Adobe using P2P for updates?



  • I have just monitored AdobeARM.exe (the super-secret Adobe Reader updater) open a connection and download from some random TPG broadband user in Australia (IP 202.7.177.26).

    It was using BITS and then when I turned off BITS it went direct (chewing up all of my (shared, dial-up) bandwidth on the way).

    Does Adobe use some kind of P2P for it’s updates now? WTF? Seems more like malware to me.



  • Is there an actual problem here?



  • It wouldn't surprise me. AdobeARM is a big bag of WTF anyway. Seems it has an update every friggin' day, it takes forever to update, it keeps popping up annoying notifications until you allow it to update, and it always puts an Adobe Reader shortcut on my desktop (WTF? If I wanted to open Adobe Reader I'd double-click a PDF file. Why would I just want to open Reader on its own? I like clean desktops.) And I have to live through this nearly every day on both my home and work PCs. Definitely an annoyance I could live without.



  •  Why are you using Adobe's PDF reader?

    http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/



  • Not really a WTF; a lot of companies are taking advantage (read: assuming customer ownership) of high-speed internet access to lower their own bandwidth usage. 

     

    @vt_mruhlin said:

     Why are you using Adobe's PDF reader?

    http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/


    Foxit has locked up more on me than Reader has.



  • I prefer PDF-Xchange Viewer



  • @mott555 said:

    It wouldn't surprise me. AdobeARM is a big bag of WTF anyway. Seems it has an update every friggin' day, it takes forever to update, it keeps popping up annoying notifications until you allow it to update, and it always puts an Adobe Reader shortcut on my desktop (WTF? If I wanted to open Adobe Reader I'd double-click a PDF file. Why would I just want to open Reader on its own? I like clean desktops.) And I have to live through this nearly every day on both my home and work PCs. Definitely an annoyance I could live without.

    Are there any Adobe products left that aren't gigantic balls of WTF?



  • @Schlagwerk said:

    Not really a WTF; a lot of companies are taking advantage (read: assuming customer ownership) of high-speed internet access to lower their own bandwidth usage. 

     

    @vt_mruhlin said:

     Why are you using Adobe's PDF reader?



    Foxit has locked up more on me than Reader has.

    It seems like they could reduce their bandwidth needs by producing software that wasn't bug-ridden, bloated, and needing patched every three days. Seems like a typical management avoid addressing the real cause of their bandwidth problem (if that is the case)



  • Instead of whingeing on about how often it updates, why not open Adobe Reader, press Ctrl+K, click Updater, Do not download or install updates automatically, then click OK? Obviously this option hasn't occurred to you fellow 'professionals.' Or are you just too lame and paranoid to switch the Adobe updates off? I mean, when was the last time Adobe Reader required an update to let you read a PDF?

    Oh, and for the record, I last updated my Adobe Reader a few weeks back, and when I just checked it by clicking Help, Check for updates..., it told me there were no updates available.



  • Nobody caught the real WTF??  SHARED DIALUP



  • @Medezark said:

    Nobody caught the real WTF??  SHARED DIALUP

     

    It gets worse - it's shared 33k dial-up...

    But at least it's free.

    And it keeps me very aware of exactly what my machines are doing bandwidth-wise.

    There aren't many options where I am. I can get pay-per-MB 56k dial-up; or I can get my own K20,000 (about US$7,000) VSAT system at a fixed monthly rate; or I can use either of the two pay-per-MB wireless (3G) providers, one of which has poor signal at my location, and the other is prohibitively expensive (like around 20c per MB).

    I'll stick with my free dial-up for now.



  • BITS 4 supposedly can fetch a file from a peer on the same subnet. I doubt that was the case. Most likely your DNS was poisoned.



  • @LurkNoMore said:

    and download from some random TPG broadband user in Australia (IP 202.7.177.26).
     

    Hey! Stop leeching my Internets!

    (Zemm, TPG broadband user)

    @LurkNoMore said:

    It gets worse - it's shared 33k dial-up...

    But at least it's free.

    Back in the day (like around 2000) TPG had free 56k dialup between 1am and 7am which was my main Internet during my uni years. Then we went and got $AU200/month 1.5Mbit 23GB/month ADSL...



  • @Cad Delworth said:

    Instead of whingeing on about how often it updates, why not open Adobe Reader, press Ctrl+K, click Updater, Do not download or install updates automatically, then click OK? Obviously this option hasn't occurred to you fellow 'professionals.' Or are you just too lame and paranoid to switch the Adobe updates off? I mean, when was the last time Adobe Reader required an update to let you read a PDF?

    Oh, and for the record, I last updated my Adobe Reader a few weeks back, and when I just checked it by clicking Help, Check for updates..., it told me there were no updates available.

    Considering how many security holes are found in Adobe Reader, is that really a good idea?

    Hint: the answer is no. No it is a terrible idea, stay patched or get pwned. Ideally, don't have it installed at all.



  • @LurkNoMore said:

    is prohibitively expensive
     

    People around here say that Australia is an Internet backwater. I guess putting the broadband situation in Papua New Guinea into perpective makes it seem not so bad...



  • I want Adobe Reader to sit silently as an application on my machine like any other. When I want to open a PDF then then I want it to start up. When I no longer want to read a PDF file I want it to then close down and remain silent like it's not there.

    Similarly Flash should execute when and only when I am running an action script or whatever else it is that requires it.

    Updating any of these should never require me to restart my computer.

    I have Kaspersky on my machine and I don't want any other anti-virus checkers installed on my computer when I upgrade an Adobe product.

    Checking if an update is available is reasonable when I start Adobe Reader or whatever, if it does it silently in the background and does not delay opening the document, and if I decline will not ask me again for at least a week.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Cad Delworth said:

    Instead of whingeing on about how often it updates, why not open Adobe Reader, press Ctrl+K, click Updater, Do not download or install updates automatically, then click OK? Obviously this option hasn't occurred to you fellow 'professionals.' Or are you just too lame and paranoid to switch the Adobe updates off? I mean, when was the last time Adobe Reader required an update to let you read a PDF?

    Oh, and for the record, I last updated my Adobe Reader a few weeks back, and when I just checked it by clicking Help, Check for updates..., it told me there were no updates available.

    Considering how many security holes are found in Adobe Reader, is that really a good idea?

    Hint: the answer is no. No it is a terrible idea, stay patched or get pwned. Ideally, don't have it installed at all.

    SIGH ... considering my Adobe Reader IS up to date, is it still a 'terrible idea?'

    Hint: the answer is no. No it is not a 'terrible idea.' ;)

    Though to be fair to you, I didn't say that I also have 'Adobe ARM' and 'Adobe Reader speed launcher' switched off so they don't auto-run at boot time. I had assumed that everyone with a brain did that as a matter of simple common sense. :)

    Like Cbuttius, I don't exactly have Adobe Reader open all the time, only on those occasions when I need to open a PDF.



  • @Cad Delworth said:

    SIGH ... considering my Adobe Reader IS up to date, is it still a 'terrible idea?'

    You lost me. Are you saying that it's okay to let the software releases installed on your system get out-of-date, as long as you keep it up-to-date?



  • @Cad Delworth said:

    SIGH ... considering my Adobe Reader IS up to date, is it still a 'terrible idea?'

    Hint: the answer is no. No it is not a 'terrible idea.' ;)

    Turning off the update notifications? Yes, yes it is still a terrible idea.

    If you only checked manually "a couple weeks ago," how do you know it's up to date? Are you using a Ouija board or some shit? (Because I've tried the Ouija board, it's not reliable.)

    @Cad Delworth said:

    Though to be fair to you, I didn't say that I also have 'Adobe ARM' and 'Adobe Reader speed launcher' switched off so they don't auto-run at boot time. I had assumed that everyone with a brain did that as a matter of simple common sense. :)

    So because I didn't do that, I have no brain? You're an asshole. Also, if you're going to insult people, do it directly.

    @Cad Delworth said:

    Like Cbuttius, I don't exactly have Adobe Reader open all the time, only on those occasions when I need to open a PDF.

    Yah, and it only takes 2 milliseconds of pwned PDF opening to pwn the rest of your computer. Asshole.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Are there any Adobe products left that aren't gigantic balls of WTF?

    Photoshop [b]Lightroom[/b] (currently version 3.0) seems to be fairly WTF-free. I quite like it, the workflow works for me, and I haven't had it crash since version 1.x as far as I can remember.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Turning off the update notifications? Yes, yes it is still a terrible idea.

    The only software I allow to auto-update is my anti-virus. Everything else, I check manually for updates.

    @blakeyrat said:

    If you only checked manually "a couple weeks ago," how do you know it's up to date? Are you using a Ouija board or some shit? (Because I've tried the Ouija board, it's not reliable.)

    I did also say that I had just checked it ... and no updates were available. Presumably you missed that part in my original post, or were you too busy getting steamed up to notice?

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Cad Delworth said:
    Though to be fair to you, I didn't say that I also have 'Adobe ARM' and 'Adobe Reader speed launcher' switched off so they don't auto-run at boot time. I had assumed that everyone with a brain did that as a matter of simple common sense. :)

    So because I didn't do that, I have no brain? You're an asshole. Also, if you're going to insult people, do it directly.

    I had thought that someone used to sparring with Morbs on this forum wouldn't be so thin-skinned. Patently I was wrong.

    @Cad Delworth said:

    Like Cbuttius, I don't exactly have Adobe Reader open all the time, only on those occasions when I need to open a PDF.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Yah, and it only takes 2 milliseconds of pwned PDF opening to pwn the rest of your computer. Asshole.

    Thanks for your feedback. :)



  • Well, he puts little smilies after his sardonic remarks, thus demonstrating that despite all evidence to the contrary he's not really an asshole.



  • @Xyro said:

    Well, he puts little smilies after his sardonic remarks, thus demonstrating that despite all evidence to the contrary he's not really an asshole.

     

     

    So, wait, your saying that you are an asshole? :)



  • @Helix said:

    @Xyro said:
    Well, he puts little smilies after his sardonic remarks, thus demonstrating that despite all evidence to the contrary he's not really an asshole.
    So, wait, your saying that you are an asshole? :)
    Why don't you think a little and read the post with your brain next time. :)



  • @Helix said:


    So, wait, your saying that you are an asshole? :)

     

    His saying that he is an asshole is an event that did not occur. 



  • @Xyro said:

    @Helix said:

    @Xyro said:
    Well, he puts little smilies after his sardonic remarks, thus demonstrating that despite all evidence to the contrary he's not really an asshole.
    So, wait, your saying that you are an asshole? :)
    Why don't you think a little and read the post with your brain next time. :)

     

    :)



  • @Helix said:

    @Xyro said:
    @Helix said:
    @Xyro said:
    Well, he puts little smilies after his sardonic remarks, thus demonstrating that despite all evidence to the contrary he's not really an asshole.
    So, wait, your saying that you are an asshole? :)
    Why don't you think a little and read the post with your brain next time. :)
    :)
    Thanks, try to remember that in the future :)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Are there any Adobe products left that aren't gigantic balls of WTF?
     

     Well, Photoshop Elements is quite okay, not perfect(and really in need of a Linux Port), but considering the opposition it's not hard to look good.

     Tales from GIMP: I desperately tried to drag a part of an image I had selected. There were no hints in the programm, so I googled it. Their official help site told me that depending on my OS I either had to use Shift while dragging, or Alt + Shift, or Alt + Strg + Shift(which is hard to do actually), and didn't say which worked where. Didn't matter though, cause none worked on my system.

     



  • @fire2k said:

     Well, Photoshop Elements is quite okay, not perfect(and really in need of a Linux Port), but considering the opposition it's not hard to look good.

    The opposition... on Linux.

    On Windows and OS X, there's actually a lot of good competition to Photoshop Elements. Hell, I'd say Paint.NET is 99% as good on Windows, as long as you can do without the photo management bit (which Windows can do natively anyway), and it's free.

    @fire2k said:

    Tales from GIMP:

    Until they finally name their product something sensible, you don't even have to try it. You *know* something named "GIMP" is going to suck. It's right in the name.

    The humorous part is that Linux people think it's just fine! Proving that not only are they incapable of creating software with a good UI, but they're incapable of even judging whether or not software has a good UI.

    (With the exception of about a half-dozen guys working in GNOME.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The opposition... on Linux.

    On Windows and OS X, there's actually a lot of good competition to Photoshop Elements. Hell, I'd say Paint.NET is 99% as good on Windows, as long as you can do without the photo management bit (which Windows can do natively anyway), and it's free.

     

    Actually I never really liked User Interfaces dealing with manipulating pictures that aren't photoshop. I'm probably not being neutral because of the hours I spent with it, but every other product people tried to show me felt unnatural and alien or like a step back(Paint.NET is a good example, seeing how it's essentialy a pimped-up paint). I dunno why people, especially on windows have this insane need to test a multitude of "Freeware"-Tools that only badly implement a feature that could easily be handled otherwise. A pal of mine installed this sidebar-tool on every PC he had access to that basically showed every played song and every system message in a bright, not-system-integrated OSD.

     @blakeyrat said:

    The humorous part is that Linux people think it's just fine! Proving that not only are they incapable of creating software with a good UI, but they're incapable of even judging whether or not software has a good UI.

     

    The problem is that with the whole programmers writing for other programmers-crowd they only write software they themselves could use. I had a few people within my CS-classes that were going on and on about how Emacs is making this thing really easy, and that and so on. Reality check is nearly nothing on Linux is easy to use. Sure it's comfortable once you got used to it, but the learning curves for most apps are a bitch. Anyone who thinks VIM for example is easy to use deserves to be beaten with a screwdriver.

     Which is why I really don't understand Adobe - with only GIMP(and a few very sucky underdeveloped other candidates) as opposition they would dominate the whole market and could easily pave the way for their other technologies like, let's say flash, which I would use if it fucking existed on 64-bit Linux!

    And don't say nobody uses Linux on Desktop - Brazil for example has a giant project of Laptops for children with KDE, and as I recently found out, my local Musikstore has their complete IT on Linux, so it's not that far fetched.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    Actually I never really liked User Interfaces dealing with manipulating pictures that aren't photoshop. I'm probably not being neutral because of the hours I spent with it, but every other product people tried to show me felt unnatural and alien or like a step back(Paint.NET is a good example, seeing how it's essentialy a pimped-up paint).

    Ok...

    @fire2k said:

    I dunno why people, especially on windows have this insane need to test a multitude of "Freeware"-Tools that only badly implement a feature that could easily be handled otherwise. A pal of mine installed this sidebar-tool on every PC he had access to that basically showed every played song and every system message in a bright, not-system-integrated OSD.

    Wha... what? Are you talking about widgets when you say OSD? Why would Windows users be more prone to trying out widgets than OS X users? What would be the better-handled way to show a running log of played songs and system messages? (I mean, if you want to see those things, why wouldn't you use a widget for it? That's pretty much exactly what widgets are designed to do.)

    You had me, then you lost me. Utterly.

    @fire2k said:

    And don't say nobody uses Linux on Desktop

    1) Not enough people use Linux on the desktop to make it economic to port software to it. Especially considering that porting software to Linux is *far more difficult* than porting the same software to Windows or OS X. (For example, you need something like 3 completely different installation packages in different formats, you have to deal with mysterious library and kernel versions which may or may not match what you need even for OSes released the same year, you have to cope with missing features in the Linux ecosystem, like how games written for X11 can't get raw mouse data when the mouse is being used to control game characters, and you need constant maintenance to keep up with Linux kernel and library changes. Frankly, I'm surprised anybody writes software for Linux.)

    The people who *do* use Linux on the desktop, by and large, don't pay for software. They'll either just steal it, or slap together a knockoff and use that instead.

    @fire2k said:

    as I recently found out, my local Musikstore has their complete IT on Linux, so it's not that far fetched.

    Retail POS systems are appliances, not computers. You never need to worry about running Photoshop on one. Or... anything more than the POS software itself, and maybe the driver for the bar-code scanner.



  • @fire2k said:

    let's say flash, which I would use if it fucking existed on 64-bit Linux!




    or for that matter on any platform other than x86 32bit ...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wha... what? Are you talking about widgets when you say OSD? Why would Windows users be more prone to trying out widgets than OS X users? What would be the better-handled way to show a running log of played songs and system messages? (I mean, if you want to see those things, why wouldn't you use a widget for it? That's pretty much exactly what widgets are designed to do.)

    You had me, then you lost me. Utterly.

    No, I meant a literal application, with a systray entry and everything. But, okay, maybe not the best example - so onto another. Everyone I know swears on a different media player on Windows. I've seen so many Video-players with bad user infaces and badly screwed up codecs I can't even remember them all. And everytime I'm on a new system completely confused by the owners default file association with JetAudioFree Shareware-Edition or QuickTime or some other thing with a completely crazy interface I get a rant how that is "the best player out there". 

     

    @blakeyrat said:


    1) Not enough people use Linux on the desktop to make it economic to port software to it. Especially considering that porting software to Linux is *far more difficult* than porting the same software to Windows or OS X. (For example, you need something like 3 completely different installation packages in different formats, you have to deal with mysterious library and kernel versions which may or may not match what you need even for OSes released the same year, you have to cope with missing features in the Linux ecosystem, like how games written for X11 can't get raw mouse data when the mouse is being used to control game characters, and you need constant maintenance to keep up with Linux kernel and library changes. Frankly, I'm surprised anybody writes software for Linux.)

    The people who *do* use Linux on the desktop, by and large, don't pay for software. They'll either just steal it, or slap together a knockoff and use that instead.

    Actually Novell has been selling okay numbers of their package of Suse with a manual for 80€, which even my local small time bookstore sold a few instances of. There has been a small number of game publishers that according to their Forums sold an okay number of games, like the Penny Arcade game. Also I would pay for it, having paid for a windows licence only to most of the times run it badly in wine kind of proves that.

     

    @blakeyrat said:

    Retail POS systems are appliances, not computers. You never need to worry about running Photoshop on one. Or... anything more than the POS software itself, and maybe the diver for the bar-code scanner.
     

    No, they have their research and internet-boxes on Linux. Basically it contains internet access to check vendors, compare prices to the opposition and so on. They even had Guitar Pro running on Wine at some point to show people specific notations/sell software, but once again the lack of native software made that not work so well.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    No, I meant a literal application, with a systray entry and everything. But, okay, maybe not the best example - so onto another.

    So you have a crazy friend who runs a weird app, what conclusion about all Windows users am I supposed to draw from this?

    @fire2k said:

    Everyone I know swears on a different media player on Windows. I've seen so many Video-players with bad user infaces and badly screwed up codecs I can't even remember them all. And everytime I'm on a new system completely confused by the owners default file association with JetAudioFree Shareware-Edition or QuickTime or some other thing with a completely crazy interface I get a rant how that is "the best player out there".

    Wow! It's almost as if the software existed in a ... some kind of... open ecosystem with a free market and tons of competition!

    Surely we need Apple to swoop down and unapprove all of these media player apps that do not live up to your expectations. We can't have this kind of freedom on a general purpose computer!

    (Seriously, what are you complaining about here? Some people like different software than you do? Boo hoo.) (And again, I wonder, what conclusion about all Windows users am I supposed to draw from this?)

    @fire2k said:

    Actually Novell has been selling okay numbers of their package of Suse with a manual for 80€, which even my local small time bookstore sold a few instances of. There has been a small number of game publishers that according to their Forums sold an okay number of games, like the Penny Arcade game. Also I would pay for it, having paid for a windows licence only to most of the times run it badly in wine kind of proves that.

    None of those things you said? None of them even come close to countering my points. That game publisher went out of business, and now none of their fucking game ports even run because of library and kernel changes. The other companies that release Linux games, except for maybe all of the indies, do it to garner goodwill or because they're insane-- not because the Linux ports make any money.

    (Indies exist in an entirely different climate than major game publishers, where the less competition they have, the better they do. The 'word of mouth' marketing far outweighs the network effects driving people to the platform, so for them it's kind of irrelevant whether Linux has 20 million or 900 million users-- they'll sell the same quantity regardless. Add to that the dirge of titles on OS X and Linux, and you can see for Indie titles it's in their best interest to port, even if the port is a pain in the ass.)

    Anyway, the point is until the economics change, you won't see software on Linux. If Linux wants commercial software, they need to take the following steps:
    1) Get the Linux Standard Base people off their ass and really, really kicking ass. You need to have a set of *I guarantee every Linux will have this library* on every Linux OS, and you need to nail down the kernel ABI (and keep it nailed down for longer than 6 months.) Stop making fun of Microsoft for backwards compatibility, and start emulating them because they're doing it fucking *right*
    2) You need to allow paid commercial software in the repositories. That's the only way they can be safely installed in most Linux OSes, and it comes really close to solving the "Linux has no universal installers" problem. And guess what? Yes, this means some form of DRM. Suck it up, crybabies.
    3) You need to get the fucking dev tools up to snuff. Yes, we know Linux people don't like mono, but guess what? Java can't write decent GUI apps, and C# is *the only non-shitty language you got right now*. Suck it up and use it. There's already patent guarantees, the language and VM is already ISO standard, and it enables Windows programmers (at least those starting new projects) to do relatively trivial ports to Linux. Additionally: if you want games, you need debuggers that can handle games. You need debuggers that can dive right inside a shader and step through line-by-line, right now nothing in Linux can do that. (Debuggers in Linux actually... suck a lot.)
    4) Continuing on point 3, you need to make hardware-related development brain-dead simple. Linux's driver ABI should be nearly identical to Microsoft's, if it were, every hardware maker on Earth would write a Linux driver for their product. You can't use Photoshop on Linux if you can't use your tablet, and you can't use your tablet if the tablet maker looks at the Linux driver model and says "fuck this, that would cost way too much."



  •  Blakeyrant 3000!! ..ousand... sand..

    @blakeyrat said:

    you can't use your tablet if the tablet maker looks at the Linux driver model and says "fuck this, that would cost way too much."

    FTFY.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Anyway, the point is until the economics change, you won't see software on Linux. If Linux wants commercial software, they need to take the following steps:
    1) Get the Linux Standard Base people off their ass and really, really kicking ass. You need to have a set of *I guarantee every Linux will have this library* on every Linux OS, and you need to nail down the kernel ABI (and keep it nailed down for longer than 6 months.) Stop making fun of Microsoft for backwards compatibility, and start emulating them because they're doing it fucking *right*
    2) You need to allow paid commercial software in the repositories. That's the only way they can be safely installed in most Linux OSes, and it comes really close to solving the "Linux has no universal installers" problem. And guess what? Yes, this means some form of DRM. Suck it up, crybabies.
    3) You need to get the fucking dev tools up to snuff. Yes, we know Linux people don't like mono, but guess what? Java can't write decent GUI apps, and C# is *the only non-shitty language you got right now*. Suck it up and use it. There's already patent guarantees, the language and VM is already ISO standard, and it enables Windows programmers (at least those starting new projects) to do relatively trivial ports to Linux. Additionally: if you want games, you need debuggers that can handle games. You need debuggers that can dive right inside a shader and step through line-by-line, right now nothing in Linux can do that. (Debuggers in Linux actually... suck a lot.)
    4) Continuing on point 3, you need to make hardware-related development brain-dead simple. Linux's driver ABI should be nearly identical to Microsoft's, if it were, every hardware maker on Earth would write a Linux driver for their product. You can't use Photoshop on Linux if you can't use your tablet, and you can't use your tablet if the tablet maker looks at the Linux driver model and says "fuck this, that would cost way too much."

     

    Funny, a few years back I would have disagreed, but... I guess you're making sense(few... that was hard to say)

    A few quick addition as to why those won't happen anytime soon:

    1) Most of the infrastructure work is too broken to provide a stable API, especially concerning 3D. DRI2(alias the Ability to have more than one application actually use GPU rendering), Kernel Modesetting, Memory Management for GPUs are all things that were added within the last 2 years, as crazy as that sounds. And those are all things added to the kernel, and they are far from stable or working correctly, and change their API so much it actually bothered Linus... enough said.

    2) Ubuntu are trying to do that with their paid DVD-CSS and MP3-support plugins, but seeing how both these features are easily avaible in "illegal but nobody bothers to take the offical repos hosting it down"-mode I doubt it's working. Hen and Egg I guess, nobody tries unique software till there are accepted repos and there won't be till people buy software there.

    3) Actually I like the Java-Look on windows. Ironically it looks like shit on Linux. Decent Debuggers for games also won't happen till there are drivers that support "a few" features of modern cards. Right now the best you can get with open drivers(and seeing how the closed drivers often struggle with the Kernel-API, your point 1, they don't count that much) is OpenGL 2.1 halfway working, with a shitload of bugs and missing GL-Extensions

    4) Once again Irony cause Tablets are the only thing on Linux that really always worked out of the box for me. However your example stands for every other hardware



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Stop making fun of Microsoft for backwards compatibility, and start emulating them because they're doing it fucking *right*
     

    At least they did that in the past. For the past 8 years or so they've said "fuck backwards compatibilty", and it is starting to show, including customers now thinking twice before upgrading to a new product. In their defense, backwards compatibility is HARD (as Raymond Chan has documented many times) and you can probably only keep it up for so long.

    Anyway, I agree with you that this would help (or even horizontal compatibility), but it would also help to have Linux go over 1% desktop share. Years ago, I wrote a simple windows program that was publicly avalable; occasionally people would ask if it was available on Linux. Three things held me back from developing a Linux version:

    1) there was no straight port available in my development environment
    2) there was a Wine workaround that seemed to work
    3) just not enough requests to do this.

    Too much work, too little profit, too bad.



  • @b-redeker said:

    At least they did that in the past. For the past 8 years or so they've said "fuck backwards compatibilty", and it is starting to show, including customers now thinking twice before upgrading to a new product. In their defense, backwards compatibility is HARD (as Raymond Chan has documented many times) and you can probably only keep it up for so long.

    Despite that, Microsoft at their worst is still an order of magnitude better than Apple was at their best, in the Classic days. (Before Apple said "fuck backwards compatibility"... well, before they said it as much.)

    The driver model changes in Vista were painful, yes, but I think long overdue.



  • @fire2k said:

    1) Most of the infrastructure work is too broken to provide a stable API, especially concerning 3D. DRI2(alias the Ability to have more than one application actually use GPU rendering), Kernel Modesetting, Memory Management for GPUs are all things that were added within the last 2 years, as crazy as that sounds. And those are all things added to the kernel, and they are far from stable or working correctly, and change their API so much it actually bothered Linus... enough said.

    Yah, I don't think twice about running: World of Warcraft, Heroes of Might and Magic V (both DirectX games), encoding an MP4, and watching Netflix streaming on the same computer at the same time. It's flawless-- hell the games don't even have framerate hiccups, even when in the background.

    @fire2k said:

    2) Ubuntu are trying to do that with their paid DVD-CSS and MP3-support plugins, but seeing how both these features are easily avaible in "illegal but nobody bothers to take the offical repos hosting it down"-mode I doubt it's working. Hen and Egg I guess, nobody tries unique software till there are accepted repos and there won't be till people buy software there.

    And previously Lindows/Linspire tried it, and it failed for them too. (Although I think their store is still open.) Which is a shame, because Linspire's Click-N-Run store actually pre-dated the iTunes app store and (IIRC) Steam, making it possibly the first store of that type in existence. But, hey, Linux people don't pay for software, so... tough luck Linspire.

    @fire2k said:

    3) Actually I like the Java-Look on windows.

    Well, ... good for you I guess. But it's not the look I complain about, but the fact that nothing works. Handwriting recognition and voice recognition don't work right in Java GUI apps. They still have redraw problems when doing things like resizing windows, they're still super-slow at drawing GUIs compared to native apps. To give you an idea, the Java app I use most often is WebEx, which just barely hurdles the "completely broken" bar. I love the conference calls that are a blank screen and 5 minutes of people yelling, "try moving the window to your other monitor! WebEx doesn't work with more than one monitor! Because they're stuck in a time-warp from 1996 I guess! Or just incompetent idiots!"

    And for some reason, Java coders seem incapable of writing a good UI. If one exists, I've never seen it... when I hear the word "Java" I think two things: 1) great another virus from the web browser integration, 2) great another shitty-ass Lotus Notes-esque app.

    @fire2k said:

    Decent Debuggers for games also won't happen till there are drivers that support "a few" features of modern cards. Right now the best you can get with open drivers(and seeing how the closed drivers often struggle with the Kernel-API, your point 1, they don't count that much) is OpenGL 2.1 halfway working, with a shitload of bugs and missing GL-Extensions

    The whole OpenGL design is broken for game development. Since it takes 5+ years for any new GPU features to make it down the pipeline into a OpenGL standards doc, you end up with poor game developers having to develop every feature twice, once for ATI and once for nVidia, and then having to write the back-up for standard OpenGL cards as further punishment. So you have 3 code paths to accomplish one task. DirectX, you have one code path, and if Microsoft works out a more badass or faster way of doing the same thing in the future you get that feature for free when it comes out.

    @fire2k said:

    4) Once again Irony cause Tablets are the only thing on Linux that really always worked out of the box for me. However your example stands for every other hardware

    Well, yah, honestly I'd never tried a tablet on a Linux computer. What vexes me is sleep mode. Holy christ, Windows and Macintosh had sleep mode perfected in 19-fucking-98, and I can't find a single laptop in 2010 with flawless Linux sleep or hibernate support. Maybe in 10 more years they'll get that extremely basic feature figured out...



  • @b-redeker said:

    At least they did that in the past. For the past 8 years or so they've said "fuck backwards compatibilty", and it is starting to show, including customers now thinking twice before upgrading to a new product. In their defense, backwards compatibility is HARD (as Raymond Chan has documented many times) and you can probably only keep it up for so long.
    Yeah, backwards compatibility is so hard that Word for Windows 2.0 doesn't run on modern systems anymore - oh wait, it does:
    Word 2.0 on Vista



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @b-redeker said:
    At least they did that in the past. For the past 8 years or so they've said "fuck backwards compatibilty", and it is starting to show, including customers now thinking twice before upgrading to a new product. In their defense, backwards compatibility is HARD (as Raymond Chan has documented many times) and you can probably only keep it up for so long.

    Despite that, Microsoft at their worst is still an order of magnitude better than Apple was at their best, in the Classic days. (Before Apple said "fuck backwards compatibility"... well, before they said it as much.)

    The driver model changes in Vista were painful, yes, but I think long overdue.

    Backwards compatibility isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's just a limited subset of compatibility, after all. About time to aim higher, what with the prevalence of VMs.


  • @blakeyrat said:

    The whole OpenGL design is broken for game development. Since it takes 5+ years for any new GPU features to make it down the pipeline into a OpenGL standards doc, you end up with poor game developers having to develop every feature twice, once for ATI and once for nVidia, and then having to write the back-up for standard OpenGL cards as further punishment. So you have 3 code paths to accomplish one task. DirectX, you have one code path, and if Microsoft works out a more badass or faster way of doing the same thing in the future you get that feature for free when it comes out.
     

    Agreed, but the funny part is that that actually makes OpenGL the fast part of Linux driver development. The history of Mesa and the X-Server within the recent years would warrant a WTF-Post all by itself. I'm regularly checking Phoronix, a Linux graphics news site frequently visited by X.Org-developers and ATIs paid open-source developers. ATI is actually sponsoring a few developers that publish documentation and work on initial driver development with new cards. Now people obviously want their cards to work the way they do on windows, so the most frequently asked question is when the 2D/3D-drivers would pick up speed. Some of the Answers:

    1) Once EXA-rendering works properly. One of the Intel guys gave a talk at a convention later explaining why EXA isn't really designed to work with Memory Management for GPUs and that they will have to fork it. Which they than did as UXA, introducing a few of the craziest bugs and performance hits Ubuntu had ever seen, making any type of desktop effects completely unusable. It works okay for Intel nowadays, not so well for everybody else.

    2) Once Memory Management for GPUs is adapted for all drivers. The implementation they had picked to use was TTM, written by Tungsten, which now belongs to VMWare. Intel was the first Vendor to try but gave up, essentially calling the API overcomplicated with lots of Windows-specific stuff. They forked it as GEM, something Linus then called "untested crap", because the Intel guys tried to merge it into the mainline kernel without having ever build the code on a 64-bit system. ATI then decided they want to use TTM, but slap the API of GEM in front of it.

    3) Once Gallium3D is adapted/ready. Gallium is a general framework written by Tungsten as cross-platform. Drivers implement specific interfaces which provide them with features. Planned were for example OpenGL 3, OpenCl, OpenGL ES and so on... working right now are the interfaces for the X-Server, OpenGL 2 and Fallback Software rendering through LLVM, aka nearly the same things as before. Sometimes they even work as fast as before.

     

    I know driver development is hard and developers/resources are limited, people doing the best they can... but seeing OpenGL 2.1 from 2004, and it was not that fresh even then, not work is really sad.



  • @LurkNoMore said:

    @Medezark said:

    Nobody caught the real WTF??  SHARED DIALUP

     

    It gets worse - it's shared 33k dial-up...

    But at least it's free.

    And it keeps me very aware of exactly what my machines are doing bandwidth-wise.

    There aren't many options where I am. I can get pay-per-MB 56k dial-up; or I can get my own K20,000 (about US$7,000) VSAT system at a fixed monthly rate; or I can use either of the two pay-per-MB wireless (3G) providers, one of which has poor signal at my location, and the other is prohibitively expensive (like around 20c per MB).

    I'll stick with my free dial-up for now.

    Wow. Sorry. If we could get four pringle's cans, mount two on the IIS, and one each here at my house and at your house or office, you can share my broadband connection.....

    We'll need a volunteer to space-walk naked while aiming the cans on the space station though.



  • @ender said:

    Word for Windows 2.0 doesn't run on modern systems anymore - oh wait, it does
     

    While that is pretty awesome (and frightening that you still have a copy of that - do you have a 5 1/4"floppy drive too? ;) have you tried opening a word 2007 .docx in Word 2.0?



  • @ender said:

    Yeah, backwards compatibility is so hard that Word for Windows 2.0 doesn't run on modern systems anymore - oh wait, it does

    Though not under x64 Windows. No 16 bit anymore.


  • @b-redeker said:

    @ender said:

    Word for Windows 2.0 doesn't run on modern systems anymore - oh wait, it does
     

    While that is pretty awesome (and frightening that you still have a copy of that - do you have a 5 1/4"floppy drive too? ;) have you tried opening a word 2007 .docx in Word 2.0?

    That would be forwards compatibility, which is a bit of a big ask without time-travel. You can do the opposite, though.



  • @Medezark said:

    Wow. Sorry. If we could get four pringle's cans, mount two on the IIS, and one each here at my house and at your house or office, you can share my broadband connection.....

    We'll need a volunteer to space-walk naked while aiming the cans on the space station though.

    Erm... do you mean Microsoft's web server, or the international space station?
    On second thought, I don't want to know what naked space walking has to do with either.



  • @LurkNoMore said:

    I have just monitored AdobeARM.exe (the super-secret Adobe Reader updater) open a connection and download from some random TPG broadband user in Australia (IP 202.7.177.26).

    202.7.177.26 is not a random TPG user, it's an Akamai server on TPG's network. Pinging other Akamai-hosted sites on a TPG connection returns IPs around that range, and HTTP responses have "Server: AkamaiGHost" in the header.


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