1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open
Umm... that's possible in Win7. Whether an application is open or just pinned to the taskbar, you can rearrange the icon(s).
2. Send windows to background taskbars (desktops), so I could be using different sets of apps at once
Windows does indeed need integrated virtual desktops. There have been many applications that provided them, including some from Microsoft, but it's never been integrated. I use a nice open-source third-party app called Vista Virtual Desktops (works on XP too, though without live previews).
You know the Office 2007 (and other apps using that interface) ribbon can be minimized, right? Double-click on the currently active ribbon tab. Single-click on a tab to have the ribbon temporarily appear until a button is pressed or you click elsewhere (like pressing Alt to access the menu bar) or double-click to restore the ribbon permanently. When minimized (the way I usually have it) it's actually thinner than the the collection of toolbars I would have on Office 2003.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose search, or navigate a lot.
WinKey-F. On Vista, it's actually much faster to just hit the WinKey itself, then type - your text automatically goes into the search box.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best of my knowledge, this paradigm is not used anywhere else in the known world. All the way back to the days of console-based file managers, Enter has meant "use this" not "rename this" and furthermore, Enter (with a selected item) is usually the same as double-clicking that item. Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
If I want to delete a file on the Mac, I hit apple delete. We could argue about whether this is better than Windows' deleting files by just hitting delete, but to empty the trash on a Mac, I hit apple shift delete. I don't know of a keyboard shortcut on Windows to empty the Recycle Bin.
I don't know of any such shortcut for the Bin either, but then I've never needed one. Shift-Delete deletes an item permanently, which makes emptying the Recycle Bin such a rare need that I honestly don't care. Out of curiosity, what does just hitting "Delete" do on OS X?
Expose is great if you like to use the mouse, but I find Alt-Tab both quicker and simpler, and the thumbnails that are shown in Vista are fully sufficient for identifying the window I want if it's not the most recent one used. It doesn't have the distinction to show only windows from a given process, but it orders windows in the order last used, which more than compensates for this, I feel. Also, Windows has two ways of hiding all open windows: WinKey-D (Show Desktop, a toggled mode) and WinKey-M (Minimize All).
Additionally, it's easy to access the menu, and any option under it, from the keyboard. For example, Alt-T-O (in sequence, not chorded) will open the options display for the vast majority of Windows desktop applications. Similarly, between the Start menu (especially with Vista's search, but even without it) and WinKey-R for Run, it's easy to run any installed program from the keyboard alone. Finally, it's possible to bind any application or app shortcut to a globally-recognized key chord using the Properties page (Alt-Enter).
While some of the difference is clearly just a matter of UI paradigm, Windows is an OS where it has always been possible to do literally everything with the keyboard (admittedly not always simple - emptying the recycle bin without the mouse appears non-trivial, though still easy if you're used to keyboard navigation). If some of the specific key combos are less intuitive than they might be (Alt-F4 is a fair example) I submit that's simply because there are so very many in use.
Accurate but oversimplified - video cards aren't the only drivers that are mapped into memory space, just (usually) the biggest thing.
If your drivers support it (many don't, which is why it's disabled by default - a driver which lacks support will cause crashes with this option) you can add/pae to the boot.ini file to enable Physical Address Extension in the kernel. PAE uses an extra 4 bits for internal memory addressing, resulting in up to 64GB of RAM being addressable. Individual processes will still run with only 4GB memory spaces. However, Windows will map some of its physical memory above the 4GB mark, allowing drivers their accustomed memory mapping (assuming the driver developer didn't make assumptions that PAE violates, like that the address space stops hard at 0xFFFFFFFF).
Thank you for your informative response. I'd heard of "water gas" but didn't recall the chemical mixture involved - chemistry is fun but far from my strongest subject, and I've not studied it in some time.
I both agree and disagree with your "gosh, it might be toxic!" paragraph. True, we do need to understand that things which might be dangerous can be safely contained - I'm a big proponent of fission power, for example - and I in no way meant to imply that I thought these things *would* be dangerous. It was merely that I'd like to know what safeguards were taken (carbon monoxide sensors to detect leaks? An added odor so humans can smell it before the concentration gets too high?)
On the other hand, just because something was used for years or even centuries without killing everybody is not a reason to use it now. Asbestos doesn't kill everybody who handles it, let alone everybody who lives in a house that incorporates it. To take some historical examples, tomatoes used to be thought toxic because they would leach lead from peoples' plates - the problem was the lead; any acid would leach it into the food. Hatters and others dealt with mercury in unsafe manners on a daily basis, long before its dangers were understood. In neither case did it kill any substantial portion of the population, but it was still dangerous and did needlessly cost lives. For that matter, I'm sure the same is true of water gas.
Casualties need not reach statistically significant levels to be tragedies. I'm sure safety has been considered, but it is nonetheless a toxic gas and the majority of the population will initially see it as such.
You misunderstood. I'm not saying that I don't think it could be safely contained, or that I'm unaware of the dangers of other fuel sources (although radiation aside - and I do in fact support nuclear reactor use - most fuels used in homes or businesses won't kill you just from being in the same room as a leak - will it have an added odor like natural gas does so you can smell it before the concentration becomes lethal?)
I was merely surprised that something which, until now, has been the cause of people installing sensors in their houses and warning children against being in a closed garage with a running car, could be so useful. I applaud the technology and am in no way suggesting that I don't think it will be safe, just that carbon monoxide gas has always before meant "dangerous combustion waste product" to me, not "fuel to heat your home."
CO to me usually means toxic and dangerous, not fuel source. I'm willing to believe it could be used to produce power, but I'd want to be quite sure it was well contained. It doesn't take much concentration of that stuff to kill a person, and the toxicity means you often lose consciousness before you know you're suffocating (and end up on the floor, where the air quality will be worst).
Good response. To elaborate on that a little, Windows stores informationa bout your login credentials in memory while running (these are used for things like transparent decryption of NTFS-encrypted files and folders). For people concerned about somebody sitting down at their system and messing with stuff, that's what WinKey-L (Lock Computer) is for.
However, if you want sudo-style "enter your password to do this" security prompts, you can enable them in Local Security Policy, found under Administrative Tasks in the Start menu. (There's also a registry key for this setting, but I don't remember which one.) Given how much complaining UAC already causes, I think MS was smart to avoid this setting being the default. On the other hand, it might have helped users understand the reason for UAC... I don't know.
It might look different, but MS has put a lot of effort into making things that used to take a few too many clicks - like connecting to WiFi, or changing display settings - much more easily accessible.
You can also just hit the Windows key and type a few letters - chances are you can find the program, control panel, or even file, email, or page in your browsing history very quickly that way.
Also, the article is incorrect on one substantial point: it is, in fact, quite possible to revert the taskbar to Vista-style (if you decide you don't like the new one). I'm surprised they didn't find it, since it's in the taskbar properties (where settings such as that have been sicne the Taskbar first appeared).
How many MacOS9 or below systems do you see in the business world, these days? Not many, huh? Now go take a look at how many Win2000 boxes are still out there - you'll probably find at least one in almost any business, because businesses don't like to break what works.
To put it differently, consider the relatively mild incompatibilities Vista faced compared to the switch from MacOS9 to OS X, and consider the screaming and shouting that the PC world raised upon discovering that their 10-year-old printer was no longer supported (this is anecdotal; personally I've had zero problems with XP and any printer, scanner, copier, tablet, camera, on indeed just about anything else).
In short, there's virtually no way in hell your idea of "chuck the old system out" with Windows will ever occur, because it would cost Microsoft their biggest market: business licenses.
You realize you could say the same about, say, Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10? DRM aside (an issue I've never run into in Vista, though some people apparently think it's a big deal... I'm just a guy who watches the occasional DVD, listens to MP3s I rip off CDs, plays games, and writes code. Vista has had no problems with any of that) you're basically looking at an iterative improvement in an OS and complaining that it isn't sufficiently different?
In any case, a fairly large portion of the under-the-hood code has been changed. MinWin was a substantial effort to modularize and remove interdependencies and stale code in NT, for example. It's not something the average user is likely to notice, but it's a substantial amount of work. On the other hand, the modification to the taskbar is easily its most significant change since its introduction, especially when you consider things like jump lists. From that perspective, you could argue that Win7 is more different from Vista than Win98 is from Win95.
Um... have you even looked at Win7 (not the videos, an actual system running it)? It's dead easy to tell if a program is running. Your comment reminds me of some blogger who was whining that Aero made it hard to tell which application was running, ignoring the giant red button in the corner that is transparent on non-active windows.
For that matter, I'm not sure where you get the idea that folks hate Aero. I've heard of some people disabling it for performance reasons (valid if you don't have a discrete video card, although if you do it actually performs better) but only one person I know actually preferred the classic theme over Aero. I'm sure he's not alone, but I can't say I've been hearing complaints about Vista's look.
Also, same crap compared to what? Almost nobody complains about Vista's security (quite the opposite, actually), which definitely can't be said for XP, even with SP3. That's worth the sacrafice of some compatibility, in my mind - although I've found very, very few drivers or programs (out of the ones I use, which is a large but not quite common set) that wouldn't run in Vista or even that ran slower - a couple needed patching after install, but most needed only to be installed using Compatibility Mode and they worked fine.
There are a few universal methods of inter-process communication. Named pipes, memory-mapped files, and localhost network connections (such as X clients/servers use). There are almost certainly a few that I'm forgetting but which are nonetheless present on essentially all OPes used today.
However, for every universal IPC technique, there are two that are Windows-specific. Some of those are only suitable for specific tasks, a number of them are deprecated and still available only for legacy reasons, and many seem needlessly complex to me. However, some of them are very powerful, fast, and easy to program against. As such, when you're writing a Windows application (which Chrome is, claims of cross-platform future releases aside), it's often tempting to go with a technique which was designed explicitly for IPC and instantly eliminates many of the more aggravating edge cases... at a cost of being tied to the most common desktop OS in the world.
You're confusing a need to do stuff that needs root permissions on a regular basis with a need to do a bunch of stuff as root in a small time frame. A timeout on sudo sufficient to avoid entering my password repeatedly would be nearly equivalent to editing sudoers to elevate without a password at all.
In any case, I don't think you quite got the point of my post. I'm not complaining about how often I need to enter my password, I'm pointing out that I need elevated permissions even more often in Linux (as judged by su/sudo prompts and windows) than in Windows (UAC prompts). Getting the privileges is as easy as I choose it to be in both systems. The issue is that all the people who bash UAC for its irritating behavior are people who run Windows as Admin... even though, among the subset of those people who also run Linux, almost none of them would ever dream of logging in as root on a daily basis (which, as often as I tinker with either OS, is close to what it would take).
gksu lets you keep the password for the entire session. Opening a root terminal does the same.
Starting an Explorer.exe or cmd.exe as Admin will do that too. If I know I need to make a lot of changes that require full permissions, I'll do such things. The problem is that I don't usually need to make many changes - I need to make one at a time, but fairly frequently. Maybe it's excessive paranoia, but I don't like leaving a root/admin shell open that long.
Hopefully not even windows does that. A forgotten password would mean losing all the data, a changed password would mean reencoding all the data!
Yes and no. You can store a recovery key, if you want to - put it on a flash drive or some such. Furthermore, while it is true that a brute-force reset of your password (by an Administrator) will cause you to lose your stored passwords and encrypted files (it warns you of this quite clearly, by the way), this means that even having physical access to the machine (and booting to Administrator safe mode or some such) isn't enough to decrypt the data - short of brute forcing the key (3DES on older versions, AES on newer) or the password (probably a lot easier) you can't recover the data
As for legitimate password changes (by the user), this is solved by having a master key encrypted by the password, and an actual encryption key which is encrypted by the master key. This offers several advantages: 1) Changing your password requires only decrypting the encryption key using the old master, re-creating the master with the new password, and re-encrypting the encryption key using the new master. 2) It is possible to have multiple key protectors. For example, while this isn't the default, it is possible to do things like store an (encrypted) copy of the encryption key in Active Directory, permitting data recovery even if a forced password reset is needed.
I was not aware of encryptfs - although I found it surprising Linux had no equivalent of Microsoft's encrypting file system - but it sounds neat, and I'll take a look. Thanks for the tip. I'm not an Ubuntu user, but if it's not already available I might try to port it.
Nonetheless, by default, things like email passwords and such are in plain text in Linux (at least in all distros I've tried, which includes Ubuntu of some time back). Using a master password for decrypting them is better than plain text, but far less convenient than transparent login-based credentials.
Um... I type my root password in Linux more often then I hit UAC in Vista (never mind Win7). It might have something to do with the fact that I'm constantly installing things like different wine snapshots and trying different drivers in hopes of getting my webcam working right (it used to work with the universal driver, and no longer does. No clue why, but I'm trying to get back there), but that doesn't change the fact that principle of least privilege is more of a pain in Linux than in Vista (for me). Then there's the encrypted wallet that I need to use for my IM passwords and such, which I must enter a password for as well (since Linux, unlike Windows, doesn't encrypt data using your login credentials).
Of course, running XP as a non-administrator is far more painful the Linux and Vista put together, so I actually consider UAC a major improvement. However, the vast majority of people run XP as an admin, so properly restricted privileges, no matter how painless the elevation process may be, come as something of a shock to them.
Good post, but I thought I'd point out that both there are in fact bootloader switches for the NT kernel (set differently on Vista and XP, but present for both). A couple that you might be interested in are /pae - enables PAE, available since Windows 2000 MSDN link /3GB - allows programs to use 3GB rather than 2GB, available since NT4 MSDN link
You're forgetting something here (and/or didn't RTFA): the chiropractor was essentially being accused of insurance fraud. That kind of accusation, in writing, constitutes libel if it is false. The damages he could be awarded for proving, in court, that the statement is an unlawful attempt to destroy his business reputation are very significant.
Of course, if the claims are true, or if they are dismissed as opinion, then you're correct - Streisand effect to the max. On the other hand, a successful lawsuit could lead to a requirement that the notice be taken down, that a retraction or similar be posted in its place, and potentially a very fat wad of money in damages.
In other words, you're post automatically assumes that the defendant is correct. While the more-than-slightly slanted Slashdot headline does indeed give that impression, your automatic assumption that the chiropractor is making the wrong move is neither useul nor necessarily correct.
Wait wait wait... Since when do 32-bit apps not run on 64-bit Windows? That has never been true, Itanium aside. I'm typing this on 64-bit Win7 beta 1 right now (MSDN subscription) using 32-bit browser while 32-bit Pidgin finishes installing.
True, x64 Windows can't run 16-bit apps, but it can virtualize a 32-bit OS that will happily run them...
The only compatibility issues I've had with 64-bit Win7 thus far are due to it shipping without.NET 1.0 or 1.1 (as best I can tell). Shipping without msvcr70.dll seems kind of odd, but there's a reason that the redistributables are available.
First off, they're actually adding the ability to get out and walk around in stations. It's a new component to the game and it's not out yet, but there are videos of doing it. It's supposed to add an additional element to the game, but personally I'm all about the spaceships anyhow - to me, character profile pictures are just a way to recognize my corpmates at a glance.
Second, if you think EVE is a lonely game, you're doing it wrong. If you've been in the game for whole months without joining a corporation, well... jeez, even the tutorial stresses how important corps are in EVE. Whether for help with getting on top of the game, support in small-scale PvP, getting into the real military actions that make EVE so much fun (from my perspective), of just social interaction... corps are where it's at, man. There are plenty that will recruit you right after you finish your trial, and some even before that.
It also helps to have an experienced player, preferably one already in a corp, help you get started. Not only will you save time and earn more money, but you'll have somebody to vouch for you with regards to corporate admission.
If you know where to sell loot, even a single moderately lucky strike on a level 1 mission can net you several million. While that's nothing to an experienced player, it's dozens of times the usual rewards for the missions themselves. The only reason early players are cash-strapped is that they either don't know how to use the market, or they don't realize that the loot is worth more than the bounties and the mission rewards combined (and in the sort of ship that runs level 1 missions, collecting loot won't waste much of your time, especially if you avoid the cheap, high-cubage junk like cap boost charges).
I haven't mined in something like a year, and I probably spend only a few hours a week, tops (for the last few it's been under an hour a week) ratting (flying around killing NPCs, for those who don't know EVE-lingo). What's more, either mining or ratting can be a social activity; jump on Ventrilo (or even use in-game voice chat) with your corp-mates and what would othersie be tedius becomes fun.
One thing I agree with, though, is that the PvP is the real fun. However, the kinds of ships I like to fly in combat just aren't that expensive, and every now and then I get to loot some idiot whose wreckage is worth more than my entire ship and fittings. Even if I don't get any loot at all, though, the PvP is still worth it.
Wow what planet are you from? 1mm is a reasonable size for the battery mechanism, and yes you can save that by not making the battery removable, but
A) you only save it on one side (the laptop case does not generally extend below the battery case - the bottom of the battery case is part of the laptop case.
B) Short of something like a PDA, the concept of a 3mm battery case is ABSURD. You realize 3mm is slightly less than 1/8th of an inch? My cell phone's battery is about 3mm. A single AAA cell, ignoring casing, is probably at least 6mm (diameter) if not more. My tablet PC, which has the thinnest laptop battery I've ever seen (and runs for 5 hours on it) has a battery at least half an inch thick, including case. Take out the case and it's still going to be 10mm or so.
In summary, eliminating those parts of the case that make the battery removable (the chemicals still need to be separated from the computer components, of course) probably saves you at most 20% (on a 17" desktop replacement, probably closer to 10%). That's not insignificant, but it's not something I'd put up with in a $2800 computer.
... $1200? Really? Apple does love to overprice commodity parts, but I'm pretty sure for $1200 you could easily buy an entire second laptop with 4GB of RAM (from anybody except Apple or Sony).
Granted, 4GB RAM modules for laptops are still expensive, but I believe they're well under $400 and Apple gets to save the $100 or so that the pair of 2GB modules would otherwise cost.
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1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open
Umm... that's possible in Win7. Whether an application is open or just pinned to the taskbar, you can rearrange the icon(s).
2. Send windows to background taskbars (desktops), so I could be using different sets of apps at once
Windows does indeed need integrated virtual desktops. There have been many applications that provided them, including some from Microsoft, but it's never been integrated. I use a nice open-source third-party app called Vista Virtual Desktops (works on XP too, though without live previews).
You know the Office 2007 (and other apps using that interface) ribbon can be minimized, right? Double-click on the currently active ribbon tab. Single-click on a tab to have the ribbon temporarily appear until a button is pressed or you click elsewhere (like pressing Alt to access the menu bar) or double-click to restore the ribbon permanently. When minimized (the way I usually have it) it's actually thinner than the the collection of toolbars I would have on Office 2003.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose search, or navigate a lot.
WinKey-F. On Vista, it's actually much faster to just hit the WinKey itself, then type - your text automatically goes into the search box.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best of my knowledge, this paradigm is not used anywhere else in the known world. All the way back to the days of console-based file managers, Enter has meant "use this" not "rename this" and furthermore, Enter (with a selected item) is usually the same as double-clicking that item. Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
If I want to delete a file on the Mac, I hit apple delete. We could argue about whether this is better than Windows' deleting files by just hitting delete, but to empty the trash on a Mac, I hit apple shift delete. I don't know of a keyboard shortcut on Windows to empty the Recycle Bin.
I don't know of any such shortcut for the Bin either, but then I've never needed one. Shift-Delete deletes an item permanently, which makes emptying the Recycle Bin such a rare need that I honestly don't care. Out of curiosity, what does just hitting "Delete" do on OS X?
Then there are the features for which Apple has keyboard shortcuts where Windows doesn't even have the feature. This would include ExposÃf©, where f9, f10, and f11 can display "all open windows", "windows for the front application", or "hide everything and show the desktop", respectively. Or apple ` to switch between only windows of the front application.
Expose is great if you like to use the mouse, but I find Alt-Tab both quicker and simpler, and the thumbnails that are shown in Vista are fully sufficient for identifying the window I want if it's not the most recent one used. It doesn't have the distinction to show only windows from a given process, but it orders windows in the order last used, which more than compensates for this, I feel. Also, Windows has two ways of hiding all open windows: WinKey-D (Show Desktop, a toggled mode) and WinKey-M (Minimize All).
Additionally, it's easy to access the menu, and any option under it, from the keyboard. For example, Alt-T-O (in sequence, not chorded) will open the options display for the vast majority of Windows desktop applications. Similarly, between the Start menu (especially with Vista's search, but even without it) and WinKey-R for Run, it's easy to run any installed program from the keyboard alone. Finally, it's possible to bind any application or app shortcut to a globally-recognized key chord using the Properties page (Alt-Enter).
While some of the difference is clearly just a matter of UI paradigm, Windows is an OS where it has always been possible to do literally everything with the keyboard (admittedly not always simple - emptying the recycle bin without the mouse appears non-trivial, though still easy if you're used to keyboard navigation). If some of the specific key combos are less intuitive than they might be (Alt-F4 is a fair example) I submit that's simply because there are so very many in use.
Accurate but oversimplified - video cards aren't the only drivers that are mapped into memory space, just (usually) the biggest thing.
If your drivers support it (many don't, which is why it's disabled by default - a driver which lacks support will cause crashes with this option) you can add /pae
to the boot.ini file to enable Physical Address Extension in the kernel. PAE uses an extra 4 bits for internal memory addressing, resulting in up to 64GB of RAM being addressable. Individual processes will still run with only 4GB memory spaces. However, Windows will map some of its physical memory above the 4GB mark, allowing drivers their accustomed memory mapping (assuming the driver developer didn't make assumptions that PAE violates, like that the address space stops hard at 0xFFFFFFFF).
Thank you for your informative response. I'd heard of "water gas" but didn't recall the chemical mixture involved - chemistry is fun but far from my strongest subject, and I've not studied it in some time.
I both agree and disagree with your "gosh, it might be toxic!" paragraph. True, we do need to understand that things which might be dangerous can be safely contained - I'm a big proponent of fission power, for example - and I in no way meant to imply that I thought these things *would* be dangerous. It was merely that I'd like to know what safeguards were taken (carbon monoxide sensors to detect leaks? An added odor so humans can smell it before the concentration gets too high?)
On the other hand, just because something was used for years or even centuries without killing everybody is not a reason to use it now. Asbestos doesn't kill everybody who handles it, let alone everybody who lives in a house that incorporates it. To take some historical examples, tomatoes used to be thought toxic because they would leach lead from peoples' plates - the problem was the lead; any acid would leach it into the food. Hatters and others dealt with mercury in unsafe manners on a daily basis, long before its dangers were understood. In neither case did it kill any substantial portion of the population, but it was still dangerous and did needlessly cost lives. For that matter, I'm sure the same is true of water gas.
Casualties need not reach statistically significant levels to be tragedies. I'm sure safety has been considered, but it is nonetheless a toxic gas and the majority of the population will initially see it as such.
You misunderstood. I'm not saying that I don't think it could be safely contained, or that I'm unaware of the dangers of other fuel sources (although radiation aside - and I do in fact support nuclear reactor use - most fuels used in homes or businesses won't kill you just from being in the same room as a leak - will it have an added odor like natural gas does so you can smell it before the concentration becomes lethal?)
I was merely surprised that something which, until now, has been the cause of people installing sensors in their houses and warning children against being in a closed garage with a running car, could be so useful. I applaud the technology and am in no way suggesting that I don't think it will be safe, just that carbon monoxide gas has always before meant "dangerous combustion waste product" to me, not "fuel to heat your home."
CO to me usually means toxic and dangerous, not fuel source. I'm willing to believe it could be used to produce power, but I'd want to be quite sure it was well contained. It doesn't take much concentration of that stuff to kill a person, and the toxicity means you often lose consciousness before you know you're suffocating (and end up on the floor, where the air quality will be worst).
Good response. To elaborate on that a little, Windows stores informationa bout your login credentials in memory while running (these are used for things like transparent decryption of NTFS-encrypted files and folders). For people concerned about somebody sitting down at their system and messing with stuff, that's what WinKey-L (Lock Computer) is for.
However, if you want sudo-style "enter your password to do this" security prompts, you can enable them in Local Security Policy, found under Administrative Tasks in the Start menu. (There's also a registry key for this setting, but I don't remember which one.) Given how much complaining UAC already causes, I think MS was smart to avoid this setting being the default. On the other hand, it might have helped users understand the reason for UAC... I don't know.
It might look different, but MS has put a lot of effort into making things that used to take a few too many clicks - like connecting to WiFi, or changing display settings - much more easily accessible.
You can also just hit the Windows key and type a few letters - chances are you can find the program, control panel, or even file, email, or page in your browsing history very quickly that way.
Also, the article is incorrect on one substantial point: it is, in fact, quite possible to revert the taskbar to Vista-style (if you decide you don't like the new one). I'm surprised they didn't find it, since it's in the taskbar properties (where settings such as that have been sicne the Taskbar first appeared).
How many MacOS9 or below systems do you see in the business world, these days? Not many, huh? Now go take a look at how many Win2000 boxes are still out there - you'll probably find at least one in almost any business, because businesses don't like to break what works.
To put it differently, consider the relatively mild incompatibilities Vista faced compared to the switch from MacOS9 to OS X, and consider the screaming and shouting that the PC world raised upon discovering that their 10-year-old printer was no longer supported (this is anecdotal; personally I've had zero problems with XP and any printer, scanner, copier, tablet, camera, on indeed just about anything else).
In short, there's virtually no way in hell your idea of "chuck the old system out" with Windows will ever occur, because it would cost Microsoft their biggest market: business licenses.
You realize you could say the same about, say, Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10? DRM aside (an issue I've never run into in Vista, though some people apparently think it's a big deal... I'm just a guy who watches the occasional DVD, listens to MP3s I rip off CDs, plays games, and writes code. Vista has had no problems with any of that) you're basically looking at an iterative improvement in an OS and complaining that it isn't sufficiently different?
In any case, a fairly large portion of the under-the-hood code has been changed. MinWin was a substantial effort to modularize and remove interdependencies and stale code in NT, for example. It's not something the average user is likely to notice, but it's a substantial amount of work. On the other hand, the modification to the taskbar is easily its most significant change since its introduction, especially when you consider things like jump lists. From that perspective, you could argue that Win7 is more different from Vista than Win98 is from Win95.
Um... have you even looked at Win7 (not the videos, an actual system running it)? It's dead easy to tell if a program is running. Your comment reminds me of some blogger who was whining that Aero made it hard to tell which application was running, ignoring the giant red button in the corner that is transparent on non-active windows.
For that matter, I'm not sure where you get the idea that folks hate Aero. I've heard of some people disabling it for performance reasons (valid if you don't have a discrete video card, although if you do it actually performs better) but only one person I know actually preferred the classic theme over Aero. I'm sure he's not alone, but I can't say I've been hearing complaints about Vista's look.
Also, same crap compared to what? Almost nobody complains about Vista's security (quite the opposite, actually), which definitely can't be said for XP, even with SP3. That's worth the sacrafice of some compatibility, in my mind - although I've found very, very few drivers or programs (out of the ones I use, which is a large but not quite common set) that wouldn't run in Vista or even that ran slower - a couple needed patching after install, but most needed only to be installed using Compatibility Mode and they worked fine.
There are a few universal methods of inter-process communication. Named pipes, memory-mapped files, and localhost network connections (such as X clients/servers use). There are almost certainly a few that I'm forgetting but which are nonetheless present on essentially all OPes used today.
However, for every universal IPC technique, there are two that are Windows-specific. Some of those are only suitable for specific tasks, a number of them are deprecated and still available only for legacy reasons, and many seem needlessly complex to me. However, some of them are very powerful, fast, and easy to program against. As such, when you're writing a Windows application (which Chrome is, claims of cross-platform future releases aside), it's often tempting to go with a technique which was designed explicitly for IPC and instantly eliminates many of the more aggravating edge cases... at a cost of being tied to the most common desktop OS in the world.
You're confusing a need to do stuff that needs root permissions on a regular basis with a need to do a bunch of stuff as root in a small time frame. A timeout on sudo sufficient to avoid entering my password repeatedly would be nearly equivalent to editing sudoers to elevate without a password at all.
In any case, I don't think you quite got the point of my post. I'm not complaining about how often I need to enter my password, I'm pointing out that I need elevated permissions even more often in Linux (as judged by su/sudo prompts and windows) than in Windows (UAC prompts). Getting the privileges is as easy as I choose it to be in both systems. The issue is that all the people who bash UAC for its irritating behavior are people who run Windows as Admin... even though, among the subset of those people who also run Linux, almost none of them would ever dream of logging in as root on a daily basis (which, as often as I tinker with either OS, is close to what it would take).
gksu lets you keep the password for the entire session. Opening a root terminal does the same.
Starting an Explorer.exe or cmd.exe as Admin will do that too. If I know I need to make a lot of changes that require full permissions, I'll do such things. The problem is that I don't usually need to make many changes - I need to make one at a time, but fairly frequently. Maybe it's excessive paranoia, but I don't like leaving a root/admin shell open that long.
Hopefully not even windows does that. A forgotten password would mean losing all the data, a changed password would mean reencoding all the data!
Yes and no. You can store a recovery key, if you want to - put it on a flash drive or some such. Furthermore, while it is true that a brute-force reset of your password (by an Administrator) will cause you to lose your stored passwords and encrypted files (it warns you of this quite clearly, by the way), this means that even having physical access to the machine (and booting to Administrator safe mode or some such) isn't enough to decrypt the data - short of brute forcing the key (3DES on older versions, AES on newer) or the password (probably a lot easier) you can't recover the data
As for legitimate password changes (by the user), this is solved by having a master key encrypted by the password, and an actual encryption key which is encrypted by the master key. This offers several advantages:
1) Changing your password requires only decrypting the encryption key using the old master, re-creating the master with the new password, and re-encrypting the encryption key using the new master.
2) It is possible to have multiple key protectors. For example, while this isn't the default, it is possible to do things like store an (encrypted) copy of the encryption key in Active Directory, permitting data recovery even if a forced password reset is needed.
I was not aware of encryptfs - although I found it surprising Linux had no equivalent of Microsoft's encrypting file system - but it sounds neat, and I'll take a look. Thanks for the tip. I'm not an Ubuntu user, but if it's not already available I might try to port it.
Nonetheless, by default, things like email passwords and such are in plain text in Linux (at least in all distros I've tried, which includes Ubuntu of some time back). Using a master password for decrypting them is better than plain text, but far less convenient than transparent login-based credentials.
Um... I type my root password in Linux more often then I hit UAC in Vista (never mind Win7). It might have something to do with the fact that I'm constantly installing things like different wine snapshots and trying different drivers in hopes of getting my webcam working right (it used to work with the universal driver, and no longer does. No clue why, but I'm trying to get back there), but that doesn't change the fact that principle of least privilege is more of a pain in Linux than in Vista (for me). Then there's the encrypted wallet that I need to use for my IM passwords and such, which I must enter a password for as well (since Linux, unlike Windows, doesn't encrypt data using your login credentials).
Of course, running XP as a non-administrator is far more painful the Linux and Vista put together, so I actually consider UAC a major improvement. However, the vast majority of people run XP as an admin, so properly restricted privileges, no matter how painless the elevation process may be, come as something of a shock to them.
Good post, but I thought I'd point out that both there are in fact bootloader switches for the NT kernel (set differently on Vista and XP, but present for both). A couple that you might be interested in are
/pae - enables PAE, available since Windows 2000 MSDN link
/3GB - allows programs to use 3GB rather than 2GB, available since NT4 MSDN link
You're forgetting something here (and/or didn't RTFA): the chiropractor was essentially being accused of insurance fraud. That kind of accusation, in writing, constitutes libel if it is false. The damages he could be awarded for proving, in court, that the statement is an unlawful attempt to destroy his business reputation are very significant.
Of course, if the claims are true, or if they are dismissed as opinion, then you're correct - Streisand effect to the max. On the other hand, a successful lawsuit could lead to a requirement that the notice be taken down, that a retraction or similar be posted in its place, and potentially a very fat wad of money in damages.
In other words, you're post automatically assumes that the defendant is correct. While the more-than-slightly slanted Slashdot headline does indeed give that impression, your automatic assumption that the chiropractor is making the wrong move is neither useul nor necessarily correct.
Wait wait wait... Since when do 32-bit apps not run on 64-bit Windows? That has never been true, Itanium aside. I'm typing this on 64-bit Win7 beta 1 right now (MSDN subscription) using 32-bit browser while 32-bit Pidgin finishes installing.
True, x64 Windows can't run 16-bit apps, but it can virtualize a 32-bit OS that will happily run them...
The only compatibility issues I've had with 64-bit Win7 thus far are due to it shipping without .NET 1.0 or 1.1 (as best I can tell). Shipping without msvcr70.dll seems kind of odd, but there's a reason that the redistributables are available.
Ah cool, thanks. I'll have to try that out.
First off, they're actually adding the ability to get out and walk around in stations. It's a new component to the game and it's not out yet, but there are videos of doing it. It's supposed to add an additional element to the game, but personally I'm all about the spaceships anyhow - to me, character profile pictures are just a way to recognize my corpmates at a glance.
Second, if you think EVE is a lonely game, you're doing it wrong. If you've been in the game for whole months without joining a corporation, well... jeez, even the tutorial stresses how important corps are in EVE. Whether for help with getting on top of the game, support in small-scale PvP, getting into the real military actions that make EVE so much fun (from my perspective), of just social interaction... corps are where it's at, man. There are plenty that will recruit you right after you finish your trial, and some even before that.
It also helps to have an experienced player, preferably one already in a corp, help you get started. Not only will you save time and earn more money, but you'll have somebody to vouch for you with regards to corporate admission.
If you know where to sell loot, even a single moderately lucky strike on a level 1 mission can net you several million. While that's nothing to an experienced player, it's dozens of times the usual rewards for the missions themselves. The only reason early players are cash-strapped is that they either don't know how to use the market, or they don't realize that the loot is worth more than the bounties and the mission rewards combined (and in the sort of ship that runs level 1 missions, collecting loot won't waste much of your time, especially if you avoid the cheap, high-cubage junk like cap boost charges).
I haven't mined in something like a year, and I probably spend only a few hours a week, tops (for the last few it's been under an hour a week) ratting (flying around killing NPCs, for those who don't know EVE-lingo). What's more, either mining or ratting can be a social activity; jump on Ventrilo (or even use in-game voice chat) with your corp-mates and what would othersie be tedius becomes fun.
One thing I agree with, though, is that the PvP is the real fun. However, the kinds of ships I like to fly in combat just aren't that expensive, and every now and then I get to loot some idiot whose wreckage is worth more than my entire ship and fittings. Even if I don't get any loot at all, though, the PvP is still worth it.
Wow what planet are you from? 1mm is a reasonable size for the battery mechanism, and yes you can save that by not making the battery removable, but
A) you only save it on one side (the laptop case does not generally extend below the battery case - the bottom of the battery case is part of the laptop case.
B) Short of something like a PDA, the concept of a 3mm battery case is ABSURD. You realize 3mm is slightly less than 1/8th of an inch? My cell phone's battery is about 3mm. A single AAA cell, ignoring casing, is probably at least 6mm (diameter) if not more. My tablet PC, which has the thinnest laptop battery I've ever seen (and runs for 5 hours on it) has a battery at least half an inch thick, including case. Take out the case and it's still going to be 10mm or so.
In summary, eliminating those parts of the case that make the battery removable (the chemicals still need to be separated from the computer components, of course) probably saves you at most 20% (on a 17" desktop replacement, probably closer to 10%). That's not insignificant, but it's not something I'd put up with in a $2800 computer.
... $1200? Really? Apple does love to overprice commodity parts, but I'm pretty sure for $1200 you could easily buy an entire second laptop with 4GB of RAM (from anybody except Apple or Sony).
Granted, 4GB RAM modules for laptops are still expensive, but I believe they're well under $400 and Apple gets to save the $100 or so that the pair of 2GB modules would otherwise cost.