This wasn't a case of someone bidding on contracts or needing a decision maker to change his vote. This was just some dude running a blog that had chosen to get Macbooks and was the unsolicited target of a M$ review machine. He later auctioned it on eBay, then promptly wasted the money by giving it to the EFF. A wonderful thumb in the face to M$ but an equally worthless use of the money.
Wait. Someone heard something *GOOD* about Vista? Seriously? So should I die of shock now, or wait for morning?
I had the same reaction, Samson. I am *forcing* myself to use Vista because I know the change over at most universities will take place in the next year or so. It still isn't going well. Every action is questioned repeatedly:
"Are you sure?" "Are you really really sure?" "Just confirming that you really are sure and you clicked ok."
Wish I didn't have to face that one for a long long time. :cry:
11 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Disclaimer: I'm not a Mac fan. That said:
One of the only Mac vs. PC ads that I liked is the one that is a spoof on the Vista questions. PC's bodyguard needs to clear absolutely everything that Mac wants to say. Here's the Youtube link.
Those Mac vs PC commercials are some of my absolute favorites. Even if I don't own a Mac, the comedy value in them alone is enough to almost make me want one.
That said, it is somewhat ironic that people tend to only pick on UAC when discussing hatred of Vista. Linux tends to make your life almost as unbearable in any sanely configured GUI, though not quite as often. You'd think that UAC would have made linux supporters happier. But alas, Microsoft as usual went way beyond what was necessary and it turned into another disaster for them. Not as bad as Millennium, but close.
12 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
I have not encountered anything like Vista's access control in Linux. As you said yourself, Microsoft missed the point: they made it so common to have to deal with it that it becomes trivialized and you click on "ok" without thinking. Linux has you enter your password (assuming a sudo scheme) only when you are touching system files that you should not normally touch. Actually, Linux is not so different from Mac in that respect, except that Mac gives you more control over things like wireless without being an administrator. Anyhow, I'm not sure why Linux supporters would be happy about a feature that makes the concept look terrible due to poor implementation.
They should have been happy because Microsoft finally started thinking about security in a proper light. M$ just took it too far as usual. They've gone from one extreme to another, but even so, with paranoid UAC there should be less of a security threat from Vista machines. That may be the only good to come of any of this.
12 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, that's the thing though: by being so paranoid, the Vista solution trains you (where you == not very security conscious/aware person) to just say "ok" to everything, because you're so used to seeing trivial questions. So the day that a truly important question or prompt comes up, you might just dismiss it with an "ok" without even reading it. I think it's comparable to crying wolf: Vista cries wolf all the time, and in the end you stop believing that the wolf is actually coming.
This article appeared a few (more or less) weeks ago. Mac and Vista hacked The short of it: MacBook Air hacked in two minutes. Vista hacked the next day. Ubuntu didn't get hacked at all by the end of the contest.
I read that article on CNet at the time, it was amusing. The best part, though, was that shortly after when I also heard about it over the radio on the CNN nightly report. :lol:
But I hear good things about Windows Vista Ultimate.
The only good thing I ever hear about Vista is after you pretty much disable everything that makes it Vista.. After that, why use it?(besides DX10)
I see people make comments like, "Well, you can have it running almost as well as your XP install did, you just have to disable <insert thirty services>"..
Makes me wonder.. If you have to disable almost everything to have a system running, how "nice" can that system actually be? :D
Darwin said:
This article appeared a few (more or less) weeks ago. Mac and Vista hacked The short of it: MacBook Air hacked in two minutes. Vista hacked the next day. Ubuntu didn't get hacked at all by the end of the contest.
LOL, the article about the MacBook getting hacked was awesome. I've never seen so many Mac "fan bois" jump into various topics to talk about how Macs can't get hacked nor get viruses..
15 Apr, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
Heh, Vista is so "good", that Microsoft is rushing to get "Windows 7" out the door next year.
I'll be happy when they cave in and back-port DirectX 10 to Windows XP, as they should have done in the first place. Afterall, windows is a great gaming platform and a not-too-shabby window manager sitting atop a nest of vipers they call a kernel.
Windows is a great gaming platform primarily because the games are written for Windows, not because of intrinsic advantages of Windows, no?
That would be my assessment as well. And if you look at the industry news lately, Blizzard might just be taking point on getting gaming to take hold on Mac OS X. Starcraft 2 is supposed to release for XP, Vista, and OS X all at the same time. So it isn't that Windows is better than OS X, it's just that the industry has been developing for Windows for a long time.
Though I'd be thrilled if DX10 backported to XP. I'd be all over that and have an excuse to get me a nice new video card again :P
15 Apr, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
Actually, none of the currently used OS's is really a good system for gaming. Pre-emptive multitasking is a bad thing when you're trying to get the most of your hardware.
Personally, I'd like to see games distributed on bootable external drives that could run whatever OS the developers wanted to use, and run with full control over the machine. I'm not gonna hold my breath on that happening though. :)
Personally, I'd like to see games distributed on bootable external drives that could run whatever OS the developers wanted to use, and run with full control over the machine. I'm not gonna hold my breath on that happening though. :)
Actually, I'm thinking that most gamers would be unhappy with that idea too since most of them like to run some sort of instant messenger or voice chat client along with a music player while they play their games these days and what you're proposing would eliminate their ability to do so, let alone any 'trainers' or other cheat software they might try to use.