Oh, please. A "fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies" is not why Windows has sucked on an an epic level. Windows has always been an "also ran" when it comes to adapting "new hardware and technologies". Always.
Oh yeah? I can use an RFID reader to log into my Windows laptop. If I pull out the card, the laptop locks itself, if I put it back in it unlocks. Where's that technology in OS X or Linux? What about the fingerprint reader my laptop also has? (Which, frankly, I never use. But slick anyway.)
Emerging technologies? Can you name one software/OS/desktop feature which MS was first-to-market on for Windows?
Just did. There's also Fast User Switching, which XP had long before any other OS picked it up.
I seem to remember something called Cairo that was making news back in the mid-90s, which had a feature list similar to what we now know as Time Machine. MS still hasn't come up with such a functionality.
You mean Shadow Copy? That was introduced in Windows 2000 Server-side, and Windows XP client-side? And does the same thing Time Machine does? You're so full of crap.
Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
In what way is it "not working well?" Although I suppose "not working well" is so vague that you could just handwave an answer even if it was perfect.
But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another.
I haven't seen an OS yet that does a good job of this.
Just FYI, it would be a lot easier to accept your rant if you demonstrated SOME knowledge of Windows.
Amusingly enough, if Arm based netbooks take off, Not only is Microsoft screwed, but intel too.
Yeah, in that strange parallel universe where anybody cares about Arm-based netbooks. Here in our universe, though, Intel pretty much has a stranglehold on the market.
Except that if the game has permissions to save into Program Files, it also has permissions to shit files *anywhere else in your system.* (And yes, it was that way in DOS too.)
Take a game you play online, like UT3. (I think you've mentioned that in a previous post.) Let's say there's an exploit in the networking code of UT3 that allows it to download a virus. In your system, the virus has no problem doing this as it has full access to the registry. The virus spreads, your entire computer turns into a giant turd, everybody you send the virus to is unhappy.
Your problem is that you're completely obsessed with DOS, an OS that sucked-ass 20 years ago and doesn't even exist now. Yet despite the fact that the entire world rejected the way DOS does things, you still embrace it-- why? The two options are either: 1) You're smarter than every Windows programmer, every Linux programmer, and every Mac OS X programmer ever. All of those OSes use the same (general) permissions systems about where applications belong and where they should write data. 2) You're doing something wrong.
I could try to verify it, but apparently one has to have a Winqual account to get the logo requirements, and you need a paid certificate from VeriSign to get a Winqual account. VeriSign won't issue certificates directly to individuals; the sign-up form requires a "company", and various PDFs that VeriSign makes available through the certificate application process imply that this means a corporation or partnership, not a mere DBA form.
Yeah, but if you're getting the logo certification, then wouldn't you already have all that in place anyway?
Yes, that would definitely turn away small developers and shareware/freeware developers, but they wouldn't be getting logo certified anyway.
If you're running it from the USB stick, or from your user directory, it'll work fine. Just as in Linux, right?
The only time you'd get a UAC prompt is when you're trying to run a "portable" app from the Program Files folder. Which brings to mind the obvious question, why the hell do you even *have* a portable app in the Program Files folder?
Because that directory string is WAY TOO FUCKING LONG and I CONSTANTLY work under command line.
Wait, Microsoft should forget about application security, forget about making user profile permissions meaningful, completely break the functionality of backup software, completely break the functionality of the Roaming Profiles feature, just so ONE idiot on Slashdot can do everything on his computer through the CLI? (Presumably not even the good PowerShell CLI, as I'm pretty sure it can parse out shortcuts.)
Are you seriously suggesting that?
Or are you going to gradually come to the conclusion that what you're doing is highly strange and you really shouldn't expect Microsoft, or anybody else for that matter, to cater to your extremely unusual whims?
I'm just your average user, not a developer. Intuitively, when something is saved, especially something like a game save, I EXPECT it to be written to the game's fucking application directory.
"Intuitively?" Why would that be the "intuitive" place to put it? I think you're just used to shitty software doing it, and now you're upset that non-shitty software doesn't.
Now, given, it might not make sense to put a saved game in Documents, but it doesn't make any less sense than putting it in Program Files. Is a saved game a "program file" in any rational definition of that term? No. It's a lot closer to a "document" the way Windows uses the term.
You know what? It's not 1994 anymore. The way computers work *has changed*. Maybe you need to go back and question some of those "intuitive" assumptions you have.
The thing you have to realize is that most of the people who gripe about how lousy Windows is (or any Microsoft product) never actually use Windows. Or, alternatively, they haven't used Windows since Windows 98 and somehow think that it hasn't changed at all in a decade.
These are the people who complain about "constant bluescreens" in 2000, XP, Vista. The same type of people who don't realize that Windows has *two* CLI environments, one of which is admittedly quite poor (but only intended for backwards compatibility), and one of which is far superior to bash. And, over a year after IE7 added tabs to IE, I kept seeing posts on Slashdot saying that Firefox was a superior browser because it had tabs and IE didn't.
It's not just time, though. They also gripe about tools they don't use. For example, geeks here who rarely, if ever, use an office suite will go to great lengths to explain why the Office 2007 interface is far inferior to OpenOffice's interface. And frequently make statements like, "Office 97 had all the features anybody ever uses." They're not qualified to speak on this, of course, but they'll do it anyway.
In short, take everything you read here with huge grains of salt.
No. They ran perfectly find under the default user account of previous versions of Windows. They did not run perfectly fine under any user account with permissions below Administrator.
Try it. Go find an application that pops up a UAC prompt in Vista, an application that you assure us "ran perfectly fine" under XP. Now create an XP user account without Administrator permissions, make it plain ol' User permissions. Tell us what happens?
Ah, look! Instead of the relatively-friendly UAC prompt, your program simply crashed and burned with a vague error message. Wow, what a shocker. Gee, isn't this kind of a problem for the thousands of corporate desktops that (would like to) run as User for security reasons?
Or, in this case, "those who don't remember a TV show are doomed to re-enact it?"
The same anti-technology crap that Ron Moore changed BSG into in the last couple seasons is the same old stuff sf has been giving us since the original Star Trek, or Forbidden Planet. As a theme, it's completely, utterly washed out-- not interesting. The worst of the cliches.
People like you for some reason suck it up like a Hoover, when it's all based on 1950s-esque atom bomb fear. You've seen it a million times before. Can we move on to something else in sf, please!?
Yeah, but they also didn't leave anything behind to warn their ancestors away from building the same AI that was in the Cylons, so they didn't do jack to "break the cycle" of humanity almost getting wiped out by machines.
Would it have been so hard to leave Galactica on the moon? Their ancestors are virtually guaranteed to find it there before they have Cylon-esque AI, and you can leave all the warnings you want in it. And odds are it'll be perfectly preserved in a couple millenia. (All the big meteors are pretty much settled down, and Galactica can no doubt still take hits from the smaller ones.)
I thought the ending was a huge downer. I was hoping for a MUCH better explanation of Baltar's hallucination.
"This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data."
What I mean, is that to pay with credit cards, from what I know, you only need the data that is written right on the card. And maybe sign the payment, like you sign any contract...
Are you talking about online only? Typically, that's correct. Some sites also require that your ship-to address be in your credit card company's database before they'll let the transaction go through.
Is that really how it works? Because if yes, then why in the word does anyone even consider using something like that? I'd rather go back to bartering goods, than something like that.
You don't *have* to use that, if you don't want to. You can get pre-paid credit cards for use on online purchases, which have all the advantages you mention. In addition most, if not all, credit card companies have additional security levels available that you can sign up for if you like. And if that's not enough for you, you can always just choose not to buy things online.
When I do payments, I either do it with a bag of fixed-value credits. Like real cash in a wallet, or digital cash in a digital wallet (what we in Germany call "Geldkarte"). (Both can be filled/loaded like you fill your wallet, and when it's empty, it is empty. Additionally both are detached from the bank account. Unlike a credit card.)
So... a pre-paid credit card, like one available in the US?
Or I do it with a secure system that needs what I have, what I know, and who I am. Like a cash card. Or secure online banking with a keycard. (Both use a keyfile, that you decrypt by entering a code into a secured device with its own keyboard [and display], to create a secure channel, to transmit payment instructions, that only result in payment, if the server allows payment for that account at that moment.)
Like the higher security systems you can get from pretty much any US credit card issuer?
Also, are you saying it's *impossible* in Germany to make an online purchase with a plain-old "type-in-the-numbers" credit card? Because it really sounds like you're complaining about absolutely nothing here.
Please do not see this as a rant (it isn't one), because I really am interested in understanding this.
There's a strong undercurrent of "God Americans suck", whether or not you intended it. Of course, it doesn't help that Slashdot gets so many "God Americans suck" posts that it's kind of hard to tell the difference anyway.
The difference is that Quake sucks, and Tribes is good.:)
Nah, I'm mostly kidding, different gameplay for different types of players. If you like any of the Battlefield games (especially Battlefield: 2142), remember: they ripped-off all their ideas from Tribes. Although they stopped short at Tribes' best feature, the jet-pack.
I wouldn't be TOO surprised if so. VGA might be a stretch, but with a Firefox canvas you'd get much better performance than how that Lemmings game is implemented.
I'm the one nitpicking language? You just redefined "has addins" to "has a GUI to easily find addins".
Yes, if you define "addin" as "that thing that IE doesn't have", then IE doesn't have them. For a rational person, there's no difference between Google toolbar in FF and Google toolbar in IE.
I don't consider myself a Microsoft apologist, I'm just allergic to bullshit so I try to combat it wherever and whenever I see it. On Slashdot, when talking about Microsoft, it's all over the place.
Whether or not IE's addins are good or completely suck, whether or not there exists an ad-blocker addin for IE, the simple fact of the matter is that IE *does* have addins, and *has* had addins for longer than Firefox has existed.
I can't go through and cover your entire list, but I do know that there's an IE addin to do DOM Inspection. I use it all the time. The aforementioned Google Toolbar does a lot of page manipulation, as well, like highlighting search results. I wouldn't be surprised if every item in your list exists in IE. (Except perhaps for "3D bookmark management", what does that even mean?)
The whole point of a "release" is to give it to the general population, i.e. "non-computer-savvy end users." If you're not doing that, then in what way is it considered a "release?" Maybe my problem isn't the phrase, but some mysterious definition of the word "release" I'm not familiar with.
There are a ton of people who use Vista every day and have no problem with it. Its usability, IMO, is much improved from XP. I'm actually more inclined to believe that the "Vista hate" is more a Slashdot phenomenon than anything in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, I totally forgot about that in my own post. I gave up trying to use my tablet as a tablet in Linux, the support just sucked.
Oh, please. A "fascination with taking advantage of new hardware and technologies" is not why Windows has sucked on an an epic level. Windows has always been an "also ran" when it comes to adapting "new hardware and technologies". Always.
Oh yeah? I can use an RFID reader to log into my Windows laptop. If I pull out the card, the laptop locks itself, if I put it back in it unlocks. Where's that technology in OS X or Linux? What about the fingerprint reader my laptop also has? (Which, frankly, I never use. But slick anyway.)
Emerging technologies? Can you name one software/OS/desktop feature which MS was first-to-market on for Windows?
Just did. There's also Fast User Switching, which XP had long before any other OS picked it up.
I seem to remember something called Cairo that was making news back in the mid-90s, which had a feature list similar to what we now know as Time Machine. MS still hasn't come up with such a functionality.
You mean Shadow Copy? That was introduced in Windows 2000 Server-side, and Windows XP client-side? And does the same thing Time Machine does? You're so full of crap.
Hell, they don't even have simple search indexing working well in Vista, yet.
In what way is it "not working well?" Although I suppose "not working well" is so vague that you could just handwave an answer even if it was perfect.
But, consider: Windows still can not approximately estimate the time it will take to copy a file from one local directory to another.
I haven't seen an OS yet that does a good job of this.
Just FYI, it would be a lot easier to accept your rant if you demonstrated SOME knowledge of Windows.
Amusingly enough, if Arm based netbooks take off, Not only is Microsoft screwed, but intel too.
Yeah, in that strange parallel universe where anybody cares about Arm-based netbooks. Here in our universe, though, Intel pretty much has a stranglehold on the market.
Except that if the game has permissions to save into Program Files, it also has permissions to shit files *anywhere else in your system.* (And yes, it was that way in DOS too.)
Take a game you play online, like UT3. (I think you've mentioned that in a previous post.) Let's say there's an exploit in the networking code of UT3 that allows it to download a virus. In your system, the virus has no problem doing this as it has full access to the registry. The virus spreads, your entire computer turns into a giant turd, everybody you send the virus to is unhappy.
Your problem is that you're completely obsessed with DOS, an OS that sucked-ass 20 years ago and doesn't even exist now. Yet despite the fact that the entire world rejected the way DOS does things, you still embrace it-- why? The two options are either:
1) You're smarter than every Windows programmer, every Linux programmer, and every Mac OS X programmer ever. All of those OSes use the same (general) permissions systems about where applications belong and where they should write data.
2) You're doing something wrong.
I could try to verify it, but apparently one has to have a Winqual account to get the logo requirements, and you need a paid certificate from VeriSign to get a Winqual account. VeriSign won't issue certificates directly to individuals; the sign-up form requires a "company", and various PDFs that VeriSign makes available through the certificate application process imply that this means a corporation or partnership, not a mere DBA form.
Yeah, but if you're getting the logo certification, then wouldn't you already have all that in place anyway?
Yes, that would definitely turn away small developers and shareware/freeware developers, but they wouldn't be getting logo certified anyway.
If you're running it from the USB stick, or from your user directory, it'll work fine. Just as in Linux, right?
The only time you'd get a UAC prompt is when you're trying to run a "portable" app from the Program Files folder. Which brings to mind the obvious question, why the hell do you even *have* a portable app in the Program Files folder?
Because that directory string is WAY TOO FUCKING LONG and I CONSTANTLY work under command line.
Wait, Microsoft should forget about application security, forget about making user profile permissions meaningful, completely break the functionality of backup software, completely break the functionality of the Roaming Profiles feature, just so ONE idiot on Slashdot can do everything on his computer through the CLI? (Presumably not even the good PowerShell CLI, as I'm pretty sure it can parse out shortcuts.)
Are you seriously suggesting that?
Or are you going to gradually come to the conclusion that what you're doing is highly strange and you really shouldn't expect Microsoft, or anybody else for that matter, to cater to your extremely unusual whims?
I'm just your average user, not a developer. Intuitively, when something is saved, especially something like a game save, I EXPECT it to be written to the game's fucking application directory.
"Intuitively?" Why would that be the "intuitive" place to put it? I think you're just used to shitty software doing it, and now you're upset that non-shitty software doesn't.
Now, given, it might not make sense to put a saved game in Documents, but it doesn't make any less sense than putting it in Program Files. Is a saved game a "program file" in any rational definition of that term? No. It's a lot closer to a "document" the way Windows uses the term.
You know what? It's not 1994 anymore. The way computers work *has changed*. Maybe you need to go back and question some of those "intuitive" assumptions you have.
The thing you have to realize is that most of the people who gripe about how lousy Windows is (or any Microsoft product) never actually use Windows. Or, alternatively, they haven't used Windows since Windows 98 and somehow think that it hasn't changed at all in a decade.
These are the people who complain about "constant bluescreens" in 2000, XP, Vista. The same type of people who don't realize that Windows has *two* CLI environments, one of which is admittedly quite poor (but only intended for backwards compatibility), and one of which is far superior to bash. And, over a year after IE7 added tabs to IE, I kept seeing posts on Slashdot saying that Firefox was a superior browser because it had tabs and IE didn't.
It's not just time, though. They also gripe about tools they don't use. For example, geeks here who rarely, if ever, use an office suite will go to great lengths to explain why the Office 2007 interface is far inferior to OpenOffice's interface. And frequently make statements like, "Office 97 had all the features anybody ever uses." They're not qualified to speak on this, of course, but they'll do it anyway.
In short, take everything you read here with huge grains of salt.
No. They ran perfectly find under the default user account of previous versions of Windows. They did not run perfectly fine under any user account with permissions below Administrator.
Try it. Go find an application that pops up a UAC prompt in Vista, an application that you assure us "ran perfectly fine" under XP. Now create an XP user account without Administrator permissions, make it plain ol' User permissions. Tell us what happens?
Ah, look! Instead of the relatively-friendly UAC prompt, your program simply crashed and burned with a vague error message. Wow, what a shocker. Gee, isn't this kind of a problem for the thousands of corporate desktops that (would like to) run as User for security reasons?
If you ever find either of those tools, please give it directly to Apple's iTunes department post-haste.
Could somebody please mod this clown down? He couldn't be more wrong.
Or, in short:
So, why doesn't Microsoft produce these tools for Windows, so the mass populace can help identify, log steps to reproduce, and report the exploits?
This tool is for Windows you dumbshit.
Or, in this case, "those who don't remember a TV show are doomed to re-enact it?"
The same anti-technology crap that Ron Moore changed BSG into in the last couple seasons is the same old stuff sf has been giving us since the original Star Trek, or Forbidden Planet. As a theme, it's completely, utterly washed out-- not interesting. The worst of the cliches.
People like you for some reason suck it up like a Hoover, when it's all based on 1950s-esque atom bomb fear. You've seen it a million times before. Can we move on to something else in sf, please!?
Yeah, but they also didn't leave anything behind to warn their ancestors away from building the same AI that was in the Cylons, so they didn't do jack to "break the cycle" of humanity almost getting wiped out by machines.
Would it have been so hard to leave Galactica on the moon? Their ancestors are virtually guaranteed to find it there before they have Cylon-esque AI, and you can leave all the warnings you want in it. And odds are it'll be perfectly preserved in a couple millenia. (All the big meteors are pretty much settled down, and Galactica can no doubt still take hits from the smaller ones.)
I thought the ending was a huge downer. I was hoping for a MUCH better explanation of Baltar's hallucination.
"This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data."
That was my yearbook quote!
And for further proof of the pussification of America, look back 200 years and see how they would have handled this case back then.
Dressed up like Indians and thrown them off a ship? Where do I sign up!
What I mean, is that to pay with credit cards, from what I know, you only need the data that is written right on the card. And maybe sign the payment, like you sign any contract...
Are you talking about online only? Typically, that's correct. Some sites also require that your ship-to address be in your credit card company's database before they'll let the transaction go through.
Is that really how it works? Because if yes, then why in the word does anyone even consider using something like that?
I'd rather go back to bartering goods, than something like that.
You don't *have* to use that, if you don't want to. You can get pre-paid credit cards for use on online purchases, which have all the advantages you mention. In addition most, if not all, credit card companies have additional security levels available that you can sign up for if you like. And if that's not enough for you, you can always just choose not to buy things online.
When I do payments, I either do it with a bag of fixed-value credits. Like real cash in a wallet, or digital cash in a digital wallet (what we in Germany call "Geldkarte"). (Both can be filled/loaded like you fill your wallet, and when it's empty, it is empty. Additionally both are detached from the bank account. Unlike a credit card.)
So... a pre-paid credit card, like one available in the US?
Or I do it with a secure system that needs what I have, what I know, and who I am. Like a cash card. Or secure online banking with a keycard. (Both use a keyfile, that you decrypt by entering a code into a secured device with its own keyboard [and display], to create a secure channel, to transmit payment instructions, that only result in payment, if the server allows payment for that account at that moment.)
Like the higher security systems you can get from pretty much any US credit card issuer?
Also, are you saying it's *impossible* in Germany to make an online purchase with a plain-old "type-in-the-numbers" credit card? Because it really sounds like you're complaining about absolutely nothing here.
Please do not see this as a rant (it isn't one), because I really am interested in understanding this.
There's a strong undercurrent of "God Americans suck", whether or not you intended it. Of course, it doesn't help that Slashdot gets so many "God Americans suck" posts that it's kind of hard to tell the difference anyway.
The difference is that Quake sucks, and Tribes is good. :)
Nah, I'm mostly kidding, different gameplay for different types of players. If you like any of the Battlefield games (especially Battlefield: 2142), remember: they ripped-off all their ideas from Tribes. Although they stopped short at Tribes' best feature, the jet-pack.
If they add the Shifter v.1 MOD, I'll fly over there and buy them all a steak. Best MOD in the best team FPS game ever.
I wouldn't be TOO surprised if so. VGA might be a stretch, but with a Firefox canvas you'd get much better performance than how that Lemmings game is implemented.
I'm the one nitpicking language? You just redefined "has addins" to "has a GUI to easily find addins".
Yes, if you define "addin" as "that thing that IE doesn't have", then IE doesn't have them. For a rational person, there's no difference between Google toolbar in FF and Google toolbar in IE.
http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ - Lemmings in DHTML
This worked fine in IE6. Nothing here is all that impressive to me.
I don't consider myself a Microsoft apologist, I'm just allergic to bullshit so I try to combat it wherever and whenever I see it. On Slashdot, when talking about Microsoft, it's all over the place.
Whether or not IE's addins are good or completely suck, whether or not there exists an ad-blocker addin for IE, the simple fact of the matter is that IE *does* have addins, and *has* had addins for longer than Firefox has existed.
I can't go through and cover your entire list, but I do know that there's an IE addin to do DOM Inspection. I use it all the time. The aforementioned Google Toolbar does a lot of page manipulation, as well, like highlighting search results. I wouldn't be surprised if every item in your list exists in IE. (Except perhaps for "3D bookmark management", what does that even mean?)
The whole point of a "release" is to give it to the general population, i.e. "non-computer-savvy end users." If you're not doing that, then in what way is it considered a "release?" Maybe my problem isn't the phrase, but some mysterious definition of the word "release" I'm not familiar with.
There are a ton of people who use Vista every day and have no problem with it. Its usability, IMO, is much improved from XP. I'm actually more inclined to believe that the "Vista hate" is more a Slashdot phenomenon than anything in the real world.