particularly promising. It wouldn't be useful in schools because with the amount of wear and tear that school textbooks go through kids would constantly be going up to the teacher complaining that their textbook is broken. Also, having to carry a power brick around (did you see the size of that thing in the video??) for any textbook would seem to be contraindicated.
And finally, if you look at the website you will see this paragraph:
Tracking the usage of a book makes it a cash register to sell additional services, advertising, and products. Your book becomes a continuing point of sales to all the money-making possibilities of the digital world. Now every page can generate continuing after sales revenue.
Great. Just what the world needs, another medium for spam.
If that that powered aerobie is invisible, then I have an old Sit-And-Spin that I will attempt to get an invisbility patent for, too.
The only thing invisible about it is when they unfocus the video camera to make it look like it has disappeared.
As McLaren rounds turn number 5 at Jerez, a small balloon pops up in his HUD:
You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. This copy of Windows is not genuine and is not eligible to receive all updates and product support from Microsoft.
Click Get Genuine now to get more information and resolve this issue.
Google maps is a huge winner. Its ajax interface allowing you to drag your map whichever way you want is still the best on the market, not to mention the satellite and hybrid overlays which, although MS also does on MapPoint, they don't do nearly as well. A similar product, google earth, is hands-down better than MS's TerraServer.
And what about google utilities such as google toolbar? That alone has made my online life substantially better. Being able to highlight all the addresses on a page and link directly to google maps is something I use all the time.
So, I completely disagree with the article's premise that google hasn't produced a huge winner other than their search engine. They've produced several.
Slashdot Mirror
I am all for making sure a fair price is paid for goods, but we should all beware the "think of the children" appeal without giving due-diligence to the facts. Starbucks typically pays higher than market prices for Ethiopian coffee. Am I missing something or is there some reason they should have to pay even more? Also, America's National Coffee Association was responsible for requesting that the trademarks not be honored, not Starbucks.
Bcdedit.exe
This will disable the requirement to have all drivers digitally signed.
Not very well in XP and very well indeed in Vista. They are two different animals completely. Search is an integral part of the OS and not the simple search mechanism found in XP. In addition Vista's instant search mechanism will display the results matching your search as you type.
No, of course sorting by name is not a new feature, but once again, sorting in Vista is a completely different beastie than in XP. For example, when sorting by name you can also have the files grouped together in a virtual folder so that all files which start with the letters A-L appear in one folder, etc. You can sort on multiple columns at once. You can sort on custom metadata within the file, including tags. None of which can be done in XP.
I agree with the point that from an end-users perspective the UI is the OS. Having said that, though, I don't think any of the items I mentioned can be considered to be strictly UI improvements. The user may experience the improvements, such as tagging and searching, via the UI but the improvements that allow this functionality are OS improvements.
I find very few similarities between the launches of the two operating systems, or at least none of which can't be also attributed to the launch of any new OS. Vista does not require new hardware to run. Sure, if you have a 10 year old computer the odds of you getting it up and running is unlikely, but the same could be said if you had a 10 year old Mac and tried to run OS X on it. Of course, I will leave Linux out of this particular point because it probably would run on a 10-year-old computer ;).
The argument that older apps won't work on Vista is false. Vista is backwards compatible with older software, including DOS apps.
What is the compelling reason to upgrade? If you are already running Windows I think it is very compelling to upgrade. Vista gets a lot of bad press, deservedly so some of it, because the UI borrows from other successful operating systems and some functionality too, but there is a lot to love under its hood if you are willing to look at the OS as a new one are willing to learn rather than trying to use it just as you do XP. Here are a few of my favorites new pieces of functionality:
The new copy functionality that pushes all copy issues to the end of the queue so that all "are you sure?", "unable to copy file, rety?", etc come after every copyable file has been done rather than randomly as in XP.
Speaking of copying...you can see additional useful information when copying files such as the xfer speed in mb/s.
We are finally done with the C:\Documents and Settings directory structure and have a more reasonable C:\Users directory. The Documents and Settings folder always annoyed the hell out of me.
Bread-crumb-like links for directory paths when browsing through folders. So, I can type C:\User\Administrator\My Documents\Backups\2005\Expenses\IBM\Clients in a folder URI and be taken to that folder. Then be able to click on any word in the URI, like "Administrator" and be taken to that folder.
64 bit everything! All Vista versions except for Basic come in 32 and 64-bit versions. You get both versions when you buy Vista. So, everyone will have access to the 64-bit version at no extra charge. To pass driver certifications venders must supply both 32 and 64-bit versions of the driver. Being able to have a fully supported 64-bit OS will be nice.
Security is completely revamped and includes offline and boot-level protection via BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Searching is thoroughly integrated into the OS. For example, open any folder and you'll see a google-like search toolbar alongside the URI which allows you to instantly filter what you see in that folder. I said any folder and meant it. Open control panel and there is the same Instant Search toolbar on that folder. Or open the "Searches" folder from anywhere and see a bunch of pre-configured searches. Looking at mine I have instant searches for "Shared By Me", "Recently Changed", "Recent Pictures and Videos", "Recent Email", "Recent Documents", "Recent Email Attachments" and "Recent Music". You can of course customize new searches.
Tags! Tag your pictures with useful information. After a recent trip to Italy I added metadata tags to all the pictures I took there. Now I can do a filter on "Rome" and see all the pics from Rome or "Florence" and see all the pics from there or even search for Rome museums and see all the pictures in Rome that were taken in museums. Tagging metadata is integrated into the OS and any file can be tagged with metadata, not just pictures. Tagging rocks.
Many new column header controls for folders. For example, looking at my Documents folder I can click on the dropdown for the "Name" column header and choose "Stack By Name". I now see three document stack icons: A-H, I-P, and Q-Z. Clicking on these will take you to those stacks. I'm sure there will be replies that say this or that OS had had that functionality for years, which is fine...there are some great OSes out there. I doubt Vista will win over very many people who are using other OSes anyway. My contention is that if you are running XP, Vista offers everything XP does plus a host of new features (that aren't eye-candy related) that make this OS very much worth the upgrade.
WTF would this post be modded +5 informative? Could we all please apply at least a modicum of common sense when modding? Please?? The above troll is completely off-topic.
1. Didn't even read the article
2. What does the design of the tcp/ip stack in any other OS have anything to do with this?
3. Ditto for Network Access control. So companies have it? This is relevant how?
4. Congratulations. Vista isn't special. It has design patterns that other OSes have. Thanks for pointing that irrelevant piece of information out.
Can we move on to the topic now?
It's refreshing to see someone on ./ point out some of the absurdity of the MS bashing going on. Nice job.
One of the best downloads I have ever made is the MVPs HOSTS file. This is a free hosts file which includes all spammers, spyware, parasites, and adware URLs. The version I am using has over 11,000 entries. Good stuff.
One nice fringe benefit of this file is that ads will no longer appear in web pages or applications which host ads, like MSN Messenger.
1. Pirate obtains a copy of Windows Vista image 2. Pirate slipstreams malware into pirated image 3. Pirate distributes malware enhanced image to other pirates. 4. Pirate submits article to slashdot claiming "Vista is designed to make malware easy."
In my experience it isn't true at all that non-tech managers try to "stay out of development." They still try to understand what is going on, they just generally have a less successful time doing it. That lack of knowledge will hurt the teams he manages more than if he had some tech background. A good manager is there to shield his people from being bothered from outside distractions and to make sure they have what they need. If he has a firm grasp of what goes on in his teams, he will be able to better anticipate when and where problems might arise in a project and plan for it.
Here is a link to the actual report.
Actually, I think the point they were making is that until your max out your resolution to above 1920x1200 both the nVidia and the the ATI it was being compared to are so fast that the bottleneck is always the CPU and not the GPU.
Although I agree in theory with a lot of the reasons posted for still wanting a DSLR, I still say in practice most people just wouldn't respond the same way. The expensive camera would end up sitting in a closet somewhere gathering dust. Or, take the scenario where the average person does generally take the camera with them, I would be willing to bet that in nearly all photos for the average user there will be no discernable difference in the quality of pictures taken with a nice DSLR vs a nice digicam. I can hear the angry keys pounding responses already, but consider the fact that as someone pointed out previously most people will use the automatic settings on any camera. Of the ones that will try the manual settings most of those won't know what they are doing or only know enough to get a picture no-better than when using the automatic settings. And the specialized scenarios where automatic settings would not be able to capture the scene properly, I assert that it would be just these scenes where the novice's attempts at manual adjustments would come out at a disadvantage to automatic settings. Don't get me wrong, I understand the higher quality photos that can be achieved with good hardware, but at the end of the day the photographer has more control over how good a photo is than the camera.
For the vast majority of us not only is a DSLR overkill, but it will actually result in less pictures being taken because of an unwillingness to lug it around. If you primarily take pictures for vacations, picnics and such then you will likely be more bothered by a DSLR than you will be enamored by its superior picture quality or manual adjustments. Don't buy into the hype: DSLRs are great technology but only useful for the one-percenters who consider themselves photographers and not picture takers.
Slow initials sales are a possibility. But, that will last exactly as long as it takes for the first great game written only for DirectX 10.0 to be released.
While the "ooooh aaaaaah" factor is there, I don't see this technology as being particularly promising. It wouldn't be useful in schools because with the amount of wear and tear that school textbooks go through kids would constantly be going up to the teacher complaining that their textbook is broken. Also, having to carry a power brick around (did you see the size of that thing in the video??) for any textbook would seem to be contraindicated. And finally, if you look at the website you will see this paragraph: Tracking the usage of a book makes it a cash register to sell additional services, advertising, and products. Your book becomes a continuing point of sales to all the money-making possibilities of the digital world. Now every page can generate continuing after sales revenue. Great. Just what the world needs, another medium for spam.
If that that powered aerobie is invisible, then I have an old Sit-And-Spin that I will attempt to get an invisbility patent for, too. The only thing invisible about it is when they unfocus the video camera to make it look like it has disappeared.
As McLaren rounds turn number 5 at Jerez, a small balloon pops up in his HUD:
You may be a victim of software counterfeiting. This copy of Windows is not genuine and is not eligible to receive all updates and product support from Microsoft.
Click Get Genuine now to get more information and resolve this issue.
Google maps is a huge winner. Its ajax interface allowing you to drag your map whichever way you want is still the best on the market, not to mention the satellite and hybrid overlays which, although MS also does on MapPoint, they don't do nearly as well. A similar product, google earth, is hands-down better than MS's TerraServer. And what about google utilities such as google toolbar? That alone has made my online life substantially better. Being able to highlight all the addresses on a page and link directly to google maps is something I use all the time. So, I completely disagree with the article's premise that google hasn't produced a huge winner other than their search engine. They've produced several.