Posts by h4rm0ny

"yea its pretty pricey, and you can try and compare it to an ultrabook. Thing is ultrabooks still run that piece of shit windows. Whatever version you talk about windows is shit."

Well that's a convincing and well supported argument!

"espically if you are trying to do anything creative which is what the macs are aimed at"

Last time I checked, Windows ran Photoshop perfectly well and Wacom tablets worked fine. Or are you talking about sound, because Cubase, Sibelius and I'm sure others too, all run fine on Windows. Maybe you mean 3D graphics and animation? Well, I have VUE installed on Windows 7 and though I don't have a render farm on Windows, I know I could and I bet it would be price comparable to the same on Macs (better probably). Same with Maya and basically a long list of creative software. Not to neglect a certain word processor for the writers amongst us.

So really, I have no idea what you're talking about unless you're talking about this false image that some try to present as Macs being the tool of creative people and Windows being the domain of "I'm a PC, I do spreadhsheets" trite little advertising stereotypes.

Seriously - Macs, Windows, both are fine for creative work. I don't know what you're talking about.

Or is there some magic creativity enhancing property of M

Re: Surprisingly reasonable

"(as long as you're prepared to take your chances with an outfit called "John Lewis"). "

What's wrong with John Lewis? The John Lewis Partnership is great (they own Waitrose and their own department store chain). They're employee owned and company profits get divvied up amongst employees.

Re: New OSX

"Moreover, I kind of don't mind paying for service packs at sub £20 per year for both my macs against the £80 I just paid for a copy of Windows 7"

See, that's a fair argument. Acknowledges that it's pretty much equivalent to a service pack for Windows, but says they're happy with it as a different business model. I don't have the same preference but they're arguing from reasonable facts. Depending on the life-span of your computer, this may be more economical than buying everything up front for slightly more.

Really, one can't compare the two directly because Apple is actually selling the software bundled with their own hardware normally. How the profit breaks down internally, how much one drives sales of the other, is something for Apple's financial people to comment on. MS don't sell the hardware, they sell the software. So it's a case of comparing a business selling software and gives you regular free updates for a very long time afterwards with a business that sells hardware + software combos and charges you for periodic service packs. Which is best? Depends what you want. I prefer Windows as an OS to OSX, so that's my choice right there. If you're doing it purely on cost, it would be a more complicated analysis (but Apple aren't known for being cheap, so I think MS would come out any comparison well). But in any case, I stand by my comment that Apple charge you for service packs disguised as a new OS. Whether that is better or worse than buying Windows up front (and whether you like Windows or not), is up to the individual.

Re: New OSX

"Well with Snow Leopard they completely redid the Kernel Removing a lot of the legacy 32 bit stuff and replacing it with 64 bit stuff."

Yes, that's what I was actually referring to when I wrote about "things that have been available for a long time elsewhere". Also, it's neither a full shift to 64-bit (which would constitute a significant differentiator in an O/S change), nor no change. It's basically them saying: that "64-bit OS" that we gave you last time, was really largely 32-bit. I.e. they're not suddenly giving you a new version of an OS that is 64-bit. They're selling you the second part of an implementation of something you've already bought. Which to me says: "service pack", not "new OS".

Your comment about how "a new Kernel makes it more of a new OS than rebadging" different versions of Windows shows a significant ignorance of how the OS's are put together. 2K to XP was a "new kernel" in your terms above as they introduced 64-bit at that time (and they didn't subsequently charge extra for the second half of the job). And a lot of other changes too. Your description of Win98 to 2000 being a re-badging not worthy of the "new kernel" difference that you get from Leopard to Snow Leopard is even more extraordinary as an argument because 2000 derived from NT, not from Win98 (98 grew into Windows ME). It was significantly different underneath as well as different on the top.

Really, you can make positive comments about screens on Apple devices, or whatever you want to argue. But stay away from arguing that the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard is anything other than a service pack that you get free elsewhere. You ain't going to win that one.

Re: New OSX

"Except its not a service pack, those you get for free through software update."

It pretty much is a service pack. I've looked down the list of features for moving to Snow Leopard and they're almost all things that would be included in a service pack from MS for Windows (e.g. Windows includes upgrades for newer processor features in a service pack, with OSX they were listed as a feature of a new OS), things that have been available for a long time elsewhere. Only exception I can see is the genuinely useful upgrdate to support MS Exchange.

Basically what makes it a service pack rather than a new OS is that the new "features" aren't new features, but small upgrades to performance. You get the new version of QuickTime. Seriously? That makes it a new OS? Ditto the new version of Safari. What else? Quicker wake from sleep? These are service pack things.

Whilst you say that most people wouldn't notice the jump from Windows 2000 to XP? Or from there to Windows 7? Millions of ranting posters on the Internet disagree that there aren't major differences between these O/S. Windows 7 is massively different to XP. There are vastly more differences between an O/S upgrade on Windows than there are between, in the case the user was talking about Leopard to Snow Leopard.

Apple have found a way of charging for Service Packs. That's obvious to anyone who reads down the very padded feature list of upgrades for them here:

Snow Leopard

Re: Tampons

How about a trade? No more tampon adverts for no more nauseating 'Lynx effect' adverts.

Re: Really AMD?

I disagree. Loads of people would love an ultrathin laptop. Pretty much all agree that they are over-priced. When AMD release their own version at a more sensible price, they'll wipe the floor with Intel. No casual or business user wants to pay an extra couple of hundred quid for processing power that they'll never use.

Also, people don't want to have to buy / use lots of different devices but many people want to be able to lie in bed and surf the web which tablets are suitable for. WIndows buyers are also more likely to want to do serious work on the device as well which, for many of us, means a real keyboard. So a hybrid will actually be a good seller, imo.

Plus the new APUs they have developed provide decent graphics and good enough processing with lower cost and power use. Really, I think AMD are looking at a winner here. My only caveat is that they should ensure they don't skimp on the screens. I don't mind if my laptop APU isn't as rawly powerful as an Intel processor because it's plenty good enough for what I use my laptop for. But I do care if it's a shoddy screen or skimped on elsewhere.

Re: You've got two choices...

"I would like to propose a heavy tax on people with more than 2 children. People who have more than 4 should be castrated/sterilised, and people who have 15 state-funded scrotebag oiks should be ground down into animal feed."

A far, far more effective way of getting a population reduction is less discrimination against women in the workplace and greater educational opportunities all round. The greater sexual equality and work opportunities increase, the greater the reduction in birth rate so far (demonstrable throughout the West and elsewhere and logically guessable to anyone who pauses to think whether they would prefer to have an intellectually stimulating job that gives them lots of spare cash and some holiday time to spend it, or if they would prefer to try squeezing something the size of a grapefruit out of something the size of a lemon).

Re: SHARES

You posted that same comment on the last Facebook story. It was about as funny as cotdeath then, too.

Re: If

What if it is completed on budget?

This is true and I agree. But this is not about Ads directly. This is about Do Not Track. I.e. following your online presence from website to website. The Register are still free to display ads when you come here (and I don't block them either, actuallly. The Registrer is one of the few sites I visit where the ads are likely to interest me and get my clicks). However, it prevents an advertiser tracking you from The Register, to New York Times to donkeyporn.com and back again. So agree with your point, but Do Not Track is not about blocking ads, but monitoring your online behaviour.

Re: Errm did you not understand the article.

"Because Microsoft defaulted to on, they broke the agreement, and now advertisers simply will just ignore the DNT header."

So basically, it's better to have rights on the understanding that we don't use them, than to try to use those rights and risk losing them. How about we agree that Judith has the *right* to have a baby, even though she can't actually have one?

It's good to have this done. It's an expression that we do not wish to be tracked. If that is ignored, then maybe we can get some real laws in place on the subject. Seems to me that if we can't use our Do Not Track option, then it's not worth much. And I don't like a solution that lets everyone else be tracked just so advertisers aren't provoked into challenging my privacy. It's both selfish and it normalizes intrusion which long-term makes it harder for anyone to object to it including us.

RE: Music

I can't find a volume control on the App either. It does have "preview" written across it, but anyway... I was able to change the volume in two ways. On my laptop, it has a volume slider at the top (imagine it's the same if the keyboard has volume buttons). Sliding this up and down immediately displayed the volume on screen and changed the volume of the MP3. The other way I found was to slide the mouse to the right and click on Settings on the Charm menu and there is a volume control right in front of me. More or less just like how I go to the bottom left to click on the volume control in Windows 7. It seems that the App just uses whatever the general volume setting is rather than having its own. I suppose that is simpler.

Anyway, my first reaction to Metro was absolute horror. My second reaction, where I really tried, was also horror. Then I tried with the latest preview and suddenly I found it wasn't too bad. Don't know if you will have a similar change or heart or not. All I know was that I was getting as frustrated as you were last week and now I'm not. I want Word? I hit the Windows key, press 'w' and then 'enter' to select it. I'm immediately back in the desktop and it's about the same speed or quicker as using the Start menu. The full screen Apps I just flip back to the Desktop and it makes no difference (MP3 keeps playing) though I can see how it could. E.g. if you like to have the name of what's playing or where you are in a track on the desktop. But keep in mind that's just the MP3 player that came with it (and a beta at that). You can still stick VLC or whatever you want on it as you could with Windows 7.

You have no evidence of that. This is a good thing. And it's a smart thing. MS make their money by selling software. They have a sideline in advertising via Bing, but it's barely a toe in the water just for the sake of not letting themselves be fenced in or at the mercy of other companies. Whereas for Google it's almost their entire business model. So by doing this they simultaneously do three things: They please their customers (more of us care about our privacy than you might think and privacy is in the news often enough). They draw a clear line between themselves and other companies - pay up front with us, or pay via your personal details with others. And they hamstring their competitors in an ethical and perfectly legal way by siding with their customers' interests rather than Google and others that sell the online behaviour information.

All good solid reasons to do this and yet to see the reactions of some here, you'd think MS had done a bad thing. Oh yes, of course they have - they've done something that is good for the customers and can't easily be criticized for. That actually is a bad thing I suppose if you're someone who always seeks ways to condemn MS in everything they do.

Re: Patches?

Hardly a surprise to anyone who works in software development. Creating the install isos will be a substantial process, have to go through testing, then lined up on the web-servers ready to be hit by millions of downloads the moment it goes up, etc. The CP was probably finished at least a week ago. A week during which developers have had time to do more work, which only needs to go straight from them to testing and then up as a patch.

"I really can't get any enthusiasm for Win8, or even get interested enough to download it. Must be getting cynical in my old age... Is it just me?"

I doubt it's just you but it's also not universal. I develop primarily on UNIX systems (I've done the odd bit of Windows work here and there), but I've been reading through the development blog for Windows 8. Apart from the suitability or not of Metro on the Desktop, which I've yet to make my mind up about, Win8 is actually reading like they've put a lot of thought into assisting developers. It is well worth the time to have a read through the articles on their blog where they explain a lot of their reasoning. For example this article on screen resolutions:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx

Might seem a bit dry by topic, but things like native Vector support in applications so I can construct the whole application as vector graphics, the APIs for scaling, layout handling, automatically using selecting images based on the user's screen DPI, et al. are actually quite enthusing me. I particularly like the development tools that let me at a touch, switch between all the supported screen resolutions for testing. Similarly at the more techy end. I like how Chkdisk can now function on a mounted volume and can drop repair time down to <2secs. That's even faster than my ext4 partions. There's a lot of stuff like that.

Also, I was initially concerned about Win8 being dumbed down. It's well worth reading this (again from their design blog) article on the Enterprise features for "Bring Your Own" PC.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/19/managing-quot-byo-quot-pcs-in-the-enterprise-including-woa.aspx

I'm still not 100% sure what to make of Win8. It looks like Fisher Price, but take the time to read through the design blogs first. It looks like it's going to actually be a dream to develop for.

Re: Sorry what?

Thanks. That is a relief. There seems to be a lot of confusion here between Desktop and Metro "Apps."

Re: first concorde, now the UI (It is called Cargo -Cult)

It's hardly a cargo cult. The thing about Win8 and Metro is they are shaping up to be absolutely fantastic on mobile devices and tablets. The problem is the deployment of that GUI onto the Desktop.

Re: Sorry what?

Well that sort of answers one of my questions about how this will work with multiple monitors, but it raises more. I've tried Win8 out on my laptop. I still don't like it much - it's a step backward from Win7, imo. But on a laptop where I'm generally just browsing or doing a single thing such as a word document or reading a PDF, it's not a disaster, just a nuisance. But on my Desktop I am a power user. I will frequently have a VM running on one monitor and Windows visible on the other containing, e.g. my email client, Skype, maybe a browser window. If I don't have the VM up, it's typically because I'm doing more management stuff, e.g. I have MS Project up on one screen, Excel or Word or my email client in another. Will this sort of set up be possible in Windows 8? I assume with the Desktop I can do this (and Metro will merely be an annoying nuisance when I start up or need to launch a new program). But what about full screen progams such as my VM that take over the whole monitor as if it were there own? Does anyone know how Win8 will affect all this?

Re: I love Metro

What kind of a brand-obsessed idiot wants to see Windows get worse just so they can point and call names? Competition is what keeps raising standards. Apple, Linux, Windows, WP7, Android, iOS... All of them get better by having others around them that are good. It's self-destructive (and self-centred) to cheer problems in OS's, just because you identify yourself too closely with one product line. You don't see me celebrating a fall in Reebok's share price just because I wear Nike trainers at the moment.

Anyway, this assumes MS's share price will fall, which remains to be seen.