Vex Star » software http://www.vexstar.com Computers and Programming Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:52:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Comcast Ordered to Stop BitTorrent Traffic Interference http://www.vexstar.com/comcast-ordered-to-stop-bittorrent-traffic-interference/ http://www.vexstar.com/comcast-ordered-to-stop-bittorrent-traffic-interference/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:41:53 +0000 admin http://www.vexstar.com/comcast-ordered-to-stop-bittorrent-traffic-interference/ ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for years now, but only recently has this turned into a political issue. In a huge victory for BitTorrent users, the FCC has now announced that it will order Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

Almost a year ago we first reported that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Now, after numerous debates and false promises from Comcast, the FCC has ruled that Comcast’s BitTorrent interference is unacceptable, and orders the company to stop doing so.

Kevin Martin, FCC chairman told AP that Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling is “arbitrary”, and that the company had violated the principles of the Federal Communications Commission. Martin said that Comcast slows down BitTorrent users independent of the amount of traffic they use, and that the company failed to communicate their network management practices to their consumers.

Indeed, a recent study by the Max Planck Institute showed that the company had misinformed the FCC and their users. Comcast has always argued that BitTorrent upstream traffic was only blocked during periods of heavy network traffic, this turns out to be a lie, as the study showed that they blocked BitTorrent upstream traffic 24/7.

The FCC has announced that it will take appropriate action against Comcast, and the ISP will be ordered to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. Comcast has said before that it will invest in its network capacity and stop slowing down the traffic of their users, but these were all false promises.

Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press who filed the complaint with the FCC is delighted with this outcome, and said in a response: “Nine months ago, Comcast was exposed for blocking free choice on the Internet. At every turn, Comcast has denied blocking, lied to the public and tried to avoid being held accountable. We have presented an open and shut case that Comcast broke the law.”

“The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money,” Ammori added.

It is to be expected that – if the pipes are really congested – Comcast and other ISPs will have to step away from the all-you-can-eat plans they have been offering for years, now that people are actually using bandwidth they signed up for.
Hot damn, now I don’t have to be worried when I move and Comcast is the only ISP available in the area.

i wouldn’t be so quick to say that. if you are really using bittorrent and have high bandwidth requirements, you’re probably going to be paying more for your internet access.

honestly, i don’t know why they just haven’t done this for years. if 90% of the bandwidth is being used by 5% of the users, make them pay more for the extra bandwidth and then use that money to increase the available bandwidth.
My ass the pipes are clogged. There’s more dark fiber in the USA than lit fiber.
I prefer a socialist internet. I pay the same as everyone else, and use it as I need to. I don’t want to have to pay more one month, less the next month, just because I had more Windows updates than normal.
in other news


Written by J.J. King on July 10, 2008
During their annual summit meeting in Japan, the G8 members agreed to get the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) ready for implementation by the end of the year. The agreement, pushed by multimillion dollar companies, will open the doors to a digital police state, much to the pleasure of the MPAA and RIAA.

This May we already posted about the leaked ACTA proposal, and it now seems that the final agreement will be ready sooner than we had hoped. Fresh out of the G8 meetings ‘Declaration on the World Economy‘, passages under the heading ‘Protection of Intellectual Property Rights’ suggest member states want the international anti-piracy agreement ready for implementation sooner than some expected, as it reads:

We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, ACTA, and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year.

This date is consistent (surprise, surprise) with that which the US Trade Representative has set as its own timetable for ACTA. Together with some insider information that was obtained by TorrentFreak, this doesn’t sound promising.

How will ACTA affect P2P users?
So what does this mean for P2P users? The honest answer is that it’s hard to be sure. The degree of secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations is astonishing, blocking attempts at a variety of levels to develop a counter-strategy. The process is deliberately avoiding both the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which now have enough member countries suspicious of the “anti-piracy maximalist” agenda to make ACTA’s progress impossible.

At a recent EU meeting following the June ACTA negotiations in Geneva, a packed room of “stakeholders” — that is, industry representatives — were desperately trying to get information on what had made it into the June draft of ACTA while revealing as little as possible, publicly, about what they themselves wanted in it. The Commission — on first-name terms with these industry reps, showing only too well how well regarded they are in this policy-forming process — has basically indicated that no-one will see the text of ACTA until it’s ready to sign.

Also at this EU meeting, it was made absolutely explicit that ACTA is in large part about updating legal frameworks to take account of P2P and developments on the Internet. The previous regime to deal with IP and piracy, TRIPS was 12 years old, officials said, and the Internet had ‘not existed in the same way’ when TRIPS was drafted. In this respect, the hints we have about what might make it into ACTA from a list of suggestions the RIAA obtained by Knowledge Ecology International (which has been double checked for veracity) are very important. More than any other lobby, of course, the RIAA is dealing with issues specifically related to the Net. This gives some pointers of where ACTA could go if the anti-piracy and IP lobbies get their way.

Getting your iPod though customs…
RIAA’s proposals for ACTA go well beyond U.S. law on the enforcement of copyrights online. As earlier reported, they want ‘competent authorities’ to be able to take action at borders over pirated copies without the need for a complaint from a rights holder. An official at the EU meeting ridiculed the ‘iPod search’ stories about ACTA, pointing to the EU’s own border measures — but given U.S. border agents are already retaining and searching large amounts of laptops at borders, this is another burden for travelers who are already harassed by ridiculous “security” measures in the Homeland and beyond. Those dismissing such ideas as ‘merely’ the wish list of the rabid anti-piracy lobbies take note: although there has only been one draft of ACTA made so far (and no one outside the secretive gang involved has been able to see it), reliable sources say there is text relating to the border measures provisions. So at least one of the RIAA’s wishes seems, in some form, to have already made it in.

The RIAA’s wish list for online enforcement of its ‘rights’ is also of great concern, not least because it implies that they would get access to private data from ISPs in order to be able to see what we’ve been sharing. As the year goes on, it’s becoming clear that the P2P / IP debate is merging with the surveillance and privacy debate in ways that I think many people hadn’t forseen. We need to understand fast that enforcement of copyright is one of the main levers being used to drive a wedge into our data privacy at the international level.

RIAA and MPAA want to police the Internet
In general, what the RIAA want is ‘harmonization’ (read: extension of US law over the whole world) of the tricky Grokster ‘inducement’ provisions that make providers of software liable if they can be seen as inducing infringing behavior in users. As I know personally from discussions with the RIAA about projects like VODO, interpretations of what constitutes contributory liability are very broad in the States. What the industry wants to do is chill the rapid innovation that led to products like Napster and BitTorrent by rendering entrepreneurs uncertain about the legal status of their activities. The fact that BitTorrent is the most efficient media reproduction and distribution system in history, used by hundreds of thousands of producers to distribute their own work outside the clutches of the corporate media cabals is, of course, not part of the picture here. This is precisely about media conglomerates’ desire to hang on to the tatters of their empire.

The RIAA’s ACTA would also continue the trend towards ISPs and search engines to weed out infringing users. RIAA expects ISPs to filter infringing materials and police offending P2Pers, cutting off their access if necessary. Again this points to mass surveillance of internet use that, in the light of the wiretapping controversy alread raging in the States, is utterly unacceptable in Europe or anywhere else.

How We Can Slam On The Brakes
So what can be done, and what hope do we have over ACTA? Well, firstly, there are internal contradictions in the process that might make its progress less than smooth. The inclusion of the ‘3 strikes’ rule for kicking P2P users from their ISP contract is a case in point — the European Parliament is actually very suspicious of the 3 strikes rule and the UK government is reportedly desperately looking for alternatives to this political hot potato, which only months ago was portrayed as a fait accompli. This raises the possibility of a showdown between ACTA and the European Parliament.

Secondly, the European Commission has no mandate to implement criminal sanctions on copyright matters – this is down to the individual member states who will be very wary about antagonizing their electorates. Since these criminal sanctions are seen by players like the RIAA as a key ‘virtue’ of ACTA – without which it would be a ‘dodo’ – the shakiness of the legal base for inclusion of criminal sanctions is a big issue.

Thirdly and relatedly, the secrecy around ACTA is a potential pitfall. A mandate should have been obtained from the Commission to negotiate the Treaty, but if it exists it has been declared too secret, or at least ‘confidential’ to bring out. Since this document would very likely have to include a rationale for allowing the Commission to negotiate beyond its power on criminal sanctions, it may be rather suspect. European TorrentFreak readers should immediately write to your MEP in your Member State and ask them to request a copy of the mandate, so that we can get a copy of it online and look at how the EU justifies negotiating an ACTA that includes criminal measures. Since the US wants ACTA to be signed before Bush leaves office, a derailing tactic like this has a good chance of working.

ACT against ACTA before it’s too late…

cliffs: the RIAA can diaf

well, no. i’m figuring there would be a bandwidth cap, though i guess there could be a monthly usage cap too. pay X for 250down/150 up… Y for 500down/250up. Z for 1Mb down/500kbup. you know. instead of throttling speeds, force people to pay for the speed they want.

that’s the way it should work. fuck all you can eat because if there is an asshole that is running BitTorrent on my shared cable line and is fucking up my connection, then he should be paying more to pay for upgrades so my service isn’t degraded.

Start a movement, I’ll join.

No need. It’s already that way. They’re trying to change it to not be that way anymore.

well, no. i’m figuring there would be a bandwidth cap, though i guess there could be a monthly usage cap too. pay X for 250down/150 up… Y for 500down/250up. Z for 1Mb down/500kbup. you know. instead of throttling speeds, force people to pay for the speed they want.

that’s the way it should work. fuck all you can eat because if there is an asshole that is running BitTorrent on my shared cable line and is fucking up my connection, then he should be paying more to pay for upgrades so my service isn’t degraded.

If there’s a bandwidth cap, there is by definition a usage cap. If you can’t download more than 1Mb/s, then you can’t download more than 2.5Tb/mo. The problem isn’t the asshole next door running BitTorrent, the problem is the assholes at the cable company who sell your neighbors more than their fair share of the cable’s maximum capacity.

i agree that the cable company is full of assholes, but i hate when people run their torrent client 24/7 knowing that they are on a shared link and not caring that they are fucking up everyone else’s connectivity.

oh, and a bandwidth cap only constitutes a usage cap if you are maxing your connection non-stop. if you are, you shouldn’t be paying the same as me. it doesn’t matter the size of the pipe, the assholes i’m talking about will max it out no matter what the limit is simply because they can. so, have them pay twice as much as me and use that to fund a bigger pipe.

over-selling is essentially a REQUIREMENT in order to provide the burstable speeds that we demand for a price we’re willing to pay.

There’s a reason that business products cost more for the same bandwidth — because the business statistically use it more fully than their residential counter-parts.

Look at webhosting…. Dreamhost gives me 8,656 GB of bandwidth per month…. but if I even came close to using that they’d shut me down. It’s all smoke and mirrors to make you feel good.

If people would just stop being asshats and stop with the piracy then everything would be better for everyone. Costs would go down, and speeds would go up.

Torrents are not inherently bad, but if you remove piracy from torrent usage it basically goes the way of gopher.

No related posts.

]]> http://www.vexstar.com/comcast-ordered-to-stop-bittorrent-traffic-interference/feed/ 0 Does anyone actually LIKE Windows Vista? http://www.vexstar.com/does-anyone-actually-like-windows-vista/ http://www.vexstar.com/does-anyone-actually-like-windows-vista/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:28:34 +0000 admin http://www.vexstar.com/does-anyone-actually-like-windows-vista/ I can’t see any positives.. I recently (yesterday) got a new laptop from HP. Its a beast compared to my old computer, yet I really don’t feel like I’ve made an improvement in performance.

My old computer had Windows XP and Ubuntu Fiesty installed
2.8 Ghz Pentium 4
512 mb PC 2600 ram
and a 128mb nVidia 6600 GT video card.

My new laptop has Windows Vista Home installed
AMD Turion 64 Dual Core 2.0 GHz
3 GB DDR2 ram
and an nVidia 7150 integrated card with 1 gb shared ram

But all the programs are still as slow as ever. Crap takes forever to load when I’m using the DVD drive. I don’t know if my expectations were too high for a 64bit processor and 6x the amount of ram, but I had no problem running multiple processes in Ubuntu.

Some people say its the visual effects of Vista that clog it down, and I’m starting to think that it must be because they are so badly coded. I had Compiz Fusion running nonstop in Ubuntu and never had any hangup (and this is with multiple transparencies, physics effects, live previews and other demanding processes).

This has left me with an overwhelming distaste for the quality of this supposed Windows Upgrade. Not to mention the plethora of antivirus and security software that came preinstalled on the computer…. What are everyone else’s thoughts on this Stunning New Windows

edit: Microsoft Smart Quotes messing everything up
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4gigs of RAM
8800GTS 512
7200rpm drives x2

Vista runs pretty smoothly for me.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4gigs of RAM
8800GTS 512
7200rpm drives x2

Vista runs pretty smoothly for me.

you also have a dedicated card that is far superior to mine… does everyone need a high end graphics card just to run vista smoothly?

same computer? huh

Same Compaq V2000 laptop.
my laptop has shared memory and runs vista just fine too? its just cheap gateway laptop. vista has been nice to me
I haven’t experienced many problems but if I was given the option of Windows XP Pro or Vista, I would still take XP Pro.
runs better than my other computer on XP

then again, I have 3 gigs of ram in my vista comp

well I can’t play Counter Strike for some unknown reason. I installed it from the CD too.

I’m blaming vista.
don’t forget that laptop specs do not translate to desktops with respect to performance

(with the same specs, the desktop will perform better)
With one gig of shared video memory for the video card that means vista has available 2gb of memory. It has been said vista runs with 2gb as xp does with 1gb.

An athlon 64 x2 is about 40% (which is probably what an amd turion is closet too) behind compared to a core 2 duo but I think your biggest bottleneck is its a laptop.

If you had a core2 duo desktop or even a phenom desktop with 4gb of ram or so with at least a geforce 8200 onboard or 8500gt or higher you’d have a much better experience. An ati comparable video card would be fine as well.

No reason to get childish just because you don’t believe me. It is my work laptop (I am an SAP consultant) so it gets used more than most. In my experience, people who bitch about like Vista are people who have never used it, Apple fanboys, or ignorant people who feel they know stuff they know nothing about.

Are there shortcomings? Yes. Are there features that you simply don’t need and should turn off? Yes.

If you want to run Vista with full Aero effects and still run smoothly with a bunch of apps open, yeah, it’ll help to have a dedicated GPU.

Our company is still considering the changeover. I’m not looking forward to it from what I have experienced so far.
Only thing I did on my PC was upgrade the RAM to 2GB and I think vista is much better than XP
I’ve had it for about a year now and have no complaints. It loads programs noticably faster than XP on this computer as well.
I have Vista and XP set to dual-boot on my laptop (Core2Duo, 2gb RAM, Radeon x1400), and I haven’t booted into the Vista partition for probably half a year. I timed it once, and I was able to boot into XP and launch word, Opera, and AIM before Vista even made it to the log-in screen. Add to that that for some reason Vista decided to stop talking to my router (it did start talking to it again after about a week), and I was fed up with it.
I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 since August 2007 and I have loved it then as much as I do now. The only issue I had – still have – is finding an internal tv tuner card that is supported for vista x64 and a few other minor drivers.

The pros outweigh the cons. And when you go back and forth between Vista and XP as I do for work, XP seems outdated.

Going to be stuck with Vista for -ANY- new machine now aren’t you?
My home machines are staying with XP Pro up until I decide to run Ubuntu on one. Work machine isn’t up from lease for another year or so I think but I’m afraid I’ll be stuck with Vista once I get a new one. I have a feeling a few more people, including myself, will be dual booting primarily into Ubuntu for our day to day and keeping Vista there for the Adobe Suite programs.
a friend of mine bought an hp desktop that came with vista. it only has 1gb of ram. it runs like crap, it took him almost 20 minutes to install nero. he has about 100mb of ram free. he’s like "well, they should give you the amount of ram you need from the factory"

yeah, hes retarded

i have vista on one of my desktop computers only because the tuner card will only work with vista media center and nothing else. tried linuxmce, mediaportal, winxp media center, mythtv etc, nothing will work except vista media center

Not with enterprise licensing.

I agree with the statement that an IT department which switches to Vista is dumb; unless they have no other option.

Not with enterprise licensing.

I agree with the statement that an IT department which switches to Vista is dumb; unless they have no other option.

Our entire company has gone to vista without a problem.. you just can’t have monkeys running the network. Most IT depts that have problems moving over to vista are related to horseshit Domain Policies that don’t work/break the domain controller.
I say it because there really isn’t a benefit to going to Vista. Why put your users through a transition, and put strain on your help desk, if you don’t have to.

i agree, there’s not much benefit for the transition. i do like vista for personal use though.

a friend of mine bought an hp desktop that came with vista. it only has 1gb of ram. it runs like crap, it took him almost 20 minutes to install nero. he has about 100mb of ram free. he’s like "well, they should give you the amount of ram you need from the factory"

yeah, hes retarded

i have vista on one of my desktop computers only because the tuner card will only work with vista media center and nothing else. tried linuxmce, mediaportal, winxp media center, mythtv etc, nothing will work except vista media center

Vista will use all the RAM you give it, to cache frequently-used files. No way around it. RAM’s not the issue, though he could use more than 1GB anyway.

I’m running Vista on a Thinkpad R40 with a 1.5GHz P4 Centrino and 2GB of RAM; it does alright. My biggest beef with Vista at this point is that it’s like a fucking nanny; anything I want to change, I have to verify that I’m really the one requesting the change to be made. I can understand doing this for important shit, but for changing the screen resolution or changing the time? Come on, that’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
I think vista is quite good.

You need current-hardware to run it well…. And that’s no diff than when XP first came out. XP didn’t exactly run well on "upgrade" boxes, anyway, if you recall.
Once SP1 came out and I figured out how to turn off the fuckin UAC, I haven’t looked back at my XP disks since. I have a machine that will run it easily though so that probably makes the difference. The only other problem I’ve had with it is finding things that have been moved around to somewhat hide them from the click happy computer illiterate people of the world.
It’s fine apart from the permissions that I vented off about in the thread in C&P
I was running it on a Toshiba laptop.. Core Duo, 1gb ram, onboard graphics.. for day to day stuff it ran fine, but good luck doing anything like Photoshop on it.

It was just a work laptop for checking email and browsing the web though, and I did like it more than XP, but definitely felt it struggle more than a few times.

I’m not fussy though

When I build my new desktop, i’ll be putting vista on it.. but it will be beefy enough to handle it without struggling.
I’ve been running Vista Ultimate 64 at home on my system for about 6 months now and it’s been fine. A few issues here and there, but nothing that I didn’t go through with XP when it came out.
I’ve been using it for about 18 months here at work, and its been great. I’ve got it on one of my machines at home, but don’t have a license for my other machine, so its still running XP. So far, I’ve had absolutely no problems with it. I’ve had some problems with some applications, but you can’t hold MS responsible for other companies’ shitty software development practices.
A relative has a newish PC with Vista on it. It is slow like a 486. What innovation!

that’s funny, mine runs like grease lightning.
Mine is too. But e6600 and 2 gigs ram is plenty of machine for vista. I had it running on my 2ghz 1gig ram laptop for a while and it was running fine with some of the fancy shit turned off.

Thats because you have more money than him. He bought a low-end new PC with Vista and got fucked. Its the slowest ‘new’ computer I have ever used. Slower than Win 3.1

Maybe your relative doesn’t know how to configure a machine properly — like, for example, that magical and esoteric ritual called defragmentation. Woooooo…(waves hands in spooky manner)

well i imagine if it’s a new pc there wouldn’t be much defragmentation…

Its new. It was slow when he got it. They set the Vista limits WAY WAY below anything that is actually reasonable to run Vista. MS lied, behaved horribly and he and millions of other conumers got fucked. A defrag won’t get him out of that.

Well, he got what he paid for. To get the machine to run decent with low-end hardware that just meets the required (not recommended) components he needs to turn off some of the fancy visuals. Also, get rid of the crap that is most likely preloaded on the computer. Should run fine then.
How did they lie? 2gigs ram is a RECOMMENDED spec. Are game developers lying when they put the minimum and recommended specs on the back of a game because you can’t run it smoothly at the minimum specs? No, because all it has to do at the minimum specs is run, not run well.
eh, i could take or leave Vista. it is better for newer computer users in helping them not screw up their PCs, but that’s about it that i have found. i wouldn’t buy it on its own, but i wouldn’t pay extra to put XP on it.

the thing that i find most stupid about Vista is that it can’t run on current hardware. netbooks are the latest big thing in computers and they run Vista like shit.

Quit being a fucking jackass and Microsoft hater, you buy cheap you get cheap. that $500 dell with 1 GB of RAM doesn’t cut it.. even for XP anymore.

Oh. I thought it was an upgrade box.
Its a well known scandal that "Vista Ready" computers were NOT. You guys are such hosers. They under-specified the minimum. His computer would work fine if it were XP. Its Vista and so he is totally screwed.

But saying that obvious fact upsets you little honeybons? OH NO!
Didn’t read much here, but I like Vista… I have it on a dual core 2 gig RAM Shuttle PC.

When I first installed it, it took about the same amount of time to boot as my XPS M1210 on XP did. It’s slowed down some, but not much.
I like it.

networking is way easier with vista than with xp, folder navigation is a MILLION times better than xp, search is more capable but no faster than xp

all good software works on vista fine, so if you’re having trouble with software, you’re using shitty software. my computer starts in like a minute, and nothing ever seems slow (except firefox when it’s bleeding memory)
Vista is fine, but you have to realize it takes more power to run than XP. Just like how when everyone was upgrading from 98 to XP, they needed better machines to run XP.

these days windows has 11ty million services running. what they should do is when you install windows it should have nothing but the bare bones services running and then when a services is needed that’s not enabled it should tell you waht it is and let you enable it. ya you might get a few of those messages to begin with but when you’re done you only have the services running that you need!

right now when you have a service disabled that you need it’s more of a just not work and fail horribly type thing going on.

these days windows has 11ty million services running. what they should do is when you install windows it should have nothing but the bare bones services running and then when a services is needed that’s not enabled it should tell you waht it is and let you enable it. ya you might get a few of those messages to begin with but when you’re done you only have the services running that you need!

right now when you have a service disabled that you need it’s more of a just not work and fail horribly type thing going on.

I agree that should be an option. Unfortunatly, MS has actually made effort to do the opposite — and for 95% of users, MS is right.
"The operation you wish to perform requires the [insert service name] service. This service is not currently running. Starting the [insert service name] service will allow [explanation of consequences]. Do you want continue?"

[Yes, start the service just this once] [Yes, start the service permanently] [No, don't start the service and cancel the operation]

- – -

Oh yeah, that’s totally hopeless.
Just out of curiosity, what would happen if all services were set to Manual startup? Would they still run on demand, when first needed, or would you have to open the Services panel to start them?

"The operation you wish to perform requires the [insert service name] service. This service is not currently running. Starting the [insert service name] service will allow [explanation of consequences]. Do you want continue?"

[Yes, start the service just this once] [Yes, start the service permanently] [No, don't start the service and cancel the operation]

- – -

Oh yeah, that’s totally hopeless.

i’ve seen that popup before which is what gave me the idea. unfortunately most operations fail if the service is disabled rather than popping up that window.

I like it.

networking is way easier with vista than with xp, folder navigation is a MILLION times better than xp, search is more capable but no faster than xp

all good software works on vista fine, so if you’re having trouble with software, you’re using shitty software. my computer starts in like a minute, and nothing ever seems slow (except firefox when it’s bleeding memory)

Are you shitting me? Folder navigation in Vista bugs the living fuck out of me. The folder tree was just fine.
i like vista

i use it on both of my main systems and it would also be on my laptop if it wasnt a bit too old

i do prefer vista over xp personally

Vista will use all the RAM you give it, to cache frequently-used files. No way around it. RAM’s not the issue, though he could use more than 1GB anyway.

I’m running Vista on a Thinkpad R40 with a 1.5GHz P4 Centrino and 2GB of RAM; it does alright. My biggest beef with Vista at this point is that it’s like a fucking nanny; anything I want to change, I have to verify that I’m really the one requesting the change to be made. I can understand doing this for important shit, but for changing the screen resolution or changing the time? Come on, that’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Do you still have UAC turned on?

speaking of UAC, that is the only thing that i’ve had cause problems on my own machine. i tried leaving it on, just for the hell of it, and found that a few different programs wouldn’t install correctly with UAC on. turned it off, and had none of the same problems.

not blaming vista for this, i just didn’t think i would have problems like that

Its a well known scandal that "Vista Ready" computers were NOT. You guys are such hosers. They under-specified the minimum. His computer would work fine if it were XP. Its Vista and so he is totally screwed.

But saying that obvious fact upsets you little honeybons? OH NO!

So you are still using the horseshit software that came preloaded right? A clean vista install with a real antivirus(not norton or mcafee) and your normal apps works fine with what that machine came with. Our office sells our customers lenovo PCs with quad core CPUs and 2 GB of ram and are so loaded with shit you would never know they were new. Get over it, they come loaded with shit to make them cheaper.
When I first got my hands on Vista, it was pre-SP1 and I had a shitload of problems with my networking, plus dealing with a bunch of third-party programs that couldn’t be used in Vista (wud?). So I dumped it and went back to XP.

A few months ago I tried Vista again, this time with SP1. So far, the only problem I’m having is with Vista not wanting to come back up on standby. And as far as the muscle needed to propel Vista, a fast 7200rpm drive and 4GB of ram pretty much did the trick.

If I was running a business, I would stick to XP since I probably couldn’t be bothered to struggle with the upgrades.
Just installed Vista x64 yesterday, I like it so far.

speaking of UAC, that is the only thing that i’ve had cause problems on my own machine. i tried leaving it on, just for the hell of it, and found that a few different programs wouldn’t install correctly with UAC on. turned it off, and had none of the same problems.

not blaming vista for this, i just didn’t think i would have problems like that

UAC is a good idea, but they take it too far. It doesn’t need to check if the user wants to add a shortcut to the Start Menu. Delete system files? Yes. Change screen resolution? No.

Microsoft does have a good point* that users shouldn’t be using admin privileges all the time, and software vendors shouldn’t write programs that require them to use those admin privileges all the time. The problem is that there’s no in-between for old software that hasn’t been updated, and may never be updated.

UAC is a good idea, but they take it too far. It doesn’t need to check if the user wants to add a shortcut to the Start Menu. Delete system files? Yes. Change screen resolution? No.

Microsoft does have a good point* that users shouldn’t be using admin privileges all the time, and software vendors shouldn’t write programs that require them to use those admin privileges all the time. The problem is that there’s no in-between for old software that hasn’t been updated, and may never be updated.

it’s a good idea with a poor implementation. OSX has the same thing and they implemented it much better. when you want to make a change, it prompts you for your password. then, i think it has a certain amount of time where it allows you to make changes without bothering you again. that’s cool because quite often if you are changing one thing that they would flag for admin privs, you are probably doing more than one.

i agree about the other stuff too. UAC should only be flagged for important things that actually matter, not stuff that is just preferences.
running Vista w/ 2 gigs ram and core 2 duo e4400 and ATI 2600pro.

it runs most programs (word, excel, quickbooks, database program, IE7) pretty well. It opens and works pretty well in Adobe CS3 too. Not great but not too bad. I bought this thing for $400 about 6 months ago. Budget PC that still runs pretty well. I only ‘upgraded’ the vid card b/c it used to be onboard.

UAC pisses me off too.

it’s a good idea with a poor implementation. OSX has the same thing and they implemented it much better. when you want to make a change, it prompts you for your password. then, i think it has a certain amount of time where it allows you to make changes without bothering you again. that’s cool because quite often if you are changing one thing that they would flag for admin privs, you are probably doing more than one.

i agree about the other stuff too. UAC should only be flagged for important things that actually matter, not stuff that is just preferences.

I was reading a discussion about that on another forum; apparently, whereas Linux and Vista lock down the desktop and launch the confirmation window in a completely separate memory space that no other programs have access to, OSX just pops up the confirmation window in the middle of the user’s desktop. That means a two-part malware could keylog your password when the window pops up, then run a virus that needs admin permissions, then "type" your password into the confirmation window and "click" OK before you even know what’s happening. OSX’s implementation might be friendly, but it’s not secure.

that is a level of implementation that i’m not concerned with. microsoft could easily have implemented their own more secure version without harassing you indefinitely with their stupid "are you really sure you want to do that? i mean really sure. come on. are you positive? have you really thought this through? do you really, really, really want to create your own directory in c:program files? and then do you really want to name it something in particular?"

the only security i really want from those things is to make the user think twice about what they are doing, not stop some sort of malware from infecting the system. also, it stops other people from installing shit (which is what always breaks my parents’ and brother’s computers when my young cousins want to install their stupid software).
MS was in a tough spot. They have all those programs out there needing administrative access because of all the hacks required to get windows apps to run across versions over the last couple decades… and yet they were under mucho pressure to improve security. So they just decided to inconvenience the user with admin access warnings until all the software providers updated their software. Its not just about security, its about "This program hasn’t been updated to our new way of doing things, doesn’t this PISS YOU OFF?" Its advertising for updates from vendors.
Maybe they should add a disclaimer to the confirmation window that says "…if you are seeing this message very often, please contact the software vendor to request that they update their software." That would take the heat off Microsoft in an instant.

I find it ironic that the Mac guy is bashing Vista’s UAC, considering how transparent and ultimately more time-consuming Mac’s UAC is.

that is a level of implementation that i’m not concerned with. microsoft could easily have implemented their own more secure version without harassing you indefinitely with their stupid "are you really sure you want to do that? i mean really sure. come on. are you positive? have you really thought this through? do you really, really, really want to create your own directory in c:program files? and then do you really want to name it something in particular?"

the only security i really want from those things is to make the user think twice about what they are doing, not stop some sort of malware from infecting the system. also, it stops other people from installing shit (which is what always breaks my parents’ and brother’s computers when my young cousins want to install their stupid software).

It’s a level of implementation you should be concerned with, because something that asks the user to confirm they are in control of the machine doesn’t do any good if a machine process can trick the OS into thinking the user is in control when he’s not.

Yes, I agree that Microsoft applied UAC to things that don’t need it; something is wrong with the rule system they cooked up to determine which settings need UAC and which don’t. I made that point a couple of times myself. But it’s all pointless if it isn’t actually secure.

more time consuming? i used OSX for a while, enough not to be a noob, but not enough to be the best, and i had no issues at all with their UAC. i had vista for less than a week and i was about to smash my brand new laptop because of Microsoft’s incredibly intrusive and utterly horrendous implementation. so, you are completely bass ackwards on that one.

It’s a level of implementation you should be concerned with, because something that asks the user to confirm they are in control of the machine doesn’t do any good if a machine process can trick the OS into thinking the user is in control when he’s not.

Yes, I agree that Microsoft applied UAC to things that don’t need it; something is wrong with the rule system they cooked up to determine which settings need UAC and which don’t. I made that point a couple of times myself. But it’s all pointless if it isn’t actually secure.

Vista’s UAC is not going to stop viruses and malware. This is Windows. Every door they close leaves 4 other windows (pun not intended) open for malware programmers to sneak their code though.

All UAC is going to do is help keep machines running a little better by A) making someone think twice before they make that change and B) by preventing those without access from installing software or making changes that they shouldn’t be making. So, once you acknowledge that you recognize the changes you are going to make are possibly dangerous, it should leave you alone. But, because it doesn’t, so many people shut off their super shitty UAC and break the biggest new security enhancements that their shitty programmers came up with.
Vista’s UAC takes about 30 seconds to turn off.. Mac’s CAN’T be turned off.

it doesn’t need to be turned off. it does what it is supposed to do without being intrusive or problematic. it is a poor comment on a piece of software when people think its best feature is the ability to easily shut it off.

Mac’s continuously gets in my way, but I can’t turn it off. Vista’s took no time at all to turn off.

It’s a poor comment on Mac’s "just works" philosophy.. when it doesn’t.

Type password vs. click ok. Now, type password into a window that runs in user-space, or click ok on a screen that runs in a memory space you’re not allowed to step into. I honestly cannot see how anyone that is remaining completely objective can claim to hate Vista UAC and not claim that Apple’s is just as bad.

Apple geeks are never objective.

Mac’s continuously gets in my way, but I can’t turn it off. Vista’s took no time at all to turn off.

It’s a poor comment on Mac’s "just works" philosophy.. when it doesn’t.

Maybe there should be an online computer literacy test that people can take, and if they pass, then they’re allowed to create an admin account for themselves on their machine; otherwise, they’re required to use a normal account and put up with UAC.

until one of the questions asked "do you consider scripting languages to be programming languages?" in which you would fail the test and be stuck with UAC.

Since the test would be written in a scripting language by someone who probably has never worked with anything that actually compiles, chances are you’d be right. However, I could anticipate that, and guess the correct answer.

I find it laughable that you think I was bashing UAC.

As to time consuming… I type my password in once a week or so. OMG so hard!

OSX just doesn’t have the security problems that Windows does. all of the people who fail to recognize this are just ignorant. for years people have been saying that when Apple’s OS has the market share to justify hackers spending time on writing malware for it that everything would come crashing down on them…. but it hasn’t. OSX continues to gain market share and definitely has enough to be worth attacking, but you never hear a peep about anything like you do with Windows.

and again, with the OSX implementation, you put in your password once and it lasts for a while. with Vista, if you were doing the exact same thing, you would be intruded upon god only knows how many times.

Mac’s continuously gets in my way, but I can’t turn it off. Vista’s took no time at all to turn off.

It’s a poor comment on Mac’s "just works" philosophy.. when it doesn’t.

2 things… 1) if you are constantly being harassed by OSX’s UAC, you are doing something wrong. what are you changing that often to be bothered? they are so much more intelligent about what you would be bothered about than Microsoft whose UAC was flagged for all kinds of stupid shit. 2) i’m sure that Microsoft made it so easy to turn off because it is a horrible piece of shit. again, the best thing you could say about Vista’s UAC is that it is easy to turn off. lol. how could you possibly argue then that it isn’t a piece of shit? if it didn’t suck, leave it on.

that’s not true, i hear many peeps concerning osx security. probably more than its share considering it only has 10% of the market.

are you hearing that people are having problems or are you stumbling across the various articles talking about how insecure OSX is? when you read about Windows insecurities you are reading about people whose computers have been compromised and are now part of a bot net or about people whose computers are all but dying due to the various malware that is on it. if you read about OSX insecurities, you are generally reading theoretical discussions about possible insecurities that are rarely exploited.

i remember reading an article that was posted on this forum about how OSX is less secure than Windows because the writer counted the number of security reports on some website for Windows and OSX and saw that there were more for OSX. it was the most ignorant article i can remember reading outside of readers digest. if you looked at most of the security reports for OSX, most were either place holders for security problems that weren’t found yet or were security problems with 3rd party applications such as various Adobe products. then, for the Windows side, each security report covered a multitude of issues that were resolved with a single patch. so, to compare the security of the OSs based on numbers was bullshit.
Like, stop raining on the windows parade, man.

Thats not cool, man.

Its not easy being hip-resistive, especially against superior products. You have to get bigotted and hoot and haw a lot… while you defragment, de-spam and virus scan.

Like, stop raining on the windows parade, man.

Thats not cool, man.

Its not easy being hip-resistive, especially against superior products. You have to get bigotted and hoot and haw a lot… while you defragment, de-spam and virus scan.

i actually don’t use OSX at all anymore and never switched over when i had my MBP for a few months (as a manager many of the tools i used had to run in IE, so i did most of my work in VMWare Fusion). but, there were certainly things about OSX that i liked and there are things that MS ripped off from OSX that they never implemented properly in Vista.
THATS NOT POSSIBLE. YOU MUST BE AN OS X ‘SACK RIDER.’ THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBILITY.

You want to give them cognitive dissonance and diarrhea, don’t you?

THATS NOT POSSIBLE. YOU MUST BE AN OS X ‘SACK RIDER.’ THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBILITY.

You want to give them cognitive dissonance and diarrhea, don’t you?

You must not work in a large network oriented environment.

for years people have been saying that when Apple’s OS has the market share to justify hackers spending time on writing malware for it that everything would come crashing down on them…. but it hasn’t.

Get back to me when OSX has at least 25% of the market or more, preferably more.
Oh, one of these threads! Fun!

(I like Vista, and use and generally prefer it over my other computers running OSX, XP or Ubuntu… of course it’s on my most powerful computer which is used for some programming, image analysis and photography.)

You mean like the interweb?

He means like an office. Belonging to a company.

Maybe the big companies run their shit on *nix, but that’s because they bought into it back when *nix was the only viable option for huge networks. Nobody who doesn’t already have a *nix infrastructure to maintain is bothering with it anymore. Windows is just too goddamned easy.

He means like an office. Belonging to a company.

Maybe the big companies run their shit on *nix, but that’s because they bought into it back when *nix was the only viable option for huge networks. Nobody who doesn’t already have a *nix infrastructure to maintain is bothering with it anymore. Windows is just too goddamned easy.

are you kidding me? you must have absolutely no clue if you would make that statement. Windows is easy and it certainly has its place in the corporate environment, but it is still light years behind UNIX when it comes to stability and scaleability. anyone who even considers running a multi-terabyte database in Windows should be shot on sight. i’d also much rather run UNIX/Linux web servers than Windows unless we had some dependency on .NET or ASP.

If companies weren’t interested in UNIX, why would Linux have taken off? You would have the big companies running Solaris, HPUX and AIX and no one would’ve considered Linux. Everyone else would’ve just used Windows and these other companies would stop adding to their UNIX footprint and would start migrating everything they could to Windows.

please don’t talk about shit that you just don’t understand because these are the things that make people question your intelligence.

why? SQL Server is quite nice, especially in large database environments.

because it’s free? (other than support licenses)

how is he talking shit? a little passionate are we?

why? SQL Server is quite nice, especially in large database environments.

because it’s free? (other than support licenses)

how is he talking shit? a little passionate are we?

I’m a UNIX admin and have been one for years. I’ve run into ignorance on both the Windows and UNIX side for years. Anyone who thinks the particular OS that they like is the best is always misguided. UNIX is the best for certain tasks. Windows is the best for others. Even OSX is the best in its own space. To not understand that is to live in a world with blinders.

For large databases, Windows can’t compete with UNIX. The amount of CPUs and memory available in a RISC environment is staggering compared to what you can get with the x86/x64 platform.
Windows is great for desktops, email, middle tier application servers and file/print services. It is pretty good at small to medium databases as well. I think MS SQL is much easier than Oracle for smaller databases.

I don’t know so much about Windows for web, but UNIX is a no brainer. It is simple and stable and you can run it on some really cheap hardware with great availability options.

So, he basically said that UNIX is only around because companies are too lazy to switch over from their legacy systems to the much easier Windows. That is ignorance. I’ve also argued the opposite point to some ignorant UNIX admins who think that UNIX is the answer to everything.

I’m a UNIX admin and have been one for years. I’ve run into ignorance on both the Windows and UNIX side for years. Anyone who thinks the particular OS that they like is the best is always misguided. UNIX is the best for certain tasks. Windows is the best for others. Even OSX is the best in its own space. To not understand that is to live in a world with blinders.

For large databases, Windows can’t compete with UNIX. The amount of CPUs and memory available in a RISC environment is staggering compared to what you can get with the x86/x64 platform.
Windows is great for desktops, email, middle tier application servers and file/print services. It is pretty good at small to medium databases as well. I think MS SQL is much easier than Oracle for smaller databases.

I don’t know so much about Windows for web, but UNIX is a no brainer. It is simple and stable and you can run it on some really cheap hardware with great availability options.

So, he basically said that UNIX is only around because companies are too lazy to switch over from their legacy systems to the much easier Windows. That is ignorance. I’ve also argued the opposite point to some ignorant UNIX admins who think that UNIX is the answer to everything.

well i’ve run both IIS and apache and they both work as i would expect, nicely. so there you go, you both win.

lol. so diplomatic. it still doesn’t address his ignorance which is his comment about how companies that aren’t running UNIX aren’t considering it. like i said, how did Linux become so popular? Linux competes against Windows much more so than it does against other UNIX flavors. people choose it over Windows for whatever reason and quite often they are shops that aren’t running UNIX already.

well if you want my honest answer i think price is the biggest determinant in them choosing linux.

that may be. i didn’t specify any reason.

my point is that depending on the task at hand, there are many "best" choices for your operating system. up until recently, i would’ve said that XP was the best choice for me for home desktop use, but i’m slowly being swayed to the Vista path. i know a few people for which OSX is the best choice and many ignorant people will never grasp that.
ive had vista for about a year and have no problems with it. as long as you have a decently powerful computer you should be able to run it just fine

are you kidding me? you must have absolutely no clue if you would make that statement. Windows is easy and it certainly has its place in the corporate environment, but it is still light years behind UNIX when it comes to stability and scaleability. anyone who even considers running a multi-terabyte database in Windows should be shot on sight. i’d also much rather run UNIX/Linux web servers than Windows unless we had some dependency on .NET or ASP.

If companies weren’t interested in UNIX, why would Linux have taken off? You would have the big companies running Solaris, HPUX and AIX and no one would’ve considered Linux. Everyone else would’ve just used Windows and these other companies would stop adding to their UNIX footprint and would start migrating everything they could to Windows.

please don’t talk about shit that you just don’t understand because these are the things that make people question your intelligence.

Linux didn’t take off until it got the backing of wealthy philanthropists, and companies that saw Linux users as a ready and willing beta tester pool. Some would argue it still hasn’t taken off, though it’s certainly more viable than it’s ever been. That said, I don’t know anyone who runs any *nix besides Solaris in their server rooms.

I never denied that *nix has a longer history in server rooms (in fact, I stated it clearly), but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Windows to catch up. In fact, the Navy is running my company’s products on a multi-terabyte database, running on (gasp) Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

In general, your posts are pretty good, but this one reeks of fanboyism. *nix can’t do anything Windows can’t do nowadays, and Windows usually does it more easily.
Too many are talking about running databases and running numbers through their computers, but that is just a fraction of the actual work in a corporate environment. Like trouphaz mentioned, windows and *nix have their own place. Many offices would be unproductive without a managed mail server or domain policies and network distribution.

you must have misread my fanaticism. apparently, i am strictly a UNIX fanboy who can’t recognize that Windows has any place on computers. i guess only deus recognizes that.

how "low-end"? i bought a $320 machine off ubid.com and it runs like a champ for normal shit (gaming wasn’t too great, 8400gs ftl). threw in a hd4850 and full settings in orange box doens’t slow it down. that’s all i’ve been playing on it.

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