A hefty read but quite interesting after hearing all those rumors on "transparent content protection" in the new "and improved" operating system form Microsoft...
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 01-16-2007 07:31
Bloody hell! I'm about half way through and just shaking my head.
You start out initially being pissed off your video's or music might be affected then, you get into the medical images crap.... and oh by the way you perhaps shouldn't run a war ship with this OS... and it just goes on and on and on.
I particularly like this bit.... and that's where I'll pick up tomorrow. One thing for sure tho'.... no upgrade for this boy. =)
quote:Overall, Vista's content-protection functionality seems like an astonishingly short-sighted piece of engineering, concentrating entirely on content protection with no consideration given to the enormous repercussions of the
measures employed. It's something like the PC equivalent of the (hastily
dropped) proposal mooted in Europe to put RFID tags into high-value banknotes
as an anti-counterfeiting measure, completely ignoring the fact that the major
users of this technology would end up being criminals who would use it to
remotely identify the most lucrative robbery targets.
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
The more I hear about Vista, the more I think I'll stick to XP for a while before, finally, switching to a Linux distro if the DRM nightmare still goes on in Vista.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 01-16-2007 10:03
quote:The more I hear about Vista, the more I think I'll stick to XP for a while before, finally, switching to a Linux distro if the DRM nightmare still goes on in Vista.
Yup, Vista is really the thing making me view Linux now as my next OS. When support for WinXP is dropped, I am switching soley to Linux.
For me, Vista is the last nail in the M$ coffin.
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
How depressing. And here I was hoping that MS would finally get it together. If they spent half the amount of energy on designing as they do on promoting, they'd have a great OS. But their strategy seems to be to design a crappy OS and then spend all their energy on promoting it in hopes that they'll pull one over on us.
That said, I don't think I'm ready to switch to Linux. It seems a bit daunting to me, and I'd have to get my wife on board as well. And I'm not sure how Korean softward would work on Linux.
(Actually, the truth is that I don't really know much about Linux at all).
It's been the same OS (which they did not design, but bought) since 1993; they've just been adding more bloat and (begrudgingly) patches to it to help justify resale.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 01-17-2007 09:21
I'm just fed up, I am sick and tired of M$ crap.
Either bring out a NEW OS, instead of another IE7...or don't.
Either way, I have reached that critical point where one says "That"s it! Here and no further!"
After WinXP support dies, I am switching to Linux. That will give me enough time to slowly get to learn Linux better.
It really bothers me that the new DirectX will ONLY run on Vista...meaning all the new games running the new DirectX version will be Vista only. And there is no way that I am going to install Vista just to play a game!
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
well then i think it is about time of think of an alternative OS but what i have tried different Linux distributions (mandrake, Kubuntu) and wasnt satisfiedt ... the problem with linux is it takes a lot of work until everything workes ..it takes a lot of knowladge to do so. and runing it on my laptop seems almost impossible to me due to the the fakt that HP does not have drivers for it. And well quite honestly M$ still has better usability than any Linux Distribution.
*i don't think it gets any quicker sig* Blacknight
Especially if you're used to the Linux command-line. I had the opportunity today to compare the output of the Linux 'dig' command for DNS queries, to Windows' nslookup.exe.
Windows told me the name of the DNS server reporting (not necessarily the SOA, just the one that finally gave me the report), the IP address and domain that I asked for.
dig, on the other hand, can potentially give me everything, down to the time-periods of the zone record, all of the various record-types in that zone, the serial number, the primary, secondary and tertiary name-servers, as well as expanding authority information, telling me how many recursive hops it took to give me the information...
I have to admit, Linux is my living; but, even if it weren't, I'd still love it. I write this, of course, whilst using a Windows box, because there's some things I do in my own time, not at my job, that I simply cannot do yet in Linux, because the specific programs I have to use aren't in place under Linux. That, though, is the *only* thing which keeps me running a Windows box along-side my Linux ones.
There's a great opportunity in all of this Vista furor for the Linux distro-makers. If they can talk themselves up enough against Vista, get all the functionality without any of the hassle, and pretty much pull their socks up, they can steal the market out from under Microsoft.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 01-17-2007 13:56
quote:There's a great opportunity in all of this Vista furor for the Linux distro-makers. If they can talk themselves up enough against Vista, get all the functionality without any of the hassle, and pretty much pull their socks up, they can steal the market out from under Microsoft.
Agreed, and there was no better time than now to do it!
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
I agree wholly, I was intrigued with vista at first, then the more I used my private Mac, plus the MacBookPro I switched to at work, the more I see that all the stuff Vista is touting is already in OSX, or for that matter a fimely tuned/setup Linux distro...
Then, as I read this I felt more and more disgusted with the bare thought of an operating system that places design requirements on a thirdparty hardware manufacturer! Gah!
The main thing with a computer is that it in itself should be totally neutral, the software you choose to install is what makes it possible to do things. this is now overridden by M$
Yes, I'm running a brand new top of the line PC with a maxed out graphics card and a beautiful 24" 16:9 flatscreen and I love it!
But, I use it for gaming, media center and backup data storage on my 3x300Gb disk... So far that's it.
Day to day private things run on my little 12" G4 Mac...
With the new PC came a free "upgrade" to Vista. I really doubt that I'll even try it, perhaps on a dual boot to see what the overall experience is but I really do hate the side effects of the DRM solutions.
/Dan
*/ I'm a ginio.....genios......genu......smart person! /*
{cell 260}{Blog}
-{ Sleep: A common physical disorder that manifests itself as the level of blood in the caffeine circulation exeeds 20% }-
I tried that...it didn't work for me. I have PS7 running though so that's good enough for me.
I got a beta3 a while back from some M$ rep that came to the office. It hung out in desk drawer for a few months and the other day I thought I'd give it a shot. Wouldn't even load. My work pc is a 3gig processor with 512ram. You need a gig of ram at least to run it. Kind of limiting your users who would just like to upgrade.
Like the most of you, I'll wait until XP is done and then I'm done completely with winders. I like my linux box better anyway
yes i have ben thinking of switchingto linux myself ..but that brings me to one big quetion: whats with all those poor souls that can barely handle xp how should they now change to linux? I doubt that most people even know of alternatives let alone are capable of handling them. to be honest don't realy know my way round linux. And seting linux up is way more complicated than setting up xp or Vista.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 01-19-2007 13:30
was reading this from digg. Ubuntu and the other flavors of it, have made installing linux a snap.
Installing software on linux used to be a real pain but with the addition of adept it really is nothing now. I'm still amazed at the number of people who have never even heard of linux
i tried Ubuntu on my laptop and the install was easy but i never managed to completely configure everything so that all i wanted would work. and finding drivers was almost impossible
I had a good crack at (k)Ubuntu too, it's a really nice OS, and did install very seamlessly. I did however have problems with my wireless card, it proved overly complicated for me to set it up as it was a Belkin, and required some emulation of windows drivers to work correctly. In the end I decided to install an nlite verion of windows as I know that everything will work out of the box for my old PC
Even when Linux gets better support for drivers (I was pleasantly surprised how well everything else was detected) it still has a way to go in terms of user experience and interactivity compared to Vista and OS X. Really I think Linux distros should put their energy's into emulating the best bits of OS X as much as possible, then ease of use and installation will be second nature and people will flock to their free operating systems.
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
By the end of the year, even liberal guesses are putting usage of Windows Vista at around 12% of Windows machines, the rest of them being nearly all Windows XP. XP is not going to be ignored, Vista will be buggy for at least a full year, and I see no reason to change over.
Yet again, it seems, the legitimate user base will be depending upon hackers to break content-protection in order to view their legitimately acquired media without further expense and hassle. In fact, as usual, it is only the pirates who won't be having issue with this, as it is not possible to produce an unbreakable content-protection system, meaning that only the legitimate end-user will be left neck-high in the crap, while the black-market industry will continue unabated.
While most noble types will see this as a bloody good reason to switch to free software solutions and development, I'm starting to think it's high time I flew the Jolly Roger and fished out my old eye patch. I think life will be much more manageable when I stop trying to be fair about it - especially as, being a legitimate end-user, I'm the only one in the great chain of consumerism who is!
It's more likely that the majority of my clients will desire to make the eventual switch to Vista rather than to Linux, but I can't see it happening for some time (keeping in mind the obligatory year-or-more of bugs and updates that follows any new Microsoft release). When it does happen, I very-much doubt I'll be the only person in the IT industry with a pocket full of the necessary tools (read "hacks") to ensure my experience with Vista remains a pleasant one.
Well done, Microsoft - just keep that thing aimed at your foot...
ROFL! I would point out that this would be easy to circumvent through an application of echo/feedback cancellation, whereby output from the speakers could be discerned from 'real' voice commands by the user...
However, as such a feature would be crippled by Vista's wonderful new Premium Content Protection (PCP?!?), I couldn't be sure that this would be viable.
Anyway, as a quick note regarding my thinly-veiled reference to piracy, I hope that it was taken with a pinch of salt, as intended. Reference to 'tools' on the other hand, still valid.
____ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz.....
Microsoft have discovered a cure for cancer! They'll release it as soon as they find a way to stop anyone using it...
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-02-2007 13:59
___________________________________________________________________________
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
ahhhh, it is so good to read all those jealous posts on a fresh install of vista, which, thanks to the local student conditions, only costs me 10 bucks!
i didnt get that flip3d running, anyone got an idea how to activate it? its vista business btw.
Yeah yeah, lots of eye-candy that you'll just want to turn off once you realise that it takes and extra 5 minutes to boot, and you have to wait around for fancy effects to finish...
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 02-08-2007 13:37
quote:Yeah yeah, lots of eye-candy that you'll just want to turn off once you realise that it takes and extra 5 minutes to boot, and you have to wait around for fancy effects to finish...
Sounds like Windows...
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-11-2007 00:30
quote: Blaise said:
that you'll just want to turn off
at least you'd be able to turn it off with Beryl. Windows your stuck with the gunk. I had a chance to play around with vista a couple of days ago. I didn't have time to really find anything *that* great about it. The DRM thing kind of sucks though.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-11-2007 14:36
^ You might find this article informative.
I too have been considering Linux and of all the articles I've run across this one has, so far, made the most sense for this novice. I was near about tearing out my hair trying to get a handle on all the different flavors of Linux when I landed on this one.
After reading this I'm at least going to try what is called a 'Live CD.' Seems pretty safe.
quote:One of the most challenging aspects of dealing with Linux is that there are hundreds of different Linux distributions and this is overwhelming and confusing to most people trying to learn about Linux. In reality, deciding on what Linux to use is not really a critical issue. It is generally very easy to install Linux; and data from one distribution is easily moved to a new distribution without any problems.
I have some other sites that from a novice perspective have been very helpful... one with a good movie walking you through a dual boot installation and if you're interested in those just holler and I"ll post'em up. But initially this one here has been the best for me.
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-11-2007 14:49
quote: NoJive said:
one with a good movie walking you through a dual boot installation
yeah, post that one up if you would NoJive. I've done it before but I am getting ready to do a dual boot but with 2 hard drives, not 2 partitions.
Might be useful.
One of the biggest questions of course... for many people... is; what about photoshop. This gets about as close to an answer as I can find.... but it also introduces 'wine.'
I'm trying as best as possible to keep track of the software I use most and it seems it's somewhere around 6 or 7 and with the possible exception of ps there appears to be very acceptable open source alternatives.
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work? Would you not have to shutdown and change the boot sequence every time you wanted to use one or the other...or have I missed something very simple? I think it's probably something ver simple. lol
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-12-2007 02:44
quote: NoJive said:
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work?
well that I'm not sure of. I was hoping that the link you gave would give me some info. Haven't researched it yet though. I would imagine that when I install linux, I just choose to have it go to /hdb (slave drive) and then have the boot loader go to the MBR as usual. Don't know. I'm going to test it first on a different computer first. LOL
I came to the conclusion that ubuntu would be where to start about a month ago...got around to the install about a week ago. Have only used it intermittenly, but so far everything has been very smooth. Many things will take some getting used to (I have to type commands to install drivers ? ugh....) but so many convenient features built right in as well...
Smoother than I thought a first expience with linux would be. =)
It wouldn't be a very good tut, as I don't by any means know what I'm doing - the documentation in the ubuntu wiki, and the screen casts, cover it all pretty well. I had a hard time following some of the wiki instructions though - just kinda winged it with their guidance basically, and got lucky
Unfortunately I saw the screen casts after the fact - I would highly recommend watching them.
Yes yes, everyone is talking about Ubuntu, I was only trying to affirm this
I actually just tried installing Xubuntu on Sunday, and to be honest am disparaged somewhat as to how inconvenient things can be. Linux really has a few years to go before it's as straight forward as it should be, but then everyone will be able to use it.
Unfortunatly it only proved to me that Ubuntu really isn't the be all and end all of Linux Distros and lamentably one does have to try a few differenyt distros to know what they want and how easy it can be.
For example, with my fresh install of Xubuntu, I can't change my wireless settings, even with the root account and using iwconfig through terminal, any changes I make are ignored! How annoying is that!
Still if anyone is reading this and would like ot try a Linux distro, Ubuntu should be on the list, but take the opportunity to look at Vector Linux, OpenSuze and Freespire.
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work? Would you not have to shutdown and change the boot sequence every time you wanted to use one or the other
NoJive,
I'm not a big fan of dual boot machines, so I haven't done one in a while, but my experience has always been that when you have two different operating systems on a machine, the boot loader (that will probably be GRUB) will pause for a few seconds as the machine is booting and allow you to select the operating system you want to load. If you don't select one, it will automatically load the default OS.
The length of time the boot loader waits and the default OS are both configurable.
My experience has always been that to switch from one OS to the other, you need to re-boot the machine. Unless there have been some really dramatic changes with loading OSs in the last couple of years, you can't just switch from one OS to the other the way you would from one window to another.
The exception to this is when you are running an emulator. For example, if you run Windows programs in Wine while you're running Linux, you can switch from Linux to your windows programs without re-booting, but that is not really a dual boot system.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-13-2007 06:59
^ Thank you. A friend is burning a Live CD which I will try but from what I've been reading ... my old clunker of a system likely has inherent problems so an actual installation is probably not in the works. I'm probably going to die with this system and the way it's been sounding lately I'm thinking my days are numbered. =)
___________________________________________________________________________
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
I recently installed Xubuntu on my old 1.3GHz PC as a dual boot, the installation went well, I can't load any web browsers though or use my wireless card yet, even though it is detected correctly, I just can't enable the damn thing.
Still I managed to get Beryl up and running and it is freakin' sick dude! OMFGHOLYBBQ with PONY's!
What I liked was that this installed so very easily and it's enhanced my user experience so much, it does take a bit of configuring though, but it's worth it.
With the ubuntu, my wireless card worked without me having to do anything. Firefox, open office, and many other things installed and ready to go.
My display drivers I am still having problems with. Documentation is not very user friendly for solving the issue either =(
But I haven't really dug into it deep yet...
Haven't run with any eye candy, but the default look and feel is very nice already.
So far I have just done the basic things - web browsing, email, office app stuff, ripped a couple CD's, play with some photos from my digital camera, etc.
All of that - the basics that a computer for the average person needs to do - work wonderfully.
I'll just throw this out there though: I hate GIMP. A lot.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-16-2007 17:44
Well piss me off! I have both Ubuntu and Mepis on CD and neither will run. I get the same error message as these folks. I really want to have a go at this but I am just not interested in this much jackin' around. Like I said back up there^ this system is old, is not going to be replaced any time soon... if ever so, it's coffee time. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=192689
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-16-2007 21:04
quote: Blaise said:
So did CPrompt ever get his dual boot going?
I got the extra hard drive. It's sitting on my desk at home. I have not had the time or energy to mess with it yet.
It kind of concerns me that my hard drives are SATA. Since there's no master/slave on the drives I am not sure how to go about setting it up. I have posted something at a local linux user group about it but haven't really gotten a reply yet. Does anyone here have a suggestion?
The new drive is twice the size of my current drive so I will be able to see the different drives best that way for sure. But I am not sure how to go about it since I have never set up linux on an SATA drive before.
I'll start googling it since things here at work seem to have calmed down for the time being.
I'll just throw this out there though: I hate GIMP. A lot.
The GIMP takes a lot of getting used to and even though I have used for almost ten years and like it, I still tend to use Photoshop for most of my image editing.
From: Underneath a mountain of blankets. Insane since: Jan 2007
posted 02-16-2007 22:47
When I went to buy my laptop, I took a live CD with me so I could grab the laptop which worked with it. Wireless worked out of the box... It took a little tweaking to get the memory card reader to work.
rukuartic@halflght:~/$ whatis life
life: nothing appropriate.
It kind of concerns me that my hard drives are SATA. Since there's no master/slave on the drives I am not sure how to go about setting it up.
SATA may not contain the concept of primary master/slave and secondary moaster/slave the way PATA does, but it does contain the concept of primary/secondary with SATA slot 0, SATA slot 1, and so on. Linux in and of itself doesn't really pay attention to the whole master/slave thing. It sees all drives in a flat row, in the order of: Primary Master -- Primary Slave -- Secondary Master -- Secondary Slave, or /dev/hda through /dev/hdd to be more precise. I believe that Linux still displays SATA drives as /dev/hda and so on, so you should just be able to install normally.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-17-2007 03:27
just spent about an hour backing up a bunch of "important" files to dvd (8 disks). Put the new drive in...plugged up the power...no data cable! LOL
I'll have to go buy a data cable for the thing tomorrow. I don't think the install should be that big of a deal though like Skaarjj said.
Right now I have my other linux box that I just updated to Edgy Eft
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-18-2007 23:22
well....I screwed it up!
Installed the new drive. Booted up Kubuntu 6.10. The installer came up and listed both drives, 80gig and 160gig. I selected the 160 gig since windows was already on the 80gig. Everything went according to plan. Booted back up and it went straight to linux.
OK...so I rebooted again and went to linux. rand fdisk -l and what was there?....the 80gig drive!!!! Unhooked the 160 drive and the same thing. Completely wiped out windows. Good thing I backed everything important up.
Oh well. I have everything on disk so I can just reinstall windows and put everything back. Just a bummer. I wonder if it would be easier just to install windows and reconfigure Grub?
Install Windows first. It's so much easier that way, since the Windows bootloader will refuse to admit that the Linux partitions exist, and so will overwrite the GrUB partof the boot sector. Put the /boot partition right at the start of the drive, and everything should be sweet.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-19-2007 14:14
quote: Skaarjj said:
the Windows bootloader will refuse to admit that the Linux partitions exist
Just to get my terminology right. By "partitions" you are referring to the 2 hard drives? Because this will be on 2 different hard drives. Linux on one and Winders on another. Seems like you could just install windows on the other hard drive and edit the grub config to show that Windows is there.
Eigh...I'll just start over again LOL. I'll install winders on the 160gig drive and re-install Linux on the 80gig and see what happens.
Sorry to hijack this thread. I know it has to do with Vista
One more point to note as you're having adual boot system.
When I did this I had 4 partitions. 1 for windows (10GB NTFS) one for all programs and files (80GB FAT 32) one for linux swap (1GB ext2) and one for linux (69GB ext3). That way no matter what OS I booted in, I could always access my music and video on the FAT 32 drive with both read and write access. NTFS can bve troublesome for Linux and I believe there's no reliable way to gain write access.
posted 01-15-2007 11:54
I sort of figured some ppl here would react 
? ugh....) but so many convenient features built right in as well...