There is a major difference between making Vista look like Win XP or 2000, and what is in Vista's underlying program structure. I know most people can't tell the difference, but as a person who understands that you can't just stand still and expect some sort of progress, I've been most accommodating to Vista's new interface. I wouldn't go back to the old start menu if it was forced down my throat.
I know some people are just used to using one type of interface and are tied to it because again that's just what they know. But I'd rather learn something that makes my life better. I don't really care if I have to learn something else 2 years down the line as long as it's legitimately better than what I was doing. Vista is that. Just because some people can't get around the smallish differences doesn't mean new users wouldn't find it immediately comfortable.
It's all about scale though. I mean how do you expect people get oil out of the ground. I suppose they must do it with their bare hands. Or more likely with electricity created from coal. But this vehicle at least eliminates part of the equation. And since electricity doesn't have to come from coal this could be very good for the environment.
Seriously? Maybe I'll be modded down for this but I like Vista. But maybe its just that I'm using it as a NEW tool instead of trying to use it like XP.
- Despite having 1GB RAM, the laptop ran like a glued snail.
I'm using Vista Ultimate on my Macbook (black, 2Ghz Core2Duo, 1Gb Ram). While not totally approved from the Apple overlords, it runs great on the handy notebook. Snail it is not.
- Network speed was inconsistent and seems to be bound to movements of the sun.
My network speeds has been great. But yeah I'm still waiting for updated drivers. The speed is great but if I'm streaming mp3's I get pauses every few minutes. I'm patient though
- Many printers (including my HP 2600n) are still unsupported. Not sure if this is HP being their usual crap self or just a complete inability to get Vista to play properly with network printers.
My printer works. Meh YMMV
- Aero. Why?
Seriously? Aero is fantastic! It's not just about eye candy. If a program becomes unresponsive the program just blanks out letting you know that it can't be used right now. Much better than the blanking out that occurs with XP. Seeing window redraw is a thing of the past and responsiveness is very good.
- So many features like "Map Network Drive" have now been moved so they can only be access from specfic areas like "My Computer"
This one is just bullshit. Hit the ALT key. You get the menu you should be used to. Hit Alt+T and you get the tools menu. Map Network Drive is the first menu item.
- The updated XP style for control panel etc is really frustrating.
- When opening some MS Office 2007 applications, the screen would corrupt then everything would hang for about 3 minutes.
- Maybe a problem with Vista's sound libraries? Music sounded tinny through Vista, but cleaner in XP on the same machine.
I'll just handle all these together. Xp style for control panel is really user preference and can be changed. I don't use Office 2007(still using 2003) so I can't argue about it. And Vista sound libraries? The sound sounds fine to me, but I'm comparing OS X to Vista. ??? I dunno about that one???
Although there a few things that I do like about Vista compared to XP I'll just enumerate just one. I really like that while in explorer I can be in any folder and go to the address bar and type/Videos to go to my home directory's video folder. Same thing with the other folders and this improves my life significantly.
Seriously... http://webmail.mozdev.org/ Webmail for Thunderbird is the way to go. I have a Live Mail account plus Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Having access to all my accounts from one place with all the abilities of a full desktop client is fantastic. I use it on OS X machine as well as my XP and Mandriva machines and they all work exactly alike so I know what I'm getting to when I move to a different machine. And with the other extensions available it really is my perfect client.
~3cho
Yes doubling, but you do get the extra feature of having a physical disc. Maybe a few people would pay $4 for a song but I guarantee you it won't be more than a few. It just wouldn't be profitable. Competition is what it is. People pay for maybe 2 ringtones every couple months... quite a different picture if you want to buy music with any regularity. So in the end I just want to see the market decide what the price should be.
Right now it's Apple's DRM vs the labels. If Fairplay was licensed then it's then not just Apple against the label but everyone else who has a license. Do you think that any person is actually gonna spend 5 dollars on a reasonably popular song? (hey I can get a single for $2.00 at the store and I get a physical disc). When profits drop for the labels you know theres gonna be someone asking for a more aggressive pricing structure. And the companies selling the music are gonna want to compete with the Apple and co.
In all cases, if Apple licensed FairPlay, get ready for a price war.
It may be measurable, but it is bullshit to say that it affects productivity. For example if YOU clicked on the menu item and there is a 1/10 of a second difference in speed will YOU see any difference. I know some/.'s here are quick on the draw but seriously? AND if you use the keyboard for menu selecting (like I do) you don't notice any delay since it doesn't matter if the menu is fully appeared.
In your Mac example of the menu bar, you have a good point in theory but I have never overshot a menu item that I was purposefully trying to click. And honestly I like just going to the top of the screen to get to the things that have to do with the window I'm in like closing or minimizing the window. This of course only applies to full screen apps. Like you said the Mac menu is always at the top of the screen. What happens when I have an app that takes up much less of the screen. And what if I decide (because I have other apps I need to see) to put the app at the bottom of my screen. I now waste that 1/10 of a second moving my cursor to the top of the screen instead of just moving a little bit while I'm working in the window. So all in all a wash.
I'm not quite sure what the logic is behind creating their own format for everything
It's because they were successful at it in the past. You have to remember that they helped create the CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc. I think you remember how that one turned out. But as successful as it was they know that it's going to go away sooner or later. They need something else to carry the data for all digital minded people who want their information on the go. There isn't a lot of standards going around. SD isn't standard flash memory and the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle isn't over yet so we can't say which one will become the standard.
Yes it's about making money. But all they are doing is giving the consumer choices. Pick the best one. Or just pick the best one for you. Technically Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD... something apparently you think the R&D should be spending their money on. Doesn't mean it's the right fit for you but it might for a lot of other people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with competing formats as long as when a real winner has been declared everyone gets on board. Unfortunately we probably will never see one for flash media and audio formats. Just too many good choices and too many people advocating one side or another. Oh well. I personally use Memory Stick Pro Duo's because both my phone(w810i) and my PSP use them. Good enough for me.
Bullshit. Erring on ANY side is a BAD thing. I thought we were all scientifically minded here. And the scientific method is how this stuff should be handled. Anything else will be prone to errors. Once there is a complaint derive a hypothesis. Do not blame anyone and do not under any circumstances be on anyones side. But do check it out both thoroughly and quickly. I'm sorry you were an abused child, and I really can understand where you came from since I too was abused (thrown ACROSS the room on more than one occasion).
But I'm begging please don't take any side til you've at least collected a few pieces of evidence to back up one side or the other. The authorities are hopefully trying to make everyones life better not just the childs.
But then again it's not just Windows it's Internet Explorer.
I've seen viruses in my day(spyware and adware) and so have my friends. Ever since we started using Firefox(since its days as Phoenix) we haven't looked back. We also haven't had a single hit of spyware, adware or any other nasty that happens to be the virus of the week.
But guess what all this amounts too. IE being very very bad. And guess what operating system IE only runs on. Honestly any windows system has been good enough for me(better since SP2). But the first thing any sane person should do when getting a windows system is download either Firefox or Opera. Pick your flavor and the internet is going to be a far funner place to be. And please don't blame all of Microsoft for just 1 departments shortcomings.
No this isn't quite as big a mess as you seem to make it. We (computer experts) have heard about this nightmare called UAC for quite some time. I've just installed Vista myself but had a bit of a different experience. As soon as it was installed I knew that I'd be installed a bunch of stuff that I need on a new computer. So I just turned UAC off then... Not after I got irritated by it. Installed all my stuff and then turned UAC back on. I like to reminded that the OS might be doing something dangerous so I keep it on.
But I got way less than 50 (like 0) security alerts when I first started installing stuff and it was seriously easy to do when you just sit down and think about what you are really trying to do. This argument everyone has that turning off UAC is such a chore is ridiculous. This is a good security measure. It really needs fine tuning (like to selectively tell the OS when to prompt)but it is nowhere near as bad as people like to point out. And if you aren't prepared to just turn it off when you are doing a lot of installing then you probably need a few dialog boxes to remind you that installing software isn't the safest thing to do anymore.
We'll actually see life from another planet around a hundred years, when they come to kick our asses for sending them that darned plague. Good thing we remember Christopher Columbus so fondly.
And what happens if I was not a programmer. Do I care if it was the kernel or the driver that was broken?
At least with the closed blob from the manufacturer I know that they have a financial stake in making things work. Which makes for a very good motivator.
Lets not kid ourselves. ATI/AMD and nVidia are in a very competitive field and are very unwilling to give even a hint at what is really behind the scenes. Sure we can make guesses and backwards engineer what they have done. But doing this will always put us at least one step behind. Sure we can say, "Well wouldn't it be great if...," but we don't live in that reality right now. So if we look at it from this perspective there really isn't anything wrong with closed blobs in linux. And until we get Open Source Video Cards, Open Source Video drivers will always be a few steps behind.
Maybe what we should have here is the opposite action. I am hereby initiating a call to arms. Bostonians unite! I implore you, each and every one, to make signs out of Litebrites... Giant banners written in crayon... Huge paper mache balls with fuses. And when everybody is doing it, no one is wrong. What will they do? Sue the entire city? Their own city? But maybe just maybe this is the only way to get people to realize that over-reacting doesn't make your life any better.
The only real way to make it better in a post 9/11 world is to live life, not in a way that says that we will be cautious but optimistic, but to say that we don't care what kind of crap you throw at us. We will not be scared. We will not be afraid of what's out there and we will become educated enough to make correct judgment calls about the things we see day to day.
Just to clarify as per the article. Number 7 should be Once the install is complete, restart the DVD based setup from Vista. Choose "Custom" install so that you can do a clean install.
Just saying perform a in-place upgrade could lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
But what you described is only a choice and therefore not relevant. You describe antivirus, firewall, mail filtering, and programming IDEs. But it's YOUR choice whether or not you want to pay for commercial software thats available for Windows. But just like every single other OS there are free alternatives to each and every one of those examples. Just for example I personally use Avast(antivirus), ZoneAlarm(for those computers not behind my hardware firewall), SpamBayes (for Outlook mail filtering), and you could just go ahead and use GCC(which is available for all major OS's) for programming if you were so inclined.
This idea that after you have Windows you HAVE to buy stuff is ridiculous. My Macbook which is running OS X and Windows Vista hasn't seen a paid program on it since I got it. Paying for programs is incidental and totally up to the person using the computer.
But do you use QNX as a desktop OS? Or better yet does everyone else? Lots of "heavy duty" OS's have stuff that none of the popular OS's have, that's why they still exist. But now everybody gets a piece of the I/O cancellation pie.
The reason this is news isn't because it's brand spanking new that no one has thought up before. It's because now everyone gets something that QNX users take for granted. This is not a small thing.
I have to agree with you eBooks are great for the reasons you describe. But I have to include reference books in what I would like as an eBook for one reason, Search. There is so many times that I read an API book and I wish to anyone listening that I could just type what I was looking for in the cover of the book and it would just flip to the appropriate page. Now I can. Thank you, who ever was listening.
Are you shitting me? I have NEVER YET seen a Kernel Panic in Mac OS X. Yet I have seen Windows 2000 "STOP Error" once or twice, and even more times with Windows XP. And of course, WinDOwS 3.11/95/98/ME would bluescreen at the drop of a hat.
I too have never seen a Kernel Panic in OS X. But guess what I also have never seen a "STOP error" in Windows XP SP 2 either. But I don't go around doing the crazy things people sometimes do. *shrugs shoulders* But I have to argue with your point about the previous Windows. You go all the way back to Windows 3.11. Damn that's some cold shiz. You compare that to OS X? Lets get a little more relevant kay? I remember OS's before OS X. There was OS 9, OS 8, System 7... all of them no where near as good as OS X let alone the various Windows at the time. Bomb's, kernel panics, annoying error messages. I'm just saying lets get real here.
About the user interface... can we just agree to disagree? The UI is a very personal preference. No one (not you, certainly not me) can really effectively tell somebody that a certain UI is going to be better for everyone on the planet.
Yes, but do those old DOS programs run WELL, or are they crashing you? Are they forcing you to run as administrator to make them work? Did you know that Windows XP runs those old programs in a buggy emulation mode? Did you know that emulators that will allow you to run ancient Mac OS 9 and below programs exist? Please.
Unfortunately I have to run OLD Dos programs everyday. I run WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS and it runs perfect. This is on a Pentium 3 700Mhz. Really this is more like running System 7 on OS X. And it still prints to my printer like a champ. Amazing.
When you talk about vulnerabilities, you say it's because of it's *Nix roots that it's secure. That's of course bullshit. It's HOW you implement your security that makes a system secure. OS X is pretty secure, but it's only because they decided to implement their security in a respectable way. Not because it's based on any mythically secure system. And since we're really talking about Vista, we all have to realize that Windows now doesn't allow normal users to be admins. They have to deal with the same limited user accounts that OS X users have had the priviledge of using for quite some time. But now is now, not a year ago so lets just move on with our lives.
See what a laugh the "Month of Mac OS X Bugs" is turning out to be? They had to stoop to finding bugs in commonly deployed Mac OS X apps. HA Ha. However, you can do a YEAR of Windows Bugs, and those bugs will be with the system and system utilities.
Descent was a good game, but the makers went on to make Freespace. All around a better game. And then there was the sequel, Freespace 2. And it was FANTASTIC. I can only imagine what they could do with what we have today. I really really want another sequel to it. Give it half as good a story as the first 2 and it could revitalize the space combat sim genre.
I do grant you 25% of 1.1 Mbps is 825Kbps. But that's gotta be total including protocol overhead. What else is there to internet video?
My numbers of 900Kb/s are roughly from 10% of the 1Mb/s that's stated they are shooting for. But that's still total, there really isn't a whole lot to video transport.
But that's really not here or there. Depending on the type of sources Netflix can get for their initial transcoding (Can they get the original digital sources dvd's are made from?) they can get quite a bit of quality from Mpeg-4. Anyone who has seen what H.264/AVC(Mpeg4 Part 10) can do knows that you can easily get 500% or more compression with equal or better quality depending on the source compared to Mpeg-2.
25% is quite a bit more extreme than necessary. Find a decent bandwidth test and it should tell you how much is being used as data overhead. I've tested my own cable internet and I've never gotten over 10%.
I've encoded lots of stuff at 900Kb/s, they all look terrific. Especially widescreen movies. There is just less stuff to encode therefore every frame gets more bits to go to quality.
And just because the bitrate fluctuates doesn't mean it's the end of the world. All you have to do is set up the application so that it buffers like(and this is just some random number) 10 seconds before playing the video. Now unless the entire next 10 seconds has a higher than average bitrate(not likely) you'll have good quality video working at decent speeds.
Also youtube videos are horrendous. Don't compare what you can do at 900Kb/s to what youtube does. I guarantee a significantly better picture than what you can get from youtube.
That's why the whole MS lock-in thing is such a problem. All their applications are so tightly integrated together that if you want to use one, you have to use them all. Want to use Sharepoint, you have to use MS Office, want to use Exchage, you have to use Outlook, Want to use any of these, you have to use Windows. It would all be much better if you could use one application without being forced to use another application to get all the functionality.
Yeah and if you want to use an iPod you have to use iTunes. It's not all MS but just like any other company they wanted to make sure that they can keep your business throughout the years. Would it be better if I can pick and choose my applications, of course it is. But as any company looking out for it's shareholders, sometimes its hard to distinguish what's good for the customers and what's good for the company.
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There is a major difference between making Vista look like Win XP or 2000, and what is in Vista's underlying program structure. I know most people can't tell the difference, but as a person who understands that you can't just stand still and expect some sort of progress, I've been most accommodating to Vista's new interface. I wouldn't go back to the old start menu if it was forced down my throat.
I know some people are just used to using one type of interface and are tied to it because again that's just what they know. But I'd rather learn something that makes my life better. I don't really care if I have to learn something else 2 years down the line as long as it's legitimately better than what I was doing. Vista is that. Just because some people can't get around the smallish differences doesn't mean new users wouldn't find it immediately comfortable.
My only problem with speed on XUL is the startup times. XUL apps have been fine for me except for when you just start it up.
It's all about scale though. I mean how do you expect people get oil out of the ground. I suppose they must do it with their bare hands. Or more likely with electricity created from coal. But this vehicle at least eliminates part of the equation. And since electricity doesn't have to come from coal this could be very good for the environment.
I'm using Vista Ultimate on my Macbook (black, 2Ghz Core2Duo, 1Gb Ram). While not totally approved from the Apple overlords, it runs great on the handy notebook. Snail it is not.
My network speeds has been great. But yeah I'm still waiting for updated drivers. The speed is great but if I'm streaming mp3's I get pauses every few minutes. I'm patient though
My printer works. Meh YMMV
Seriously? Aero is fantastic! It's not just about eye candy. If a program becomes unresponsive the program just blanks out letting you know that it can't be used right now. Much better than the blanking out that occurs with XP. Seeing window redraw is a thing of the past and responsiveness is very good.
This one is just bullshit. Hit the ALT key. You get the menu you should be used to. Hit Alt+T and you get the tools menu. Map Network Drive is the first menu item.
I'll just handle all these together. Xp style for control panel is really user preference and can be changed. I don't use Office 2007(still using 2003) so I can't argue about it. And Vista sound libraries? The sound sounds fine to me, but I'm comparing OS X to Vista. ??? I dunno about that one???
Although there a few things that I do like about Vista compared to XP I'll just enumerate just one. I really like that while in explorer I can be in any folder and go to the address bar and type
Seriously... http://webmail.mozdev.org/ Webmail for Thunderbird is the way to go. I have a Live Mail account plus Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Having access to all my accounts from one place with all the abilities of a full desktop client is fantastic. I use it on OS X machine as well as my XP and Mandriva machines and they all work exactly alike so I know what I'm getting to when I move to a different machine. And with the other extensions available it really is my perfect client. ~3cho
Yes doubling, but you do get the extra feature of having a physical disc. Maybe a few people would pay $4 for a song but I guarantee you it won't be more than a few. It just wouldn't be profitable. Competition is what it is. People pay for maybe 2 ringtones every couple months... quite a different picture if you want to buy music with any regularity. So in the end I just want to see the market decide what the price should be.
Right now it's Apple's DRM vs the labels. If Fairplay was licensed then it's then not just Apple against the label but everyone else who has a license. Do you think that any person is actually gonna spend 5 dollars on a reasonably popular song? (hey I can get a single for $2.00 at the store and I get a physical disc). When profits drop for the labels you know theres gonna be someone asking for a more aggressive pricing structure. And the companies selling the music are gonna want to compete with the Apple and co.
In all cases, if Apple licensed FairPlay, get ready for a price war.
It may be measurable, but it is bullshit to say that it affects productivity. For example if YOU clicked on the menu item and there is a 1/10 of a second difference in speed will YOU see any difference. I know some /.'s here are quick on the draw but seriously? AND if you use the keyboard for menu selecting (like I do) you don't notice any delay since it doesn't matter if the menu is fully appeared.
In your Mac example of the menu bar, you have a good point in theory but I have never overshot a menu item that I was purposefully trying to click. And honestly I like just going to the top of the screen to get to the things that have to do with the window I'm in like closing or minimizing the window. This of course only applies to full screen apps. Like you said the Mac menu is always at the top of the screen. What happens when I have an app that takes up much less of the screen. And what if I decide (because I have other apps I need to see) to put the app at the bottom of my screen. I now waste that 1/10 of a second moving my cursor to the top of the screen instead of just moving a little bit while I'm working in the window. So all in all a wash.
It's because they were successful at it in the past. You have to remember that they helped create the CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc. I think you remember how that one turned out. But as successful as it was they know that it's going to go away sooner or later. They need something else to carry the data for all digital minded people who want their information on the go. There isn't a lot of standards going around. SD isn't standard flash memory and the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle isn't over yet so we can't say which one will become the standard.
Yes it's about making money. But all they are doing is giving the consumer choices. Pick the best one. Or just pick the best one for you. Technically Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD... something apparently you think the R&D should be spending their money on. Doesn't mean it's the right fit for you but it might for a lot of other people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with competing formats as long as when a real winner has been declared everyone gets on board. Unfortunately we probably will never see one for flash media and audio formats. Just too many good choices and too many people advocating one side or another. Oh well. I personally use Memory Stick Pro Duo's because both my phone(w810i) and my PSP use them. Good enough for me.
Bullshit. Erring on ANY side is a BAD thing. I thought we were all scientifically minded here. And the scientific method is how this stuff should be handled. Anything else will be prone to errors. Once there is a complaint derive a hypothesis. Do not blame anyone and do not under any circumstances be on anyones side. But do check it out both thoroughly and quickly. I'm sorry you were an abused child, and I really can understand where you came from since I too was abused (thrown ACROSS the room on more than one occasion).
But I'm begging please don't take any side til you've at least collected a few pieces of evidence to back up one side or the other. The authorities are hopefully trying to make everyones life better not just the childs.
But then again it's not just Windows it's Internet Explorer.
I've seen viruses in my day(spyware and adware) and so have my friends. Ever since we started using Firefox(since its days as Phoenix) we haven't looked back. We also haven't had a single hit of spyware, adware or any other nasty that happens to be the virus of the week.
But guess what all this amounts too. IE being very very bad. And guess what operating system IE only runs on. Honestly any windows system has been good enough for me(better since SP2). But the first thing any sane person should do when getting a windows system is download either Firefox or Opera. Pick your flavor and the internet is going to be a far funner place to be. And please don't blame all of Microsoft for just 1 departments shortcomings.
No this isn't quite as big a mess as you seem to make it. We (computer experts) have heard about this nightmare called UAC for quite some time. I've just installed Vista myself but had a bit of a different experience. As soon as it was installed I knew that I'd be installed a bunch of stuff that I need on a new computer. So I just turned UAC off then... Not after I got irritated by it. Installed all my stuff and then turned UAC back on. I like to reminded that the OS might be doing something dangerous so I keep it on.
But I got way less than 50 (like 0) security alerts when I first started installing stuff and it was seriously easy to do when you just sit down and think about what you are really trying to do. This argument everyone has that turning off UAC is such a chore is ridiculous. This is a good security measure. It really needs fine tuning (like to selectively tell the OS when to prompt)but it is nowhere near as bad as people like to point out. And if you aren't prepared to just turn it off when you are doing a lot of installing then you probably need a few dialog boxes to remind you that installing software isn't the safest thing to do anymore.
We'll actually see life from another planet around a hundred years, when they come to kick our asses for sending them that darned plague. Good thing we remember Christopher Columbus so fondly.
=(
And what happens if I was not a programmer. Do I care if it was the kernel or the driver that was broken?
At least with the closed blob from the manufacturer I know that they have a financial stake in making things work. Which makes for a very good motivator.
Lets not kid ourselves. ATI/AMD and nVidia are in a very competitive field and are very unwilling to give even a hint at what is really behind the scenes. Sure we can make guesses and backwards engineer what they have done. But doing this will always put us at least one step behind. Sure we can say, "Well wouldn't it be great if...," but we don't live in that reality right now. So if we look at it from this perspective there really isn't anything wrong with closed blobs in linux. And until we get Open Source Video Cards, Open Source Video drivers will always be a few steps behind.
Maybe what we should have here is the opposite action. I am hereby initiating a call to arms. Bostonians unite! I implore you, each and every one, to make signs out of Litebrites... Giant banners written in crayon... Huge paper mache balls with fuses. And when everybody is doing it, no one is wrong. What will they do? Sue the entire city? Their own city? But maybe just maybe this is the only way to get people to realize that over-reacting doesn't make your life any better.
The only real way to make it better in a post 9/11 world is to live life, not in a way that says that we will be cautious but optimistic, but to say that we don't care what kind of crap you throw at us. We will not be scared. We will not be afraid of what's out there and we will become educated enough to make correct judgment calls about the things we see day to day.
Just to clarify as per the article. Number 7 should be Once the install is complete, restart the DVD based setup from Vista. Choose "Custom" install so that you can do a clean install.
Just saying perform a in-place upgrade could lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
But what you described is only a choice and therefore not relevant. You describe antivirus, firewall, mail filtering, and programming IDEs. But it's YOUR choice whether or not you want to pay for commercial software thats available for Windows. But just like every single other OS there are free alternatives to each and every one of those examples. Just for example I personally use Avast(antivirus), ZoneAlarm(for those computers not behind my hardware firewall), SpamBayes (for Outlook mail filtering), and you could just go ahead and use GCC(which is available for all major OS's) for programming if you were so inclined.
This idea that after you have Windows you HAVE to buy stuff is ridiculous. My Macbook which is running OS X and Windows Vista hasn't seen a paid program on it since I got it. Paying for programs is incidental and totally up to the person using the computer.
Both OS X and Vista can have a new CLI. Vista can have PowerShell/MSH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell. Game is just getting started.
But do you use QNX as a desktop OS? Or better yet does everyone else? Lots of "heavy duty" OS's have stuff that none of the popular OS's have, that's why they still exist. But now everybody gets a piece of the I/O cancellation pie.
The reason this is news isn't because it's brand spanking new that no one has thought up before. It's because now everyone gets something that QNX users take for granted. This is not a small thing.
I have to agree with you eBooks are great for the reasons you describe. But I have to include reference books in what I would like as an eBook for one reason, Search. There is so many times that I read an API book and I wish to anyone listening that I could just type what I was looking for in the cover of the book and it would just flip to the appropriate page. Now I can. Thank you, who ever was listening.
I too have never seen a Kernel Panic in OS X. But guess what I also have never seen a "STOP error" in Windows XP SP 2 either. But I don't go around doing the crazy things people sometimes do. *shrugs shoulders* But I have to argue with your point about the previous Windows. You go all the way back to Windows 3.11. Damn that's some cold shiz. You compare that to OS X? Lets get a little more relevant kay? I remember OS's before OS X. There was OS 9, OS 8, System 7... all of them no where near as good as OS X let alone the various Windows at the time. Bomb's, kernel panics, annoying error messages. I'm just saying lets get real here.
About the user interface... can we just agree to disagree? The UI is a very personal preference. No one (not you, certainly not me) can really effectively tell somebody that a certain UI is going to be better for everyone on the planet.
Unfortunately I have to run OLD Dos programs everyday. I run WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS and it runs perfect. This is on a Pentium 3 700Mhz. Really this is more like running System 7 on OS X. And it still prints to my printer like a champ. Amazing.
When you talk about vulnerabilities, you say it's because of it's *Nix roots that it's secure. That's of course bullshit. It's HOW you implement your security that makes a system secure. OS X is pretty secure, but it's only because they decided to implement their security in a respectable way. Not because it's based on any mythically secure system. And since we're really talking about Vista, we all have to realize that Windows now doesn't allow normal users to be admins. They have to deal with the same limited user accounts that OS X users have had the priviledge of using for quite some time. But now is now, not a year ago so lets just move on with our lives.
And then there was a person who didn't even choose to read. ahref=http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/rel=url2
and so on. Please don't laugh. These are serious. Underestimating the value of bug checking will leave you in a sore spot in the long run.
Descent was a good game, but the makers went on to make Freespace. All around a better game. And then there was the sequel, Freespace 2. And it was FANTASTIC. I can only imagine what they could do with what we have today. I really really want another sequel to it. Give it half as good a story as the first 2 and it could revitalize the space combat sim genre.
I do grant you 25% of 1.1 Mbps is 825Kbps. But that's gotta be total including protocol overhead. What else is there to internet video?
My numbers of 900Kb/s are roughly from 10% of the 1Mb/s that's stated they are shooting for. But that's still total, there really isn't a whole lot to video transport.
But that's really not here or there. Depending on the type of sources Netflix can get for their initial transcoding (Can they get the original digital sources dvd's are made from?) they can get quite a bit of quality from Mpeg-4. Anyone who has seen what H.264/AVC(Mpeg4 Part 10) can do knows that you can easily get 500% or more compression with equal or better quality depending on the source compared to Mpeg-2.
25% is quite a bit more extreme than necessary. Find a decent bandwidth test and it should tell you how much is being used as data overhead. I've tested my own cable internet and I've never gotten over 10%.
I've encoded lots of stuff at 900Kb/s, they all look terrific. Especially widescreen movies. There is just less stuff to encode therefore every frame gets more bits to go to quality.
And just because the bitrate fluctuates doesn't mean it's the end of the world. All you have to do is set up the application so that it buffers like(and this is just some random number) 10 seconds before playing the video. Now unless the entire next 10 seconds has a higher than average bitrate(not likely) you'll have good quality video working at decent speeds.
Also youtube videos are horrendous. Don't compare what you can do at 900Kb/s to what youtube does. I guarantee a significantly better picture than what you can get from youtube.
Yeah and if you want to use an iPod you have to use iTunes. It's not all MS but just like any other company they wanted to make sure that they can keep your business throughout the years. Would it be better if I can pick and choose my applications, of course it is. But as any company looking out for it's shareholders, sometimes its hard to distinguish what's good for the customers and what's good for the company.