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Comment Bad Choices By Microsoft (Score 2, Informative) 676

by Czmyt (#22852696) Attached to: The Death of Windows XP
It seems very obvious that the people who developed Windows Vista don't never to use their own product. What else can explain some of the stupidest fucking product decisions ever made? It's just unbelievable how Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system took a giant step backwards from Windows XP. The fact that network transfer speeds from Windows Vista over gigabit Ethernet averages around 5MBps for me when similar transfers from my XP machine if six times faster. This is after I installed SP1 and I'm not running multimedia applications in the background. Before SP1, the transfer speed would sometimes go down to 1MBps. Just unbelievable. WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING? I've got a couple of notebooks running Vista. Whenever I first turn them on, their hard disks whir away for 10 minutes or so doing the shadow backup/system restore thing it does, WHETHER IT'S RUNNING ON BATTERY POWER OR NOT. Way to go, dumb fucking shits. This is after I figured out how to stop its incessant disk defragmenting. The tech. press has said it much better than I could: Microsoft broke tons of existing applications without adding any real innovation to Vista.
The Courts

Submission + - Seattle Blogger Successfully Defends Libel Suit (richardsilverstein.com)

Submitted by
richards1052
richards1052 writes: "Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Reid yesterday dismissed a suit filed by a controversial local pro-Israel activist who sued me for saying in my blog that she was a "Kahanist." She claimed that in doing so I had called her a terrorist, since there was an Israeli political party, Kahane Chai, which the U.S. Treasury Department labelled a terrorist organization. The plaintiff, Rachel Neuwirth, also included noted Stanford University Middle East historian Joel Beinin as a party to her suit. My pro bono attorneys filed an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) arguing that a blog is a public forum, that the pro-Israel activist was a public figure, and the issues under discussion were vital ones that merited discussion in public discourse. The judge accepted our thinking and dismissed the suit. This is a victory not only for blogging free speech, but for the widest possible discussion of the thorny issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are those who only believe in speech they agree with, while speech they disagree with should be stifled. This is a pernicious principle and one the court rejected. The plaintiff will have to pay reasonable legal fees for the defendants."
Government

Submission + - France Attempts to Ban Pirates from Web Access (pcmag.com)

Submitted by
explosivejared
explosivejared writes: "Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new anti-piracy system unveiled on Friday. The three-way pact between Internet service providers, the government and owners of film and music rights is a boon to the music industry, which has been calling for such measures to stop illicit downloads eating into its sales. Under the agreement — drawn up by a commission headed by the chief executive of FNAC, one of France's biggest music and film retailers — service providers will issue warning messages to customers downloading files illegally. If users ignore those messages, their accounts could be suspended or closed altogether."
The Internet

Submission + - Virtual Vigilantism for Megan Meier's family (rottenneighbor.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "http://www.rottenneighbor.com/story.php?title=55926 Bloggers have taken on Megan's cause, with an outburst of virtual vigilantism. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that dozens of people have apparently been calling local businesses that work with the Drew family's company, which prints advertising. The Drews' home address, phone numbers, email addresses and photographs have also been posted on blogs such as RottenNeighbor.com and hitsusa.com. And there are reports that people are driving through the once tranquil neighbourhood in the middle of the night, screaming, "Murderer!""
Encryption

Submission + - WWII Colossus codecracker outdone by a German (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by
superglaze
superglaze writes: "More on the World War II-era Colossus codecracker project. Not only has it been outdone in a cipher-breaking challenge, but — irony of ironies — it was beaten by a German! From the story: The winner was Joachim Schüth, from Bonn, who completed the task using software he wrote himself. "[Schüth] cracked the most difficult code yesterday," said the museum's spokesperson on Friday. "We're absolutely delighted. He used specially written software for the challenge. Colossus is still chugging away, as we got the signals late. Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.""
Portables

Submission + - Inside The Asus Eee PC, A Full Retail Evaluation (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "The Asus Eee PC is now available for sale in the US as of today and there is more than enough buzz about this new, low-cost, ultra-portal computer that ships with a custom KDE-built interface for Linux. Though the machine has been positioned by some as a response to the XO-1 laptop from OLPC, it appears to be a bit more and much less toy-like in its design. This full evaluation shows the Eee PC is built on Intel's mobile Celeron and the 910GML Express chipset. Power consumption was measured at a miserly 15 Watts idle and 18 Watts under load with battery life in excess of three hours. There is also an abundance of software pre-installed on the machine, like Open Office applications, Skype and Pigeon."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft denies sabotaging Mandriva-Nigerian deal (blorge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has denied sabotaging Mandriva's deal with the Nigerian government to supply Classmate PCs from Intel along with a customized Mandriva Linux operating system. Mandriva recently closed the deal with the Nigerian government and the initial order of 17,000 PCs is now on their way. However, the Nigerian government informed the company that once the initial order had been filled it will terminate the agreement and switch to the Windows operating system instead. Doh!
Censorship

Submission + - Schools blocking Wikipedia doesn't do it favours 1

Submitted by
codingmasters
codingmasters writes: "I'm currently a 16 year old student in an Australian secondary school. As with most schools, Wikipedia is blocked because the content, despite usually being correct, is deemed unreliable because anyone can edit it and there is no sure-fire way of ensuring that the information on there is correct. While these people make a valid point, it is easy to see that these people have practically no experience on Wikipedia. Anybody who did would realise that vandalism is reverted almost immediately, and that all information is required to be sourced from other places, or it is removed.

The driving force for me to write this was thus: a couple of years ago, when Wikipedia started becoming widely known, my principal apparently came across some pornographic images on there (this is unconfirmed, but odds are she was looking at a page to do with sex, making the images relevant). Not understanding Wikipedia, and believing it an easy way for people to access porn at school, she requested that the site be blocked (despite widespread dissent from a lot of teachers). Then, last Tuesday night, at our school's annual Speech Night, she mentioned Wikipedia and how good it is, and quoted things from a couple of articles. This major piece of hypocrisy got me thinking.

By blocking Wikipedia and told that it's unreliable because anyone can edit it, I believe it encourages a mentality in people: "Wikipedia is bad, everything in it is bad, it will never be good, so don't use it." By telling people this, I reckon they are more likely to vandalise Wikipedia, because they are being told, and end up believing, that Wikipedia is trash, so trash it further and see now reason why they shouldn't.

If teachers were to stop bringing Wikipedia down, take the time to understand it and how it works, unblock it at school, agree that Wikipedia is useful, and tell the students that they can use this resource, I believe it would create a new mentality in students, and in the end, the wider community: "Wikipedia is a useful resource which you can and should use, not ruin. Don't vandalise it, because you are just spoiling it for yourself and others. In stead, use the vast information it has to offer."

What do you guys think about this idea? Is it possible to change now that its reputation as either a great resource or a massive waste of space is so immensely ingrained in people's minds?"
Input Devices

Submission + - The 10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time (pcworld.com)

Submitted by
Harry McCracken
Harry McCracken writes: "We've posted a slideshow on the 10 Worst PC Keyboards of all time — most of which date from the early 1980s, and all of which are just terrible, with missing keys, keys whee they shouldn't be, and some truly strange design decisions. (I'd forgotten that the IBM PCjr didn't even have characters printed on the keycaps.) If you ever owned any of these, browsing through our picks may make your fingers numb all over again. — Harry McCracken, editor in chief, PC World"
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Vista Corrupts Database Files

Submitted by
Major General Ist
Major General Ist writes: ""Time for a rant. If ever there was proof that Vista was rushed out the door, this is it. If ever there was proof that there is slow uptake of Vista by enterprise clients, this is it. Let me explain..." This blog article goes on to discuss how the much hyped Bitmap Differential Transfer (BDT) feature of Windows Vista's Folder Redirection corrupts databases! It seems that the new block synchronization needs some work. I'm amazed this hasn't been discussed everywhere."
Privacy

Submission + - UK to imprison for inability to decrypt data

Submitted by mrbluze
mrbluze writes: Ars technica has an article describing new laws which come into effect on 1st November in the UK. Up to 2 and 5 years imprisonment can be inflicted on any person who refuses or cannot provide keys or decrypt data as requested by police or military for criminal or anti-terror purposes, respectively. From the article:

The Home Office has steadfastly proclaimed that the law is aimed at catching terrorists, pedophiles, and hardened criminals — all parties which the UK government contends are rather adept at using encryption to cover up their activities.
It refers to a potential problem faced by international bankers who would be wary to bring their encryption keys into the UK. Some how I doubt that is the real problem with the law.
Businesses

Submission + - Who's the Expert here?

Submitted by brainee28
brainee28 writes: Recently, The IT Department for my company rebuilt from the ground up all infrastructure (servers, workstations and network switches)to deal with legacy issues from the last systems administrator. It was done in 2 phases, both of which were technically successful, but have created political issues.(I'm the administrator that advocated for the change. The political issues are that during the planning for this process, 2 engineers from one of our divisions were asked to consult because the IT Department was relatively new, and the president wanted other opinions. One used to build network switches for a discontinued LAN based product; the other created some of the basic VLAN software that's now used in most network switches. Both have expressed their dissatisfaction at the end result of this change; as it impacts some of their projects by the new structuring. One has now resorted to sniping, "testing" my system with potential backdoors, and advocating that the engineer's home network is better suited for his work than my corporate network, and general badmouthing. He unfortunately, has worked at this company for over 25 years, whereas I've been here for 8 years now. How would you handle this situation?
Data Storage

Submission + - Seagate's new 1TB drive -- costly, but so are SUVs (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Tested with Simpli Software's HDTach, the Barracuda 7200.11 series drive posted an 85.5MB/sec average read speed. Compare that with the 57MB/sec recorded from a 250GB Seagate hard drive (ST3250824AS 3.AA), and that's a huge difference for a hard drive. Random-access time was also lower for the 1TB Barracuda at 12.9ms, vs. 15.7ms for the 250GB drive. But the cost of the Barracuda may put you off. On the other hand, hey, it's a terabyte of storage."

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