It installs. I haven't used it yet, but it the installer only stated there were known compatibility issues, and directed me to download the service pack before using it. Nothing said "thou shalt not install this program on this OS!" The service pack was easy to find and install (IIRC the message included a "check for solutions" button which provided a link to the download page).
Vista 5744 (RC 2) in both x86 and x64, Visual Studio 2005 x86 with SQL Server Express 2005.
I'm no ordinary computer user myself - I use all the major desktop OSes, work as a developer, etc. - but I am the de facto IT guy in my part of the dorms, so I deal with plenty of people who view their computer as little more than a device (think music player, game console, or even microwave). These people simply do not care about the stuff listed. From just a glance at the site:
SMB2: Few enough of these users have ever tried connecting to Windows on SMB; they aren't going to care about Linux. They just possibly might appreciate the much-improved interface and the ability to join networks easily without rebooting, however. The Network Map also just looks "cool" to them. Oh, and higher editions of Vista (such as those used in businesses or by powerusers) include NFS support, so why are we terribly concerned about SMB again?
Hardware: I'm sure there are people outside the tech industry that actually upgrade their own OS, but there aren't many. Those that do are probably running fairly new hardware anyhow, quite possibly because they do homebrew upgrades of that too. Corporations may care about this one, but I wouldn't hold my breath; most of the machines where I work are ~3 years old - we actually have a handful of P3 chips - and very few of them wouldn't run Vista easily enough. They won't do Aero without video card upgrades (about $40 each) but they hardly need to.
Antivirus: Complaining that Vista doesn't bundle antivirus is pure bullshit. However, there are at least three antivirus programs that I personally know work with it already: OneCare, PC-Cillin, ClamAV (though I've only used it in the UNIX subsystem). Symantec and McAfee will get there as soon as they re-configure their rootkits to deal with PatchGuard. Avast might be there already. I know I'm forgetting a few. Or, you can roll like I usually do (if you're a poweruser and know what you're doing) and not run AV. It's bloody hard to write effective malware that doesn't need admin access (via UAC) to bypass the two-way firewall, if nothing else.
Drivers: Holy shit, an OS that not all third-party hardware maufacturers have released drivers for yet! Quick, everybody switch to Linux! Seriosly, this is dumb. It's also borderline lying, since Vista will happily load XP drivers 95% of the time. There may be advantages to the Vista drivers - WDDM being the obvious one - but probably at least half the drivers on my Vista system are not available for Vista yet, and I still have my proprietary webcam and TV tuner, SD cardreader and one-touch buttons, printer, and etc. What's wrong with the MS drivers anyhow? They tend to be short on configuration utilities but they work, and that is all that the vast majority of users care about. For the rest there's maual configuration in the Devace Manager, if need be.
Application compatibility: This one hasn't bitten me yet in 5744 (sure, earlier versions had issues, but even they were good) and frankly, the ability to run WarCraft: Orcs and Humans (from the days when Windows wasn't technically on OS) suggests MS puts a lot more effort into backward compatibility than most people realize. If an installer doesn't run correctly (I think the test is technically whether main returns a non-zero value) a dialog will prompt you to ask whether you would like to apply compatibility mode settings. Some games (DirectX-9 heavy ones) get slightly better framerates in XP mode, but usually run just fine under Vista even without comaptibility settings. Anything that checks explicitly for XP will probably fail, but not much does. MS also did a lot of testing of the applications normal people use; I think even the new AOHell client now works. Oh, and exactly how much OS
Okay, that's the first 5. Sometime later I might bother responding to the rest. Seriously, it's not hard coming up with answers to these, if you know the normal computer user very well (and powerusers can deal with these "shortcomings" theselves, usually quite easily).
if MS had supported POSIX / UNIX APIs in a protected mode subsystem, would Linux have really "happened"?
You mean like Services for Unix (wikipedia) or the Subsystem for Unix Applications (which is the same idea, but integrated into Server 2003, Longhorn Server, and advanced versions of Vista)? It's Unix, but in Windows. uname identifies it as Interix. It uses a lot of BSD code, but also GNU tools such as gcc, make, and so forth (and yes, it includes sources for everything GPLd). It has a BSD-like package management system with a small but growing repository (including software ranging from libpng up to openssl, bash, Apache v1 and v2, and even the GIMP). It's a fairly sane build environment, and recent versions of the config.guess script (part of the autoconf package, I believe, but most programs have outdated versions, and will direct you to download new ones from the author) allow a surprising number of programs to be compiled easily (random example: the NAUTY algorithm is used to determine whether graphs are isomorphic - it can probably do other stuff, but that's what I needed - and the program to use it, called dreadnaut, is only available as source and only compiles on unix. Replace the config.guess and it compiled and worked perfectly in my Vista system's SUA). The only real drawback is lack of an easy X server... it can use a Windows X server if you have one installed, or allow remote machines to use their X servers, or use a commercial one available from Interix. I'm currently trying to comppile x.org on it, which is a rather large undertaking for somebody of my experience level. If anybody has done so successfully (with x.org or another free X server) I'd be very interested.
Before the inevitable "but why don't you just use Linux" questions start, I do use Linux (and, once I get another hard drive, will install DesktopBSD as well) but there are some things that the SUA is great for. Most of my work is in Windows, and I can't afford to change OSes - even with hibernate, it takes too long - every time something comes up in class if I have been using the other OS. Sure, there's virtualization and, to a limited extent, Wine (though it doens't tend to run the kinds of Windows programs I use, like Visual Studio and OneNote) but since the only downside to Interix is its (current) lack of GUI apps (I don't need POSIX-exclusive GUI apps very often), and I can easily open multiple SUA windows, I find it solves my every day, CSE-student/gamer needs better than booting by default into Linux/*BSD.
Good to know you aren't a really a VB(.NET) programmer, or you'd know that the new keyword doesn't belong there! Also, that would be a Sub not a Function unless you specify a return type.
Shit, I think I just revealed what I do for a living these days. I swear, I don't use that language for anything else! Please don't kill me!
From what I read of the article (the link in the summary, but not the links from there) this looks like an issue that only affected those with modded XBox 360s, and MS released a fixed patch the next day. While I hope they will fix (for free) any system that was permanently bricked by this, I'm not even sure they are under contract obligation to fix a modded XBox (for free, at least). Making them pay $5-10 million for a patch that messes up the systems of those who have already voided their warranty might be valid, but if MS is indeed offering to fix them for free, including shipping, this guy doens't have a leg to stand on and I hope he gets laughed out of court.
The question (for the rest of the world) is whether it will work with *any* iCal program. Windows Calendar (Vista) and, I believe, Outlook 2007 calendar are iCal compatible (for real, this time) and can publish and sync with other iCal software. If this phone could do that, they have a larger market possibility. There have been phones and even calendar watches that sync with Outlook, but for the home users that often don't even run Outlook (and for those to whom the stigma of Outlook's early days still turns them away from it) such functionality is irrelevent. With Windows Calendar being standard in Vista, all major OSs (I'm assuming there's something for Linux, if not there will be very soon) will include iCal compatible software out of the box. An iCal compatible smartphone could do really well in this environment, as long as it isn't limited to one platform.
Lets face it, the iPod wouldn't have done anywhere near as much for Apple if it were limited to current Apple users. For one thing, there aren't enough, and for another, it has been so successful it has helped raise brand awareness and emphasized the "it just works" philosophy. An iPDA (iSmartPhone?) could make a big difference, especially among business professionals who still tend to run Windows since all their business apps run on it (and we already have Boot Camp, Parallels, so Apple computers are no longer a non-option).
Basically, Apple probably has more to gain from interoperability than from tying their smartphone exclusively to their own platform, under the assumption that they make a good product and market it well. Going by past performance, that's no trouble for them. The only issue left is price point.
STEREO launched some time ago (they are two of the many satellites which I mentioned we already had up) when 4MP was pretty good. Remember that space hardware needs to be hardened against radiation; it tends to lag slightly behind the cutting edge of consumer electronics. However, they make up for it in quality; I'm sure those 4MP cameras (probably even the old 1MP cameras) took images of comparable of superior power to my one-year-old 5MP camera.
So, having said all that... the new observatory uses 16 megapixel cameras. Those, too, are not cutting edge - DSLRs have had 30+ for a while now I think, certainly they had 20+ last year - but they are probably the highest-resolution cameras looking at the sun by a significant factor (say, 4x).
We've had satellites designed to study the sun for decades now. We have magnetograms, cameras operating all the way up into the Gamma frequencies, spectrographs of about 14 different varieties, and good old-fashioned eyeballs (heavily filtered if directly observing the surface). This is revolutionary because...?
That said, it's certianly good to learn more about the most vital, influential, and dangerous object in the solar system.
We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us. The question is, what keeps them from knocking out this spy with a well-aimed CME?*
It doesn't seem logical anyhow. Sure, there may be only two high capability options, but that doesn't make them monopolies. Besides, there AREW a few other companies out there... Intel doesn't have the other 50%. So, you have at least THREE major corporate players, all within a factor of two of each other marketshare-wise, plus third (fourth?) parties. Intel might not really directly compete with NVidia, but ATI has had and continues to have integrated solutions for laptops, at least. I've tried one; it's not bad, though not as powerful as a standalone card. So, overall I think we have a healthy, active community of companies all competing like hell to give the best customer experience, in a cutthroat and fast-moving industry, without actually cutting any throats. This needs an antitrust probe WHY?!?
So wait... if I'm understanding this correctly, the idea here is free images of XP. Sure, they probably won't work in anything except VirtualPC, but they are still free copies of XP! I thought the whole rationale behind making VPC free was to drive adoption of virtualization, resulting in more Windows licenses sold...
Are they *fully functional* versions? I.E. can you install other software (there's a decent supply of XP-only software that won't even run in W2K)? The summary suggests you can upgrade the browser, which is a big step by itself... but I have a few friends who haven't upgraded to W2K for various reasons, and still run W2K. Does this new download mean they would be able to use XP (within W2K) without needing to buy an XP license?
IDC expects out of those 90 million units that 67% will be Vista Basic and 30% will be Vista Premium (both private consumer versions). Vista requires the PC to have a semi-competent graphics processor, able to push DX9, just to function properly. This could mean the PC gaming market will enjoy more potential customers, especially among more graphically intense programs.
Should read "... Vista Home Premium and above requires the PC to have a semi-competent graphics processor, able to push DX9, to display the new Aero interface instead of the Vista Basic or legacy interfaces."
I ran Vista Ultimate betas for months on a computer that couldn't get even one frame/second in Aero because it didn't support pixel shader 2.0 (I overrode the hardware check just to see). Everything else worked perfectly. Yeah, high-end graphics adds usability as well as eye candy (stuff like Flip-3D, transparent sidebar, etc.) but in the end, even a high-end desktop OS can do fine without fancy graphics compositing. While people might end up buying more graphics cards, even Intel Integrated (crap, from a gamer's perspective) can do Aero if you have the newest releases.
Considering the anti-phishing filters in IE7, Outlook 2007, and Windows Mail (Vista's replacement for Outlook Exress) I'd say Apple is doing less than Microsoft to protect against such scams. This needs to change. Outlook/WinMail gets a number of false positives and Firefox 2.0 also has phishing filters, but thus far, the default software for (the next version of) Windows provides better protection. It's hard to provide such protection, but Apple should be trying.
Please let me know if there's a feature of Leopard I've missed.
OS X has been hacked. There have been rootkits, worms, corrupted image exploits, and at least one spambot in the wild.
OS X is completely subject to social engineering. Indeed, it may be MORE subject, since many Mac users incorrectly assume that they CANNOT get malware. That makes it much easier to convince people they ought to run the installer/enter password/click OK on that prompt.
OS X is a MUCH rarer OS that Windows. In general, an exploit for one of them won't affect the other. Therefore, Mac malware has a far lower impact than Wondows malware because it is much more difficult to spread. For example, suppose a Mac ActionScript exploit gets into the wild. Even though it will probably execute on Windows machines (everybody runs Flash) differences in filesystem, user structure, etc. pretty much guarantees the worst it might do is crash the Windows machine. It probably won't really do whatever it is intended to do.
Bear in mind that malware doens't neccessarily need root priveleges; tons of damage can be done from userspace. Things like spambots and such need nothing more, and userspace exploits can lead to root compromises. Consider a virus that adds itself to downloaded files (after hash check). You download a program from a safe source, don't bother to hash it yourself (basically nobody does), and install it, providing password when requested. Bang, you're rooted.
OS X's browser isn't perfect either. There have been plenty of problems with Safari, and some of them were quite serious. Firefox is already starting to get exploited, and it only has ~15% usage (of which some very small portion is on Macs). Safari is, last I checked, well under 3%, but there have been at least two exploits for it.
MySpace trusts its users WAYYYY too much. I think it filters out <script tags, but beyond that I make no promises. Any site that needs to warn its users that "using HTML and CSS to hide MySpace's advertisements is not permitted" is asking for it, big time. Note that at least a few profiles do hide the ads anyhow (on those occasions where I visit the site using a browser that will show ads) and some may actually circumvent the scripting restrictions, even.
The advantage is you get to assault your visitors eyes with a combination of bad programming and bad taste... or just bad design in general (links that go to 24px and bold on MouseOver?!? Blue text on blue backgrounds? You get the idea...) You can put up flash (good for music, videos, games, and remote code execution exploits) and forms (doesn't everybody love surveys? What about a way to post comments without scrolling ALL the way to the bottom of the page? Surely you don't have an issue with default buttons that go... somewhere! I know... let's sneak a Password field on there.) I haven't been to the site in a month or two, which means it is settling blissfully into the recesses of my mind...
While I don't personally play WoW, a lot of my friends do and I've seen exactly this kind of behavior (repetitive, predictable mob fights, etc.) PvP adds a different element, but a bot could do a lot of grinding in relative safety.
What I'm curious about is what do you think of EVE in this context? Sure, mining asteroids is both boring as hell and easily scriptable (and, left for a few hours, racks up amazing levels of cash) but there tends to be a bit more variation in the fights. Okay, you can stick to one particular TYPE of fight (staying away from missile-armed enemies, visiting deadspace rats where you know their fighting style, etc.) but in general it would seem very different. Also, the real valueable stuff in EVE is all in the low security space, and in lowsec you are ALWAYS at risk of getting jumped by a PVPer. Short of making a best attempt to flee (tricky if the first thing the enemy does is scramble your warp drive and perhaps web your sublight). I don't really think I'd trust a bot to be adaptable enough in a PvP fight.
I don't put any particularly sensitive info on GMail or Live Mail, because I know it will be monitored. On the other hand, advertising does help keep a lot of web pages and services (like webmail) free. I'm not going to bitch if, in a discussion of stocks, Google (or MS) finds I'm more likely to click on one online stock broker than another. I'm even LESS likely to bitch if they then post a link to that broker prominently when I search something stock-related, rather than prominently posting some other broker and hiding the one I like behind a link or two.
Anybody who thinks these services work without reading your input and working from what it provides needs to stop believing in magic. However, since Google is non-evil and MS isn't (or at least, that's not their motto) We clearly need to get on MS's case about this... </sarcasm>
Question: Did these groups say anything about Google's AdSense?
Honestly, anybody who looks at those targeted ads must realize that information is being harvested to create them. You know what? Good for them! I'd MUCH rather have a service that finds ads of companies I'm interested in than one which either:
1) Slaps up random ads to dating sites, unrelated services also provided by the host company who's service I'm using, etc.
2) Charges me even slightly to offset costs of data storage, server maintenance, R&D, bandwidth, etc.
Except for the restrictions regarding legal action, the Ms-PL (Permissive License) seems sort of BSDL-like. You're allowed to edit the source, you're allowed to redistribute it, and you're even allowed to close it (redistribute it sans source). You're not allowed to take credit for the original version and the software is licensed "as-is".
IANAL but I think the main difference between the Ms-PL and the BSDL is the Ms-PL term 3B:
If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically.
I'm assuming you're saying you just don't want to run Flash, since otherwise you REALLY don't want to be using an outdated version of the player (security issues). Best solution I've found: Install Flash player, then disable it. You can disable it (IE-wide global switch) using the Add-In Manager (you can reach this from the Tools comand bar icon, or by double clicking a spot on the Status bar - I think there's s tooltip that appears when your mouse is over the Add-In Manager) and flash will then just not load. You shouldn't get any prompts at all, except perhaps the first time, and I'm pretty sure you can set that to never appear again. It's not quite as good as Flashblock because you can't block specific sites while allowing others - global switching only - but it works well, and can be enabled/disabled in about 3 clicks.
Some truly wonderful sites, like Pandora.com, are awfully boring without Flash. Yes, there is a justification for its existence. You really don't want to run an outdated version, though.
Somewhat OT, but useful info for those running IE7.
Actually, Firefox 2.0 now has WORSE zooming than IE. IE7 has supported full-page zooming (text, graphics, flash, everything) since beta 2 or before. It is now (a few days before Firefox 2; coincidence?;-) a fully released product, and works well msot places. The lastest version isn't available for Vista yet though (and I don't run XP anymore) so I can't say I've tried it, but the RC3 was good.
HP has been selling laptops with dual HD bays for over a year, I think. Check out their dv8000 (Turion or Core Duo) and dv9000 (Turion X2 or Core 2 Duo) lines. They aren't terribly expensive, have decent battery life (I get 3+ hours), and offer the performance improvements of dual drives (striped data partition anybody?) You can also use them for data backup, or to easily migrate data (pull the drive out of an old laptop and put it in as the secondary). You have been able to buy them preconfigured with up to 2x120GB for months now, and with 160GB and 200GB drives now available, you can potentially get up to 400GB internal laptop storage.
uBid.com has been selling the dv8000 for quite a while; most are under $1000. Even those without dual drives already should have the second bay waiting; buy one of the fancy, new drives and use it for data storage, for example.
I'm not vhemontly anti-Dell, but screw them. They really aren't the best deal in town these days. MBPs were good a year ago, but a week ago they were obscenely overpriced. I'm glad to see them back in the game. In any case, I need a new laptop. I've just spent a LOT of time looking.
I use 17" and won't use anything less, so that cut out most things. Core 2 Duo or Turion X2 was a must. That cut out Apple until this announcement, but I went and compared some specs anyhow. The truth is, the MBP was way overdue for this upgrade. 120GB is barely over middle-of-the-road for a laptop HDD. Any "Professional" machine with less than 2GB of RAM is a joke. The procs were fast but 32-bit only. The video cards were... okay.
One thing that jumps out at me is that Apple (and Dell) just don't seem to take advantage of the larger case that comes with the larger b>display. For a year or two now, HP's 17" laptops come with things like a built-in numpad (in addition to full-size keyboard) and two hard drive bays. For a desktop replacement (without lugging an external HDD as well), dual bays is the capacity upgrade we've all been waiting for.
A lot of the great stuff that comes with Macs is no longer new or exclusive. The magsafe power adapter aside, pretty much everything hardware-wise except FireWire 800 (vs. 400) is available in PC laptops. ABG wireless, BlueTooth, built-in webcam, et al. Dual-layer DVD burners are a standard now, and even LightScribe is fairly common. A few laptops even have options for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray now (at a major premium, but hey... it's still under $2800...)
A new PC laptop can come with up to 512MB VRAM, 4GB RAM (for an absurd amount, but it can... 2GB is very common) hard drives up to 200GB/disk, all the Merom or Turion X2 goodness, TV tuner cards, 1680x1050 resolution, and more.
The crazy thing is you can get a HP dv9000 with dual HDD, 2GB system RAM, 512 MB VRAM, TV-Tuner card, Lightscribe dual-layer burner, ABG and Bluetooth, Webcam, 1680x1050 res on a 17" display, and a decent Core 2 Duo for... ~$2000. Knock off some of the options, and you can get a MBP-like system for close to $1600. It doesn't come with OS X... but it does come with Media Center, and if you buy it now the upgrade from Media Center to Vista Home Premium is minimal.
get firefox and find a way to force it, like link iexplore.exe to it
Set Program Access and Defaults (Admin-level tool which I believe is in the control panel on XP) is a tool designed to do exactly this, with no funny hacks. You can not only set things like the default web browser, media player, etc. you can also prohibit access to certain programs (including IE, OE, and other applications where many programs are designed to do the same thing).
Firefox is great, although I personally hate using it without some choice extensions (the adding of which may have security implications). However, IE7 on a limited account will probably do as well. Sorry to go against groupthink... but I've had a number of annoying experiences trying to get Firefox 1.5 to work properly on limited accounts. It's almost acceptable using my university's setup, though
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It installs. I haven't used it yet, but it the installer only stated there were known compatibility issues, and directed me to download the service pack before using it. Nothing said "thou shalt not install this program on this OS!" The service pack was easy to find and install (IIRC the message included a "check for solutions" button which provided a link to the download page).
Vista 5744 (RC 2) in both x86 and x64, Visual Studio 2005 x86 with SQL Server Express 2005.
Okay, that's the first 5. Sometime later I might bother responding to the rest. Seriously, it's not hard coming up with answers to these, if you know the normal computer user very well (and powerusers can deal with these "shortcomings" theselves, usually quite easily).
You mean like Services for Unix (wikipedia) or the Subsystem for Unix Applications (which is the same idea, but integrated into Server 2003, Longhorn Server, and advanced versions of Vista)? It's Unix, but in Windows. uname identifies it as Interix. It uses a lot of BSD code, but also GNU tools such as gcc, make, and so forth (and yes, it includes sources for everything GPLd). It has a BSD-like package management system with a small but growing repository (including software ranging from libpng up to openssl, bash, Apache v1 and v2, and even the GIMP). It's a fairly sane build environment, and recent versions of the config.guess script (part of the autoconf package, I believe, but most programs have outdated versions, and will direct you to download new ones from the author) allow a surprising number of programs to be compiled easily (random example: the NAUTY algorithm is used to determine whether graphs are isomorphic - it can probably do other stuff, but that's what I needed - and the program to use it, called dreadnaut, is only available as source and only compiles on unix. Replace the config.guess and it compiled and worked perfectly in my Vista system's SUA). The only real drawback is lack of an easy X server... it can use a Windows X server if you have one installed, or allow remote machines to use their X servers, or use a commercial one available from Interix. I'm currently trying to comppile x.org on it, which is a rather large undertaking for somebody of my experience level. If anybody has done so successfully (with x.org or another free X server) I'd be very interested.
Before the inevitable "but why don't you just use Linux" questions start, I do use Linux (and, once I get another hard drive, will install DesktopBSD as well) but there are some things that the SUA is great for. Most of my work is in Windows, and I can't afford to change OSes - even with hibernate, it takes too long - every time something comes up in class if I have been using the other OS. Sure, there's virtualization and, to a limited extent, Wine (though it doens't tend to run the kinds of Windows programs I use, like Visual Studio and OneNote) but since the only downside to Interix is its (current) lack of GUI apps (I don't need POSIX-exclusive GUI apps very often), and I can easily open multiple SUA windows, I find it solves my every day, CSE-student/gamer needs better than booting by default into Linux/*BSD.
Good to know you aren't a really a VB(.NET) programmer, or you'd know that the new keyword doesn't belong there! Also, that would be a Sub not a Function unless you specify a return type.
Shit, I think I just revealed what I do for a living these days. I swear, I don't use that language for anything else! Please don't kill me!
From what I read of the article (the link in the summary, but not the links from there) this looks like an issue that only affected those with modded XBox 360s, and MS released a fixed patch the next day. While I hope they will fix (for free) any system that was permanently bricked by this, I'm not even sure they are under contract obligation to fix a modded XBox (for free, at least). Making them pay $5-10 million for a patch that messes up the systems of those who have already voided their warranty might be valid, but if MS is indeed offering to fix them for free, including shipping, this guy doens't have a leg to stand on and I hope he gets laughed out of court.
The question (for the rest of the world) is whether it will work with *any* iCal program. Windows Calendar (Vista) and, I believe, Outlook 2007 calendar are iCal compatible (for real, this time) and can publish and sync with other iCal software. If this phone could do that, they have a larger market possibility. There have been phones and even calendar watches that sync with Outlook, but for the home users that often don't even run Outlook (and for those to whom the stigma of Outlook's early days still turns them away from it) such functionality is irrelevent. With Windows Calendar being standard in Vista, all major OSs (I'm assuming there's something for Linux, if not there will be very soon) will include iCal compatible software out of the box. An iCal compatible smartphone could do really well in this environment, as long as it isn't limited to one platform.
Lets face it, the iPod wouldn't have done anywhere near as much for Apple if it were limited to current Apple users. For one thing, there aren't enough, and for another, it has been so successful it has helped raise brand awareness and emphasized the "it just works" philosophy. An iPDA (iSmartPhone?) could make a big difference, especially among business professionals who still tend to run Windows since all their business apps run on it (and we already have Boot Camp, Parallels, so Apple computers are no longer a non-option).
Basically, Apple probably has more to gain from interoperability than from tying their smartphone exclusively to their own platform, under the assumption that they make a good product and market it well. Going by past performance, that's no trouble for them. The only issue left is price point.
STEREO launched some time ago (they are two of the many satellites which I mentioned we already had up) when 4MP was pretty good. Remember that space hardware needs to be hardened against radiation; it tends to lag slightly behind the cutting edge of consumer electronics. However, they make up for it in quality; I'm sure those 4MP cameras (probably even the old 1MP cameras) took images of comparable of superior power to my one-year-old 5MP camera.
So, having said all that... the new observatory uses 16 megapixel cameras. Those, too, are not cutting edge - DSLRs have had 30+ for a while now I think, certainly they had 20+ last year - but they are probably the highest-resolution cameras looking at the sun by a significant factor (say, 4x).
plasma loops capture video of you!
We've had satellites designed to study the sun for decades now. We have magnetograms, cameras operating all the way up into the Gamma frequencies, spectrographs of about 14 different varieties, and good old-fashioned eyeballs (heavily filtered if directly observing the surface). This is revolutionary because...?
That said, it's certianly good to learn more about the most vital, influential, and dangerous object in the solar system.
We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us. The question is, what keeps them from knocking out this spy with a well-aimed CME?*
*The second question is at least half-serious.
It doesn't seem logical anyhow. Sure, there may be only two high capability options, but that doesn't make them monopolies. Besides, there AREW a few other companies out there... Intel doesn't have the other 50%. So, you have at least THREE major corporate players, all within a factor of two of each other marketshare-wise, plus third (fourth?) parties. Intel might not really directly compete with NVidia, but ATI has had and continues to have integrated solutions for laptops, at least. I've tried one; it's not bad, though not as powerful as a standalone card. So, overall I think we have a healthy, active community of companies all competing like hell to give the best customer experience, in a cutthroat and fast-moving industry, without actually cutting any throats. This needs an antitrust probe WHY?!?
So wait... if I'm understanding this correctly, the idea here is free images of XP. Sure, they probably won't work in anything except VirtualPC, but they are still free copies of XP! I thought the whole rationale behind making VPC free was to drive adoption of virtualization, resulting in more Windows licenses sold...
Are they *fully functional* versions? I.E. can you install other software (there's a decent supply of XP-only software that won't even run in W2K)? The summary suggests you can upgrade the browser, which is a big step by itself... but I have a few friends who haven't upgraded to W2K for various reasons, and still run W2K. Does this new download mean they would be able to use XP (within W2K) without needing to buy an XP license?
Should read "... Vista Home Premium and above requires the PC to have a semi-competent graphics processor, able to push DX9, to display the new Aero interface instead of the Vista Basic or legacy interfaces."
I ran Vista Ultimate betas for months on a computer that couldn't get even one frame/second in Aero because it didn't support pixel shader 2.0 (I overrode the hardware check just to see). Everything else worked perfectly. Yeah, high-end graphics adds usability as well as eye candy (stuff like Flip-3D, transparent sidebar, etc.) but in the end, even a high-end desktop OS can do fine without fancy graphics compositing. While people might end up buying more graphics cards, even Intel Integrated (crap, from a gamer's perspective) can do Aero if you have the newest releases.
Considering the anti-phishing filters in IE7, Outlook 2007, and Windows Mail (Vista's replacement for Outlook Exress) I'd say Apple is doing less than Microsoft to protect against such scams. This needs to change. Outlook/WinMail gets a number of false positives and Firefox 2.0 also has phishing filters, but thus far, the default software for (the next version of) Windows provides better protection. It's hard to provide such protection, but Apple should be trying.
Please let me know if there's a feature of Leopard I've missed.
MySpace trusts its users WAYYYY too much. I think it filters out <script tags, but beyond that I make no promises. Any site that needs to warn its users that "using HTML and CSS to hide MySpace's advertisements is not permitted" is asking for it, big time. Note that at least a few profiles do hide the ads anyhow (on those occasions where I visit the site using a browser that will show ads) and some may actually circumvent the scripting restrictions, even.
The advantage is you get to assault your visitors eyes with a combination of bad programming and bad taste... or just bad design in general (links that go to 24px and bold on MouseOver?!? Blue text on blue backgrounds? You get the idea...) You can put up flash (good for music, videos, games, and remote code execution exploits) and forms (doesn't everybody love surveys? What about a way to post comments without scrolling ALL the way to the bottom of the page? Surely you don't have an issue with default buttons that go... somewhere! I know... let's sneak a Password field on there.) I haven't been to the site in a month or two, which means it is settling blissfully into the recesses of my mind...
While I don't personally play WoW, a lot of my friends do and I've seen exactly this kind of behavior (repetitive, predictable mob fights, etc.) PvP adds a different element, but a bot could do a lot of grinding in relative safety.
What I'm curious about is what do you think of EVE in this context? Sure, mining asteroids is both boring as hell and easily scriptable (and, left for a few hours, racks up amazing levels of cash) but there tends to be a bit more variation in the fights. Okay, you can stick to one particular TYPE of fight (staying away from missile-armed enemies, visiting deadspace rats where you know their fighting style, etc.) but in general it would seem very different. Also, the real valueable stuff in EVE is all in the low security space, and in lowsec you are ALWAYS at risk of getting jumped by a PVPer. Short of making a best attempt to flee (tricky if the first thing the enemy does is scramble your warp drive and perhaps web your sublight). I don't really think I'd trust a bot to be adaptable enough in a PvP fight.
I don't put any particularly sensitive info on GMail or Live Mail, because I know it will be monitored. On the other hand, advertising does help keep a lot of web pages and services (like webmail) free. I'm not going to bitch if, in a discussion of stocks, Google (or MS) finds I'm more likely to click on one online stock broker than another. I'm even LESS likely to bitch if they then post a link to that broker prominently when I search something stock-related, rather than prominently posting some other broker and hiding the one I like behind a link or two.
Anybody who thinks these services work without reading your input and working from what it provides needs to stop believing in magic. However, since Google is non-evil and MS isn't (or at least, that's not their motto) We clearly need to get on MS's case about this... </sarcasm>
Question: Did these groups say anything about Google's AdSense?
Honestly, anybody who looks at those targeted ads must realize that information is being harvested to create them. You know what? Good for them! I'd MUCH rather have a service that finds ads of companies I'm interested in than one which either:
1) Slaps up random ads to dating sites, unrelated services also provided by the host company who's service I'm using, etc.
2) Charges me even slightly to offset costs of data storage, server maintenance, R&D, bandwidth, etc.
IANAL but I think the main difference between the Ms-PL and the BSDL is the Ms-PL term 3B:
I'm assuming you're saying you just don't want to run Flash, since otherwise you REALLY don't want to be using an outdated version of the player (security issues). Best solution I've found: Install Flash player, then disable it. You can disable it (IE-wide global switch) using the Add-In Manager (you can reach this from the Tools comand bar icon, or by double clicking a spot on the Status bar - I think there's s tooltip that appears when your mouse is over the Add-In Manager) and flash will then just not load. You shouldn't get any prompts at all, except perhaps the first time, and I'm pretty sure you can set that to never appear again. It's not quite as good as Flashblock because you can't block specific sites while allowing others - global switching only - but it works well, and can be enabled/disabled in about 3 clicks.
Some truly wonderful sites, like Pandora.com, are awfully boring without Flash. Yes, there is a justification for its existence. You really don't want to run an outdated version, though.
Somewhat OT, but useful info for those running IE7.
Actually, Firefox 2.0 now has WORSE zooming than IE. IE7 has supported full-page zooming (text, graphics, flash, everything) since beta 2 or before. It is now (a few days before Firefox 2; coincidence? ;-) a fully released product, and works well msot places. The lastest version isn't available for Vista yet though (and I don't run XP anymore) so I can't say I've tried it, but the RC3 was good.
HP has been selling laptops with dual HD bays for over a year, I think. Check out their dv8000 (Turion or Core Duo) and dv9000 (Turion X2 or Core 2 Duo) lines. They aren't terribly expensive, have decent battery life (I get 3+ hours), and offer the performance improvements of dual drives (striped data partition anybody?) You can also use them for data backup, or to easily migrate data (pull the drive out of an old laptop and put it in as the secondary). You have been able to buy them preconfigured with up to 2x120GB for months now, and with 160GB and 200GB drives now available, you can potentially get up to 400GB internal laptop storage.
uBid.com has been selling the dv8000 for quite a while; most are under $1000. Even those without dual drives already should have the second bay waiting; buy one of the fancy, new drives and use it for data storage, for example.
I'm not vhemontly anti-Dell, but screw them. They really aren't the best deal in town these days. MBPs were good a year ago, but a week ago they were obscenely overpriced. I'm glad to see them back in the game. In any case, I need a new laptop. I've just spent a LOT of time looking.
I use 17" and won't use anything less, so that cut out most things. Core 2 Duo or Turion X2 was a must. That cut out Apple until this announcement, but I went and compared some specs anyhow. The truth is, the MBP was way overdue for this upgrade. 120GB is barely over middle-of-the-road for a laptop HDD. Any "Professional" machine with less than 2GB of RAM is a joke. The procs were fast but 32-bit only. The video cards were... okay.
One thing that jumps out at me is that Apple (and Dell) just don't seem to take advantage of the larger case that comes with the larger b>display. For a year or two now, HP's 17" laptops come with things like a built-in numpad (in addition to full-size keyboard) and two hard drive bays. For a desktop replacement (without lugging an external HDD as well), dual bays is the capacity upgrade we've all been waiting for.
A lot of the great stuff that comes with Macs is no longer new or exclusive. The magsafe power adapter aside, pretty much everything hardware-wise except FireWire 800 (vs. 400) is available in PC laptops. ABG wireless, BlueTooth, built-in webcam, et al. Dual-layer DVD burners are a standard now, and even LightScribe is fairly common. A few laptops even have options for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray now (at a major premium, but hey... it's still under $2800...)
A new PC laptop can come with up to 512MB VRAM, 4GB RAM (for an absurd amount, but it can... 2GB is very common) hard drives up to 200GB/disk, all the Merom or Turion X2 goodness, TV tuner cards, 1680x1050 resolution, and more.
The crazy thing is you can get a HP dv9000 with dual HDD, 2GB system RAM, 512 MB VRAM, TV-Tuner card, Lightscribe dual-layer burner, ABG and Bluetooth, Webcam, 1680x1050 res on a 17" display, and a decent Core 2 Duo for... ~$2000. Knock off some of the options, and you can get a MBP-like system for close to $1600. It doesn't come with OS X... but it does come with Media Center, and if you buy it now the upgrade from Media Center to Vista Home Premium is minimal.
Set Program Access and Defaults (Admin-level tool which I believe is in the control panel on XP) is a tool designed to do exactly this, with no funny hacks. You can not only set things like the default web browser, media player, etc. you can also prohibit access to certain programs (including IE, OE, and other applications where many programs are designed to do the same thing).
Firefox is great, although I personally hate using it without some choice extensions (the adding of which may have security implications). However, IE7 on a limited account will probably do as well. Sorry to go against groupthink... but I've had a number of annoying experiences trying to get Firefox 1.5 to work properly on limited accounts. It's almost acceptable using my university's setup, though