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Dave Barry Does Windows
retrosteve writes: "Well, it's finally happened. Someone (Dave Barry) in the popular press has finally, explicitly and with a sense of humour, pointed out that Microsoft Windows doesn't get any more reliable or usable, no matter how many versions you buy."
This is.. my first post.. and i mean it.
Windows and linux will be on equal footing for stability and security...
Microsoft is compelled by their business plan to churn their user base ever year or two with new versions of their OS products. As we have seen with the introduction of Windows XP, each new version will introduce a new set of security and stability problems. Therefore it is very unlikely that Windows will ever match Linux stability or security.
So linux is free, which is great, but what else?
For me freedom is enough.
Let me buy you a sense of humor. No, it's all right, I believe in charity. It's only the standard model, but it's better than nothing which is what you have.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
har har!1 you are funny man!
please give up day job and pursue career in comedy!!
me laugh very long time at your joke
har har har!!!!
Joseph?
Any longtime Mac person would see an immediate and dramatic improvement in stability upon switching to Windows. The Macintosh bore a legacy even stronger than Windows for a long time. Having cast it aside, there is hope, but there is also hope for the foe, as Microsoft has cast aside its legacy. Still, in these times of new beginnings, I can't help but hope that there is room for another newcomer, fair Linux, to cast a pall over all the rest.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Actually, I think the convention these days is to deny ACs credit for their first posts in favor of the first logged in first post. Checking closely, it appears that I posted logged in, and that you did not. Therefore I win.
I also declare myself master of the universe times infinity, and I call the front seat.
I kind of wondered whether someone would say something like this. I love to laugh. I realize there's no evidence of that in my posting, but I do. Let me throw down two possible causes of laughter:
- random, silly, funny shit that makes me briefly forget all the stuff that makes want to cry
- bitter, angry shit that makes me remember that stuff, but reminds me that that's how life is
I like to laugh at ridiculous, hilarious stuff. I like observational humor, though aesthetically I often find it too predictable/cliché/formulaic. Probably my favorite observational humor is in David Lynch movies -- his dialogue is so lifelike it makes me giddy. But otherwise I love the Kids in the Hall, which tends toward complete comedic chaos, completely out of touch with any reality.But my favorite joke is such a bitter, life-hating joke that is probably too offensive to put in a post that I don't want to be modded down. It seems to me the joke that contains the most truth of any joke I've ever heard, but it's the kind of 'honesty' that might make you want to kill yourself. But it immediately puts me through to the other side, and I see it as a life-affirming joke that makes me want to live every day to its fullest, as cheesy as that sounds. I'll put it at the end of this post, but don't anybody read it if you're offended by cancer jokes.
He's not trivializing an issue at all. His issue is that he's a computer illiterate and he's using absurdism to show how. This is how he writes. If you're hoping he'll let himself be co-opted into a political agenda,
I'm not hoping that he'll be co-opted into my political agenda. The ./ summary looked to me like it was saying Barry was on an anti-Microsoft political agendum, so I was disappointed somewhat and posted to clarify. And since he's writing on a topic that is one of my quasi-political hot-buttons, I can't help thinking of the politics that I attach to this subject. What if Dave Barry said that he was not just computer-illiterate, but actually reading-illiterate, and joked about his crappy school that couldn't afford books? It would be funny, the way he was self-deprecating, but it would remind me that some schools are underfunded and unable to educate their students properly, and that some people are never given a fair chance to be successful. Here's another example: I think George Bush is a doofus. I enjoy hearing jokes about George Bush's being a doofus, but I put them in the Dilbert category rather than the Lenny Bruce category. Emphasizing that GWB is a doofus makes us forgiving of his mistakes and weakens our other criticisms of him, and makes his crappy politics seem like an accident and an afterthought. But however stupid he may be, he is also powerful and also makes decisions that are making the world a much worse place to live.
I'm not saying that this humor shouldn't exist, or isn't funny, or could be ethically better. In some ways it is good to at least bring up that Windows sucks, that schools are underfunded, that Bush is a doofus, and in most cases it probably is better for the humorist not to propose a solution. But please don't blame me for thinking about the bigger issues when I read humor: I just can't help it.
Oh, the joke: don't read this.
What did the deaf, dumb, blind kid get for Christmas?
Cancer.
The main source of crashes and problems with Windows 2000 kernel based products are programmers doing device drivers who can't code their way out of a linked list, or those who base their products on inherently flawed programming languages such as Visual Basic.