Out of curiosity, why would you expect Win8 to fail to "run everything important to the business"? In terms of app compatibility, Win8 is *much* closer to Win7 than XP is to any OS released since 2007. Most XP apps could be persuaded to run on Vista (yes, most could, contrary to the popular opinion) but it sometimes took some work (setting Compatibility modes, running as Admin, etc.). Here's the thing, though: Win7 didn't change any of that; it still treats XP software the same way that Vista did. If you think otherwise, it's due to the software vendor releasing fixes for the broken shit that XP let them get away with, nothing more. By the time Win7 came out, many developers had done this, so Win7 was seen as more compatible than Vista. In reality, in terms of legacy code, they're the same. Win8 is the same thing again, with full compatibility with Vista and Win7 apps and the ability to run anything that they ran, even if it was originally targeted for XP or even something older. The only app compat issue that I'm aware of with Win8 - and I've been running it on one of my boxes (a convertible tablet) for over a year - is that just as Win7 no longer includes really old versions of.NET out of the box, Win8 no longer includes any version of.NET prior to v4 out of the box. They can, of course, be installed (and the OS will offer to do this automatically if needed).
Now, if you claim that the new UI will fail to pass your extensive pilot program, you might have a point because that actually is different from Win7 (less so than many think; I spend almost all my time in the Desktop, and launch programs using the Start search the same as I do on my Win7 boxes). The app compat isn't going to be an issue, though.
XP is practically 32-bit only (its 64-bit port has almost no driver support). This means less than 4GB of addressable RAM, once drivers are mapped in. By 2014 we'll have smartphones with that much... Also, more RAM means more programs resident in RAM at once, which means instant task switching, which improves productivity because people don't get distracted waiting for the OS to thrash the requested data out of the pagefile (swap). Also, XP's memory management algorithms are archaic - they're from an era when 256MB was a lot of RAM for a PC, not a really crappy smartphone - and will very aggressively move data out of RAM to the pagefile. This means that XP makes much poorer use of additional RAM than it should, again leading to reduced productivity.
XP doesn't support ASLR. DEP alone is trivial to bypass (there are entire compiler toolchains that build ROP payloads these days) and this means that nearly any memory corruption bug is trivial to turn into a working exploit on XP. It's much, much harder on newer versions. Additionally, there are a lot of bugs in older Windows versions that are either fixed during development of newer versions, or the relevant feature was re-written without the bug (and received a hell of a lot more security testing). There's a reason that practically every Windows 0-day exploit works on XP, but very few of them work on Win7 (even if Win7 theoretically also contains the vulnerability, the mitigations in place make successful exploitation much, much harder).
XP's support for SSDs is practically nonexistent (it treats them like any other block device, leading to terrible decreases on performance over time). You claim XP is productive, but the productivity boost that comes from the OS being able to load programs and files near-instantly is also significant, and SSDs are a huge help there. Newer versions of Windows can also use removable Flash storage as a solid-state cache, which again dramatically improves access time for frequently used data or programs. XP feels *laggy* on fairly modern hardware, compared newer Windows versions. Yes, there is a tipping point where XP will run better just due to its lower minimum specs, but that tipping point is a long, long way below even low-end modern PCs (my parents' netbook from three years ago runs smoother on Win7 than it did with the XP that it shipped with).
XP's built-in search is a complete joke. Index-based "instant" search is a tremendous improvement in the latency of "dealing with the OS" (finding files / emails, launching programs, managing data, etc.) and that, again, translates to improved productivity due to higher efficiency in how people use their time. Yes, it requires a little adjusting to "the new way" of doing things, but spend a couple days actually using it and trying to use XP instead will feel like using a slide rule instead of a graphing calculator.
Believe it or not, all those UI changes on the desktop are a lot more than just eye candy. Aero Snap (snap windows to fill exactly half the screen with a quick click+drag or a key chord) makes multitasking or comparing / combining data tremendously faster. That's a very significant productivity boost for many types of work - it's pretty close to turning each monitor into two, and I expect most/. users are famailiar with the benefits of multi-monitor setups - and it very quickly becomes reflex to the point that, again, trying to use XP is purely an exercise in frustration. You may claim that XP "makes sense" but if you haven't actually used a more productive UI, you won't know what you're missing!
As for your "personally" bit, that's absurd. Binaries built on Win7 work on whatever platform you target them for, most certainly including XP (you can be damn sure MS doesn't run its build machines on XP...) and of all the supposedly technical reasons I've heard for not switching, that's most likely the most boneheaded. If that is representative of your understanding of software development, I hope to hell I never have to use any software you
Actually, back when it was called PocketPC, and then the early versions of Windows Mobile, WinCE-based phones were pretty popular (for PDAs and smartphones, i.e. mobile computer devices, of the day). They were extremely business-oriented, competing with Blackberry and the like, but they existed and actually had a quite substantial piece of the (admittedly small) market.
It was definitely a failure on Microsoft's part to not realize that smartphones now could and should be built as consumer-oriented devices and marketed to the general public. They spent a good while trying to turn their existing Windows Mobile business in that direction once they realized it was possible, but by the time they finally got into the game for real, it was definitely too late for what they could offer. For a smaller company,t hat would have meant death. For Microsoft, it meant some hard quarters financially, but they have both the cash and the technical skill to keep trying until they succeed. WP7 may have been the world's biggest OS beta test, but it achieved its purposes: it established that Microsoft was once again focusing on smartphones instead of stagnating as they did for years, and it earned mindshare even if not marketshare. There's a lot of talk about things like the Lumia 920, even though there isn't even any advertising for it yet, and it's that and the other WP8 devices that MS is really aiming at to try taking back the marketshare that they once had.
I wouldn't bet against them. The original Xbox was a similar failure from a financial standpoint, but the 360 has been highly successful even if it hasn't made money for MS, just because it has established MS as a firm player in that market. WP8 on phones, and Win8 / Windows RT on tablets, is setting up to be Microsoft's Xbox 360 in the mobile space. It still might not make money there, but its goal is to earn marketshare regardless.
I don't get where this "they scrambled to push Windows 7 out the door ASAP" bullshit keeps coming from. Kids who don't remember anything more than five years back? The time period between Windows Vista's release and Windows 7's release was approximately equal to the time period between Windows 98 SE's release and Windows XP's release. Except, from 98SE to XP, there was also both Windows ME and Windows 2000. From Windows Vista to Windows 7 there was... nothing (well, in the non-server space, which is all I counted for 98-XP too). There was certainly drive to ship Win7, but that's always the case.
In fact, the time from Vista to Win7 is also about the same amount of time as from Win7 to Win8. Obviously, with Win7 being highly successful, MS doesn't *need* a new PC operating system right now, so I hardly imagine you'd say they "rushed" it out in that sense. However, the feature changes from Win7 to Win8 are substantially greater than from Vista to Win7, so in order to finish in about the same amount of time, MS ovbiously had to rush Win8 pretty hard. You can discuss the reasons for that all you like, but "customer dissatisfaction with the previous release" is obviously not the answer.
So, your point is that this Vic Hyder person, the COO of a company supposedly providing a technological solution to private conversations, apparently thinks that such PS blocks are worth the bits to transmit them? That says a lot for my confidence in SC...
Or were you suggesting that the GP shouldn't have posted that message? Here's a hint: those blocks are not only completely unenforceable, they're basically meaningless business-speak bullshit. Short of legal or contractual obligations to do otherwise, once you receive a document by any means, it's yours to do with as you please. In the case of email, even copyright doesn't apply.
Or even LoL. I don't know where in hell this guy got the idea that any 3D game from the last 5+ years will perform acceptably under software rendering (especially when you've got anoth OS running at the same time, limiting your resources) but it's bull. Using state-of-the-art software rasterization, a top-of-the-line server CPU can edge out the baseline minimum for graphics hardware - the Intel integrated graphics processor, which itself is scarcely adequate for gaming - but you're talking about the difference between getting 7.8 frames per second and 9.2 frames per second on low graphics settings (which still isn't really playable) using the full power of a CPU+Motherboard combo that cost well over a thousand dollars by themselves.
That's a surprisingly good set of advice for a non-security-professional. I could add a few things, like doing ad blocking in IE9+ using the built-in "Tracking Protection" feature plus something like EasyList from AdBlock (a huge portion of web-based malware comes from ads) and some tips for getting any game that insists on running as Admin (sadly there are a number of these, including LoL) to run as a standard uer instead. I also wouldn't have relegated firewall management to being a more advanced concept; it's certainly easier than things like configuring ForceASLR and can provide both security and privacy. However, for the most part you've covered the area quite well.
Starting with Windows Vista (and therefore also in Win7), there's a built-in two-way firewall with fine-grained rules. No need for third-party software; if you want to block web browsing on the PC you can just block outgoing connections to TCP 80 and 443 (for example).
Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility; they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but side-step the 100 million year production process...
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
To think, in 1999 when the game came out, this was predicted to be a tech we wouldn't see for at least another century and a half. Not quite 14 years later, we're already researching it and making serious progress!
Of course, there's the last part of that quote which I left off:
... we can corner this market once again!
Hopefully not. I'd really like to see this become a widespread technology. If we (for all values of "we", not just the US where I happen to live) can eliminate both the need for foreign oil and for domestic drilling, that will be two huge wins for the world.
If you don't want to go with Surface, there are plenty of other tablets that will come with Win8 or Windows RT. Many (especially the "RT" ARM ones) are "pure" tablets without keyboard/mouse, others are "convertible" (laptops with touchscreens that can fold over to lay flat on top of the keyboard). In fact, you can take one of the existing x86 tablets and stick the x86 version of Win8 on it right now, if you want to.
Good points, except for one thing: sideloading absolutely does *not* require joining a domain! It can be enabled with a single command entered into an elevated Powershell prompt.
Can we take a blog seriously when it doesn't even have a Surface RT to test?
Sure. He's comparing them on prices, specs, and included features. You don't need to have *either* device to do that. In fact, it's the sort of comparison that an informed buyer would make before purchasing *either* device. Sure, it doesn't count the "experience" of either device, but the author doesn't try to do so, either.
If I didn't like the iPad then why would I even consider the Surface RT? I have a nice selection of Android tablets to choose from that actually have apps. Is this why Microsoft prefers to compare themselves to the iPad and not to Android?
Are there *any* Android tablets with a 10" screen and specs that come within a factor of 2 of what the Surface has (never mind what they cost or what their market share is)? If not, then the simple reason that most people, including this guy, uses the iPad for comparison is because it's a comparable device in terms of specs, features, and price. It also has by far the largest market share, making it the obvious device to compare a new device against.
As for why you might consider Surface RT, there are plenty of reasons why a consumer in general might consider it (durable construction, good specs, reasonable price for those specs, from a well-known company, familiar UI when in the desktop, same UI as Win8 on the PC, comes with Office, USB ports, built-in kickstand, innovative screen cover/keyboard/touchpad, no need to "root" it, supports sideloading, multi-user OS, Windows network support, widescreen display, actually run two apps side-by-side...). I don't know which, if any, of those are persuasive reasons to you, specifically, but they are all things that Surface has and iPads don't. Android tablets have some of them, as well, but not all of them. Some Android devices will be better in some areas, worse in others, as well.
If you actually read that whole section instead of taking that bit out of context, you'd see that the author's point is that the *specific* couple dozen apps varies by user, and often the important software - the stuff that really seals the deal - is not available on all platforms. He gives that point to the iPad, because Microsoft's app store isn't yet going to have the critical software for nearly as many users as Apple's app store does.
Agreed. However, the official answer is "somewhere in between a 'real' keyboard and an on-screen one" although some members of the Surface team mentioned, during a Q&A on Reddit, that they had typing speeds of 60WPM or higher. Not amazing for a real keyboard, but beyond anything I've ever seen for an on-screen.
Also, Surface has an optional "real" keyboard (called "Type Cover) instead of the "Touch Cover" for a bit more cash. It still doubles as a screen cover, with the same behaviors as the normal cover (screen off when it's up, orientation unlocked when it's folded behind the screen) although it's a bit thicker (over 5mm instead of about 3).
What makes you say Surface only has a "small subset of fonts"? I mean, yeah MS could have included fewer fonts than normal to try and reduce the install footprint, but in general Windows RT *is* Win8, including all the usual things that require fonts (web browser, email client, command line, plus wordpad and such) in addiiton to Office.
you can pick up WP7.x devices for under $400. I don't know what the WP8 devices will retail for (when purchased without carrier subsidy), yet. Granted, those aren't manufactured by Microsoft, but neither were "Pocket PC" devices.
That is simply, factually, incorrect. Win8, including Windows RT, supports sideloading. It's free and can be enabled via a simple command in Powershell. Third-party software must be packaged as.appx bundles, but it doesn't have to be approved for distribution in the app store. In fact, one explicit use case for unlocking Windows RT devices in this manner is to allow installing corporate or other organization-internal apps.
Wow, modded up for outright factual errors? This is what/. has come to?
The iPad's retina display is 2048x1536, not the 25% larger 2560x1536 that you claimed. Way to pull bullshit and expect us to bite... (source: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/)
That said, the new iPad's display is 3145728pixels. The Surface RT's display is 1366x768, for a total of 1049088 pixels. Three of them combined would have all of 1536 more pixels than the new iPad. If you'd claimed "3x Microsoft Surface 32GB tablets to yield the same combined resolution: $1497" you'd have, at least, been accurate.
Wow, reading comprehension fail. Here, let me quote that link you conveniently included yet failed to read:
After the OS, OfficeRT and a bunch of apps, you will still have more that [SIC] 20GB
(emphasis added).
Now, I don't know what he considers "a bunch" of apps in terms of storage, or how much "more [than]" 20GB will be left, but claiming that "Windows and Office alone" are 12GB is just outright different from what he said. Also, you're claiming "12GB" based on 32 - 20 = 12, but considering that even a freshly formatted "32GB" storage device doesn't actually have 32*2^30 bytes of storage - maybe 32 * 10^9, if you're lucky - if there are actually 20GB of usable space after base install plus apps, then your 12GB claim falls flat too.
To be fair, the iPad's OS base install footprint is definitely lower, but then, it doesn't include any productivity software, or drivers for USB devices, or the various system tools that come with Windows (not even a file browser, much less anything even vaguely similar to Powershell...)
I believe MS and Google give approximately equal value in benefits. MS used to have "Cadillac-class" heath benefits that outstripped pretty much everybody else, but I think they're now merely in line with the rest of the top of the industry. Google offers more services to employees free of charge (including food). MS switched from stock options to stock grants some years back; I don't know what Google offers but at MS stock is basically just a bonus that occasionally fluctuates a little in value and pays a bit of dividend. End-of-year bonuses at MS are frequently in the 5-12% of base salary range (though they can be both higher and lower) plus stock grants of maybe half as much.
Disclaimer: I live in the area and know a bunch of people who work there, but I don't generally ask the details of the compensation plans, so I may be off a bit; I'm extrapolating from comments that people made and out-of-date from an offer I got right out of college.
Well, no state income tax. There is a state sales tax (~10%) though.
My family still owns a house 1 mile from MS main campus (we've been renting it out for the last 11 years, but my dad walked to work there in the 90s). 2200 sqft, 5 bedrooms (we used one as an office and another as a guest room), 2.75 bath, 2-car garage that also holds a small workshop, lots of yard space (we had a side garden plot, a large backyard garden, five fruit trees, and still tons of room for running about as kids), it's basically across the street from a great park (we could walk down to play tennis). The property is valued at about $420K now. There are some crazy-expensive places that are *right* around MS (a 5-minute walk rather than a 20-minute one) but for the most part, living in Redmond is not very expensive.
Except, if you skip two OS X upgrades, you'll spend the last year or so running a bunch of other obsolete software too, because - as scot4875 pointed out - Apple doesn't bother to include support for old OS versions in their software. Meanwhile, you can still run most Windows software on XP, and some of it on Windows 2000 or even Win98. Tell me, where can I find brand new retail software that will run on Mac OS 9 these days? Nowhere? OK, how about OS X 10.2, which is about contemporary with the last major service pack for XP?
So, what if you wanted to use the features of the new dev environment that *aren't* just "it can do $LATEST_VERSION_OF_OS stuff"? VS2012, for example, comes with improved compilers, some new configuration options, a bunch of new development assistance features (things like improved refactoring, for example), and oh yes, it can create Win8 apps (or Win95 apps, if you want it to). If MS handled OS compatibility like Apple, you would have to be running Win7 SP1 (the current version) or Win8 (the new version that this dev environment targets) if you want to use VS2012.
No, I call a single set of related and well-documented API calls that access data no matter where it's stored on disk "centralized".
If you honestly can't see the value in having your data store able to enforce that a certain value is a date, and be able to convert it to or from any number of date formats without requiring a bunch of external code, then you have some *very* odd ideas about computing. Do you think that filesystem permissions and timestamps are stored as plaintext? How about the structure of IP packets on the network? Plaintext is untyped, inefficient in both space and time, and far harder for a computer to parse meaningful data out of.
The size is still an advantage, even if it's a trivial one these days.
See above comment, but s/size/speed/ and bear in mind that the registry dates to the days of the 386, not the Pentium Pro.
Unicode is not a data format, it's a character encoding. You have to build a data format on top of it. If you're going to do that anyhow, why not do it on top of binary instead? More to the point, since your OS developer already built a data format for you, why re-invent the wheel (and poorly, at that)? As for the proprietary aspect of the registry, the point is that it's accessed through standard APIs, not by reading the.DAT files manually. The actual data that backs those APIs can be in any format you want. Wine stores its registry in the.REG flat text file format. This is sometimes (if it gets large enough) perceptibly slower than the native Win32 registry even on modern hardware, but the apps which are calling the registry APIs don't care about the fact that Windows and Wine store registry data differently.
Searching the entire filesystem for those files, then those files for the settings you want, would still take a hell of a lot longer than searching the registry on any typical machine. Yes, you *could* get around this by indexing all your config files, but there's no reason you couldn't do the same to the registry if you wanted to.
Well, a 1-digit number plus a newline, in unicode, takes as much space as a DWORD. Of course, with the registry, you could instead use a single byte if you wanted to.
That's already fragile enough. Try editing a.INI file in a Unix-style editor, or a Unix-style config file in Notepad, and then observe what happens when the relevant program tries to process it. It's not pretty (newlines).
Considering that the registry can (although it really shouldn't) be used to store large chunks of unstructured text or arbitrary binary, in blobs of reasonable size, I don't actually think there's any situation where a config file (note that I'm not talking about resource files or data files here) would be used to store data that the registry can't.
Your solution is to push the burden onto app authors? Thank you, no. Even with frameworks like Python making it easy, it's still a hell of a lot better if you don't have to go parsing files at all.
Because HTML was intended as a human-readable and -writable format. There's no reason it has to be that way, and indeed sending uncompressed HTML over the wire *is* very inefficient. It makes the jobs of web developers and browser authors just a little bit easier, though.
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Out of curiosity, why would you expect Win8 to fail to "run everything important to the business"? In terms of app compatibility, Win8 is *much* closer to Win7 than XP is to any OS released since 2007. Most XP apps could be persuaded to run on Vista (yes, most could, contrary to the popular opinion) but it sometimes took some work (setting Compatibility modes, running as Admin, etc.). Here's the thing, though: Win7 didn't change any of that; it still treats XP software the same way that Vista did. If you think otherwise, it's due to the software vendor releasing fixes for the broken shit that XP let them get away with, nothing more. By the time Win7 came out, many developers had done this, so Win7 was seen as more compatible than Vista. In reality, in terms of legacy code, they're the same. Win8 is the same thing again, with full compatibility with Vista and Win7 apps and the ability to run anything that they ran, even if it was originally targeted for XP or even something older. The only app compat issue that I'm aware of with Win8 - and I've been running it on one of my boxes (a convertible tablet) for over a year - is that just as Win7 no longer includes really old versions of .NET out of the box, Win8 no longer includes any version of .NET prior to v4 out of the box. They can, of course, be installed (and the OS will offer to do this automatically if needed).
Now, if you claim that the new UI will fail to pass your extensive pilot program, you might have a point because that actually is different from Win7 (less so than many think; I spend almost all my time in the Desktop, and launch programs using the Start search the same as I do on my Win7 boxes). The app compat isn't going to be an issue, though.
XP is practically 32-bit only (its 64-bit port has almost no driver support). This means less than 4GB of addressable RAM, once drivers are mapped in. By 2014 we'll have smartphones with that much... Also, more RAM means more programs resident in RAM at once, which means instant task switching, which improves productivity because people don't get distracted waiting for the OS to thrash the requested data out of the pagefile (swap). Also, XP's memory management algorithms are archaic - they're from an era when 256MB was a lot of RAM for a PC, not a really crappy smartphone - and will very aggressively move data out of RAM to the pagefile. This means that XP makes much poorer use of additional RAM than it should, again leading to reduced productivity.
XP doesn't support ASLR. DEP alone is trivial to bypass (there are entire compiler toolchains that build ROP payloads these days) and this means that nearly any memory corruption bug is trivial to turn into a working exploit on XP. It's much, much harder on newer versions. Additionally, there are a lot of bugs in older Windows versions that are either fixed during development of newer versions, or the relevant feature was re-written without the bug (and received a hell of a lot more security testing). There's a reason that practically every Windows 0-day exploit works on XP, but very few of them work on Win7 (even if Win7 theoretically also contains the vulnerability, the mitigations in place make successful exploitation much, much harder).
XP's support for SSDs is practically nonexistent (it treats them like any other block device, leading to terrible decreases on performance over time). You claim XP is productive, but the productivity boost that comes from the OS being able to load programs and files near-instantly is also significant, and SSDs are a huge help there. Newer versions of Windows can also use removable Flash storage as a solid-state cache, which again dramatically improves access time for frequently used data or programs. XP feels *laggy* on fairly modern hardware, compared newer Windows versions. Yes, there is a tipping point where XP will run better just due to its lower minimum specs, but that tipping point is a long, long way below even low-end modern PCs (my parents' netbook from three years ago runs smoother on Win7 than it did with the XP that it shipped with).
XP's built-in search is a complete joke. Index-based "instant" search is a tremendous improvement in the latency of "dealing with the OS" (finding files / emails, launching programs, managing data, etc.) and that, again, translates to improved productivity due to higher efficiency in how people use their time. Yes, it requires a little adjusting to "the new way" of doing things, but spend a couple days actually using it and trying to use XP instead will feel like using a slide rule instead of a graphing calculator.
Believe it or not, all those UI changes on the desktop are a lot more than just eye candy. Aero Snap (snap windows to fill exactly half the screen with a quick click+drag or a key chord) makes multitasking or comparing / combining data tremendously faster. That's a very significant productivity boost for many types of work - it's pretty close to turning each monitor into two, and I expect most /. users are famailiar with the benefits of multi-monitor setups - and it very quickly becomes reflex to the point that, again, trying to use XP is purely an exercise in frustration. You may claim that XP "makes sense" but if you haven't actually used a more productive UI, you won't know what you're missing!
As for your "personally" bit, that's absurd. Binaries built on Win7 work on whatever platform you target them for, most certainly including XP (you can be damn sure MS doesn't run its build machines on XP...) and of all the supposedly technical reasons I've heard for not switching, that's most likely the most boneheaded. If that is representative of your understanding of software development, I hope to hell I never have to use any software you
Actually, back when it was called PocketPC, and then the early versions of Windows Mobile, WinCE-based phones were pretty popular (for PDAs and smartphones, i.e. mobile computer devices, of the day). They were extremely business-oriented, competing with Blackberry and the like, but they existed and actually had a quite substantial piece of the (admittedly small) market.
It was definitely a failure on Microsoft's part to not realize that smartphones now could and should be built as consumer-oriented devices and marketed to the general public. They spent a good while trying to turn their existing Windows Mobile business in that direction once they realized it was possible, but by the time they finally got into the game for real, it was definitely too late for what they could offer. For a smaller company,t hat would have meant death. For Microsoft, it meant some hard quarters financially, but they have both the cash and the technical skill to keep trying until they succeed. WP7 may have been the world's biggest OS beta test, but it achieved its purposes: it established that Microsoft was once again focusing on smartphones instead of stagnating as they did for years, and it earned mindshare even if not marketshare. There's a lot of talk about things like the Lumia 920, even though there isn't even any advertising for it yet, and it's that and the other WP8 devices that MS is really aiming at to try taking back the marketshare that they once had.
I wouldn't bet against them. The original Xbox was a similar failure from a financial standpoint, but the 360 has been highly successful even if it hasn't made money for MS, just because it has established MS as a firm player in that market. WP8 on phones, and Win8 / Windows RT on tablets, is setting up to be Microsoft's Xbox 360 in the mobile space. It still might not make money there, but its goal is to earn marketshare regardless.
I don't get where this "they scrambled to push Windows 7 out the door ASAP" bullshit keeps coming from. Kids who don't remember anything more than five years back? The time period between Windows Vista's release and Windows 7's release was approximately equal to the time period between Windows 98 SE's release and Windows XP's release. Except, from 98SE to XP, there was also both Windows ME and Windows 2000. From Windows Vista to Windows 7 there was... nothing (well, in the non-server space, which is all I counted for 98-XP too). There was certainly drive to ship Win7, but that's always the case.
In fact, the time from Vista to Win7 is also about the same amount of time as from Win7 to Win8. Obviously, with Win7 being highly successful, MS doesn't *need* a new PC operating system right now, so I hardly imagine you'd say they "rushed" it out in that sense. However, the feature changes from Win7 to Win8 are substantially greater than from Vista to Win7, so in order to finish in about the same amount of time, MS ovbiously had to rush Win8 pretty hard. You can discuss the reasons for that all you like, but "customer dissatisfaction with the previous release" is obviously not the answer.
So, your point is that this Vic Hyder person, the COO of a company supposedly providing a technological solution to private conversations, apparently thinks that such PS blocks are worth the bits to transmit them? That says a lot for my confidence in SC...
Or were you suggesting that the GP shouldn't have posted that message? Here's a hint: those blocks are not only completely unenforceable, they're basically meaningless business-speak bullshit. Short of legal or contractual obligations to do otherwise, once you receive a document by any means, it's yours to do with as you please. In the case of email, even copyright doesn't apply.
Or even LoL. I don't know where in hell this guy got the idea that any 3D game from the last 5+ years will perform acceptably under software rendering (especially when you've got anoth OS running at the same time, limiting your resources) but it's bull. Using state-of-the-art software rasterization, a top-of-the-line server CPU can edge out the baseline minimum for graphics hardware - the Intel integrated graphics processor, which itself is scarcely adequate for gaming - but you're talking about the difference between getting 7.8 frames per second and 9.2 frames per second on low graphics settings (which still isn't really playable) using the full power of a CPU+Motherboard combo that cost well over a thousand dollars by themselves.
That's a surprisingly good set of advice for a non-security-professional. I could add a few things, like doing ad blocking in IE9+ using the built-in "Tracking Protection" feature plus something like EasyList from AdBlock (a huge portion of web-based malware comes from ads) and some tips for getting any game that insists on running as Admin (sadly there are a number of these, including LoL) to run as a standard uer instead. I also wouldn't have relegated firewall management to being a more advanced concept; it's certainly easier than things like configuring ForceASLR and can provide both security and privacy. However, for the most part you've covered the area quite well.
Starting with Windows Vista (and therefore also in Win7), there's a built-in two-way firewall with fine-grained rules. No need for third-party software; if you want to block web browsing on the PC you can just block outgoing connections to TCP 80 and 443 (for example).
Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility; they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but side-step the 100 million year production process...
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
To think, in 1999 when the game came out, this was predicted to be a tech we wouldn't see for at least another century and a half. Not quite 14 years later, we're already researching it and making serious progress!
Of course, there's the last part of that quote which I left off:
... we can corner this market once again!
Hopefully not. I'd really like to see this become a widespread technology. If we (for all values of "we", not just the US where I happen to live) can eliminate both the need for foreign oil and for domestic drilling, that will be two huge wins for the world.
If you don't want to go with Surface, there are plenty of other tablets that will come with Win8 or Windows RT. Many (especially the "RT" ARM ones) are "pure" tablets without keyboard/mouse, others are "convertible" (laptops with touchscreens that can fold over to lay flat on top of the keyboard). In fact, you can take one of the existing x86 tablets and stick the x86 version of Win8 on it right now, if you want to.
Good points, except for one thing: sideloading absolutely does *not* require joining a domain! It can be enabled with a single command entered into an elevated Powershell prompt.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx
Can we take a blog seriously when it doesn't even have a Surface RT to test?
Sure. He's comparing them on prices, specs, and included features. You don't need to have *either* device to do that. In fact, it's the sort of comparison that an informed buyer would make before purchasing *either* device. Sure, it doesn't count the "experience" of either device, but the author doesn't try to do so, either.
If I didn't like the iPad then why would I even consider the Surface RT? I have a nice selection of Android tablets to choose from that actually have apps. Is this why Microsoft prefers to compare themselves to the iPad and not to Android?
Are there *any* Android tablets with a 10" screen and specs that come within a factor of 2 of what the Surface has (never mind what they cost or what their market share is)? If not, then the simple reason that most people, including this guy, uses the iPad for comparison is because it's a comparable device in terms of specs, features, and price. It also has by far the largest market share, making it the obvious device to compare a new device against.
As for why you might consider Surface RT, there are plenty of reasons why a consumer in general might consider it (durable construction, good specs, reasonable price for those specs, from a well-known company, familiar UI when in the desktop, same UI as Win8 on the PC, comes with Office, USB ports, built-in kickstand, innovative screen cover/keyboard/touchpad, no need to "root" it, supports sideloading, multi-user OS, Windows network support, widescreen display, actually run two apps side-by-side...). I don't know which, if any, of those are persuasive reasons to you, specifically, but they are all things that Surface has and iPads don't. Android tablets have some of them, as well, but not all of them. Some Android devices will be better in some areas, worse in others, as well.
If you actually read that whole section instead of taking that bit out of context, you'd see that the author's point is that the *specific* couple dozen apps varies by user, and often the important software - the stuff that really seals the deal - is not available on all platforms. He gives that point to the iPad, because Microsoft's app store isn't yet going to have the critical software for nearly as many users as Apple's app store does.
Agreed. However, the official answer is "somewhere in between a 'real' keyboard and an on-screen one" although some members of the Surface team mentioned, during a Q&A on Reddit, that they had typing speeds of 60WPM or higher. Not amazing for a real keyboard, but beyond anything I've ever seen for an on-screen.
Also, Surface has an optional "real" keyboard (called "Type Cover) instead of the "Touch Cover" for a bit more cash. It still doubles as a screen cover, with the same behaviors as the normal cover (screen off when it's up, orientation unlocked when it's folded behind the screen) although it's a bit thicker (over 5mm instead of about 3).
What makes you say Surface only has a "small subset of fonts"? I mean, yeah MS could have included fewer fonts than normal to try and reduce the install footprint, but in general Windows RT *is* Win8, including all the usual things that require fonts (web browser, email client, command line, plus wordpad and such) in addiiton to Office.
you can pick up WP7.x devices for under $400. I don't know what the WP8 devices will retail for (when purchased without carrier subsidy), yet. Granted, those aren't manufactured by Microsoft, but neither were "Pocket PC" devices.
That is simply, factually, incorrect. Win8, including Windows RT, supports sideloading. It's free and can be enabled via a simple command in Powershell. Third-party software must be packaged as .appx bundles, but it doesn't have to be approved for distribution in the app store. In fact, one explicit use case for unlocking Windows RT devices in this manner is to allow installing corporate or other organization-internal apps.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx
Wow, modded up for outright factual errors? This is what /. has come to?
The iPad's retina display is 2048x1536, not the 25% larger 2560x1536 that you claimed. Way to pull bullshit and expect us to bite... (source: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/)
That said, the new iPad's display is 3145728pixels. The Surface RT's display is 1366x768, for a total of 1049088 pixels. Three of them combined would have all of 1536 more pixels than the new iPad. If you'd claimed "3x Microsoft Surface 32GB tablets to yield the same combined resolution: $1497" you'd have, at least, been accurate.
Wow, reading comprehension fail. Here, let me quote that link you conveniently included yet failed to read:
(emphasis added).
Now, I don't know what he considers "a bunch" of apps in terms of storage, or how much "more [than]" 20GB will be left, but claiming that "Windows and Office alone" are 12GB is just outright different from what he said. Also, you're claiming "12GB" based on 32 - 20 = 12, but considering that even a freshly formatted "32GB" storage device doesn't actually have 32*2^30 bytes of storage - maybe 32 * 10^9, if you're lucky - if there are actually 20GB of usable space after base install plus apps, then your 12GB claim falls flat too.
To be fair, the iPad's OS base install footprint is definitely lower, but then, it doesn't include any productivity software, or drivers for USB devices, or the various system tools that come with Windows (not even a file browser, much less anything even vaguely similar to Powershell...)
I believe MS and Google give approximately equal value in benefits. MS used to have "Cadillac-class" heath benefits that outstripped pretty much everybody else, but I think they're now merely in line with the rest of the top of the industry. Google offers more services to employees free of charge (including food). MS switched from stock options to stock grants some years back; I don't know what Google offers but at MS stock is basically just a bonus that occasionally fluctuates a little in value and pays a bit of dividend. End-of-year bonuses at MS are frequently in the 5-12% of base salary range (though they can be both higher and lower) plus stock grants of maybe half as much.
Disclaimer: I live in the area and know a bunch of people who work there, but I don't generally ask the details of the compensation plans, so I may be off a bit; I'm extrapolating from comments that people made and out-of-date from an offer I got right out of college.
Well, no state income tax. There is a state sales tax (~10%) though.
My family still owns a house 1 mile from MS main campus (we've been renting it out for the last 11 years, but my dad walked to work there in the 90s). 2200 sqft, 5 bedrooms (we used one as an office and another as a guest room), 2.75 bath, 2-car garage that also holds a small workshop, lots of yard space (we had a side garden plot, a large backyard garden, five fruit trees, and still tons of room for running about as kids), it's basically across the street from a great park (we could walk down to play tennis). The property is valued at about $420K now. There are some crazy-expensive places that are *right* around MS (a 5-minute walk rather than a 20-minute one) but for the most part, living in Redmond is not very expensive.
Except, if you skip two OS X upgrades, you'll spend the last year or so running a bunch of other obsolete software too, because - as scot4875 pointed out - Apple doesn't bother to include support for old OS versions in their software. Meanwhile, you can still run most Windows software on XP, and some of it on Windows 2000 or even Win98. Tell me, where can I find brand new retail software that will run on Mac OS 9 these days? Nowhere? OK, how about OS X 10.2, which is about contemporary with the last major service pack for XP?
So, what if you wanted to use the features of the new dev environment that *aren't* just "it can do $LATEST_VERSION_OF_OS stuff"? VS2012, for example, comes with improved compilers, some new configuration options, a bunch of new development assistance features (things like improved refactoring, for example), and oh yes, it can create Win8 apps (or Win95 apps, if you want it to). If MS handled OS compatibility like Apple, you would have to be running Win7 SP1 (the current version) or Win8 (the new version that this dev environment targets) if you want to use VS2012.
No, I call a single set of related and well-documented API calls that access data no matter where it's stored on disk "centralized".
If you honestly can't see the value in having your data store able to enforce that a certain value is a date, and be able to convert it to or from any number of date formats without requiring a bunch of external code, then you have some *very* odd ideas about computing. Do you think that filesystem permissions and timestamps are stored as plaintext? How about the structure of IP packets on the network? Plaintext is untyped, inefficient in both space and time, and far harder for a computer to parse meaningful data out of.
The size is still an advantage, even if it's a trivial one these days.
See above comment, but s/size/speed/ and bear in mind that the registry dates to the days of the 386, not the Pentium Pro.
Unicode is not a data format, it's a character encoding. You have to build a data format on top of it. If you're going to do that anyhow, why not do it on top of binary instead? More to the point, since your OS developer already built a data format for you, why re-invent the wheel (and poorly, at that)? As for the proprietary aspect of the registry, the point is that it's accessed through standard APIs, not by reading the .DAT files manually. The actual data that backs those APIs can be in any format you want. Wine stores its registry in the .REG flat text file format. This is sometimes (if it gets large enough) perceptibly slower than the native Win32 registry even on modern hardware, but the apps which are calling the registry APIs don't care about the fact that Windows and Wine store registry data differently.
Searching the entire filesystem for those files, then those files for the settings you want, would still take a hell of a lot longer than searching the registry on any typical machine. Yes, you *could* get around this by indexing all your config files, but there's no reason you couldn't do the same to the registry if you wanted to.
Well, a 1-digit number plus a newline, in unicode, takes as much space as a DWORD. Of course, with the registry, you could instead use a single byte if you wanted to.
That's already fragile enough. Try editing a .INI file in a Unix-style editor, or a Unix-style config file in Notepad, and then observe what happens when the relevant program tries to process it. It's not pretty (newlines).
Considering that the registry can (although it really shouldn't) be used to store large chunks of unstructured text or arbitrary binary, in blobs of reasonable size, I don't actually think there's any situation where a config file (note that I'm not talking about resource files or data files here) would be used to store data that the registry can't.
Your solution is to push the burden onto app authors? Thank you, no. Even with frameworks like Python making it easy, it's still a hell of a lot better if you don't have to go parsing files at all.
Because HTML was intended as a human-readable and -writable format. There's no reason it has to be that way, and indeed sending uncompressed HTML over the wire *is* very inefficient. It makes the jobs of web developers and browser authors just a little bit easier, though.