“In “Windows Vista: more than just a pretty face,” we began our extensive assessment of Windows Vista with a focus on the changes to the graphical framework of Windows. We also talked about improvements to the general Windows API, the media foundation, and improvements in sound. In what follows, we look at three remaining areas of major improvement for Vista: security, networking, and storage. At the end, we present the first round of our criticisms of the new OS. In the coming weeks, we will unveil our performance-oriented examination of the OS.”
Windows Vista: Under the Hood
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I admire Ars Technica’s articles. They strive for impartiality, even in a highly charged religious war between a myriad Linux distributions, desktop environments, Windows, *BSDs, and so on. This article is informative if one wishes to learn the internals and guts of Vista. Their first article about Vista is also equally applaudable.
Religious wars have caused by the murdering in the name of GOD countless millions.
What is interesting is the cost of this *improvement*. In every area Vista is slower, including networking.
“Religious wars have caused by the murdering in the name of GOD countless millions.”
Actually, some of the most committed secularists were horribly monstrous. Ever heard of Hitler or Stalin?
The phrase “religious war” is widely accepted in the computer world to be understood as a flame-war where two groups have competing dogmas (See the section about emacs versus vi in “Learning the vi Editor” by Lamb L., et al), and I meant it as such.
As for the performance degradation: some people have stated that Vista is faster, others stated Vista is slower. To categorically state that Vista is ALWAYS slower for everyone is wrong. For example, the article explains why memory usage is much higher, and why Microsoft’s decided to have the OS use more memory.
Edited 2007-06-08 06:44
The phrase “religious war” is unacceptable, and I am disgusted a to how it has been used.
“As for the performance degradation: some people have stated that Vista is faster, others stated Vista is slower.”
The benchmarks *always* say it is slower. I would be happy for you to produce *any* benchmarks to the contrary.
Edited 2007-06-08 07:18
I hate to break the news to you but it is used completely correctly here.
You might be able to argue that it was glib or inappropriate. But unacceptable? That’s going a bit far – unless there’s some reason that’s a little more substantial than your own personal feelings of disgust.
You must surely be joking that the term “religious war” is offensive – it’s an analogy. What term should we use instead then?
Hmmm… I am quite put out by the term “guts of Vista” – makes me feel a bit squeamish!
“Ever heard of Hitler or Stalin?”
Ever heard of Godwin’s Law?
A Hitler: “Gott mit uns”
More at:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
Joe Stalin was not above using the Orthodox Church (and the Orthodox Church stooped low enough to be used) in order to promote ‘patriotic fervour’
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/v007/7.3br…
Why not just be descriptive and neutral and use ‘fanatic’/’fanatical’
Since no-one has bothered with an actual rejoinder, and given that the same thing has already been said in this thread (with apparent impunity and albeit without references) I will have to reply to myself, sad though this is.
As Kurt Vonnegut used to say “Read history, and weep”: – I know it might offend some to realise how their religious have connived actively with the worst of the worst, but hey, I don’t exactly make this stuff up – it happened.
He may not have been a practicing member of any organized religion, but Hitler certainly wasn’t a “secularist” – at least, not judging by his upbringing as a catholic and his later membership in “occult” groups.
This is really off topic. However, for the record, Hitler was not secularist. He was himself likely not very religious (though not anti-religious), but his speeches and followers relied on twisted elements of Christianity and Paganism.
The roots of Nazi mysticism are very similar to the early days of Christianity. Further, Hitler in a number of his speeches referenced Christ (as a reason for his actions).
http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_mysticism
Sorry about the lack of scholarly, peer reviewed journals, but even contemporary pop culture links seem to counter the notion that Hitler was an atheist.
================
The rest of what you said about Vista and religious factions within the open source movement I would have to agree with (Vi v. Emacs and Linux v. BSD).
“What is interesting is the cost of this *improvement*. In every area Vista is slower, including networking.”
Your opinion contradicts my realworld results, where Vista is about the same as WinXP on the same hardware. Perversly, using Aero on a good VC will actually be faster than using Vista Basic.
It may not be a religious war, but it is most certainly a http://www.albany.edu/~ig4895/dillbert.JPG“>”Holy .
Totally agreed, Ars is by far the most the most professional of all the “non-professionally-produced” tech sites (in that no one’s paying them to do it / it’s not an offshoot of some existing print publication).
Of course, some people even manage to interpret a relative degree of impartiality as sign of bias. E.g., there have been a few posts around here where I’ve seen people accuse Ars of having of an “anti-Mac” bias (which is especially silly when considering that John Siracusa, their Mac editor, does a better job than most Mac-specific “news”/fansites).
Is it really under the hood!?
Why do all articles include features like bitlocker.
“Home Basic: Ultimate minus BitLocker hard drive encryption, full system backup, the ability to join a domain, user group policy support, Windows Fax and Scan, shadow copy, corporate roaming, the offline files and folders feature, Remote Desktop, Windows premium games, scheduled backups, network backups, Windows Aero, Media Center, Flip 3D navigation, Windows Meeting Space, tablet PC support, SideShow, DVD Maker, and high definition (HD) support for Windows Movie Maker.”
Half this article is not going to be available to the user except at an exorbitant price. Lets have articles that *at least* point out the cost of these feature £300
What is also missing is that these features, are cheap and have been available from alternative members for some time.
What I also find irritating is that these articles talk about what should happens not what actually does.
“Vista’s IP stack is designed to be self-tuning, so it will determine these numbers dynamically; as a result, home users in particular should see better transfer rates and lower latencies from their Internet connections.” — yet networking is slower by a long way. People have *tested* it. This is simply a lie. In fact in every area Vista is slower, from application performance to graphics performance.
Nobody will deny that in five years Microsoft *must* have changed something, but its all *hidden*, or provided elsewhere.
Two things surprise me about this article 64-bit and IPv6, these are mature technologies we are now putting 16+ cores on a CPU, and the OS is still having driver(sic) problems.
What irritated more than anything was the section marked as Internet Explorer protected mode, rather than the even more secure Internet Explorer add/remove option. Is nobody saying are they still bundling that.
Is nobody else astonished how little has been done; and have yet to see real improvements over its predecessor.
Mankind’s ability to ignore the rational is what sets him above the animals. Heck, there are people that ignore global warming and the holocaust. Ignoring Vista’s reality is a dawdle for a number of people – they’re not willing to change platforms, Vista is their only option – therefore it is better
Mankind’s ability to ignore the rational is what sets him above the animals.
Above?
In a strange way may be he’s right.
In that, the “rational” consensus over time has changed due to the advancement of indeviduals bucking the trend.
Like the world being flat, then being round (or oval).
Earth being the centre of the universe, then just being one of billions of other planets scattered around the void.
etc etc.
Though, this is of course all entirely off topic
@hhcv “It may not be a religious war, but it is most certainly a http://www.albany.edu/~ig4895/dillbert.JPG “Holy War”.”
We all know why terms like zealot; religious fanatic; are used even though in todays world these words have an even more frightening post 7/11, and why they are used so innocently next to a “Vista is wonderful comment”.
@Kroc “Ignoring Vista’s reality is a dawdle for a number of people – they’re not willing to change platforms, Vista is their only option – therefore it is better”
I don’t think it is true. I think the one thing nobody says is that the *great* thing about Microsoft is its not changed for since 95. I don’t mean actual users but power(sic) users. I don’t just mean the OS instead of Linux+X+Desktop or editing the registry instead of editing a named text file in /etc. I mean basic stuff like downloading a codec pack, instead of downloading one from a repository a 2 minute job at best; stealing software from work or p2p and patching it rather that actually using a free alternative, because I cannot believe anyone pays for the stuff; nobody here seems to know the real price if you had to buy software. They know how to download for hours updates; defrag the hard drive; run their virus software; push the reset button and the 100′ of other maintenance jobs you have to do; Micro Mart this week has pages dedicated it…and yet half the world runs IE6, and find pushing a button to update everything Kernel+Windows Environment+Desktop+Apps difficult. They can install a driver from a CD that came with the computer with adware programs and novelty programs…but can’t look on a compatibility list and buy a £12 usb wireless stick. They feel in control, overcoming License and OS restriction imposed by Microsoft…but haven’t experienced real control. Lots of people have only lived in an all Microsoft world. Its all they know.
Two things really shook me recently. The first was a pigen update a minor one to 2.0.1. I sat through a whole forum of windows power users complaining about having to wait a couple of days for 2.0 to hit the repositories, and yet as part of one of my updates I got 2.0.1 it was just there. I marveled how wonderful that is.
The second really stuck me was a recent article I read concerning an update to the state of graphics on Vista. I use the open source drivers on an x800, they are upto 50% slower in some games than the proprietary drivers, there is no way to sugar coat that one. They had chosen to use the latest graphics drivers in Vista, and used Ati. The results were between 5-25% slower than XP when Vista has been out for 7 months and in beta forever, are aware of the cards nuances have the hardware specs; and have a working driver under XP and the consensus was that some mythical driver would be better in future, as though that magically changes the fact that they are that they are slower now, and have been since launch, and optimizing is a game of diminishing returns, but it was somehow alright, but I can’t argue with someone who has convinced themselves that black is white, or who will openly lie to themselves and others about the graphs in front of them.
Edited 2007-06-08 09:30
There is more to life than improved performance.
While yes, it would be nice to see this it’s not always going to be the case.
And you also have to remember that some of that performance decrease is driver immaturity.
Also, there are areas where Vista is faster; the UI is far more responsive and search is instant.
Are you saying that you are still complaining that IE comes with Windows? I’ve got news for you, it’s not going to go away. IE is now 1/100th the security risk it was on XP, not only because of the improvments to it in general, but also because of protected mode it is completely isolated from the rest of the system and basically runs in a sandbox.
Not only that but IE is no longer entangled with the shell.
Search isn’t instant. I added my documents volume to the indexing list, 2 days later, it still hadn’t been indexed. I couldn’t seem to manually force it to index either.
I cannot post rationally to these retarded articles anymore. I’m developing a real problem. I’m becoming smug. I cannot describe to a windows user(sic) what it is like to pour over the changelogs of linux for the past 5 years, looking at the improvements that effect *me*, and those come out every 3 months, or those of the desktop that come out every 6 months, or X thats should be coming out every six months, or all the applications that are updated on a regular basis, or major improvements like that of OpenOffice or Firefox. All updated at the click of a button. What it feels like to read an article like this or that awful wiki page.
My brain is screaming “Is that it, after 5 years, and nothing else for another 2”. If anyone finds anything in all this I’m telling you that you have been starved, because there is nothing here. I cannot have a rational discussion who things anything here is wonderful, because I’m talking at odds with them. I live in a software environment thats not stuck in 1998. Where every day brings new and exiting changes not “patch Tuesday”. Where my computer works *better* not worse over time, at a fraction of the cost.
Hey, but it has a new look.
“I cannot post rationally to these retarded articles anymore”
Thank you, as it is obvious that you are not the target audience for Vista, and your comments are just negative.
Some of the changes in Vista have been in other OSs for years, but that doesn’t change the fact that they needed to be implemented in Windows. Especially UAC and uncoupling IE from the OS. Others, like moving the graphics and Audio drivers into userland, are incremental, but remove most of the causes of BSODs (badly written drivers). That increases the dependability of Windows, and XP was pretty resiliant anyway, as long as you had good hardware with good drivers.
It’s also been a very long time since I had an XP system work worse over time because of updates, you seem to be living in the past, complaining about things that are no longer true.
It’s obvious that you don’t use Vista, and have no plans too, and that’s good, I don’t argue your right to do that, but I do argue against your posts in this discussion, as others here, including me, who will have to support Vista will find these articles very useful, and this article (like msot articles from Ars Technica) is well written and informative. Just because you don’t like the info in it does not mean the article itself is “retarded”, perhaps it’s your perspective that is the problem.
I cannot post rationally to these retarded articles anymore.
Then why waste the time posting?
If you can’t rationally contribute to the discussion then there really is no point.
@Bit_Rapist”Then why waste the time posting?
If you can’t rationally contribute to the discussion then there really is no point.”
I have commented more on the content of the article than anyone else becuase I’ve *read it*. I’m not good, and don’t know the right words. I cannot *believe* Microsoft released something as bad as Vista after 5 years. I can’t even select the right words. Its awful. I tried to explain what its like to use an OS that evolves rapidly like they did before Microsoft became a monopoly, even Microsoft, but I can’t. Look at 5 years of changes in just the kernel on Linux since October 2001.
Thats about kernel 2.4.11 but ill only show it from 2.5
released over a year later than XP
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux25Changes
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_0
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_1
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_2
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_3
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_4
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_5
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_6
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_7
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_8
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_9
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_10
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_11
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_12
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_13
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_14
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_15
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_16
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_17
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_18
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_19
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_20
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_21
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_22
…and there are going to be another 6 of these before Vista Next is *possibly* released. Vista is already an old operating system in the Linux world, and getting older all the time…and I haven’t posted the changelogs for the chat clients; media centers; Desktop; Userspace tools, but seriously you should be getting some idea, as to why I struggle to understand whats in this article that is worth 5 years development , when the most visible effect is everything is drastically slower, and less compatible, with reduced productivity. I can’t put that into words, my standards are expectations are clearly higher. you have to live it.
Edited 2007-06-08 18:36
I tried to explain what its like to use an OS that evolves rapidly like they did before Microsoft became a monopoly, even Microsoft, but I can’t. Look at 5 years of changes in just the kernel on Linux since October 2001.
Thats about kernel 2.4.11 but ill only show it from 2.5
released over a year later than XP
There is nothing to compare here because MS dosen’t post changelogs.
I’m sure if MS posted all the internal changelogs to the kernel, or even the entire OS and we could all read the little things like “added option a to command b” then it might paint a different picture.
I do feel that the release of vista was somewhat lacking for the amount of time they spent, that I agree with.
I guess I just don’t see the point in what you have posted here.
They might not provide a line by line changelog, but they do disclose what features they’ve added in their service pack/new release. Just look through MSDN and Channel9 resources for not only features (both superficial and kernel level/system level) added to Windows Vista but Windows Server as well.
Compare those to what Linux, OpenSolaris or FreeBSD provides; the issue isn’t the number of features but the depth of features, and justification for charging the huge amount they do for what I consider features that are less than on par with free operating systems out there.
The point the original poster was trying to get at is the fact that in 5 years of development and the huge development team that Microsoft has, he was expecting alot more to come from them. I don’t blame him. When you have a jugganaut like Microsoft with $50billion cash, the issue it seems to me is that they don’t want to make changes rather than not being able to.
Windows Vista could have been a break from the past, purge all the compatibility out the window, have a pure win32 without compromises – provide a clean path to upgrade, throw in a free virtual machine for customers to run their existing applications in a hosted Windows XP environment.
They could have done it, but they didn’t. Rather than being a leader in the IT industry, they instead compromised resulting in a castrated operating system that was all sizzle and no steak.
“Interesting, cool article, made me chuckle.”
http://www.downloadsuite.org
Rant=1. When win95 and win3.1 were released, these were IMO much farther behind what was possible at the time. However it seems MS truly intends to make a state-of-the-art OS. They’re big and the OS is huge, and that has been a real challenge. I remember AmigaDOS back in 1987 was years ahead of its time, but it was such a small OS and much more prone to crashing.
One thing the article didn’t mention was speech recognition in Vista. I just went through the tutorial. It’s pretty cool, better than I’ve seen before certainly. It will select text, replace text, let you click buttons, etc.
I like the article’s talk about WinFS being not that functional or important. Seems like WinFS might help but I for one am fine with a the current file system. There are more things to criticize about Vista that the author seemed to steer clear of but there’s enough of that on the Internet already.
@jjmckay “One thing the article didn’t mention was speech recognition in Vista.”
I noticed their speech recognition software aquasition in an article the other day. They sure so buy companies at quite a rate. I’ve always been surprised that IBM is hasn’t supported Open source with its collection of tools including speech recognition, as Microsoft is making its back catalog practically worthless.
I’m always surprised that Media Center doesn’t get more of a push, and I can’t think why. I know there are alternatives, but it does bring a niche market mainstream, and control of the living room is part of what Vista is about.
@BluenoseJake “Your opinion contradicts my realworld results, where Vista is about the same as WinXP on the same hardware. Perversly, using Aero on a good VC will actually be faster than using Vista Basic.”
Your lie contradicts documented *benchmarks* all over the net. Its not an opinion(sic), we live in a computing world where we have tools to test such things. Networking is slower; Application Performance is slower; Graphics is slower; Productivity is down everything is slower with the exception of program startup.
@Nex6 “yes, Vista is alittle fatter, but there are decent reasons for it, like most drivers now run in User space. that *costs* and it adds value to the OS.
and once software is better written for Vista and directX 10 and drivers mature you will see better preformence.”
Raise your hands if you have a DirectX 10 graphics card…ok keep your hands up if you find any games that take advantage of it. Ok keep your hands up if you can explain how an API that is designed to allow *direct* access to the hardware will be faster under DirectX 10. Again its slower *now*, but you can hope for your mythical magic drivers that will make Vista better later, or you can enjoy a healthy performance boost now on XP, and look forward to OpenGL 2.0 and 3.0!? coming soon to XP.
@BluenoseJake I’m sorry not fawning over Vista’s improvements(sic), I didn’t realize that OSNews was a place for making only positive comments about an OS thats slower in every way than its predecessor with little if any real world advantages, and yet due to crooked pricing costs twice as much as its predecessor.
I’m glad that you pointed out that IE is uncoupled from the OS, and The EC managed to successfully make is optional to allow market forces to take hold again. You wouldn’t mind showing me a screenshot of where you can remove it from Vista. Or maybe your just lying.
I’m glad you mentioned the drivers moving incremetally. Its not like the OS has been out for 7 months, been available in beta forever, you would almost think there is something fundamental. Which is it Microsoft are not good enough to provide an easy to use driver interface, or there is something else going on DRM perhaps. I’d love to know your take.
I’m glad you point out that XP got worse becuase of updates. Do you think going on this track record that the same will happen in Vista? I was actually referring to how use over time simply kills XP, people absolutely swear by a clean install, well those few that are capable and are happy to break the license agreements, or download an illegal copy of XP to use there legal copy of XP. I wonder with SPP will still be able to do this or will this be slowly eroded away like WGA(sic) maybe in a couple of years time.
Unlike you I am a potential customer, rather than an inelastic customer like yourself. Microsoft is a Monopoly its a disgrace that it still exists as one. It has set back software development *years* look at IE6. I am affected by hardware engineering decisions like those that cripple the hardware, remove standards between vendors , and raise prices to fulfill Microsoft’s choices to control what you do on your computer.
My initial comment is based on shock and awe in Vista. XP has driven the competition, an outdated concept to continually improve itself to the fully functional desktop today. Linux/Apple do not exist in a bubble.
Thats without saying the obvious still its a Monopoly. I’m paying for Vista with *my* taxes. I’m going to be using; supporting; fixing Vista machines for years. I will come across it in all walks of life. It will effect if I can access media that I *paid* for. etc etc.
Vista is slow? This is really, really stupid argument.
Slower on average – yeah, it definitively is. But crippling slow it is not.
When compared to all previous major OS transitions in MS’s history, like DOS->Win3.1->Win95->NT4->NT5, transition from XP to Vista is the least demanding from perspective of needed hardware updates to run system sufficiently good. Every other major transition required significant money/hardware investment just to be able to run new OS. In contrary to that Vista will run on anything purchased in last two years with no more than $50 investment in memory. Vista isn’t slower by factor of 2 or such; it is more like 5-20% on average.
If you still don’t get it – computer running Vista that isn’t fast enough to do something in relevant time, won’t be able to do same thing even running XP. Argument is especially wrong because it overlooks the fact that much of “slowness” is caused by either an immature drivers (OGL for example) or by the “good things” like shift of services from the kernel to the userspace and similar architectural changes. Anyway bitching about “Vista is so sloooow” is like bitching “XP is so slooower than DOS”. While that is the Truth, it is just wrong point of view.
Vista does many things which XP does not. It is cool when it does those things faster than XP, but it is still ok when it happens somewhat slower. Even if it is slower by factor of 2 (which isn’t) in year of two it will not matter at all.
And that monopoly stuff is really unneeded here. Argument is valid, but monopoly itself isn’t illegal, and even when they could do something, US courts choose to do nothing about it. Bring it up on Vista topic is just unproductive for discussion about Vista on its pure technical basis and thus non relevant for this topic. It is just trashing in the vain of common Linux H4X0R 1337.
And yeah, if you wonder, FC6 is my major system, and have no desire to go Vista route anytime soon.
Edited 2007-06-08 19:14
*Vista is slower in every way* apart from application startup how is that a stupid argument.
The arguments that DOS->Win3.1->Win95->NT4 made the computer slower are comparable, you have to remember the obvious. The transition between those and XP->Vista are enourmous. Vista brings bundled apps, and a compositing desktop, and DRM to those that can afford expensive Vista, and precious little else.
Vista’s main feature will not run on intel915 chipset or before there is no way to update this on a laptop. Memory upgrades etc are only for the few with skills. Nobody who bought a graphics card even a few months ago had a DirectX 10 capable graphics card.
Although I’m happy for you to look through the benchmarks. http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=9
or even provide an update to them. but as you see things are more like 20-50% slower with *NO* real benefits to the user.
Microsft Vista drivers may well be poor, it is the responsibility of Microsoft ensure delivery of good drivers. Although if after 5 years 10 months and more thats Vista had been in development and its *still not ready* I would demand your money back or use an OS that is.
I particularly love the argument of Vista–>XP and XP–>Dos lets see 32bit;desktop;multitasking etc etc you wouldn’t want to list the improvement of Vista->XP thats worth a 25%->50% drop in network speed; graphics between 5% and 30% even on the latest drivers etc etc.
Its not a year or two lets talk about *NOW* today. in 2 years APPLE will have launched at least 1 new version of there OS. Linux will have 6 releases.
The monopoly stuff is always needed. In the EU the monopoly stuff is still happening. Is IE7;Media player still being tied to the desktop. Are abusing their Monopoly still. Have they stopped time? I remember when computing was exciting.
Its funny how all these people who defend Microsoft all use a different OS…are you ashamed? Or is there some subterfuge.
“but as you see things are more like 20-50% slower with *NO* real benefits to the user.”
Actually in link you provide there is 26% difference in networking speed and even Rayn states that he doesn’t know is it drivers or stack itself. And links like this one http://www.networkcomputing.com/channels/storageandservers/showArti… state completely other picture.
Even it is really IP stack problem, on other benchmarks Vista is quite more potent even topping XP in Office test. For majority of people that is much more important one. And yeah, Vista doesn’t require DX10 cards to run in all its glory.
“Its not a year or two lets talk about *NOW* today. in 2 years APPLE will have launched at least 1 new version of there OS. Linux will have 6 releases.”
And? You are implying that shift from 10.5 to 10.6 or 2.6.22 to 2.6.28 is something more than incremental change and that those updates to present systems will make circles around the Vista. It won’t happen. 2 years for now power comparable to today’s Quad Core will cost less than $100, and this will push those API overheads introduced with Vista to marginal levels.
Anyway, as you want lets talk about *NOW*. I don’t think that Vista is *NOW* better value than XP. Not because performance hits introduced by it. Lack of real benefits with present software and not-so-perfect software compatibility is the main Vista’s problem. I don’t think you get it what Vista is. Main benefit with the Vista is software of future. Majority of introduced changes are better building blocks for new software. It’s like shift from NT4 to NT5 or 2.4 kernel to 2.6. In both of those two cases, shifting in moment of introduction of those products didn’t bring any new value with software present at that moment. But looking back those migrations were complete success because they made possible writing better software.
“Its funny how all these people who defend Microsoft all use a different OS…are you ashamed? Or is there some subterfuge.”
It’s funny how every Linux H4X0R thinks that their club is exclusive to only 1337 in existence; and their technologies are clearly superior to anything else. Go read this: http://www.croz.net/index.php/hrv/techblog/xfrm_programming. I am the author and you can see my name on it. Its knowledge based on playing with kernel and iproute2 source. And I did it because that 1337 and superior technology is, guess what, UNDOCUMENTED. That’s because every 1337 Linux user can read source like Neo reads Matrix. Hell I can even pinpoint bug in that kernel module which halts system and isn’t patched for at least last 2 years. Superior my ass.
And what have you done for your favorite system? Oh yeah I forgot. You just run around making big speeches about bashing monopolies and their inferior products without any understatement why those “inferior” products are so successful in the first place.
Bye boy. Grow up. 😉
Edited 2007-06-08 22:20
I seem to rememeber when XP came out alot of the same talk. its the same thing…
yes, Vista is alittle fatter, but there are decent reasons for it, like most drivers now run in User space. that *costs* and it adds value to the OS.
and once software is better written for Vista and directX 10 and drivers mature you will see better preformence.
overall, I think Vista is a good step forward from XP.
-Nex6
“overall, I think Vista is a good step forward from XP.”
A bloated, DRM infected, expensive, years delayed mess is a “good step forward”? MS probably used hundreds of imaginary patents to make it, so maybe you are right.
say that five times fast and it may come true.
how, say you is it Bloated? sure its fatter, but so is Fedora I mean fedora is what like 4 CDs.
DRM infected? please explain,
and how excately is it a mess?
I use , ALL OS’s. and yeah, it was deplayed. the deplay mainly was becuase of 2 reasons. one: they based the code base off of XP, and the XP kernel. which turned out to not work the way they wanted it to. so they reset on win2k3. and second beucasse they wanted winFS, which was pretty cool and lofty. had way to much overhead and issues they could never work out.
now, take a new look the dev time is more reasonable. as a deveolper you sometimes have to look at a project and just rm -rf and start over. it happens the fact that microsoft relised it. is good news.
-Nex6
“how, say you is it Bloated? sure its fatter, but so is Fedora I mean fedora is what like 4 CDs.
DRM infected? please explain,
and how excately is it a mess?”
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37291
“it was deplayed. the deplay mainly was becuase of 2 reasons. one: they based the code base off of XP, and the XP kernel. which turned out to not work the way they wanted it to. so they reset on win2k3. and second beucasse they wanted winFS, which was pretty cool and lofty. had way to much overhead and issues they could never work out.”
5 years to make Vista is unacceptable, Linux gives people a much higher quality OS in a very reasonable amount of time. MS could learn much from Linux developers.
while I agree that 5 years is way to long. when u look at the project as a whole they did a reset. and where trying add to much like WinFS which was still not closing to being ready and was trying to be forced.
I dont think MS needs to come out with a new OS overy year, i think a regular cycle would be good something in the order of every 3 years.
-nex6
@Nex6 Is your return key stuck?
“
say that five times fast and it may come true.
how, say you is it Bloated? sure its fatter, but so is Fedora I mean fedora is what like 4 CDs.
DRM infected? please explain,
and how excately is it a mess?
I use , ALL OS’s. and yeah, it was deplayed. the deplay mainly was becuase of 2 reasons. one: they based the code base off of XP, and the XP kernel. which turned out to not work the way they wanted it to. so they reset on win2k3. and second beucasse they wanted winFS, which was pretty cool and lofty. had way to much overhead and issues they could never work out.
now, take a new look the dev time is more reasonable. as a deveolper you sometimes have to look at a project and just rm -rf and start over. it happens the fact that microsoft relised it. is good news.”
You would have a hard time arguing that Vista does not suffer from code bloat or feature bloat…or any other kind of bloat. Read the article in front of you look at the section marked *visulisation*, and then have a little think. Vista’s codebase is huge, its taken years to come out, had to restart development simply becuase it had got unmaintainable, and has a business model that relies on backward compatibility, and bundling irremovable applications to to use its Monopoly on the Desktop to created a revunue stream from other markets.
I live in a country that does not have software patents, and Microsoft is not the center of my Software universe. We have yet to see what the patents are and that has been heavily discussed elsewhere, I suspect strongly by the very nature of Microsofts growth to power through; Microsoft is late to the game with every piece of its OS, and we are not talking Linux we are talking about 100’s of other companies that have pioneered development an OS, Microsoft is heading for a big world of pain if it continues this game. Its simply too profitable not to get money from, and we know patent payments can amount to Billions, and Microsoft has few friends in the software industry, and left most of those who have formed alligences with bankrupt.
Fedora comes on 4CD’s but thats the applications. Its like saying Microsoft is bloated because Download.com had terrabytes of programs you *can* install.
I cannot believe that you are not aware at the effort Vista goes to to protect media, or you haven’t heard of such things at tilt bits; reduced picture quality; breaking hardware standards, soft resets of graphics drivers…all these good things to look forward to when you get your new hardware and your locked into your media. That and the fact that your computer is slower in every way.
There is nothing wrong with starting over. There is something wrong when in the fast moving industry. Microsoft is so entrenched as a monopoly time stops. Microsoft dropped the ball for 5 years and has little to show for it, yet everyone is going to be using it. Its shocking. What is funny about your statement is by the very nature of Vista, is it shares common code with XP, by its very nature…Why is it maintainable now and wasn’t then?
yes, I agree that Vista may have some code bloat. *but* i also think some linux distros also suffer form the same problem.
as far same DRM/media protection. apples OSX is on the same field. the big media plays are forcing the issue Micosoft and apple are just playing ball. tho recently
Steve, is starting to say he has had enough and things need to change. maybe Bill and steve should get together and go to the media companys and force *them*
not gona happen. they have the content.
I also think the way modern OSs are developed is out dated. these monothilithic OS’s are not the way to go.
I think small baseline OSs which can be added to are the way to go.
then you could give away the baseline and charge or the
addons and modules. thay way, OSS could freely develop theres and commerical companys could develop there. everyone would be happy. but today, we have MS with windows, and Linux, and freeBSD’s. each has there own issues.
-Nex6
@nex “I dont think MS needs to come out with a new OS overy year, i think a regular cycle would be good something in the order of every 3 years.”
Why? Its not the place to discuss development models but it didn’t work last time they planned a release in 3 years, and IE6 was a great success. Your using last years OS I’m using todays. Even Microsoft is talking about a modular OS, and has not made a secret of wanting to move to a subscription based model.
@Bit_Rapist “There is nothing to compare here because MS dosen’t post changelogs.
I’m sure if MS posted all the internal changelogs to the kernel, or even the entire OS and we could all read the little things like “added option a to command b” then it might paint a different picture.
I do feel that the release of vista was somewhat lacking for the amount of time they spent, that I agree with.”
Those aren’t the changelogs, those are 22 “Linux:Under the Hood” articles. If you cannot read them you should not be commenting here. I have read both which is why I can continually find it astonishing that in 5 years Vista is awful. I think your behavior is disgraceful btw read the articles make an informed comment!
@nex “yes, I agree that Vista may have some code bloat. *but* i also think some linux distros also suffer form the same problem.”
I cannot properly explain the term *modular* to you you need to research it for yourself. but an example is you can run linux as a web server from a floppy. It can do so becuase you can *pick and choose* what to install. If you don’t need a media player you can remove it. If you don’t need a web browser you can remove it. You can even remove the desktop if you don’t need it. This is not possible under Vista although there is talk that this will be possible under Windows Vista. Linux Differences from Vista in one major respect choice you have a choice of desktops…even a choice of file manager of panels becuase its modular. Even the KDE desktop which is made of many parts’ most of these are optional. You cannot do this under Vista. This is not code bloat. A distribution is exactly what it says it is it gives you the programs you want from the many choices…thats how you choose a distribution it fulfills you needs, becuase of the very nature of a Distribution it is unlikely that there is a Distribution that caters for you application needs, but there is always the option of choosing from the many meta-distributions out there where you can simply roll your own.
Now you could argue possible that the kernel or X or Gnome suffers from code bloat, but *all* of these can be replaced, this is very different form application bloat, but judging by your comment, you are not able to make a proper evaluation.
Microsoft implemented DRM in there OS. No other company coded it. Microsoft chose the implementation, as they are the ones with both the technical knowhow and phisical access to the code to make it happen. Not only that its in Microsoft’s *best* interest how have it implemented this way, and is no different from any other kind of lock-in except the way its extended onto the hardware.
I would like you to point out Apple’s implementation of DRM for premium(sic) content, becuase I think you can’t.
Although I do find it funny that you think media companies have control of Microsoft and what they do with there OS when Microsoft flaunt the Law around the world and truly are accountable to nobody. In fact I would love you to point out why they would need forcing its in their best interests.
@stestagg “Search isn’t instant. I added my documents volume to the indexing list, 2 days later, it still hadn’t been indexed. I couldn’t seem to manually force it to index either.”
Alternatives for searching exist on XP, but seriously take a look at native searching on XP its really awful. Its bad design, and requires multiple screens to get what I want…and why is there a cartoon dog!? To be fair I don’t search that often.
http://secretgeek.net/ms_search.asp
Those aren’t the changelogs, those are 22 “Linux:Under the Hood” articles.
Here is a sample from just 1 item on that list:
———–
2.6.0 * Released December 18, 2003 changelog
———–
[PATCH] Add a.out support for x86-64
From: Andi Kleen <[email protected]>
Add 32bit a.out support for x86-64.
———–
If you cannot read them you should not be commenting here.
Dude those are NOT articles, those are logs of kernel changes made by the developers. If thats your definition of an article then I don’t know what to tell you.
I still stand by my original statement that if MS released this kind of in-depth developer info it give us a different picture into what exactly has been changed in vista.
I think your behavior is disgraceful btw read the articles make an informed comment!
I don’t care what you think of me and I don’t need to read changelogs of multiple linux kernel revisions to be of the opinion that you yourself are not quite *informed*
Have a nice day!
@Bit_Rapist “Dude those are NOT articles, those are logs of kernel changes made by the developers. If thats your definition of an article then I don’t know what to tell you”
example changelog
http://kerneltrap.org/files/ChangeLog-2.6.10 the stuff actually points to the changelog you have pointed the link text, but not he link, thats bizarre.
Its funny that you can pull that out but not an example like.
“Short overview (for news sites, etc)
2.6.21 improves the virtualization features merged in 2.6.20 with VMI (http://lwn.net/Articles/175706), a paravirtualization interface that will be used by Vmware (and maybe -probably not- Xen) software. KVM does get initial paravirtualization along with live migration and host suspend/resume support (http://lwn.net/Articles/223839). 2.6.21 also gets a tickless idle loop mechanism called “Dynticks” (http://lwn.net/Articles/223185), a feature built in top of “clockevents” which unifies the timer handling and brings true high-resolution timers. Other features are: bigger kernel command-line, optional ZONE_DMA; support for the PA SEMI PWRficient CPU, for a Cell-based “celleb” architecture from Toshiba, better PS3 support: support for NFS IPv6, IPv4 <-> IPv6 IPSEC tunneling support, UFS2 write support, kprobes for PPC32, kexec and oprofile for ARM, public key encryption for ecryptfs, Fcrypt and Camilla cipher algorithms, NAT port randomization, audit lockdown mode, many new drivers and many other small improvements.”
I’d be happy for you to point to me to a better overview. I’m glad you feel that you are able to make such an informed opinion on something you claim to have neither from Microsoft of the articles before you.
@bariole you quoted article shows no benchmarks at all. Where my shows a 41% speed difference in networking between XP and Vista, again show me the links. I’m certain that to take advantage of DX10 features you need a DX10 graphics card that needs those features. Its hardware you can’t change it with software. Vista is not Magic.
I’m not implying an incremental change from 2.6.21 to 2.6.22 is something more than an incremental change. I’m saying 30 incremental changes of this size show dramatic changes. When XP was launched Linux was on 2.4.10. Although I am pleased that you point out quad core will be available soon…although I’m not sure you really understand the benefits, but a good example of why Vista is old. It simply does not take advantage of Multiple core processors. In fact thats one of the features planned for Vista next, or course lots of things were planned for Vista now.
My favorite thing that you said was the Difference between Vista and XP “Majority of introduced changes are better building blocks for new software” so nothing then. Not a thing.
Although I’m glad to know you are ashamed.
@StephenBeDoper “You might be able to argue that it was glib or inappropriate. But unacceptable? That’s going a bit far – unless there’s some reason that’s a little more substantial than your own personal feelings of disgust.”
I don’t know where you live. I know nothing of your life. I live in a county where I have been trapped in city because of bombs on the very transport I am using, because of a religious war. Its sick.
@google_ninja “Not buying ACSS protected content is the only way anything will change.” absolutely and not only that the draconian methods of implementing should not be supported, which have far reaching consequences beyond playing the media.
@samad I like how cyclops took an innocuous comment I made, “Ars Technica writes good articles, and this article is also good,” and turned it into a troll-fest.
Thats a lie. I objected to the term “highly charged religious war” which seems missing from your quote.
btw seriously “people foaming at the mouth” is that not emotive? Wonder why you would choose such language? I suspect we all know.
Edited 2007-06-09 03:51
Did Vista run over your dog or something? Do you use it? Are you in any way forced to use it? Your vitriolic hatred of software that in no way effects you is downright shocking sometimes.
These were a great series of articles, as usual Ars is virtually the only place that actually talks about more then subjective feelings and a single users experience. Aside from the rant about how bitkeeper is ultimate only, the only things you have done is trolled like crazy to hijack the comments section, then proceded to attack anyone that disagreed with you.
I don’t think anyone has said that Vista is the greatest OS out there, but it seems like anything less then a total trashing of the OS is enough to get you to burst into flames.
My experience has been very positive on Vista. When I got my new laptop, I went through the install procedure of vista with my XP (for work), and Ubuntu (for everything else) discs right beside me, as this was my previous setup on home computers. From the start, I found the vast majority of the UI flaws that bugged the crap out of me on XP (and drove me to use GNOME in the first place) were fixed. The more I use it, the more pleasently suprised I am by the various improvements that have been made, enough to use the OS full time. I have linux installed for a few reasons, but I rarely boot to it.
If you want to say that it doesnt live up to expectations, you are bang on. If you want to say that for cost/value, linux does a better job, you definately have a valid point (vista cost me about 50$, which was built in to the price of the pc). If you want to say it is not the best desktop os on the market, you again, will get no arguement from me.
However, like the article says, it is a HUGE upgrade for windows. Much of the OS has been redone, and the results show for the people who actually use it. If you want to argue with me about this, thats fine, I have fun debating silly things like this, especially when its a situation where the facts back me up. But really, noone likes a zealot, especially one that worships something as completely and totally unimportant as an operating system.
here here…..
“Your vitriolic hatred of software that in no way effects you is downright shocking sometimes.”
I like how cyclops took an innocuous comment I made, “Ars Technica writes good articles, and this article is also good,” and turned it into a troll-fest.
I love open source software, and I consider myself dedicated to the Free Software Foundation’s ideals, but people foaming at the mouth at anything outside of the free software community are making the community more and more backward and closed minded.
“vista cost me about 50$, which was built in to the price of the pc”
Could you show me a reliable source for the cost of Vista in a new PC. I would love to see one other than a guesstimate. BTW could you point me to the place where I can buy Vista for £25 in the UK, becuase I’m absolutely positive the figures for the most crippled are over double that.
Ultimate without the least crippled license on my PC will cost $700
“it is a HUGE upgrade for windows” I loved you putting the word huge(sic) in capital letters. My consistent point is I don’t see it in any major update in any of the articles. There are even advantages from DRM unencumbered; stability; application compatibility ; hardware support; software support; performance everywhere; maturity. That you can get simply by Microsoft’s previous OS which is 5 years old.
I wonder why you call me a zealot and say I worship an OS, rather than say use rational arguments to support you case. You notice that I don’t have lower myself to this, but then I do have the advantage as to having something to argue with.
I’m sorry you had trouble reading the articles. I will summerize them for you.
Multimedia
Multimedia has been completely redone. Video playback APIs make more sense and are more efficient, GDI has (finally) been done away with and been replaced with a desktop manager that doesnt waste GPU cycles, and the new sound archetechture will allow for lower latencies then before from the same hardware. (Not to mention cool things like per-application volume control). This overhaul has been a very long time comming. As Vista is very new, we don’t see many benefits of these features outside obvious upgrades in the OS software, but as people port their software from the legacy APIs we will see a signifcant change in the overall quality of not just the system, but windows applications in general.
API
Vista finally moves from the dated Win32 API to .net, which is not only more intelligently designed, but now supports modern programming languages. The rest of the world left C++ behind a long time ago, and finally windows has caught up, introducing a remarkably well designed suite of new languages. By their nature, using .net languages will eliminate many things in development which are prone to bugs and exploits, while providing more advanced methods of error handling and maintainability.
Security
Vista uses kernel level MAC based security, currently the only mainstream OS to due so. Doing away from the old ideas of user/super user, it allows for not only more granular control over processes, but does away with several common categories of exploits due it its nature. Buffer overflows will be next to impossible on vista, and running as administrator is no longer nessicary for normal use. This is a huge step forward for windows, bringing it significantly ahead of both OSX, and 99% of linux distrobutions when it comes to security (SELinux integration will bring linux to Vistas level in terms of security technology. However, fedora is probably the only “mainstream” distro to have done this, the other big players are still a few years away.)
Networking
The networking stack has also had a full overhaul. Vista now takes advantage of hardware acceleration in newer NICs, self-tunes based on connection, and uses IPv6 by default.
HDs
Disc performance is greatly improved in vista. First we have superfetch, which greatly decreases launch times of heavy applications that are frequently used. (I can personally attest to this, it is a great feature) The only problem with superfetch is the amount of ram it uses, however this is greatly offset by readyboost, the technology which allows you to dedicate flash drives for this purpose. Hardware manufacturers are already integrating flash drives into both motherboards and harddrives, and we will see more of these as time goes on.
Not only that, but Vista introduces I/O prioritization. It is like thread prioritization, and results in less wait times for disc access in active programs. Previous to vista, windows I/O was a free for all, but with the changes, applications that use frequent disc reads/writes will be much more snappy and responsive.
Desktop Search
Lastly, the article covers desktop search. Vista provides integration of modern search technology all over the UI, allowing for virtually instant access to applications and documents without hunting for them. I use this feature multiple times per day, since using Vista I havent had to click the “All Programs” button. Ever. I click start, type the first two or three letters of the app I want, and press Enter.
—————-
That is the two articles in a nutshell. The author did a good job providing an overview of the major internal improvements that vista offers. The small external improvements are too numerious to mention, but even if I did, you would ignore me.
I have used rational arguements with you many times, and didnt feel like going through the motions any more. You simply ignore 90% of what I say (that you cant respond to), and attack the other 10% with information that is far from solid.
But regardless, I didnt call you a zealot because I disagree with you, I called you a zealot because of the hatred that comes through in your posts any time somebody is not critising vista. There is no valid reason to hate an OS. You should only really dislike an OS you are forced to use by circumstances outside your control. If you don’t use it then it shouldnt bother you so much.
lovely
Multimedia
==========
Is multimedia not available on XP…or even95. Is it not possible in XP to play 2 tracks together!? or any OS that won’t. I cannot even think of an an media app that does not include a volume control!?
API
===
Love the API stuff, love the fact that c++ has been left behind…even though Microsoft use it in their kernel, btw is .NET not available for XP too, is .NET the only language around. Companies will supply software to the lowest common denominator which is XP if not 98. What would have been interesting is if they had dropped all the win32 stuff…but unfortunately they didn’t.
Security
========
I wonder why Vista *still* has to be patched this tuesday for possible security exploits. Whats most funny is how you say that security is not as good for 99% Linux Distributions and OSX when those OS’s have a *proven* track record, and have been lacking well *any* kind of malware. You have to wonder why Microsoft are even selling a Virus solution. What is certain is that there are an awful low more bundled applications with Vista, and an awful lot more code to find applications in…and its backward compatible with Malware. The harsh reality is if you want security you don’t let your computer *near* Microsoft software.
Networking
==========
Slower
Slower
Slower
Potential security problems
HDs
===
Fancy cashing all over the place. I can for the cheaper than the cost of the most crippled Vista by memory and load my *entire* OS into RAM, or go for a hardware raid solution. I don’t do so because well I spend more time using an application, than actually loading one, my browser has been open for two days…and took a negligible time to load. Is this worth $700. Although its comforting to know that this feature is supported by *future* motherboards, when the licensing stops you form installing one.
Desktop Search
==============
Ignoring that Desktop search solutions are available for every platform including XP. Or the fact that the default XP one is truly bad. Why do you have to search all the time on XP? Is the layout of Vista that bad?
These are the advantages(sic) over XP at the cost of DRM unencumbered; stability; application compatibility ; hardware support; software support; performance everywhere; maturity, more restrictive licensing. That you can get simply by Microsoft’s previous OS which is 5 years old, and at no additional cost in Money of either hardware or software.
Athough I love your DRM analogy.
“Agreed. However, when you walk into a department store, are you offended by the cameras? The (sometimes undercover) security guards? The metal detectors? The turnstiles that force you through the checkout? ”
I think the fundamental difference is that my computer is in *my* home. I do not want Spyware Vista installed on *my* PC.
Edited 2007-06-09 06:32
You obviously still havnt read the article. Video rendoring is accomplished much simpler, as the new desktop manager provides more intelligent ways to display it. This allows for smoother playback with less resources. The sound system allows you to take better advantage of your hardware, and I would like to see the instant messenger or web browser with a volume control. Both make sound. You will see the benefit of this if/when the new OSS becomes standard.
They support the win32 stuff for backwards compatibility, kinda like libstdc-compat in linux. Having .net the standard means most apps will be written in it, which gives the benefits I previously mentioned. Currently, c++ is pretty much only used for low level stuff like kernel or driver development nowadays, there is simply no need for the additional complexity in 99% of user application development.
Currently companies are standardizing on XP, not 98. As you mentioned, .net runs fine on XP. Applications working with less bugs, more security, and better tools available for development will result in better applications.
You have aparently had your head in a barrel for the last three years or so, as MS has seriously shaped up in terms of their security problems. If you want to read up more on the advantages of MAC based systems, you can either read the article you keep posting on, or you can visit the NSA site on SELinux http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/info/faq.cfm
that article you keep linking to says in it that they are not sure if the results had to do with vista, or their NIC. it also says that they see real world speed improvements with the new packet compression. we have been over this.
I am glad you are happy with your current operating systems caching ability. For those of us who don’t think applications loading quicker is a bad thing, this is something that is mentioned in the article that is a low level improvement in vista.
As for hardware, this is something that will become standard over the next few years, and that you will most likely be seeing in linux as that happens and people want to take advantage of the hardware they bought. ReadyBoost is a bit ahead of its time, but it is still a new feature that is quite useful.
Personally, I have alwas hated the windows style start menu. Start->Program Files->Corporation Name->Application Name->Application Link is wayyyyyyyyyyy too many clicks to launch an application. On mac, I use quicksilver. On linux, i either launch from the terminal, or from an embedded command line in the panel. Windows now is able to give me similar functionality for the first time.
Search technology is going to radically change the way we use computers. The first people to actually start really taking advantage of this is the KDE-Nepomuk thing, but we will see an evolution in that direction as time goes on.
——-
Its alwas fun arguing with you cyclops, but you still havnt told me why vista bothers you so much? How often do you use it?
I’m pretty positive that my web browser does not make any sound. I’m sure that embedded video within my browser comes with a….sound control does yours not. Oddly my IM comes with a volume control does MSN messenger not do, you really should upgrade that. Although I love the idea that Vista uses *less* resources when everything points to the reverse your lying.
I do like your API stuff, you have invalidated everything you have said…nice, and all available for XP too, again why even mention it. I think you are lying when you say Microsoft have shaped up in terms of security. http://secunia.com/product/22/?task=statistics not those are WOW. Clearly Microsoft have got this security thing nailed tightly shut. Like I say I’m happy for you to produce benchmarks to the contrary. Although I do like the way you blame the drivers again for Vista’s failings. It does seem to be quite common its not like drivers are part of Vista.
The article is quite clear XP is 41% faster at networking than Vista when benchmarked. Like I say I don’t think applications starting quickly is a bad thing. I simply think is is negligible, and not as important as the performance loss in actually running the application. I know which I’d rather have, btw who had these motherboards. Your not allowed to fit them in Vista under its license…will you have to buy another computer!? Again 3rd party search tools are available for free on XP. Is the layout of Vista so bad that you have to use it all the time.
I don’t think you do argue otherwise you wouldn’t have to lower yourself to name calling.
Edited 2007-06-09 07:13
The article is quite clear XP is 41% faster at networking than Vista when benchmarked.
They probably have a NIC driver issue. I’ve got a completely reverse results, Vista network speed is much faster than XP — on 100Mbit RTL8139 network XP is about 6-7Mb/sec, while Vista is 8-9Mb/sec. Quick googling confirms Vista is faster:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2070
I simply think is is negligible, and not as important as the performance loss in actually running the application.
The performance loss is shocking 1-3% average and that’s due to immature drivers.
http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_system_performance_report…
“They probably have a NIC driver issue. I’ve got a completely reverse results, Vista network speed is much faster than XP — on 100Mbit RTL8139 network XP is about 6-7Mb/sec, while Vista is 8-9Mb/sec. Quick googling confirms Vista is faster:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2070“
To be fair, a simple blog spot is not good enough. OTH that article chosen by me is also poor on networking, A single test on one machine is not good enough. The whole article is looking less than honest in regards of graphics, although still significantly slower than XP they are not at the same level as they once were. The reality of a simple google search is it brings up nothing. I even got the same blog spot you did. I’d rather have some more benchmarks. I suspect when server is out, proper results will come out. I’d love to know them, becuase I’d just ignore that particular benchmark.
“The performance loss is shocking 1-3% average and that’s due to immature drivers.
http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_system_performance_report…
Thats the point. The performance difference of applications is slower. In the example they have chosen to encode a video is 6% slower. This means a Video to encode takes 35 seconds longer. When the only performance increase is application startup time, this is seriously outweighed by the fact everything is slower. In reality other than OpenOffice I cannot think of an application that doesn’t respond instantly. I think the whole thing is a nonsense.
This does not mean the application startup time isn’t important. I remember an old article that did tests on how people chose software and startup time was their main choice for choosing an application, computers where slower then, and competition did exist, but I have searched for similar articles on google, and never found one.
When applications used to have slow start up time, applications used to give you the first screen so the user could start because the slowest thing was the user. I don’t see this done anymore.
What irritates me is the excuses over Vista. Its the “drivers” being the silliest excuse. Its Vista not the drivers. Drivers are part and parcel of the OS. It also shows that the development of OS like Linux where drivers share code is a better solution.
Every web browser I have ever used has a click effect, and some sort of sound when a modal dialog comes up.
What client do you use? I am not talking about video conferencing, I am talking about the audible notification that is given when you receive a new message.
Those are just two examples. Another one that happens every once in awhile is when an installer starts playing music, it is nice to be able to mute the process.
I am paraphrasing the article on which these comments are attached. I know peoples mileage varies considerably with vista, but for me the difference between aero and no aero is about 20 megs of ram. There is no perceptable additional cpu load, and destop operations (moving, resizing windows, etc) are significantly smoother with aero then without it.
Because as the core API, there is additional encouragment for developers to use it, as no new developement is ever going to be done for win32/user32. All the new internals are well integrated into the framework, and a signficant amount of the system has been migrated to managed code. Again, I am paraphrasing from the article about the various internal changes in windows.
Either windows is a monopoly, or it is not. If it is, that makes it by FAR the biggest target for malware of all kinds. How many virii exist for Be? or Atheos? or QNX? or SkyOS? does that make them secure systems? Of course it doesnt, what it means is that people who want to do all the damage they can will consistantly do it to 90% of the world.
If you had actually read the article, you would see that they are talking about the technology used. The user/superuser paradigm is obsolete, we are now in the age of ACLs.
Again, if you want to read up more on this, read the article, or read about SELinux. The technology used for security in vista is the way of the future, and will eventually be implemented accross the board in linux. The reason that it isnt is because there isnt the same need for it, as linux really isnt a target. You could be on a desktop machine running as root with all the NAT magic in IPTables disabled and be reasonably safe.
The article you love to link to about network performance blames it on their drivers, not me. And that article is in the minority.
We arent agueing about how great vista is compared to everything else, we are argueing that the author of the articles did not give a single improvement in vista over xp.
As for caching, it is nice not to wait if you use professional applications frequently. It isnt the greatest thing ever, but it is a nice improvement over XP. Combined with the I/O prioritization, you get a significantly more responsive system over XP, as long as have the hardware to support it (i do). As the next generation hybrid harddrives come out, the additional RAM usage will be mitigated, this again is an improvement over XP which did not have the capability to use Flash drives as highspeed caches.
As for the search tools, like I said, they do exist for XP, but do not integrate well into the UI. the new search tools are nowhere near what they can be (again, look at my comments about kde-nepomuk), but they are better then XP, which was basically a search tool sitting in your taskbar.
As for my example of how I use it the most, yes, as I said the layout of vista is that bad, as has been every previous version of windows. The application menu in linux is better (at least they categorize by category rather then wasting a click on corporation), but I still MUCH perfer launching applications via the keyboard rather then navigating maze-like cascading menus. Linux gave the option, as did OSX, and it was one of the big frustrations I had with XP. With Vista, that is fixed.
What am I doing now? We are argueing. Like I said before, I love debating with people, especially about things that dont matter much. Gets my blood pumping. If you don’t think Vista is all that, thats fine. But theres a difference between a civilized discussion about technology, and a viscious arguement. There is no need to get viscious, this is just an operating system, and no matter what you say, your opinions will have as little impact on the world as mine.
If you look at the first page or two, you trolled the hell out of this comments section, and thats not cool. Not only that, but you expressed some real animosity about vista. If you don’t like something, don’t use it. If you like debating about it, fine, debate. But hating it is just silly. If you actually read the articles, you will find they are not an MS love fest a la paul theurott. They are a levelheaded discussion about the changes to the OS. If you have any legitimate interest in the technology behind vista, it may be informative to actually read them.
I’m sorry I cannot find your click effect in firefox, or even want one, I would be happy for you to point it out. I use pidgin sound volume is under preferences–>sound, I didn’t even know it was there until you suggested that its a must have(sic) feature…does msn not have this feature!?
Vista needs more of everything to run than XP, anything you say otherwise is a lie.
You made a claim that Microsoft was not the Malware beast it once was…I show graphs that show if anything its worse today than its ever been. You lied.
You make the dubious claim that Linux is more secure simply because its not a target. The amount of servers connected to net may say otherwise, but the reality is it doesn’t matter if its more secure because its been sprinkled with pixie dust, it just is.
The article does not say its the drivers thats a lie. Although I will repeat again. Is Vista not ready for the desktop with so many poorly supported devices, even by large companies like Nvidia; Creative 7 months after launch…and still waiting. There is something wrong with Vista.
Its a shame all this fancy caching comes with a 4GB price on its head, but seriously I think most people would rather have faster applications, than startup times, like I say I could only think of one application that didn’t have an instant start-up time, and that was OpenOffice.
I’m glad you are talking about the possibility of Vista being supported by future hardware again is Vista not ready for the desktop.
I’m sorry that google desktop search does not fit with your ui http://news.com.com/Screenshot+1+of+4+Google+Desktop+Search+tool/20…
although its a lie, and its not the only alternative.
I’m sorry that XP doesn’t have a mired of small programs to assign keys to launch applications…oh yes it does http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/MaxKeys-Review-56153.shtml in fact is has loads.
I know its hard to find stuff in Vista of value over XP. Thats been my point all along. It even has disadvantages from performance everywhere; less restrictive Licensing, relatively DRM unencumberd; Better hardware and software compatibility etc etc
You are right on both fronts. MSN doesnt have this feature, i use pidgin on windows as well, but was unaware that the plugin existed. MSN messenger blows, and trillian really isnt the clear winner that it used to be.
I never said it was a killer feature, it is simply a by product of the new sound subsystem, and is handy to have at times. it is also an improvement over xp.
first of all, its not me thats supposedly lieing, its ars technica, one of the most respected technical online journals. secondly, you offer no proof whatsoever to back up your claim, not even personal experience.
Pre SP2, you couldnt have an unpatched xp on the net for more then seconds, and worm after worm went through the worlds computing systems, costing business tens of thousands each time. Post SP2, the situation got alot better. I don’t think anyone who lived through that period would disagree with me.
…and linux does get hacked quite a bit. If you want a secure os, you dont use linux, you use openbsd.
However, i was talking about malware. Noone writes virii/spyware for linux because there is no point. People hack linux all the time because there is a point, but if you are going for widespread mayham and destruction, you have gotta be pretty dumb to waste your time on > 5% of computers.
First of all, we werent talking about drivers in general, we were talking about networking performance. The article you link to says that it could be drivers, and there are other articles out there that show very different results.
Secondly, your arguement that vendors dropping the ball on hardware support in vista means there is something wrong is kinda dumb. The same thing happens any time vendors are forced to rewrite any part of their windows drivers. When NT became the default, there were huge problems with hardware not being supported for a good year or so, and shoddy 3d performance for at least that long.
The I/O prioritization makes for more responsive applications, and saying there is a 4gig hit is pure FUD. I have 2 gigs of ram and it works just fine.
Personally, I run Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Visual Studio, and Office. These all are heavy apps that have long startup times, but that I use frequently and interchangably every day. Superfetch gives noticable improvements across the board. If you don’t use big apps other then OO.o, this feature wouldnt matter much. But others do, and it is an improvement over XP.
You are deliberatly misinterpreting what the article said. ReadyBoost is something that is useful now, but will become even more useful as hardware vendors take advantage of what flash drives can provide.
I said that it is a search tool that sits in your system tray, how is that a lie? If you think thats what vista search does, you really shouldnt be commenting on it.
I don’t want to assign keys, I want to be able to access any application on my computer by typing the name rather then using mouse navigation.
I disagree, and if I go through the list of things that sold me on Vista again, it would just mean bigger posts.
What we are talking about right now is the articles, which cover internal system changes. These changes have happened and while they may not be readily aparent (there are other changes which are, but like i said, lets keep this on topic) they add up to a significant upgrade over XP. Some of the best things to happen in OSX in the last few years have been the Core APIs, which at the time meant nothing to the user. However, when you empower the developers with high quality tools, that results in a bigger improvement then any other change in an os. That is what these articles have been covering, and that what I have been talking about.
And you still havnt told me why you hate Vista. If it is horrible, you should just feel glad you are on a system that is unaffected by the changes. In the context of a tech forum, that may mean some spirited debates, but there is a difference between debate and hatred.
So your sound stuff is not really a killer feature…you can’t even come up with a good example of its use…at all.
I’ll repeat Vista needs more of everything to run than XP, anything you say otherwise is a lie.
So you lied about it being the drivers, nice to know you confirm it. Vista has been in development in computing terms *forever* and has beta’s for as long. There is no excuse for Vista not having supported hardware today.
“Noone writes virii/spyware for linux because there is no point. People hack linux all the time because there is a point, but if you are going for widespread mayham and destruction, you have gotta be pretty dumb to waste your time on > 5% of computers.” again Magic pixie dust.
“…and linux does get hacked quite a bit. If you want a secure os, you dont use linux, you use openbsd”
wow just wow. when you have to use another os to defend Vista you really are struggling.
Is this WDS better http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6171341.html
lots of choices for search on XP pick one.
I find it somewhat amusing that you say you use(sic) Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Visual Studio, and Office, and startup is critical.
“I want to be able to access any application on my computer by typing the name rather then using mouse navigation” Your joking right…thats a joke. Seriously think how daft comment is. clearly Visual studio doesn’t get used much. I can see now why Vista took 5 years and still not ready. That is shameful.
“What we are talking about right now is the articles, which cover internal system changes. These changes have happened and while they may not be readily apparent”
Hell bring them all on, if your referring to bundled products used by Microsoft to abuse its monopolistic position then do so, or features only included in the $700 copy of Vista, that can be had for free or optional elsewhere, don’t require lock-in.
I know its hard to find stuff in Vista of value over XP in fact we are really starting to see not only better implementations available for free optionally for XP than those built into Vista. Thats been my point all along. It even has disadvantages from performance everywhere; less restrictive Licensing, relatively DRM unencumbered; Better hardware and software compatibility etc etc
The new sound subsystem is improved over XP. Per process volume is not a killer feature, but a by product of a modern sound system. I came up with two examples IM blips and browser sounds. Just because Pidgin has a plugin for this doesnt make it a standard feature, and most of the world still uses IE. If you want more examples, at times installers will start playing background music with no option of turning it off, two clicks and it is muted. Flash ads and interfaces often come without volume control. Notification sounds from applications, like burners or rippers (AFAIK) do not come with volume controls. If you stop to think about it, it is a useful feature.
When confronted with truth you would rather bury your head in the sand and not listen. The mark of a true zealot.
Its the same magic pixie dust that SkyOS uses. Sky has yet to have a security advisory, which by your rationale makes it the most secure OS on the planet.
I was trying to educate someone who aparently knows very little about security. Aparently I have failed.
WDS does not provide the functionality that I outlined in my previous post, therefor is not better.
You claim that commonly used applications boot times are irrelivent. I said they were, and listed the applications I use that are dramatically effected by the new I/O features in vista. I never said critical, but I would rather have a more responsive system then a less responsive system, wouldnt you?
I have 7 buttons in the quicklaunch bar for my most commonly used applications. I have 13 Apps pinned to the start menu for my less frequently used apps, then it lists the 6 most commonly used apps. That is the majority of how I launch applications.
However, what about, say, the IIS control panel? I only launch that about once a month on average, it would be a waste of space to even pin that. Or perfectdisk. or paragon partition manager. These are all things that you have to drill through menus to access. I much perfer typing then hunting through cascading menus. I like having every application on my computer a few keystrokes away.
I am referring to what is covered by the two articles that you obviously havnt read, and that we have been talking about for the last 10 posts or so. There are no products for xp that can give it a modern sound system, rendoring system, desktop manager, I/O stack, or security archetchture. These changes are far more important then anything else that was done to vista, but are never talked about. That is what makes these articles a good read.
You have yet to come close to making that point. The only free alternative that you have come up with is search, and it is far from better.
What you still havnt managed to successfuly address is how the change from a half assed user/superuser implementation is better then kernel level MAC based ACLs, how a more responsive desktop environement, and more responsive applications are not an improvement, how better multimedia frameworks are not an improvement, and how a modern api is not an improvement. There has been alot of evading, sidestepping, and deliberate misinterpretation going on, but nothing really solid to address the points of the articles we are talking about.
But I mean really, I guess I’m expecting too much from a troll.
So still no real examples of use…At all. I do find it amusing that you use IE as an example.
I’ll repeat Vista needs more of everything to run than XP, anything you say otherwise is a lie. I wonder why poeple are upset with there vista capable(sic) PC’s they must be zealots also, Wow Microsoft have upped the Minimum requirements for Vista from XP Microsoft must be Zealots. All those people complaining on Intel forums; Upgrading there graphics cards for Areo must be zealots. All those people who have only 128MB–>256MB–>?? have to upgrade there memory a task out of the reach for all but the technical must be zealots, all those people on the internet posting benchmarks showing performance across the board poorer than XP must be zealots. etc etc.
I love the way that you defend Microsoft pitiful security record against its well 2 main rivals, by pointing out other Operating Systems…Is Microsoft’s track record of Security so bad?
Benchmarks show *everywhere* that applications are slower, yet you lie to the contrary. In fact Office OS one of the common benchmarks used. I don’t think you use the programs at all you must just start them up all the time or something, as most people spend a significant time using an Application vs its startup by a factor of tens of thousands.
like I say your really scraping at straws when you start pointing out functionality that can be created in just a few lines of code. Clearly you never use visual Studio.
I’m talking about real benefits of which you have yet to show one. Thats shocking. I did find it funny that you evaluate alternate desktop search and compare with the word *better*.
I think whats most funny is talking about Modern; *important*(sic) things that have no impact at all. Does that not sound a little wrong.
I know its hard to find stuff in Vista of value over XP in fact we are really starting to see not only better implementations available for free optionally for XP than those built into Vista. Thats been my point all along. It even has disadvantages from performance everywhere; less restrictive Licensing, relatively DRM unencumbered; Better hardware and software compatibility etc etc. Maybe they needed another 5 years.
“All those people complaining on Intel forums; Upgrading there graphics cards for Areo must be zealots. All those people who have only 128MB–>256MB–>?? have to upgrade there memory”
// sarcasm: on
How awful!! And not only that you need more than 128 Mb of ram; you actually need a processor with a MMU!! And even that is not enough for evil MS because they even demand a FPU unit. OMG! All those 5×86 users can’t run Vista!!! Bad MS, bad..
Edited 2007-06-11 18:56
@google_ninja “What you still havnt managed to successfuly address is how the change from a half assed user/superuser implementation is better then kernel level MAC based ACLs, how a more responsive desktop environement, and more responsive applications are not an improvement, how better multimedia frameworks are not an improvement, and how a modern api is not an improvement. There has been alot of evading, sidestepping, and deliberate misinterpretation going on, but nothing really solid to address the points of the articles we are talking about.”
I’ve cut this bit out especially. Please read the article, esp the bit marked *visualization*. I think that is my favorite change in vista, and worth half a page of a small 5 page article. UAC is far from perfect and covered elsewhere.
Doing any task in the desktop environment, takes longer than it did in XP, as well as basic things like copy; paste; moving files. In fact doing anything on the Microsoft platform takes forever, there is a plethora of Vista vs MacOSX articles all over the web as well as studies that go into detail.
Applications do *start* faster…but thats it, *Everything* else is slower, again I will repeat the point. Most applications start straight away on XP, and even those with a minor delay your actual use of the programs where other factors like Graphics;CPU etc etc being slower on Vista become more important.
There is a new(sic) multimedia framework but you have yet to come up with any application that *makes* noise that does not have its own volume control. If it doesn’t it should have.
Could you point to all these applications that use a modern(sic) api, that is Vista exclusive. In fact I’ll name 10 programs that won’t work in Vista for every Vista exclusive that you come up with.
Edited 2007-06-11 01:04
Cyclops has frustrated me a lot in the past because of his fundamental intellectual dishonesty. At the end of an old thread he claimed to be “having fun at my expense.” This is pretty much the definition of a comment troll, and it was not the first time I’ve seen him make comments that are just plain unfriendly when he thinks that no one else is still reading the thread.
If there were ways to ignore comments by particular users, he and SupremeDragon would both be on my list. SD looks like a link-bot for FSF sites (he never has any content in his posts… just short declarative sentences about how vista is evil). Cyclops just seems like a gentoo-using kid who is pulled in by the open-source hype (lots of people are talking about beryl, so it must be cool) without understanding much about the underlying technology. I hope he grows up to be something productive, rather than a small-scale unprofessional sysadmin.
@PlatformAgnostic “fundamental intellectual dishonesty”
I don’t even know what it is…but I want a T-shirt with it on.
SupremeDragon. Is getting better he replies to lies regarding DRM, when people try to deemphasize how awful DRM implemented in Vista is, and it is awful. Microsoft coninually try to control *your* computer and are gradually degrading *your* control over *your* machine. We have seen WGA(sic),OGA(sic),Activation, Trusted Computing Path, increasingly draconian EULA’s,SPP etc etc. When rights are gradually eroded by Microsoft there is an uproar, and then everyone feels helpless and gets on with it, this is especially important with DRM as the ramifications are *later*. This does not mean that what Microsoft is doing is alright. Its nice that people are still spending time to remind us how terrible Spyware Vista’s implementation of Vista really is. With everything from trip bits, Picture degradation, graphics soft resets, disabling drivers etc etc and its all to come. Of course you understand the underlying technology so you are as appalled as he is, and yes I am “having fun at my(sic) expense.”
I’m glad that I’ve been pulled in by the open-source hype(sic), because open-source is exciting and fun. While Microsoft users are experiencing a legacy OS, with all its associated nastiness. Linux users can enjoy regular updates to their OS+Applications. Although I do find it unusual that open-source is a hype. With all those users, using BSD in whatever OS, the web pretty much being built on it. Applications like Firefox and OpenOffice making inroads into Microsoft Marketshare; Mindshare. Even Microsoft is starting open sourcing some of its stuff. Open-source is mainstream, and becoming more so. The fact that its free in every sense of the word; fun; cutting edge; easy available is simply a bonus.
People like cyclops help me think on my feet, and develop better debating methods. While I much perfer talking about technology with someone who doesnt hold onto ideas for emotional reasons, i still enjoy argueing with guys like cyclops, because it teaches me to think on my feet, and keep from getting dragged into an emotional arguement.
What I find frustrating sometimes is that I spend time crafting wonderful arguements and positions that get entirely ignored. But thats the price you pay for feeding a troll.
Of everything the FSF has ever accomplished, I think the FUD campeign on DRM is the most successful.
DRM by definition is only the means of creators to have control over who accesses their content. The rights of the creator have been around since before anyone can remember, it starts with “I make this, therefor it is mine”. Digital Rights Management is the application of that concept to the new age of content.
To say that there should be no drm is basically saying that everyone in the world is completely ethical when noone is watching. To say this is downright silly shouldnt be nessicary. As soon as you say that people cant be trusted to rip each other off in a circumstance where there will be no reprocussions, you are bringing DRM into the picture.
Now, specific applications of DRM can be used for reasons other then managing rights. CSS region codes allowing for price fixing under the guise of copy protection is pretty shifty, but that doesnt condemn DRM as an idea. Likewise, ACSS forcing incredable levels of both hardware and software level control is equally as excessive, for DRM to succede it needs to be invisible to everyone except the thief.
To reiterate, to say DRM is evil means you either believe in some sort of socialist utopia, or you really havnt thought out what you are saying. If you don’t agree with a specific form of DRM, then what you should do is boycott it, cracking it does nothing but make the content providers put on more restrictions (as can be seen in CSS -> ACSS). Last but not least, DRM is required by PROVIDERS, not the ones implementing the service. Microsoft is not evil for giving people the ability to view HD-DVDs, the very same restrictions are placed on the vendors of standalone hardware that has nothing to do with computers, let alone Microsoft.
DRM as an idea is not bad, just like copyright, as an idea, is a good one. However, consumers need to put pressure on companies if these things are going to change. Not using vista, but having an HD-DVD player and a rack of home movies will do nothing to improve the situation. Not buying ACSS protected content is the only way anything will change.
And to say that DRM is needed is claiming that ever customer is guilty of piracy until proven otherwise; that the content licence holders can be trusted – would you trust Sony who tried to install malware on peoples computers through their music cd protection scheme?
These companies put themselves out there long ago as organisations not to be trusted; DRM wouldn’t be so hard to swallow if they didn’t actually go about being underhanded and treating their customer as if he or she was a criminal.
Oh, and btw, I find it simplistic when they blame pirates for dropping sales, and yet, if you talk to some artists, they’ve never had it better! obviously people are now choosing not to buy crap from half baked artists; record company manufactured singers are not going to do anymore. People want talent, not lip-syncing stage performers who can ‘pop their booty’ for the camera.
Sony’s rootkit is a specific implementation of DRM. It does not invalidate the idea. That is like saying that because software patents are retarded, there should be no patents.
Agreed. However, when you walk into a department store, are you offended by the cameras? The (sometimes undercover) security guards? The metal detectors? The turnstiles that force you through the checkout? These are all measures the store has implemented because, like it or not, people can’t be trusted to be honest. Now, if the security guard was breathing down your neck from the moment you walked in the store, that would be another story. You tolerate these measures because they are reasonable, and they don’t effect honest consumers. The same needs to happen with DRM, and the only way that will happen is by boycotting media formats that use excessive force in their DRM.
Haven you heard the opinions by the RIAA (spokes person(s) for the large music record company’s) who deride the very idea of allowing people to rip music, to back up their music collection?
What it seems to be is that there are a few in the entertainment industry who want everything to stand still; home based recording equipment is cheaper, distribution facilities by online vendors are now removing the middleman – their industry, the music industry, is on its death bed. Rather than embracing those changes, they expect people to pay huge amounts for music.
For example, I have a look at music per-track through itunes in New Zealand – what do I gain by purchasing music via download if I am not going to save money than I would have if I bought the actual cd? I pay the same amount for an inferiror product? the whole of online music was the *REDUCED* costs, which then should allow *CHEAPER* music – the fact there is no physical media, no need to market, no need to do have the things that the physical world needs.
But there is a difference, once you purchase it through the check out, you actually own it! I mean, lets translate this into the real world; if the recording industry worked on the basis of the supermarket/department store they wouldn’t use DRM.
DRM by the music company is the equivilance of going into a department store, purchasing a product, then having someone follow you home to make sure that you use the products in only the ways they want you to use it in.
Sorry, once I purchase the music, what I do with it, within the confines of my own house is none of their business; now, if I started to create ‘copies’ or ‘clones’ if it, then sure, prosecute me using normal channels of investigation rather than castrating all users because of the actions of a few.
I agree 100%. However, it is not unreasonable to suggest that there are reasonable measures put in place to limit widespread copying of digital media. And as soon as you put that on the table, you are talking DRM. DRM can be used to enforce the current paradigm, but just because the paradigm needs to shift doesnt nessicarily mean a complete abandonment of expectations of reimbursment.
Again, this is an arguement about an implementation rather then the idea. They are not using DRM to keep people honest, they are using it to fix prices.
There is no difference if you buy a book, a cd, or software. You liscence these products, you don’t own them in the same way you do, say, a car. There are many restrictions in place with any piece of intellectual property. There are two differences in the digital sense, the first is that it is easier to break any terms due to its nature, and the second is that we have the ability to develop technologies capable of enforcing them.
You have to understand the distinction I am making. I agree 100% with how the big label have to die, as they are doing nothing productive, and alot to hurt the music industry. I agree that we are entering a whole new world when it comes to online distrobution, and corporate lobbys have been robbing the world of exploring new possibilities of media distrobution. I have read Free Culture more then once, and agree with almost everything in it.
However, there is a huge jump from saying that what the current industry is doing is wrong, to saying that any enforcement is wrong. It is just like how the RIAA says “Downloading = Stealing” It is nowhere NEAR that simple or one dimensional. They are doing that to push an agenda, and the same thing is happening with “DRM = Evil”
DRM(Digital Restrictions Management) is anti-consumer:
http://drm.info/
Some of the points they made make sense, others simply don’t. The overall view is very one dimensional however, and does nothing to address what I was talking about in my previous post.