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Windows Vista RC2 Available
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 06, 2006 08:34 PM
from the get-it-while-the-gettings-good dept.
from the get-it-while-the-gettings-good dept.
GarstMan writes to mention that Microsoft has released what it hopes will be the last version of Windows Vista to go through the testing process. From the article: "This new build of Windows Vista offers users a higher level of performance and stability - improving what was established in Windows Vista RC1. We were able to also fix many of your bugs reported from RC1 and implement them for RC2. Thank you to our beta testers for the bugs and feedback you submitted for RC1. The improvement shows as we raised our quality bar even higher! Platforms and Services Co-President Jim Allchin has just posted a special announcement letter of RC2 to Microsoft Connect for the Windows Vista Technical Beta Testers."
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Waste of Time (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://bw42.myftp.org/)
Re:Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
It is not necessary; it's just evil.
Now, if there was standard DRM then books would be released electroically that you could search through or have search engines search through.
Actually, this is unlikely. And in any event, the benefit of making the book searchable is dubious given that the DRM could be used to limit your ability to search it, that searching isn't really important for some books (e.g. most works of fiction), and that the DRM could be set up so that it cost you money every time you used the book in particular ways, or at all.
I think that a better solution would be to a) prohibit authors et al from having copyrights if they use DRM at all, b) not just legalize circumventing DRM, but have the government help (with funding, coordination, and dissemination of the uncopyrightable plaintext), and c) to make some other alterations to copyright, such as beefing up deposit requirements (so that electronic copies are on file with the Library of Congress) and shortening term lengths (so that the book will enter the public domain quite rapidly, if the author et al even bothers to pursue copyright to begin with).
Don't be such a defeatist. Stand up for a change, and fight for what you want!
Re:Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://robots.org.uk/)
(insert anne rand quotation about the imposibility of governing an honest man)
Re:Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
And piracy is bad, because?
Remember, while I'm a copyright lawyer, I'm also thoroughly a utilitarian when it comes to copyright. This means that I only care about what best serves the public interest (which is divided into three sub-interests: creating and publishing original works, creating and publishing derivative works, and having no or minimal copyright) and not at all about authors or publishers, save for how that might affect the public.
the issue of creators' rights
Their rights are what we choose to give them, and we should only choose to give them rights when, and to the degree that, it serves our purposes to do so. Copyright isn't a civil liberty or an inherent right. It's artificial and granted for the purpose of the public good, like a municipal cable TV monopoly.
Basically, you guys want to stack everything in favor of the pirates and against the creators.
No, only in favor of the public. If the authors benefit from this, good for them. If not, I don't care. I take into account how the public benefit is affected by the benefit of authors (in much the same way that a farmer who raises eating chickens is concerned for the health of his flock up until he's ready to slaughter them, since this is what is best for him -- that the chickens would prefer a long and natural life is of no concern) but I am never going to support giving authors anything that is purely at the expense of the public with no greater benefit involved. That would be waste.
This means that where pirates interfere with copyright that maximally serves the public interest, I am against those pirates, since they are ruining it for the rest of us. But where copyright is excessive (as it is now, IMO) and does not maximally serve the public interest, then some of the piracy is perfectly okay and in fact should be legalized, to reduce copyright down, closer to where it is ideal again. More copyright is not a good thing; in fact, it's generally worse than less.
But it would be quite unlikely for me to support no copyright at all, which is basically what you're accusing me of. I wouldn't say I never would, but the situation that would give rise to that is pretty improbable.
Besides, the GPL is essentially a form of DRM (digital rights management).
No, the GPL is basically a contract. It doesn't interfere with the underlying law, in the way that DRM invariably does. For example, it is possible to reject the GPL, and then use portions of GPL'ed code pursuant to fair use, and still be acting lawfully. Whereas, if a work is DRM'ed, then it is going to interfere with fair uses just as much as with unlawful ones, because it is a simple, stupid restriction that cannot tell the difference.
Not the last Beta (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not the last Beta (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a sub sandwich shop here that gives away free sandwich coupons every couple of months-- use as many as you want as often as you want. If you get addicted, you'll end up being their customer when it's no longer free.
Re:Not the last Beta (Score:5, Funny)
The heroin they put in their sandwiches helps.
Raised the bar? (Score:1, Troll)
Link to ISO (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to ISO (Score:5, Funny)
2.5 Terrabytes? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.toadking.com/)
Re:Link to ISO (Score:5, Funny)
(http://monkeyboy.hatman.com/)
Now that's some serious code bloat.
Torrent? (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.tlarson.com/)
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Torrent? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://stinerman.livejournal.com/)
Offers users a higher level of performance ... (Score:5, Funny)
ie: We added -DNDEBUG to the compiler command line.
No one has commented on this yet? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://sackofcatfood.blogspot.com/)
Now this is the kind of honesty you have to appreciate.
here it is (Score:5, Informative)
Can't WAIT!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Works great. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.moogr.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 31 2003, @12:16PM)
Perfect Timing (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.behti.com/ | Last Journal: Monday July 25 2005, @03:30AM)
Bugs (Score:5, Funny)
Good for how long? (Score:2)
Perhaps this is asking for too much... (Score:5, Insightful)
For once I'd like to see an opinion from someone who tried Vista without any biases.
Re:Perhaps this is asking for too much... (Score:5, Informative)
1.) It feels very much like a redressed XP. It behaves the same as previous versions of Windows have. There are even dialogs dating back to Windows 3.1, like the Install Font dialog.
2.) UAC is incredibly annoying. You'll see. You will hate it.
3.) Something feels weird about it. I often find myself wanting to go back to XP. It might be the inconsistent interface that I'm not used to, or the overuse of gaudy visual effects (the animated ribbon swoosh used everywhere looks straight out of a 1980s public access channel logo). Maybe it's the nasty colors used everywhere in the the aquamarine/sea-green theme that is Aero.
It's a weird feeling to use Vista, like it should have been out three years ago. It feels very dated in places.
Give it a try before you trash it (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of you who have tried it (at least since RC1, everything before that was junk), and don't like it, then its not for you. Stick with whatever you have and move along. Your decision to not purchase Microsoft software will send a message.
For those of you haven't, give RC2 a try, its free - at least for about 8-9 months or whatever. You can then judge all its flaws and gasp, maybe even give feedback to Microsoft so that maybe they can do something about it. Just make sure you are constructive rather than "get rid of DRM" which probably won't accomplish much of anything.
agressiv
Can someone please explain... (Score:2)
I've had reasonable success (Score:1)
I'm starting to like it... (Score:2, Informative)
(http://students.cs.byu.edu/~cookd/ | Last Journal: Friday May 28 2004, @11:03AM)
I can dual boot between XP and Vista. I was originally planning to just use Vista for testing (the program I work on is not yet 100% Vista compatible, so I need a Vista machine to use for testing my fixes). However, it has worked well enough for me that I haven't booted back to XP all week. That says a lot.
One thing I've learned about Vista is that there are a few places where a driver problem will drag your performance down. For example, the system does more disk flushes than XP. One driver was not handling the flushes well, and the result was that previous versions of Vista felt terribly slow. I was blaming it on the Video card, but it turned out to be the RAID driver. Once that driver got updated, the performance (along with my opinion of Vista) went up about 3 notches.
There are definitely pros and cons.
Pro: Vista looks nifty, runs smoothly and has a nice feel to it. It just looks and feels polished to me, if you care about that kind of thing. The machine I've been using gets a performance rating of 4 or 5 on everything except the graphics card, which rates a 2, but the Aero interface is still fast enough that I can leave it on. (Occasionally, dragging a Window is a bit sluggish, but most of the time it is fine.)
Con: Lots of things are in new places. I know my way around XP like... Well, pretty darn well. I don't know my way around Vista. On the other hand, there are search boxes in convenient places in Vista, and you can search for things like where to find setting X or how to fix problem Y.
Pro: Console window is improved. The console behaves the same, but I can put a TrueType font on my console window and it still scrolls faster than it did in XP with a bitmap font. Scrolling the console window at max speed no longer takes 100% CPU.
Con: I still don't like the UAC prompt that pops up whenever I do anything that requires administrator privileges. I've gotten used to it, though. (Basically, I think of it as automatic SU without a password requirement.) It actually makes sense to have something like that, and it allows me to run at reduced privilege and still have easy access to Admin tasks. On the other hand, it could still use some work. For example, I wish the "control panels that require administrative privileges" were all grouped together so I could just click on one UAC prompt and be done with it. As it is, I have to accept one UAC prompt here to change setting A, another UAC prompt for setting B, another over there... And if I want to copy a file to a restricted location, then rename it, then edit it, I have to approve 3 different UAC prompts. However, once I got the system set up the way I like it, the prompts come up more rarely, and the occasional UAC prompt for something significant become natural.
The only issues I have are with a few programs that don't behave well without Admin privileges. Upgrades are coming soon for them, and I have figured out workarounds for now. This is probably a good thing, as it will give software vendors a good kick in the pants to get their programs fixed to not require admin.
Better be stable!!!! (Score:1)
(http://www.tyler.mcadams.com/)
I Paid for the 1st beta.... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday November 29 2002, @01:47PM)
I got RC1 dvd in the post at work *this morning*
(and yes, perhaps I do have more money than sense - but I blow cash on other crap, so what the hell)
Why so much hostility towards their terminology? (Score:1)
All the are saying with is that its a version with frozen APIs unless a fundamental problem with the API's design is found which is unlikely. They use the term "Release Candidate" for that. Why are there all these "+5 Insightful" posts ripping on them for doing that? They arent doing anything sneaky, dishonest, or even anything that could be considered bad software development. (at least as far as their development cycle goes) They are just trying to give the bazillions of third party developers for windows something to develop against before release.
I just got RC1! (Score:2)
New Boot Sector + Dynamic Drive Overlay = Trash (Score:2)
(http://www.hexagon.tk/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 15 2003, @09:48PM)
Jonah HEX
What did they mean by implementing? (Score:1)
Do I get right, that they fixed some bugs from RC1, but nevertheless implemented these bugs in RC2? Why?
For now RC2 is rotten (Score:1)
Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://jlarocco.com/)
It's an RC. Release Candidate. By traditional labeling, a release candidate is a possible release. You release the RC, and in a few days/weeks/months, if no "major" bugs are found, you release it without change. Anyone who tried RC1 can tell you that it was most certainly NOT ready to release without change.
Right about now a million MS fanboys are screaming "But people found bugs, so they needed to fix them and make a new RC." But some of the bugs that were "found" and features that were missing were so glaring and obvious, there's no possible way MS expected it to be an actual release. I hate MS as much as the next guy, but they're simply not dumb enough to think RC1 could have been the real release. In the entire rest of the computing world, that's called a "beta." Like it or not, that's just the way it is.
Opera, for example, uses their final release candidate as the final release. Just check out their weekly builds. [opera.com] September 18 was RC1, September 19 was RC2 (with a single bug fix), and on September 21 RC2 was released as 9.02. Same build number and everything. That's how it's supposed to be.
Re:fisht post (Score:1)
(http://knorr.blospot.com/)
there's no discusion because the install takes too long
I bet they'll call it "gamma" after the RC cycle...
Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning (Score:5, Insightful)
But "If they are fixing bugs.... perhaps what they released was a beta" takes it a little too far. If they didn't fix any bugs, it would be simply a Release, not a Candidate.
Re:Schedules slip, milestones change meaning (Score:5, Funny)
We were able to also fix many of your bugs reported from RC1 and implement them for RC2.
Takes time to implement some good bugs, or else the users would not stay hooked to the "Patch Tuesday"/WGA
Re:Bigger. Fatter. Slower. (Score:2)
(http://www.insidebet.com/)
Can you beat a dead horse anymore??? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.moogr.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 31 2003, @12:16PM)
RTM = Release
Release candidate means "You can build your release software against this version as the API is frozen and we are just working out the kinks"
Re:Can you beat a dead horse anymore??? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how Microsoft defines "beta". The real definition of beta is that the software is feature complete and is in the final stages of testing (but not yet a possible RTM like RC really means). If drastic changes to the underlying mechanism and APIs are still possible, the software is still alpha, or more likely, it's not even out of the design phase yet.
By buying into these bogus definitions, you've been hoodwinked by Microsoft's marketing department into paying good money for unfinished goods.
Troll? (Score:1, Flamebait)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
Come on people, it's funny. How many useful things can anyone say about a buggy piece of commercial software that's not even finished yet. When it's done, a review or comparison might be useful ... though I have zero use for Windoze. Until then, it's all marketing hype for something most people don't like from a company most people hate.
Re:Vista violates Fair Use (Score:1)
Re:Vista violates Fair Use (Score:1)
The license agreement says "one machine."
Well guess what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sad (Score:1)
Re:Bigger. Fatter. Slower. (Score:1)
(http://eviltechmonkey.com/)
Re:bloated software (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Unedited notes ... (Score:2)
Re:bloated software (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP !
Hilarious....
And I think Joel is absolutely right bloatware rants being a symptom of a mental disorder... All these rants about bloatware are just that rants...
Half of these whiney bitches above use windows and they'll all end up on Vista because it has some functionality not available on XP... or someone will write a program that utilises new features in Vista and they will buy Vista to use the new program.....