I never thought it was possible, but as it turns out, Microsoft has managed to produce some pretty good commercials for its brand new operating system, Windows 7. They are quite product-oriented, and carry the slogan "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea".
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Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-06
Which are exactly the ONLY use cases for UAC, too.
True, but MS failed to separate the user completely from the underlying system. E.g in Vista there was a mix of user files and global files on the desktop. While UAC responded correctly to actions which required elevated privileges, the context in which these prompts occured were illogical.
When I'm messing about on my own desktop or in my own user folder, I don't want to see privilege escalation prompts. What is in my account, should be my files with permissions set to my privilege level.
Vista's UAC was right on the money in the need for privelege escalation for certain actions, but Vista failed to cleanly separate the users own environment from the system. Which resulted in vexing prompts which seemed to make no sense.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2009-02-19
Most of the problems with UAC trace back to the fact that they're trying to use a privilege-escalation-based security system with an account that already has administrator rights.
In most Linux systems, you'll log in as an unprivileged user. When you need to do something sensitive, you'll use sudo to run a process as root that will perform the task you want done. Once you run a process ass root... it's root, no more questions asked.
In Vista, you're a privileged user by default. UAC guards certain functions that even the privileged user cannot perform without authorization. UAC will therefore annoy you every time you perform that action, even if you're doing it multiple times from within one process that you've already authorized once.
That's the big problem, IMHO. If Vista had used a Linuxy model, where you weren't privileged by default, you only ever had to escalate a process once, and once you where privileged, the security system wouldn't ask you any more questions, then that approach would've worked fine. The big problem is that you can take pains to run a process as root... and UAC will still whine at you, possibly repeatedly.
Member since:2005-07-06
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2009-02-11
No, it's not. In OS X (and linux afaik) you only need to sudo when installing something, when you mess with protected files and when you change system setings. I can't understand why people keep saying that a system needing administrative rights to do the simplest things is a good thing.
In my opinion UAC is not only annoying, but also ineffective. Given enough false positives, users will start ignoring it. And since false positives are the only thing I've ever seen from UAC that's what everybody is doing. If it would fire up only once a month (when needed), then a user wouldn't be so eager to press continue.