OS WARS MEGA THREAD (Now debating proprietary vs. open-source!)

[Bj]

I don't suppose there's a way to turn it off?

It says on the site:
http://www.techarp.com

chose to have Windows 7 install updates automatically would have this update installed and running by now
...
Do note that this update cannot be uninstalled or rolled-back. If it is installed into a PC with a hacked version of Windows 7, the only way to remove it would be to reinstall Windows 7 and avoid the update.

It looks like if you don't download/install KB971033 then its all free and clear.

From Windows blog it has a few key controversial things
1:

The update can also be uninstalled at any time

2:

It is important to know that the customer will see no reduced functionality in their copy of Windows – a customer’s applications work as expected, and access to personal information is unchanged. The Update will run periodic validations (initially every 90 days). During validation, Windows will download the latest ‘signatures’ that are used to identify new activation exploits

The question is, do you trust them? What I don't like at all is that it continuously downloads and runs scans all the time... and people wonder why 7 is slow(er) .

 

[Andy44]

Why would you trust MS anymore than you can trust the telecom companies, all of whom agreed to break the law and provide the federal government their customers' private data after 9/11 (except for Qwest Communications, which was subsequently punished by being cut off from federal contracts)?

If the federal government puts the squeeze on Microsoft or Apple or any other big tech company, those companies will cave almost immediately, anything to please the Big Customer and avoid punative IRS scrutiny.

The actions of the government and big telecom companies after 9/11 make this totally plausible, if not yet verifiable.

 

[Bendarr]

Excuse me but one thing I noticed. In the articles dealing with Windows 7, I took the liberty of looking at a few comments and one thing I noticed. The date. April 1st for the article. Has there been any confirmation of this or is it only at that site and thus a candidate for a April Fools joke?

Link to the Forums at Tech ARP dealing with that article. Seems to sum it up nicely. It was a April Fools Joke.

http://forums.techarp.com/reviews-articles/25880-ed-118-spyware-microsoft-windows-7-a.html

 

[Andy44]

Excuse me but one thing I noticed. In the articles dealing with Windows 7, I took the liberty of looking at a few comments and one thing I noticed. The date. April 1st for the article. Has there been any confirmation of this or is it only at that site and thus a candidate for a April Fools joke?

Oh. Good catch. Well, don't I look the fool, now? :embarrassed:

It could be real, if it's a joke than it's not a very good one. But who knows. I still choose to eye my OS suspiciously, though, just for good measure.:tiphat:

 

[Bj]

Why would you trust MS anymore than you can trust the telecom companies, all of whom agreed to break the law and provide the federal government their customers' private data after 9/11 (except for Qwest Communications, which was subsequently punished by being cut off from federal contracts)?

Shhh Andy, they are watching us... :shifty:

Seriously, if I had any message really truly confidential that I absolutely wanted to keep a secret, I would either keep it entirely off network, or a computer for that matter. Really, is there anything special about me that the other 100's of people aren't already doing? Unless of course it was something illegal and some scan or random look picked it up.

I think what gives people this false sense of security is that there are so many other people doing the same thing and of all the trillions of TB's of internet traffic, are they going to read your 1 bit? Truth is, if someone wants to shift through my mail box, all they will find is the usual spam junkmail, and a few messages from my college about surveys, questions, notes, posts, congrats and whatever.

The actions of the government and big telecom companies after 9/11 make this totally plausible, if not yet verifiable.

It would be ignorant to assume the companies are not recording anything. Even OF records the IP address of each poster/user. AFAIK you being a mod, can see my IP... it would be dumb to say that the ISP doesn't know which IPs you accessed.

---------- Post added at 05:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:33 PM ----------

April 1st for the article.

Hhah, nice well not really,

Oh. Good catch. Well, don't I look the fool, now? :embarrassed:

It could be real, if it's a joke than it's not a very good one. But who knows. I still choose to eye my OS suspiciously, though, just for good measure.:tiphat:

I wonder how many are actually taking it seriously? The article should be retracted, so that simple searches from Google will not make that hit. Also explains the few fact differences between MS blog and that one.

Even though its a joke, I still dont like the idea of automatically downloading every 90 or less days.

 

[Bendarr]

No problem. Glad to be of some small help. I run XP myself (along with some emulators for old software and obscure stuff) for fun.

As it is, I still butt heads occasionally having to explain to people that "Alternative 3" is not a documentary. (chuckle)

Edit to add:
On one of the forum replies someone wondered how many TB of Porn suddenly got deleted by frantic users. (chuckle)

 

[Arrowstar]

It says on the site:
http://www.techarp.com

It looks like if you don't download/install KB971033 then its all free and clear.

From Windows blog it has a few key controversial things
1:
2:The question is, do you trust them? What I don't like at all is that it continuously downloads and runs scans all the time... and people wonder why 7 is slow(er) .

Well, strictly speaking, it sounds like you may only be able to avoid the update until SP1 rolls around. At that point, according to the article, your options are to avoid SP1 or continue avoiding the update. Granted, this is all under the pretense that the article isn't an April Fool's Day joke...

 

[Andy44]

If is is a joke, it's a poor one, as it's entirely plausible that this is true.

 

[Hielor]

If is is a joke, it's a poor one, as it's entirely plausible that this is true.

Arguably, those are the best kinds of April Fool's jokes.

 

[Arrowstar]

You forgot for Windows ME. :lol:

 

[Hielor]

From a few pages back, the hibernate/sleep discussion. Interesting data related to power usage during sleep:
http://lifehacker.com/5526542/how-much-battery-life-does-sleep-mode-really-drain

Not really a large enough sample size to make a full conclusion, but an interesting datapoint is how one of the laptops they used actually used less power while sleeping than while shut down... :shrug:

 

[tblaxland]

an interesting datapoint is how one of the laptops they used actually used less power while sleeping than while shut down... :shrug:

I suspect that they actually use about the same whilst sleeping/shutdown but it uses more energy for the shutdown/startup procedure than for sleep/wakeup procedure. The battery drain measurements were done before shutdown/sleep and after startup/wakeup. A full shutdown/startup cycle would typically require more time and more HDD activity so it is not too surprising that it would use more energy.

EDIT: It would also be interesting to know how the ambient temperature varied during the tests. Accurately measuring battery capacity and discharge rates is notoriously difficult at low discharge rates and varying temperatures.

 

[insanity]

You forgot for Windows ME. :lol:

We've all tried to forget Windows ME

 

[Enjo]

O-F Staff note: posts moved here from the Microsoft "dumbing down" games thread.

thankfully, there are still few hard-standing beacons of intelligent gaming like our dear Martin and his space-sim as well as some sparse others...

As he said, besides IMHO the real problem is dumbing down their OSes, at least from my point of view. That's because people not only have no idea about electronics while using computers, but stop having any idea even about computer science basics built atop it.
Ah the good old DOS days...

 

[AirSimming]

Except for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Orbiter I have nothing else that runs fine on Windows 7.

The problem I have with Windows 7 is the user interface. It just sucks. It runs nice/fast but it really sucks somehow. It is nothing more than a faster/slightly improved Vista.

 

[Hielor]

As he said, besides IMHO the real problem is dumbing down their OSes, at least from my point of view. That's because people not only have no idea about electronics while using computers, but stop having any idea even about computer science basics built atop it.
Ah the good old DOS days...

What do you mean by "dumbing down?"

Do you mean "increasing the capability of the system while also increasing its accessibility to end users?"

Because I fail to see how that's a bad thing. Are you honestly saying that navigating one's computer with a command line is better than having a GUI?

The problem I have with Windows 7 is the user interface. It just sucks. It runs nice/fast but it really sucks somehow. It is nothing more than a faster/slightly improved Vista.

And Vista was nothing more than a faster/slightly improved (or slower/less-improved, depending on your point of view) XP, which was itself nothing more than a faster/slightly improved Win2000 targetted at home users as well...

This is how OS development works. You don't start from scratch every time, you build on what's already there.

Moreover, "it really sucks somehow" isn't a particularly valid or useful point. You say it's nice and fast, but that it sucks. How does it suck?

 

[eveningsky339]

(WARNING: LINUX HIPPIE)

One of the things I enjoy about Linux is that most distro's have the option to utilize multiple desktop environments, the Big Two being KDE and Gnome. But there is also XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, and many others.

I currently have four desktop environments installed on my Ubuntu (soon to be openSUSE) partition, and while I rarely go outside Gnome or KDE, it's nice to have options instead of being stuck with a single desktop environment as one is with Windows. Although technically one could install Gnome or KDE on Windows, it's not... advisable.

To be fair there are some Unix-like systems where only one desktop environment is supported, such as PC-BSD.

 

[computerex]

As he said, besides IMHO the real problem is dumbing down their OSes, at least from my point of view. That's because people not only have no idea about electronics while using computers, but stop having any idea even about computer science basics built atop it.
Ah the good old DOS days...

I don't think that is a valid point. Who cares what the end user knows about the computer science that is used behind the OS? Computers are used as tools. A computer scientist may concern him/herself with the algorithms, techniques, etc behind an OS, but someone who is using the computer for easy billing doesn't need to know.

 

[MeDiCS]

I don't think that is a valid point. Who cares what the end user knows about the computer science that is used behind the OS? Computers are used as tools. A computer scientist may concern him/herself with the algorithms, techniques, etc behind an OS, but someone who is using the computer for easy billing doesn't need to know.

No one should be required a CS degree to use a computer, but bad things do happen when a computer is viewed as something it is not: simple. I can't complain that software projects tend to make it as simple as possible for the dumb users, but as a smart person said:

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

It's like cars, you can't expect a driver void of knowledge of how his car works to not cause an accident.

 

[computerex]

No one should be required a CS degree to use a computer, but bad things do happen when a computer is viewed as something it is not: simple. I can't complain that software projects tend to make it as simple as possible for the dumb users, but as a smart person said:

Computers are nothing more then tools, no knowledge of how a computer works should be required to use it as a tool. A good, well written program should only let the user focus on issues that the program is written to solve. If "bad things happen", that is a short coming of the programmer.

It's like cars, you can't expect a driver void of knowledge of how his car works to not cause an accident.

I don't really understand. You can't tell me that the vast majority of the drivers know anything about the internal workings of their automobiles... I certainly don't, and I have yet to cause an accident or receive an infraction. I don't expect myself to get one either, and I don't expect other people who don't know how their cars work to get one.