I had an image rendering on my wife's desktop machine for about 40 hours. Last night her machine automatically downloaded the latest from Windows Update, then automatically rebooted itself. The rendering had just finished the GI sample pass.
I've never heard of Windows automatically rebooting after an update. However, I have seen it nag about rebooting a lot, and there seems to be no way of turning that off...
Isn't Bill Gates becoming significantly less invloved with Microsoft anyway? It seems pointless to kill him now - those days are over...
actually this has happened to me a lot.....specially in vista....it would just download and install the updates and restart the comp without the user permission....although you can change the settings....
it also happens in xp where it would download and install updates without user permission and would popup the dialog box saying windows installed the updates and needs to restart and it would give you 1 minute to react to that dialog box every 15 mins and if nothing is done within 1 min, it would restart the computer and loose the rendering in progress....
I have broken 1 set of 5.1 speakers and 2-3 keyboards broken into two pieces and keys flying everywhere.....
DarkFire - Yeah, like D says, it's a matter of settings. She had her machine set up to download, install and reboot if necessary, all automatically. I hadn't realized that. And as for Bill... it would be purely symbolic. Stringing up Balmer et al just wouldn't be as emotionally satisfying.
;D
D - I'm afraid the keyboard on my desktop machine took a bit of a pounding.
;D
Quote from: Harvey Birdman on October 10, 2007, 01:08:19 PM
D - I'm afraid the keyboard on my desktop machine took a bit of a pounding.
;D
not just one....2 of them....
<sniff> Did I hear someone say something about the end of M$? What? :P
It's best to disable automatic updates. I don't even have my Windows machine connecting to the net. I do that on my Mac and Linux and no anti virus software needed. It's also very rare to ever need to have to reboot on either OSX or Linux. The whole MS stranglehold is turning into a tragedy. Linux is vastly superior now but so many software developers say there is no demand for Linux versions. It's a vicious circle. It'll take things like wine to make a difference so people can use their Windows version apps on Linux. Microsoft do not care whatsoever about creating a good product only using all their resources to fight against better products but this can only go on for so long.
I'm currently working on a grant proposal to port a portion of my calculus software from Win32 to Java so I can take advantage of JOGL. I originally developed a web-delivered sample a few years back but had to use Windows and ActiveX because at the time it was the only reasonable means of delivering GL content over the web. With JOGL that's changed, and I'm hoping I can get funding to do the work. I've already talked with a textbook publisher about licensing the final product for use on their site.
It'd be sweet to be able to really move commercially to Java; if I get the funding it'll give me a chance to explore the performance of a Java-based version of my stuff, at someone else's expense.
Quote from: Harvey Birdman on October 10, 2007, 10:47:02 AM
I had an image rendering on my wife's desktop machine for about 40 hours. Last night her machine automatically downloaded the latest from Windows Update, then automatically rebooted itself. The rendering had just finished the GI sample pass.
That's exactly the same thing that happened to me yesterday... I was rendering on TG2 for an architectural work, left the machine, and when I returned everything got lost, PC rebooted and a lot of wasted time >:( :)
Would it not be better for the IT industry as a whole to disband Microsoft as a Body Corporate, demolish there corporate HQ live on TV and make their Intellectual Property Portfolio Open Source, just an idea any way.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Quote from: Cyber-Angel on October 10, 2007, 06:35:13 PM
... demolish there corporate HQ live on TV ...
I'd pay to watch that! What the hell; I've probably paid for an office or two there over the years.
:D
Now now Microsoft is a simple, fun loving corporation that has matured over the years has grow into a profitable Global Superpower, sentient computer system, The Matrix, supplier of certain products that other major economic shareholders can't do with out.
Yeah, Microsoft's monopoly is pretty scary. There is an online magazine that contrasts Apple, Microsoft, and other big computer companies, and it's well worth a look at some of its articles:
http://test.roughlydrafted.com
Edit: Wow... apparently it has moved to a new location over the past 24 hours :P. I updated the link.
Quote from: old_blaggard on October 10, 2007, 07:18:20 PM
Yeah, Microsoft's monopoly is pretty scary. There is an online magazine that contrasts Apple, Microsoft, and other big computer companies, and it's well worth a look at some of its articles:
http://test.roughlydrafted.com
Edit: Wow... apparently it has moved to a new location over the past 24 hours :P. I updated the link.
*Ahem*, to be clear that is not a "non-partisan" (as it were) site, the author is something more of a Mac advocate/appreciator. To call it "intensely biased" might be a bit much, but still... ;)
And as much as Microsoft's monopoly has its drawbacks, I really don't find it "scary" at all, and I think it's frankly irresponsible to ignore the value of such broad standardization that it has brought. Even Apple has benefitted from it through sheer market force. With Apple as essentially the sole relevant and mainstream desktop computer alternative, they have enjoyed a virtual secondary monopoly. Imagine if the computing industry continued as it was before Microsoft became dominant - 1000 flavors of hardware and software, few compatible with each other. Apple would have a lot harder time getting software developers to favor them with broad competition like that. And if they did succeed, it's possible they would now be the monopoly MS is, only with locked-in hardware you could very safely bet on much higher buy-in cost.
So yeah, MS is evil and all, but it has also made our modern computing world a remarkably convenient place, despite the bugs, crashes, blue screens, whatever. I'll take Windows XP over 100 flavors of "DOS" any day.
- Oshyan
Apple are certainly the only alternative if you wants lots of working software but on the PC, Microsoft have an extremely unhealthy monopoly. They can produce a garbage OS now and not care. I have two PCs here, mostly sitting redundant because when I bought my Mac I simply hardly ever used them. My Mac has not had a single glitch or problem in almost 3 years. The OSX desktop is fantastically simple and easy to use. The Windows desktop is a bloated joke. The thing that angers me is the my PCs are actually great machines. I spared no expense when building them. I know them to be brilliant because I have used Linux which is simply vastly superior to Windows. after having payed with Linux for several years I installed Ubuntu ages and this system has been rock solid problem free. Ubuntu is a landmark distribution which gets better and better. So easy to install Linux these days, it makes a Vista install seem ridiculous. Linux can be totally customized to however you want it. There are so many problems with Windows I couldn't even begin to list them. For a start you have to start replacing lots of the MS apps after you install it. iTunes, Firefox etc. As far as TG2 is concerned I'll give you one example. The Windows colour dialog is a joke compared to the one on Mac and we need this system colour tool for TG2. You shouldn't have to replace any of these tools.
Did you know just for the sake of interest that Microsoft own the Patent (Granted 1994) for the Double Mouse click that nearly every UI happens to use except some that use the single click.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
I never knew that. This is one thing I don't like on my Mac. The mighty mouse. It has a 360 navigation ball which is a cool idea but they chose to use this absurd tiny little ball which gets dirt in it and stops functioning. You can't open it to clean it but I'll forgive them for that since everything else is great.
For Windows users, one thing I consider crucial is Norton Ghost. You install Windows and immediately ghost the whole system to another drive and then you can do it again with all your software. When Windows screws up you simply start ghost, it reboots and restores the whole system in a couple of minutes. However why on earth should you need to do that? In OSX you can do the same thing except the functionality is in the OS without third party software. Have I ever once needed this backup? No.
This is amazing software:
http://www.nomachine.com/
It's Linux server only though but with Mac and Windows clients. I've tried it and it's fantastic. You can remotely go into any system with full UI desktop. I have a 1 Gbit LAN here and when I use this it's exactly as if I'm at the remote computer with no lag at all. Windows Remote Desktop? - yet another MS joke.
I'll agree on one thing: the color picker on the Mac is much better. On everything else I'm afraid it comes down to A: individual experience and B: user preference. I for one really do very much dislike the OS X approach to things - desktop, dock, etc. It has some great *features* (spotlight, etc.), but the fundamental normal workings of the OS drive me nuts. And as far as individual experience, I won't pretend for a moment that my PC's haven't crashed a good amount on me. But I've seen just as bad - if not worse - behavior on a Mac, and when things go awry there it's harder for me to know how to fix it if I have to "dig in" to the system. Granted the possibilities are there, it is after BSD under the hood, but I'm not too in love with the commandline so I kind of see it like the choice between being an idiot and being a surgeon in the guts - there's no middleground. Anyway I disgress - I also hate iTunes and think it's a giant piece of crap. ;) But the point is, horses for courses.
I'm now running Vista and it hasn't been awful so far, at least once I turned off User Account Control and other nags. It's not really an improvement over XP either though. Apple definitely has MS trumped in the features and updates department, but I'm afraid you just can't say they are *fundamentally* better with OS design and workflow, because that particular workflow to be very annoying, and although that is partly because I'm a seasoned Windows user, I've also seen it get in the way of plenty of native Mac die-hards. Again experience may vary. ;D
Oh, and for remote system control in Windows, no server needed, good performance and features, and free, I use http://www.ultravnc.net/
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan.
I've used VNC and it's better than Windows Remote but not like NoMachine. With Nomachine you actually forget which system you are on. There is no difference between working on the local machine or remote. No noticable lags.
The thing that specifically bugs me in Windows is all the windows. There are actually fundamental differences with Unix based systems that makes them at core better than Windows but to argue all the advantages disadvantages of systems would be too long winded. I simply prefer Macs and Linux 8)
I do agree by the way that Microsoft played a huge role in making computers so prevalent and easy for everyone. From 1995 to XP MS achieved things but now they are negating these advances.
Personally I'm with Oshyan on this one. I've played with OSX on a few occasions and to me, the interface is in fact more complicated than a windows interface. One giant start button down at the bottom is, at least for me, far more convenient than the five or six different buttons at the top of the OSX interface. While I agree that MS has been unable to produce a significant leap forward with Vista, I'd say that when it comes right down to it, just how far can you take an operating system without digging into a Linux style system that requires the user to either be a programmer in their own right or have vast amounts of time to learn how to run it. To me that is the windows appeal, you get a package that is stupid proof in many regards and though it has its issues, typically does just fine. I've been running vista now for three months or so and granted I've had to reboot it a couple of times, those instances were usually me overestimating how much of a task load the system could handle (like TG2, an apophysis render, internet, media player all at the same time kind of thing). So for the time being I'd say that for all of its quirks, windows really isn't that bad.
Sometimes you do need to do some stuff in Linux to set things up but generally it's a case of put a CD in and install Linux then you're ready to go. I had a problem with my 24 inch widescreen. The xorg file didn't contain the correct resolution settings. So I entered the correct ones in and it worked and no more problems at all. It's Ubuntu. In my opinion this is very foolproof. The best Linux distribution ever. In fact totally foolproof beyond Windows because it has a superuser account like OSX. The short time it took me to sort that resolution problem (easily found on the net) is a fraction of the time that Windows has wasted for me. I have messed around a lot configuring stuff, learning about Linux but that was generally on poorer distributions from the past.
The Windows start button is actually a thing I don't like because it's menu after menu. There are so many windows for configuring things and ways to get to those windows. You can't even remember it. There is no intelligence in how that UI is thought out.
On OSX I can open system preferences from the dock by moving my mouse there, the dock appears and I click to open the preferences then click on whatever I want to configure so no system window for configuring anything is more than two mouse click away and only one way to get to it. System settings on Windows are a joke of a UI setup. You can get to them from all sorts of locations. tons of various windows upon windows, mazes of UI routes.
On my OSX moving my mouse to the top right corner moves all current windows off the desktop, moving to the top left shows me all open windows which I can click on to focus. Then in the next OSX version Apple have copied the multiple desktops idea from Linux which is brilliant. Going to Windows after this is like entering a UI traffic jam.
Search function in XP - I won't even go there. Where is the dictionary that can spell check everything you write system wide - aren't these things that the average computer user wants?
Vista has added some things but it should have been the Microsoft OS that got them to a very sorted position but it's the exact opposite. It's going to put them so far behind OSX and Linux that even despite their huge monoply they will lose users.
Then you could get into the whole shared .dll thing in Windows. On Linux it is impossible to install an app without knowing about a problem dependency which the package manager automatically sorts out. OSX doesn't have any shared dependency problems either but Windows will allow you to install an app that may not work.
What about the way Windows handles drives compared to Unix systems which create a mount point not a totally seperate drive with it's own tree structure. There is no swap partition, or user space etc so Windows gets all messed up and slows down.
There is no end to it. Microsoft could have reinvented Windows with Vista but instead it's another wallpapering of the same OS.
Anyway, this thread was bound to start heavy discussion but Bill Gates has has a lot to answer for >:( Maybe he stepped down because he knows this.
Microsoft made progress with XP, 2000 server and 2003 server because they were taken to court and made to do it right. The 90s proved successful for the consumer, since the Clinton administration took M$ to task...along with a list of States who wouldn't just roll over.
Quote from: efflux on October 11, 2007, 07:50:19 AM
I do agree by the way that Microsoft played a huge role in making computers so prevalent and easy for everyone. From 1995 to XP MS achieved things but now they are negating these advances.
Quote from: calico on October 11, 2007, 12:13:51 PM
Microsoft made progress with XP, 2000 server and 2003 server because they were taken to court and made to do it right. The 90s proved successful for the consumer, since the Clinton administration took M$ to task...along with a list of States who wouldn't just roll over.
Quote from: efflux on October 11, 2007, 07:50:19 AM
I do agree by the way that Microsoft played a huge role in making computers so prevalent and easy for everyone. From 1995 to XP MS achieved things but now they are negating these advances.
Do you *really* believe it was the action of the courts that improved things? As far as I can recall 2000 came out before the results of the trial were even determined, and it would have been so far into development even well before that point that making major changes based on the legal determinations would have been unlikely anyway. Not to mention that the legal case(s) had much more to do with bundling software (which, hmm, Apple isn't really criticized for - instead it is in fact applauded for, go figure) - which MS continues to do - and some strong-arm tactics in the market, neither of which reflect any notable change in direction for the OS that would have had positive outcome.
No, 2000 was good because it was finally shedding the cruft of the old 16 bit DOS back-end, and XP was good because it built on the successful 2000 core with more user-friendly (theoretically) and multimedia-oriented features - 2000 was designed as a pro-oriented OS whereas XP was basically the publicly-oriented successor. Vista, despite all the claims of great change, is a lot closer to XP than I at least would have expected. I was hoping - like Efflux - for more of a "sea change", though I grant it's very difficult to provide that and still maintain good backward compatibility. On the other hand Vista has all kinds of problems even with Windows XP apps, let alone Win95-98 or older, so perhaps that is not even a good reason for the real *lack* of innovation and progress in Vista. Many things were promised and the most interesting of them were dropped before release (WinFS for example).
The sad thing is I definitely do use Windows because there's nothing better (IMO) available, but I also see many flaws in it and wish it were better. Yes, I wish it had a built-in dictionary, built-in disk imaging (some versions of Vista do), built-in efficient file search, etc. I consider many - if not all - of those things to be core OS features (unlike Windows Movie Maker which MS bundles, for example, or Outlook Express/Windows Mail). At the same time I think that if MS did bundle some of that stuff they might be slapped with more lawsuits for being anticompetitive - that's one of the drawbacks of being the market leader. I feel quite confident that if Apple were the market leader they too would have had legal cases brought against them for bundling so many functions with the OS. So in some ways Mac users enjoy certain benefits in their OS because Apple is *not* dominant (and someone else - Microsoft - is). Ironic.
So where's AmigaOS when you need it? ;)
- Oshyan
I tried Vista and was very disappointed. I was hoping for some radical change. First of all it started telling me my system was not powerful enough for certain things yet Windows was only using a fraction of resources. My systems are powerful despite being a few years old. Then it disabled my digital sound output due to not being DRM. Then the most absurd thing of all. It pretended to be a secure system by constantly asking me if I wanted to do certain tasks that could be harmful to the system but did it stop me. No. "Are you sure you want to do" messages. Absurd. If I do something like this on OSX or Linux I need a password. A box comes up to enter it. If I can't do this I can't change anything critical to the system, end of story. Windows is not a proper multi-user secure system.
The things that are set to actually require admin access *are* passworded. It's just that it asks you for confirmation on a million other things that it shouldn't, or at the least it does so needlessly because, as you said, people can just get into the automatic habit of clicking "OK", "Yes", "Go", "Whatever". Yes, the UAC system is poorly designed and executed. A "proper multi-user system"? I'm not sure Vista falls into your criteria, but I think it is, it's just that the defaults are stupid. ;)
- Oshyan
Yes, I think the fact Microsoft had to be accountable to a number of States and the Federal government put them under the spotlight and clearly stated to them that they couldn't continue to crap on the consumer. XP and 2003 came out of this, for sure, but the litigation against them had started during the time 2000 came out...and Active Directory. I'm not a big fan of AD, liking instead Novell's brand, but that's another discussion.
Anyway, government regulation will be the only way IT gets straightened out <ducking the stones> and anyone in the IT industry knows it's a hodge-podge of stuff that does work some of the time or simply is piece of dung. We wouldn't put up with the failure rate in automobiles in the same fashion we endure it from the IT world. As a matter of fact, I believe the IT world has been largely responsible for the throw away society we have along with the lack of concern for quality work.
Planetside is an exception to this. Of course. 8)
Linux completely seperates each user into a user space. All their apps etc. Nothing at all crosses over. Absolutely everything can have all kinds of levels of permissions. Loads of people can be logged in a the same time and you wouldn't even know. It's more efficient at this. Microsoft server is better than the standard desktop editions at multiuser but that's because they want you to buy that and not a home edition of Windows for a server. I can't say I know a whole load about this but some people have told me that security between user accounts in Windows is very poor. You can get at other peoples files. Unix was made from the bottom up as full multiuser system whereas Windows started as single user. NT (XP) has proper multiuser capabilities but MS restrict it in the home desktop Windows versions. Linux is Linux. You make it how you want whatever task you want, not what the developer restricts you to so they can make more cash. Unix was totally built for multiuser from the bottom up.
Hmm, well I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this then. I'm not sure there's a single thing you said below that I agreed with. ;) I still see little or no connection between government regulation and *operating system quality*. MS didn't take the investigations as a blanket call to arms to improve their product - they very reasonably focused on the areas that the investigations were concerned with. Why overhaul your product unnecessarily if you're not being scrutinited for the majority of its functioning? There was no "Microsoft's operating system isn't easy to use" point in the legal proceedings, so what you're saying makes little or no sense IMO.
As for government regulation improving IT, I think in some cases it has helped (the formerly mandated opening of private phone networks to 3rd party providers for example), but most often it is the lighter hand that will have the best effect. The more government stays out of areas it clearly doesn't understand the better IMO. Companies working on significant innovation certainly don't need any burdensome government regulation mandating standards compliance or "easy access" or "fairness". Innovation is stifled by bureaucracy, plain and simple. Even when it's not government the influence of bureaucracy is still quite negative - just look at the progress rate of OpenGL vs. DirectX. :P
- Oshyan
Quote from: calico on October 11, 2007, 01:39:19 PM
Yes, I think the fact Microsoft had to be accountable to a number of States and the Federal government put them under the spotlight and clearly stated to them that they couldn't continue to crap on the consumer. XP and 2003 came out of this, for sure, but the litigation against them had started during the time 2000 came out...and Active Directory. I'm not a big fan of AD, liking instead Novell's brand, but that's another discussion.
Anyway, government regulation will be the only way IT gets straightened out <ducking the stones> and anyone in the IT industry knows it's a hodge-podge of stuff that does work some of the time or simply is piece of dung. We wouldn't put up with the failure rate in automobiles in the same fashion we endure it from the IT world. As a matter of fact, I believe the IT world has been largely responsible for the throw away society we have along with the lack of concern for quality work.
Planetside is an exception to this. Of course. 8)
Quote from: efflux on October 11, 2007, 02:00:13 PM
Linux completely seperates each user into a user space. All their apps etc. Nothing at all crosses over. Absolutely everything can have all kinds of levels of permissions. Loads of people can be logged in a the same time and you wouldn't even know. It's more efficient at this. Microsoft server is better than the standard desktop editions at multiuser but that's because they want you to buy that and not a home edition of Windows for a server. I can't say I know a whole load about this but some people have told me that security between user accounts in Windows is very poor. You can get at other peoples files. Unix was made from the bottom up as full multiuser system whereas Windows started as single user. NT (XP) has proper multiuser capabilities but MS restrict it in the home desktop Windows versions. Linux is Linux. You make it how you want whatever task you want, not what the developer restricts you to so they can make more cash. Unix was totally built for multiuser from the bottom up.
Yes, that's true, this is something Linux is definitely better at. And yet all I can think is "why does the average person give a crap"? ;) 99.9% of people really don't care. They only care if it helps prevent virus infections and improves security, and although that is somewhat the case, it is also true that people would often be prevented from doing things that they might want to do in an ideal security scenario, so like Windows it may be more secure, but also more annoying, and you're back to the same problem. The *only* advantage then is that another user account could be used to log-in and be unaffected, and if the administrator password were known that could theoretically be used to repair any messed up account. Yet if the user knows the admin password they're likely just to use that to avoid the hassle of limited rights, so that defeats the whole purpose. The end result then is this is only effective in a truly managed environment with an IT person or staff available and that's why Windows Server has this functionality and, despite it being included in Linux free, the vast majority of people have no ability to make use of those features (or likely interest in doing so), so it's rather a moot point unless you're already a geek. I would never argue against Linux for the technophile, but for the average desktop user I don't think it offers any significant advantages, and has a lot of disadvantages too.
Windows is a huge series of compromises, but they're all ones that generally work and are made to cater to the general public. Linux is less compromising, but less attractive to the average consumer as a result.
- Oshyan
What Ubuntu have done is force you to be a superuser when you install. Other Linux systems are not like this. OSX is similar. It means that these systems are secure from square one. You can not do any admin without the password. The home Windows just defaults at install to single like environment user with no security. If you want to set up a root account in OSX or Ubuntu you can but why do this? You have a password to termporarily do admin if you're a superuser.
A root account in a Unix system still has no access to the other users space, only admin of the system. I'm not sure this can be set up in Windows, at least somebody told me it can't.
I think you're missing the point here though - when you give a user the control they want over the system, it is virtually impossible to avoid giving them the ability to break the system. If they screw up their own account they're not going to know how to use the admin account to fix it. I don't see an easy solution to this problem and don't see it as solved on OS X or Linux either. Sure maybe it's better, but I'm not so sure it comes down to the particular configuration you're talking about. It seems just like a better implementation of what Windows already has, and better defaults. Again I'm not arguing Windows is great at this, just that *in practice* the actual difference between Windows and Linux in terms of security *for the average user* is not going to be great, assuming said average user can even use the Linux box in the same way.
- Oshyan
Man, I'm starting to feel like a drive-by troller, the way this thread has taken off. Catching up on it is kind of like peeking into the bar to see how the brawl I started is progressing.
;D ;D
Quote from: Harvey Birdman on October 11, 2007, 02:25:22 PM
Man, I'm starting to feel like a drive-by troller, the way this thread has taken off. Catching up on it is kind of like peeking into the bar to see how the brawl I started is progressing.
;D ;D
lol! Just a friendly debate. ;D
- Oshyan
The thread topic was bound to start off a big thread. It always does :D
The thing is though under Linux it is impossible for a user to break the actual system as long as their privileges are correct, only their user space can get messed up. It's not so seperated in Windows. Also, the admin can not fix anything in that users account unless the user allows it by supplying the password it or it has been originally set up with those privileges. I'm not sure this flexibility with privileges is in Windows.
As far as I know Microsoft can not fix this situation in Windows without destroying backwards compatibility with software but they should have started from scratch and just totally overhauled Windows with Vista. If people have to upgrade their software I don't see that as a major issue.
I'm no expert in any of this anyway but these things secure the system from getting viruses etc as well.
I don't expect many in IT to agree with government regulation, but I'm not talking about heavy handed regulation. Just the same as goes for (supposedly) the FDA and food / drugs. In other words, if it isn't working right, there's a problem and the company needs to make it work correctly. The idea that bugs will always exist in software started with M$. That's BS. It's possible to have an IT structure that doesn't include wild code. Modular hardware wherein each piece is coded to handle certain aspects of logic with a clear cut definition of how these pieces fit together would end the need to have umpteen programmers killing keyboards with illogical code (and I'm not talking about Planetside, since I have so far loved the way you guys produce what you've produced).
As far as M$ doing what they did in XP and 2003 without the government call to arms, I don't think we can prove it. It's obvious that M$ won't admit to a wrong until someone with some authority, governmental or technical, shows to the world they are plain and simple asses.
Quote from: Oshyan on October 11, 2007, 02:01:37 PM
Hmm, well I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this then. I'm not sure there's a single thing you said below that I agreed with. ;) I still see little or no connection between government regulation and *operating system quality*. MS didn't take the investigations as a blanket call to arms to improve their product - they very reasonably focused on the areas that the investigations were concerned with. Why overhaul your product unnecessarily if you're not being scrutinited for the majority of its functioning? There was no "Microsoft's operating system isn't easy to use" point in the legal proceedings, so what you're saying makes little or no sense IMO.
As for government regulation improving IT, I think in some cases it has helped (the formerly mandated opening of private phone networks to 3rd party providers for example), but most often it is the lighter hand that will have the best effect. The more government stays out of areas it clearly doesn't understand the better IMO. Companies working on significant innovation certainly don't need any burdensome government regulation mandating standards compliance or "easy access" or "fairness". Innovation is stifled by bureaucracy, plain and simple. Even when it's not government the influence of bureaucracy is still quite negative - just look at the progress rate of OpenGL vs. DirectX. :P
- Oshyan
Quote from: calico on October 11, 2007, 01:39:19 PM
Yes, I think the fact Microsoft had to be accountable to a number of States and the Federal government put them under the spotlight and clearly stated to them that they couldn't continue to crap on the consumer. XP and 2003 came out of this, for sure, but the litigation against them had started during the time 2000 came out...and Active Directory. I'm not a big fan of AD, liking instead Novell's brand, but that's another discussion.
Anyway, government regulation will be the only way IT gets straightened out <ducking the stones> and anyone in the IT industry knows it's a hodge-podge of stuff that does work some of the time or simply is piece of dung. We wouldn't put up with the failure rate in automobiles in the same fashion we endure it from the IT world. As a matter of fact, I believe the IT world has been largely responsible for the throw away society we have along with the lack of concern for quality work.
Planetside is an exception to this. Of course. 8)
I'm going to set up some accounts in XP to actually check all this out. I know how it works in Linux but have never really used it in XP. I only know what some people have told me as far as this multiuser thing is concerned.
This is the first time I've checked back since I posted (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2509.msg24735#msg24735). I'm simply speechless at the number of long posts...
Clearly some people feel strongly about something, but I really can't be bothered to read every post so I suppose I'll never know what everyone is talking about...
I'd just like to point out that I've never had to change any settings in any version of Windows to stop automatic reboots, so if you suffer from a random automatic reboot it's probably your own fault.
I'd like to see a bigger test of the true validity of this security model *on the desktop and with the average user*, but I agree in principle it's better. I also agree I was very disappointed Vista wasn't a total overhaul, especially with how long it took. They had a real opportunity to force 64 bit (every shipping CPU is now 64 bit and the other Vista requirements are already so high it doesn't matter), to use some kind of legacy or even Virtual Machine system to handle old software in a secure sandbox (I believe MS even has a company in its fold that could handle this), to go for a database-driven underlying file system to handle metadata, searching, virtual file organization, and file relocation handling. Essentially they could have done what Apple did with OS X, except better. ;D
- Oshyan
You'd have to have been posting to make it worth reading these posts Dark Fire, otherwise it's not worth it.
All I can say is that if Microsoft thought through their OS UI as well as Planetside thought through how to make a landscape app UI then we'd have a better Windows.
Quote from: calico on October 11, 2007, 02:48:59 PM
The idea that bugs will always exist in software started with M$.
That is patently false and completely rediculous. Do you really believe that? ;) Bugs *will* always exist, except in the absolute simplest of code. There simply is no way to completely test every possible scenario, circumstance, hardware and software configuration, etc. and even if there were there isn't enough time in the day for even the largest group of coders to address all the problems found, at least not without going bankrupt. The only software development project I know of that even comes close to "zero bugs" is at NASA where they work on software for the shuttle and other space missions, and even there they still get bugs.
Quote from: calico on October 11, 2007, 02:48:59 PM
As far as M$ doing what they did in XP and 2003 without the government call to arms, I don't think we can prove it. It's obvious that M$ won't admit to a wrong until someone with some authority, governmental or technical, shows to the world they are plain and simple asses.
And again I disagree and I think history would prove me correct. MS consistently improved, in some cases in very significant ways, from Windows 3.1 to Win95 and then 95 to 98 (less of a jump obviously) and then particulary from 98/ME to 2000 and then XP, all significant jumps, major improvements, all getting easier and more pleasant to work with and more feature-rich. ME is the big minus on their record, but otherwise things steadily improved, and ME was really just a latch ditch attempt to have a new OS out for sale that wasn't 2k that they wanted to sell to the Pro market - it was a bad decision, plain and simple. But given that history I really don't see how you can justify saying that improvements in XP were a result of litigation, in whole or even in part. If anything I would say that litigation simply distracted the development of XP from its real potential with having to faff around with what apps you can include and whatnot. Apple doesn't have to worry about that crap.
- Oshyan
Apple don't have to bother with that because all their extra apps can be sent to the trash in one mouse click if you want. M$ wanted to integrate IE into the Windows desktop in such a way that it couldn't be seperated.
Heres a bombshell for you Windows lovers.
I just installed TG2 under Wine in Linux. it is fully functional apart from some messed up UI. You see the UI when mousing over but node network, all settings windows open for nodes and the realtime preview work. It is actually totally usable but here's the real bombshell. It renders faster. To fully exploit this I'd have to disable hyperthreading in the bios because Linux sees my one CPU as two. However TG2 on one half of the CPU renders well beyond half the speed that it does on my XP system. The UI outperforms the UI on my Mac despite the glitch because on the Mac TG2 UI is sluggish. TG2 will eventually be 100% working under Wine. The UI glitch will be an Open GL problem. I have it on another app I tested. At one stage this got fixed in Wine then regressed again. So it's looking good.
What kind of graphics card do you have? You really need at least 128MB of VRAM for the interface to be snappy because OS X has all of those core technologies that use the graphics processor, whereas Windows and Linux use the main processor for that more.
Yes OSX is a little slower in UI because of that but TG2 is much slower than other apps. My graphics card is a GeForce 6600 PCI Express with 256 MB VRAM. Nothing special but should be perfectly good enough. jo has said that once multicore is enabled things should get better. It's not a major deal but a little annoying.
I'm going to disable the HT in my Linux system and run a TG2 render speed test. Maybe there will not be any difference from Windows but signs so far are that there there will be.
I tested on Linux with HT disabled but the trouble is that Linux generally takes a performance hit when I do this whereas with Windows it makes no difference whether HT is enabled or not. TG2 is not faster on Linux but not much different from Windows. However this is perfectly OK.
No software can even utilize my PCs to full extent the way most of my Mac software can utilize the Mac (TG2 unfortunately not being in this category yet due to non multi core). This is absolutely absurd and who is to blame - M$. They never produced an OS that performs properly with my HT CPUs the way Linux does and Linux doesn't have all the apps because of the Windows monopoly.
The thing is there is a clear performance difference on my PCs because of this hyperthreading. Windows does not run anything faster when I enable it including the actual OS. I simply have two CPUs whereas with Linux when I enable HT there is a clear performance benefit with anything I do. The desktop is faster.
I think we see this as how it is now. Even I understand this as a programmer,
but it is easy to believe that in the future devices (hardware devices) will replace many of the functions we now program. This isn't a stretch. Think about the capacity for memory and CPU to retain coding. If someone was really a genius, they'd figure out a way to dissect logic down to a few basic hardware components and be able to use these components to enhance robotics, etc. We think the way we do now, since this is what we see. Someday, people will look back and say, "Oshyan was sure smart for his time. But, how could he have known this?" ;D
Quote from: Oshyan on October 11, 2007, 03:06:20 PM
Bugs *will* always exist...
MS consistently improved...
- Oshyan
As far as MS improving, I see that too. But, my context is the entire IT industry. It's my opinion that there were better operating systems when MS started and that there still are better. The only trouble is that most of these haven't been brought to the consumer level through the innovation of front-end magic. The need for people to utilize technology simply is what has driven Microsoft's business. Perhaps someday someone (like LINUS TORVALDS) will find the magic formula for intelligence emulation. By then, I'll be using TG5.01 to create virtual movies. 8) <-- Me as a
virtual movie director.
There were better operating systems. M$ was simply able to cheapen it all and make is more GUI for the consumer. DOS stands for dirty operating system as far as I remember and M$ bought it cheap. They still have the same business policy.
I knew someone who programmed for Acorn computers. This was a UK company. He said it was fundamentally far superior to Windows.
Linux renders fastest if I keep HT enabled on my PCs and open two instances of TG2. This is actually my fastest way of rendering on any system. There is a problem in the UI of TG2 under Wine though which I've just discovered. The right click menu in the node graph intermittently fails.
Would anyone ever start a thread called Death to Linus Torvalds? I think not.
Quote from: efflux on October 12, 2007, 04:42:44 AM
Would anyone ever start a thread called Death to Linus Torvalds? I think not.
it is already done!
Why would anyone have anything against Linus?
DOS = Disk Operating System. ;)
You may find this site interesting for comparison - OS X comes out on top, but not by as much as I think many people would like to think: http://www.xvsxp.com/
- Oshyan
This is what it says in the WIKI about DOS:
MS-DOS began as QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System) So it did really begin with this name although Microsoft changed it.
Quote from: efflux on October 13, 2007, 07:05:27 PM
This is what it says in the WIKI about DOS:
MS-DOS began as QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System) So it did really begin with this name although Microsoft changed it.
Mmm, fair enough, but the "quick" is an important part there. I doubt it would have actually been called *just" "Dirty Operating System". It's a rather vital omission. ;)
- Oshyan
I didn't remember the Quick bit. I just thought of the DOS letters. Microsoft apparently payed $50,000 for it.