Windows XP at the 10-Year Benchmark
I've noticed that all the people I personally know who are stubbornly sticking with XP are OLD. They just hate learning new things. And Vista legitimized this for them.
Which is pretty funny, since I'm actually older than quite a few of them, but I was happy to move up and on once Win7 came out. A huge sticking point for them is usually the taskbar, which is different than what they've been using for eight years, and it's right up front and obvious, so it causes an immediate aneurysm - I gave it a week, learned all the new features it has to offer, and now I love it. So much more productive.
But... fear of the unknown. Which I guess is understandable if you've spend 8 years learning all the quirks of your old girlfriend.
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?
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Yes, we will continue to use it for years to come.
Manufacturing equipment and programs do NOT get updated very quickly to new OSes. I have machines that still run on Windows 2000 with proprietary controllers that cannot be run virtual. You have to run it on iron or nothing on these things. The same goes for Windows XP. Did I mention that some of these machines still use DOS?
You don't go chucking out $500,000 to $3,000,000+ equipment just because an OS is old.
The workstations that interface with these machines are like-wise stuck with the older OS because the software will not run or are not supported on a newer OS.
The office machines will be updated to a new OS as the physical hardware gets replaced. The migration schedule has really slowed down in this economy.
I will get to support DOS and Windows 2000 through 7 for years and years to come.
The good news is I can keep most of that equipment off the Internet. The rest can be restricted to just the site or sites they need.
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?
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It showed the danger when there is a lack of real competition in a market place, when one company has a near dominance of a product category. XP was a fine operating system for it's time but it would never have been allowed to stay around for so long had there been real competition from Apple or another vendor.
It also coexisted alongside the abomination that was IE 6 and they showed little urgency in producing decent successors for those products. You wonder how long it would have taken for Microsoft to release IE 7 (and the much better IE 8) had it not been for Firefox. They let XP live for ages because even after OSX became a better OS it wasn't going to make inroads into Microsoft's bread and butter - the enterprise market. (It seems unbelievable now that there were sites that only worked in IE 6)
Thankfully Microsoft are now much better. Windows 7 is a great OS, IE 9 is a pretty decent browser and doesn't break the web, and they are committing to more frequent releases of those products. However when fanboys are dismissing the competition we should remember what happens when their is none. Would iOS have developed at the same pace were it not for Android? Would we all be stuck with crappy phone software and Windows Mobile 6.5 had it not been for the iPhone?
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?
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Works "just"? What planet is this guy from?
XP is still so widely used because it actually does work. Clunky? Need better software? Why?
For most of us, just being able to use Office apps, a browser, and look at photos, music and some basic video is all we do with a computer. This ongoing insistence by the tech heads (and Microsoft, and Apple), that they need to keep "improving our experience" is nothing short of irritating.
With each new incarnation, the systems are more bloated irritating to use. Stop hiding things. Stop embedding features I don't need.
Leave it alone. NT was awesome. It was fast as lightening on a lowly 400 MHz P3. Now, it takes a processor with 10 times the throughput just to make it so Windows can open a directory window or the START menu as fast as NT did.
Newer systems = newer features.... not necessarily "better" features, or even "necessary" features.
Just make the darn thing stable, simple, and secure. Stop worrying about transparent menu pop-ups.
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?
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Reminds me how I miss Windows 98 SE.
Which in turn reminds me how I miss Windows 95.
Which in turn reminds me how I miss Amiga OS
Which in turn reminds me how I miss my Amstrad CPC
Which in turn reminds me how I miss my ZX81
Which in turn reminds me how I miss my Atari
Which then makes me cry, because then I miss Hill Street Blues, and dancing to disco as a nipper with my mum.
*sobs*
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?
Snap, Kraken and Pop!
Like the boy who cried wolf,
there is so much hyperbole surrounding the world of scientific discovery today
that I find it hard to trust the over-the-top theorizing of modern scientists.
Scientists have long been taking giant leaps in their theories about the fossil
record. With the growing competition for financial backing and the race to
publish, both in scientific journals and in the media, one could quite easily
dismiss or, at the very least, distrust what is being purported today as solid
science.
I guess the parable for today is, The Scientist Who Cried Kraken, by
Mark McMenamin.
Read the article DISCOVERY NEWS/ Smokin' Kraken?
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Putting on the blinders of mock historical retrospective, all of the naysayers below sound very much like the contemporary establishment that had nothing but snide, overly confident criticism for the pursuits of Darwin or the Wright Brothers (neither of whom approached their life's work from a basis of classical education in the subject).
While Carl Sagan was almost certainly correct when he suggested that "just because some geniuses were laughed at doesn't imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses," history has proven time and time again that one's presence as the laughing stock of any scientific community can be and often is the very first hallmark of the sort of brilliance that ultimately changes the world.
At the very least, Mr McMenamin's ability to so brazenly challenge established thinking suggests that he possesses a quality that most scientists regrettably do not: a backbone that enables him to leave the pack without fear. If history is correct, and whether ultimately vindicated in his present hypotheses or not, McMenamin would thus seem far more likely to make an impact on science than those who are too busy laughing at him to prove him wrong or, God forbid, right.
Read the article TG DAILY/Triassic 'Kraken' may have created self-portrait
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Neutrinos Moved Faster Than Speed of Light?
OPERA Neutrino Experiment
This is the thing I find so fascinating about science. As Tim Minchin put it,
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed". This discovery could one
day change our understanding of the universe and the way in which things work.
Doesn't mean previous scientists were wrong; all science is build on the
foundation of others work. That's not arrogance, it's a thirst for knowledge.
Read the article BBC/Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
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The results are observed within a 'confidence interval'. That means there're
possible errors arising from sample size, measurement artifacts etc. All the
scientists are saying is that their expts. are significant within a certain
accuracy, and they want an independent review of their results. If one can prove
mathematically that a speed above light exists, then you're on to something.
Read the article BBC/Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
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Having run various experiments on many systems during my engineering career I
can appreciate the position the scientists at CERN are in. They ran an
experiment, got odd results. So they recalibrated everything, still got weird
results, upgraded parts for accuracy, still got weird results. So now they're
doing what I'd do, getting someone else to cross check what they've done. All
very professional
Read the article BBC/Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
I tend to lean in favour of one of Relativity's most simple ideas, in that nothing can exceed the speed of light.
To do so violates the idea of anything with mass (even neutrinos) accelerated to close the speed of light requiring an insane amount of energy to do so. To equal it, infinite. Then you have the build up of kinetic energy in anything with measurable mass when accelerated to the speed of light, no matter how small, becoming infinite. The object's mass becomes infinite. All of which point towards physical impossibilities.
I feel error has crept into these experiments because the results kinda fly in the face of many rigid and tested theories. I recall reading recently about theoretical particles with truly zero mass (that could hypothetically be accelerated to the speed of light), but these were purely theoretical and measuring/observing them if they did exist posed all sorts of challenges.
Does this mean current theories concerning optics and relativity cannot be proven wrong or expanded upon? Of course not, but a lot of basic 'rules' suggest the claims these folks are making will require some serious evidence and re-testing. And given the tiny margin they are claiming, error cannot be ruled out
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Neutrino experiment sees them apparently moving faster than light
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If this is true consequences are mind boggling. If in fact neutrinos can travel faster than light, it doesn't matter that it's "only" 0,00002 % faster (or whatever) as far as we know (and we may know less that we thought), it should be possible to reach any speed.
As I understand for a particle with mass to reach the speed of light you need more and more energy, as more energy gets converted to mass reaching a point where you would need infinite energy. Massless particles can only travel at the speed of light (photons and other force carriers). But particles moving faster than light have no barrier that we're aware of. Instantaneous communications are possible; just to mention something.
The consequences are just too far reaching, so let's be cautious and wait for some other team to replicate the experiment and see what it all brings us. Relativity has been tested over and over, in increasingly finer and subtler details, and we have never seen hints of new physics. A discovery as exceptional as this requires also exceptional, beyond reasonable doubt, and replicable tests
Read the article ARS TECHNICA/Neutrino experiment sees them apparently moving faster than light
READ MORE TOP COMMENTS: September 2011
I think the problem is not just with tech reporting but also within the technical fields themselves. Count the number of 'breakthroughs' with sensationalist headlines reported each year by scientists. Then follow them up five years later to see if even a few of them met or exceeded original 'hopes'. I can assure you that most of the headliners wouldn't have survived that long.
There are two parties at fault here imo: 1. The scientists themselves, who aspire to greatness that they are not, and so speculate more than they need to -- and add high-sounding encomiums to their own work 2. The tech journalists who know nothing more about technology than mere enthusiasts.
And both feed off each other. The trouble is developing a good science contact list takes time and more importantly effort for the journalists (just like developing good science takes effort and time for the scientists). If you decide on taking shortcuts, it shows up in the results in whatever profession you are in.
Read the article WIRED/The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense