Within OS X, legacy drivers might be compatible, but I really doubt MacOS 9 drivers run on even PPC OS X.
Linux has *never* had a stable kernel binary interface, and unless Linus has a revelation and decides on the One Perfect Driver ABI, it probably never will.
NT drivers are actually forward compatible, most of the time. During the Vista betas, I used XP drivers for almost everything - companies hadn't released Vista drivers yet, but the XP drivers worked fine (if they used a.EXE installer, just set Compatibility Mode and they installed without a hitch. If they used a.INF/.SYS, slight modification of the.INF might be needed.
The only XP drivers I had trouble with on Vista were for network, particularly WiFi. I haven't tried legacy printer drivers, but I hear complaints about them too. Everything else has Just Worked; even if you forget the Compatibility mode, Vista will detect the error and prompt you to ask if you want to try again using Compatibility Mode.
Typing from a Win7 box on a 1.2GHz tablet. It's no netbook, but with 1GB of RAM, an ultra-slow hard drive, a slow processor, and Intel Integrated graphics, it's not much better.
Win7 runs GREAT! It takes a while to boot up, but that's mostly HDD I/O bound (1.8" drives are incredibly slow). Once booted, it's fast to start programs, responsive while doing things, and goes into and out of sleep instantly. More RAM would let me run more programs at once, but 1GB is enough for Outlook, a not-too-heavy Firefox session, and OneNote (I use the tablet capability to take notes in class) without swapping for more than a moment on switch.
I'm running Win7 Ultimate, with all the graphical effects and such enabled. Even on Intel Integrated graphics, Aero is responsive and smooth. All features appear to be present - media center, tablet (obviously), IIS (not that I'm using it), POSIX subsystem, etc.
Hell, I still run WarCraft: Orcs & Humans sometimes. DOS-based, included its own drivers for sound, video, etc. Runs great, even in multiplayer. I'm slowly transitioning to 64-bit (Win7, currently on 32-bit Vista) and I'll need to include a virtual 32-bit system just so I can continue playing it. Old DOS, Win16, Win9x, and NT4 apps all run just fine on Vista (and, lack of 16-bit support on 64-bit aside, on Win7 too), thank you very much.
Screw long-distance charges - that's what Skype is for. If it's a toll-free number, you don't even need to buy SkypeOut credit. If it isn't, it costs 3 cents a minute or something. Seriously, Skype is perfect for this.
You *could* just use an OS from this half of the decade, hit the Start menu, and type all of three or four letters to find the program you want. Back in 2001, Linux wasn't too great either. XP drives me nuts these days, even though I do know things like WinKey-E to open "Windows Explorer" for file management.
When was the last time anyone using a recent distro and recent software touched an rpm?
Last time I checked, Skype was only available for many distros as RPM/DEB/TGZ. It's possible to install without the command line - RPM or DEB ought to be associated with a GUI package manager - but it's not magic; you still have to know what to download, click through various things, etc. It's not hard, but you do still have to deal with package files at times.
most of the devices discussed here are within the 300-400 dollar range anyway
Most of the discussion seemed to concern the n800, n810, and iPod Touch. Of those, the base prices are variable, depending on capacity and new vs. used, but all are available for $250 or less. Some are available for under $200, especially if you don't need to purchase SD cards to expand the n8x0 devices' capacity.
Just saying... cost is an issue, and the contract-less G1 isn't cheap.
Yes the iPod is probably a better music player but that wasn't the question.
Possibly true, if you're only interested in using it with headphones, but the comes with a decent media player (OK, the browser definitely isn't AS good, but it's not terrible) and has external speakers as well. On your desk, in your pocket, or when sharing something with friends, the n8x0 series works quite well.
Displaying exactly the same rendering would be a lot more useful if the resolution wasn't lower than any modern web page is designed for. The 800x480 resolution of the n800 is high enough that, in full screen mode, you can easily see as much as you would on a windowed browser on a desktop computer (many web pages are designed to display correctly at 800 pixels wide).
By comparison, the iPhone/iPod Touch screens are just too small to display a full page. The scrolling/zooming features work well, but you have no choice but to use them - it's miles better than the next-best (your average smartphone) but not nearly as good as the desktop-like experience you can get on the n8x0.
It should go without saying that the Gecko-based HTML/CSS/JavaScript rendering is easily good enough. It won't pass Acid3 any time soon but it will run Gmail or Slashdot just fine. It would be cool to have a WebKit-based browser, but it's not essential. Besides, the ability to port Firefox extensions is awesome. On an 800x480 screen, AdBlock Plus is incredibly helpful. I can't imagine mobile browsing, especially on a smaller screen (but with full render capability), without it.
You *can* play Flash games on the n8x0 (although a complex one will take ages to load), but I don't recommend it. It does hurt the battery life to do so, but more importantly the interface (physical pressure touch screen) just isn't designed for it. There's virtually no way to move the "pointer" without clicking, for example. Lack of a hardware keyboard on the n800 is also a problem, although this may be less of an issue with the n810.
I mostly used Flash on my n800 for listening to Pandora.com, but I'd watch the occasional YouTube or such. One of the first packages I installed was AdBlock Plus for MicroB, a port of ABP to the browser used on the n8x0. No Flash (or any other kind of) ads to deal with at all!
Heh... Flashblock is nice, but the REAL killer plugin for a handheld web browser is AdBlock Plus (yes, it's available for n800/n810 - there's a plugin repo, and it uses the standard ABP filters). Faster load times, less clutter on the screen (800x480 is a good resolution for a handheld but you still don't want to waste space on ads), and no crappy flash ads at all.
This feature alone makes the n8x0 the best handheld browsing device I'm aware of right now, though I suppose it's only a matter of time until there's an Android browser with ad-blocking.
Surface has already been deployed. The first models were installed months ago. Some of the fancier hotels are rolling them out across the country already. It's not priced for the home user - something on the oder of $5000/machine - but you could probably buy one for personal use if you wanted to. Given enough time, its price will certainly come down.
The point is, just because you've never personally used a given product doesn't mean it isn't already developed, deployed, and being used in the world.
You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all the time... this cuts both ways. Sure, it could be applied to Microsoft making auto-reboot the default, but it also applies to you claiming that's why we haven't seen BSODs at all.
A couple interesting points:
* It's quite possible to tell when a Windows system crashes, even with auto-reboot enabled - you still see the BSOD briefly, and then the computer spontaneously reboots, and *then* you get a message on log-in claiming that a problem occurred.
* I have auto-reboot disabled on all my computers. I *still* haven't seen one of them crash (BSOD or otherwise) on any release OS (betas don't count, especially when mucking about with beta drivers as well) in literally years.
* If you, personally, are getting BSODs (or crashes in general) you're doing something wrong - the OS itself does not inherently crash, but if you're running as an Administrator (and if you're using XP, I'd give 100-to-1 odds that you are) then a single poorly written program that silently loads a bad driver into the kernel can bring the system down. A remarkable number of programs insist on loading some driver or another.
StarCraft I would include not so much for its longevity and player base - those are statistics, which may indicate influence, but are not themselves influence. Instead, I would credit SC with essentially birthing the E-sports competition. True, it wasn't through any particular design of StarCraft aside from the fact that it was a good game with excellent multi-player capabilities (including out-of-the-box integrated Internet play, nearly unheard of back then), but it's still the game which most influenced that entire aspect of society.
Also, read the summary. This is a list of CONSOLE games. None of the games you mention, and only some of the ones the GP mentioned, were primarily intended for the console.
I honestly didn't believe you until I scrolled up to the top to check. This is an interesting, informative, and well-written article about a relevant issue, and positive, or at least definitely non-negative, about Windows. It isn't even a dupe.
This is so unlike the typical kdawson fare that I find myself wondering if another editor slipped it in under his account as a joke!
Actually, it's a somewhat surprising lack. You can now burn ISOs and mount VHDs, but you can't (out of the box) unpack or mount ISOs. This is especially strange because there MS has actually made ISO mounting tools before, usually released as Power Toys (technically unsupported, but first-party software). Vista's powertoys seem to never have been released - there's an internal server with a collection of them in various states of completion, but none have seen work in some time - but internally there are functional ISO mounting add-ons for Windows. It really would be nice if they could include that.
This is especially true in light of fact, pointed out in the very fine article, that many modern ultra-portable laptops lack optical drives. If I download an ISO off MSDN, for example, I need to unpack it using 7-Zip if I want to use it on my tablet.
I can't believe this made it to +5, but I suppose Slashdot group-think dies hard. The actual OS security is *very* good these days. It's not perfect, and it improved since when Vista first shipped, but these days a properly patched system with the firewall enabled is very hard to exploit. Run as a non-administrator (which is a lot easier in Vista thanks to UAC, just like in Linux with sudo) and it's almost impossible.
Unfortunately, most malware for Windows doesn't actually exploit the OS. It exploits the OS's users, which are a much easier target. Trojans, rogue anti-malware, software cracks from shady sources, and "you need to update your version of ActiveX Video Object to view this movie" are the attack vector for Windows malware these days.
As for correcting this problem, educating users is the only feasible option. Windows, especially Vista/Win7, does try... but the OS is fundamentally incapable of understanding whether a program is dangerous or not, since it can not know what your intentions are. It certainly makes a stronger attempt, however, than (for example) Linux with regard to loading drivers - but you can't fix stupid, and when it comes to computers the average person is very stupid indeed.
Actually, most Vista or Win7 updates don't require rebooting. Probably about one third of Patch Tuesdays require a reboot, but usually *most* of the patches in the update don't - it's really only updates to core components that will require a reboot.
XP was much worse about this, with most updates of any flavor (and damn near every single Patch Tuesday) demanding to update.
IE8 compatibility mode is IE7's rendering engine. It's not so much that you need to test in more browsers, as that you can now test multiple rendering engines within one browser (not the only browser that allows you to do this of course, but the only one I know of that allows testing multiple versions of Trident, IE's engine and still the most popular worldwide by a large margin).
In terms of CSS and HTML prior to 5, IE 8 actually *is* standards-compliant (it still doesn't fully support data: URIs, though it has partial support - enough to pass Acid 2). JavaScript is still something of a mess, though it's better in IE8 than it used to be. For pure rendering, however, any HTML/CSS code that renders correctly in Firefox 3 and Safari certainly should work in IE8.
You're mistaken - it's not that IE8 can't render Google, it's that Google's code is sloppy and doesn't conform to any standard. For that matter, it doesn't even specify the standard that it should be compared against. Since it is missing required information, web browsers are forced to guess what defaults Google wanted them to use. This is what a browser's "quirks" mode is for (ironically enough often used to handle code aimed at IE) but these guesses are almost never 100% accurate.
In fact, IE8 renders Google.com identically, as best I can tell, to Firefox 3. Nonetheless, Google's code is invalid and therefore cannot, by definition, be fully compatible.
How many of the mainstream browsers even pass the ACID tests (v2 & 3)?
Every single one, except IE7 (for Acid 2, at least). IE8 passes Acid3, but it's by far the last browser to do so - KHTML (precursor to WebKit) and Opera both passed Acid2 years ago, Firefox 3 and other browsers using recent versions of Gecko pass it, and the biggest news on Slashdot regarding the IE8 beta was that it passed Acid 2 (lots of other features too, but that's the one that had everybody excited).
Acid 3 is a trickier beast. There are versions of WebKit and Opera that pass it, and Gecko is close if they haven't hit it already, but most browsers still fail at least 20 of the tests. IE is again an outlier; no version passes more than 23 (of 100) tests in Acid 3, and while IE8 improved slightly over the last summer, IE8 RC1 actually regressed on Acid 3 relative to beta 2.
Actually, while IE7 is a major step forward in compatibility, it's still horribly borked - it just requires *different* workarounds. Most of the IE7 improvements were in areas like security and interface (I happen to like the new UI, though I'm not universal in that - IE8 lets you go back - but the additions of a search box and tabbed browsing are excellent).
IE8, by comparison, is faster (not up to Firefox 3 on JavaScript, but actually in the running - which 6 and even 7 really weren't), more stable (process-per-tab is nice), and actually passes Acid2. It's definitely not perfect (you will probably still need some custom Javascript, though their DOM is a *lot* better), but it's miles ahead of IE7. CSS should work across browsers, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... WTF?
Within OS X, legacy drivers might be compatible, but I really doubt MacOS 9 drivers run on even PPC OS X.
Linux has *never* had a stable kernel binary interface, and unless Linus has a revelation and decides on the One Perfect Driver ABI, it probably never will.
NT drivers are actually forward compatible, most of the time. During the Vista betas, I used XP drivers for almost everything - companies hadn't released Vista drivers yet, but the XP drivers worked fine (if they used a .EXE installer, just set Compatibility Mode and they installed without a hitch. If they used a .INF/.SYS, slight modification of the .INF might be needed.
The only XP drivers I had trouble with on Vista were for network, particularly WiFi. I haven't tried legacy printer drivers, but I hear complaints about them too. Everything else has Just Worked; even if you forget the Compatibility mode, Vista will detect the error and prompt you to ask if you want to try again using Compatibility Mode.
Typing from a Win7 box on a 1.2GHz tablet. It's no netbook, but with 1GB of RAM, an ultra-slow hard drive, a slow processor, and Intel Integrated graphics, it's not much better.
Win7 runs GREAT! It takes a while to boot up, but that's mostly HDD I/O bound (1.8" drives are incredibly slow). Once booted, it's fast to start programs, responsive while doing things, and goes into and out of sleep instantly. More RAM would let me run more programs at once, but 1GB is enough for Outlook, a not-too-heavy Firefox session, and OneNote (I use the tablet capability to take notes in class) without swapping for more than a moment on switch.
I'm running Win7 Ultimate, with all the graphical effects and such enabled. Even on Intel Integrated graphics, Aero is responsive and smooth. All features appear to be present - media center, tablet (obviously), IIS (not that I'm using it), POSIX subsystem, etc.
Tried running a Win16 program lately?
Hell, I still run WarCraft: Orcs & Humans sometimes. DOS-based, included its own drivers for sound, video, etc. Runs great, even in multiplayer. I'm slowly transitioning to 64-bit (Win7, currently on 32-bit Vista) and I'll need to include a virtual 32-bit system just so I can continue playing it. Old DOS, Win16, Win9x, and NT4 apps all run just fine on Vista (and, lack of 16-bit support on 64-bit aside, on Win7 too), thank you very much.
Screw long-distance charges - that's what Skype is for. If it's a toll-free number, you don't even need to buy SkypeOut credit. If it isn't, it costs 3 cents a minute or something. Seriously, Skype is perfect for this.
You *could* just use an OS from this half of the decade, hit the Start menu, and type all of three or four letters to find the program you want. Back in 2001, Linux wasn't too great either. XP drives me nuts these days, even though I do know things like WinKey-E to open "Windows Explorer" for file management.
When was the last time anyone using a recent distro and recent software touched an rpm?
Last time I checked, Skype was only available for many distros as RPM/DEB/TGZ. It's possible to install without the command line - RPM or DEB ought to be associated with a GUI package manager - but it's not magic; you still have to know what to download, click through various things, etc. It's not hard, but you do still have to deal with package files at times.
most of the devices discussed here are within the 300-400 dollar range anyway
Most of the discussion seemed to concern the n800, n810, and iPod Touch. Of those, the base prices are variable, depending on capacity and new vs. used, but all are available for $250 or less. Some are available for under $200, especially if you don't need to purchase SD cards to expand the n8x0 devices' capacity.
Just saying... cost is an issue, and the contract-less G1 isn't cheap.
Yes the iPod is probably a better music player but that wasn't the question.
Possibly true, if you're only interested in using it with headphones, but the comes with a decent media player (OK, the browser definitely isn't AS good, but it's not terrible) and has external speakers as well. On your desk, in your pocket, or when sharing something with friends, the n8x0 series works quite well.
Displaying exactly the same rendering would be a lot more useful if the resolution wasn't lower than any modern web page is designed for. The 800x480 resolution of the n800 is high enough that, in full screen mode, you can easily see as much as you would on a windowed browser on a desktop computer (many web pages are designed to display correctly at 800 pixels wide).
By comparison, the iPhone/iPod Touch screens are just too small to display a full page. The scrolling/zooming features work well, but you have no choice but to use them - it's miles better than the next-best (your average smartphone) but not nearly as good as the desktop-like experience you can get on the n8x0.
It should go without saying that the Gecko-based HTML/CSS/JavaScript rendering is easily good enough. It won't pass Acid3 any time soon but it will run Gmail or Slashdot just fine. It would be cool to have a WebKit-based browser, but it's not essential. Besides, the ability to port Firefox extensions is awesome. On an 800x480 screen, AdBlock Plus is incredibly helpful. I can't imagine mobile browsing, especially on a smaller screen (but with full render capability), without it.
You *can* play Flash games on the n8x0 (although a complex one will take ages to load), but I don't recommend it. It does hurt the battery life to do so, but more importantly the interface (physical pressure touch screen) just isn't designed for it. There's virtually no way to move the "pointer" without clicking, for example. Lack of a hardware keyboard on the n800 is also a problem, although this may be less of an issue with the n810.
I mostly used Flash on my n800 for listening to Pandora.com, but I'd watch the occasional YouTube or such. One of the first packages I installed was AdBlock Plus for MicroB, a port of ABP to the browser used on the n8x0. No Flash (or any other kind of) ads to deal with at all!
Heh... Flashblock is nice, but the REAL killer plugin for a handheld web browser is AdBlock Plus (yes, it's available for n800/n810 - there's a plugin repo, and it uses the standard ABP filters). Faster load times, less clutter on the screen (800x480 is a good resolution for a handheld but you still don't want to waste space on ads), and no crappy flash ads at all.
This feature alone makes the n8x0 the best handheld browsing device I'm aware of right now, though I suppose it's only a matter of time until there's an Android browser with ad-blocking.
Surface has already been deployed. The first models were installed months ago. Some of the fancier hotels are rolling them out across the country already. It's not priced for the home user - something on the oder of $5000/machine - but you could probably buy one for personal use if you wanted to. Given enough time, its price will certainly come down.
The point is, just because you've never personally used a given product doesn't mean it isn't already developed, deployed, and being used in the world.
You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all the time... this cuts both ways. Sure, it could be applied to Microsoft making auto-reboot the default, but it also applies to you claiming that's why we haven't seen BSODs at all.
A couple interesting points:
* It's quite possible to tell when a Windows system crashes, even with auto-reboot enabled - you still see the BSOD briefly, and then the computer spontaneously reboots, and *then* you get a message on log-in claiming that a problem occurred.
* I have auto-reboot disabled on all my computers. I *still* haven't seen one of them crash (BSOD or otherwise) on any release OS (betas don't count, especially when mucking about with beta drivers as well) in literally years.
* If you, personally, are getting BSODs (or crashes in general) you're doing something wrong - the OS itself does not inherently crash, but if you're running as an Administrator (and if you're using XP, I'd give 100-to-1 odds that you are) then a single poorly written program that silently loads a bad driver into the kernel can bring the system down. A remarkable number of programs insist on loading some driver or another.
StarCraft I would include not so much for its longevity and player base - those are statistics, which may indicate influence, but are not themselves influence. Instead, I would credit SC with essentially birthing the E-sports competition. True, it wasn't through any particular design of StarCraft aside from the fact that it was a good game with excellent multi-player capabilities (including out-of-the-box integrated Internet play, nearly unheard of back then), but it's still the game which most influenced that entire aspect of society.
Also, read the summary. This is a list of CONSOLE games. None of the games you mention, and only some of the ones the GP mentioned, were primarily intended for the console.
I honestly didn't believe you until I scrolled up to the top to check. This is an interesting, informative, and well-written article about a relevant issue, and positive, or at least definitely non-negative, about Windows. It isn't even a dupe.
This is so unlike the typical kdawson fare that I find myself wondering if another editor slipped it in under his account as a joke!
Actually, it's a somewhat surprising lack. You can now burn ISOs and mount VHDs, but you can't (out of the box) unpack or mount ISOs. This is especially strange because there MS has actually made ISO mounting tools before, usually released as Power Toys (technically unsupported, but first-party software). Vista's powertoys seem to never have been released - there's an internal server with a collection of them in various states of completion, but none have seen work in some time - but internally there are functional ISO mounting add-ons for Windows. It really would be nice if they could include that.
This is especially true in light of fact, pointed out in the very fine article, that many modern ultra-portable laptops lack optical drives. If I download an ISO off MSDN, for example, I need to unpack it using 7-Zip if I want to use it on my tablet.
I can't believe this made it to +5, but I suppose Slashdot group-think dies hard. The actual OS security is *very* good these days. It's not perfect, and it improved since when Vista first shipped, but these days a properly patched system with the firewall enabled is very hard to exploit. Run as a non-administrator (which is a lot easier in Vista thanks to UAC, just like in Linux with sudo) and it's almost impossible.
Unfortunately, most malware for Windows doesn't actually exploit the OS. It exploits the OS's users, which are a much easier target. Trojans, rogue anti-malware, software cracks from shady sources, and "you need to update your version of ActiveX Video Object to view this movie" are the attack vector for Windows malware these days.
As for correcting this problem, educating users is the only feasible option. Windows, especially Vista/Win7, does try... but the OS is fundamentally incapable of understanding whether a program is dangerous or not, since it can not know what your intentions are. It certainly makes a stronger attempt, however, than (for example) Linux with regard to loading drivers - but you can't fix stupid, and when it comes to computers the average person is very stupid indeed.
Actually, most Vista or Win7 updates don't require rebooting. Probably about one third of Patch Tuesdays require a reboot, but usually *most* of the patches in the update don't - it's really only updates to core components that will require a reboot.
XP was much worse about this, with most updates of any flavor (and damn near every single Patch Tuesday) demanding to update.
Note: It is possible to exclude the Flash broker process from breaking through Protected Mode without a prompt, though it requires a registry hack.
It's actually even simpler than this; sites can instruct IE8 to use the IE7 rendering engine (compatibility mode) through a single meta tag.
That said, I have found pages which broke in IE8 until I changed the user agent (yes, you can do this).
IE8 compatibility mode is IE7's rendering engine. It's not so much that you need to test in more browsers, as that you can now test multiple rendering engines within one browser (not the only browser that allows you to do this of course, but the only one I know of that allows testing multiple versions of Trident, IE's engine and still the most popular worldwide by a large margin).
In terms of CSS and HTML prior to 5, IE 8 actually *is* standards-compliant (it still doesn't fully support data: URIs, though it has partial support - enough to pass Acid 2). JavaScript is still something of a mess, though it's better in IE8 than it used to be. For pure rendering, however, any HTML/CSS code that renders correctly in Firefox 3 and Safari certainly should work in IE8.
You're mistaken - it's not that IE8 can't render Google, it's that Google's code is sloppy and doesn't conform to any standard. For that matter, it doesn't even specify the standard that it should be compared against. Since it is missing required information, web browsers are forced to guess what defaults Google wanted them to use. This is what a browser's "quirks" mode is for (ironically enough often used to handle code aimed at IE) but these guesses are almost never 100% accurate.
In fact, IE8 renders Google.com identically, as best I can tell, to Firefox 3. Nonetheless, Google's code is invalid and therefore cannot, by definition, be fully compatible.
How many of the mainstream browsers even pass the ACID tests (v2 & 3)?
Every single one, except IE7 (for Acid 2, at least). IE8 passes Acid3, but it's by far the last browser to do so - KHTML (precursor to WebKit) and Opera both passed Acid2 years ago, Firefox 3 and other browsers using recent versions of Gecko pass it, and the biggest news on Slashdot regarding the IE8 beta was that it passed Acid 2 (lots of other features too, but that's the one that had everybody excited).
Acid 3 is a trickier beast. There are versions of WebKit and Opera that pass it, and Gecko is close if they haven't hit it already, but most browsers still fail at least 20 of the tests. IE is again an outlier; no version passes more than 23 (of 100) tests in Acid 3, and while IE8 improved slightly over the last summer, IE8 RC1 actually regressed on Acid 3 relative to beta 2.
Actually, while IE7 is a major step forward in compatibility, it's still horribly borked - it just requires *different* workarounds. Most of the IE7 improvements were in areas like security and interface (I happen to like the new UI, though I'm not universal in that - IE8 lets you go back - but the additions of a search box and tabbed browsing are excellent).
IE8, by comparison, is faster (not up to Firefox 3 on JavaScript, but actually in the running - which 6 and even 7 really weren't), more stable (process-per-tab is nice), and actually passes Acid2. It's definitely not perfect (you will probably still need some custom Javascript, though their DOM is a *lot* better), but it's miles ahead of IE7. CSS should work across browsers, though.