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Is Windows Ready For Joe Longneck?
Carewolf writes "Is Windows ready for the desktop? We have heard it year after year, that now is the time for Windows on the desktop. But is it really time? Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't think so and has writen a piece that list a number of issues that needs to be solved before Windows is really ready for the masses and "Joe Longkneck"."
of course it is, but is he ready for linux :)
"User interface. Look, XP has the best colors on any OS I've ever seen. Why would you use an OS with inferior colors?" Because God knows that's exactly why we should decide on one piece of software over another...
I'm not a MacHead... nor do I even own a Mac (though on occasion I've worked on some)... however, I don't even see how it can claimed that XP has the best colour scheme. Every time I see OS-X I start drooling and wish that I could afford a Mac to play with...
Its funny!
:)
The paragraph on clicking is worth the whole article alone. Why are the funniest things always the closest to the truth.
Always reminded me of the "mac needs a second mouse button" rant. Its true that power users love the second mouse button, but it still makes me want to pull my hair out when people single click on shit that needs double clicking, and even worse, trying to guide somebody through the gui and having them double clicking where they should be single clicking.
Say what you will about Windows, but the clicking conventions are a complete and utter mess. I'm not even sure power users can predict with 100% certainty when a particular drag and drop in a particular context will result in a move, copy, or make shortcut action. (And yes I know about the left click drag - its hilarious, that feature is a total hack for how confusing the drag & drop heuristics are.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
"The best way to get someone to touch something is to put a sign on it that says Don't touch"...
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Is windows ready for the masses?
This article seems to come about 10 years too late...
In other news, this new interweb thing just might take off....
Now thats what we need is a nice satire....
Despite all of the negative comments, I thought this bit of satire was refreshing.
I only wish the article went into a bit more detail about all of the challenges Windows faces on the desktop. In order to be funny, some things were exaggerated too much at the risk of discrediting valid points.
After reading the same types of articles with Linux as the subject matter, I am tired of seeing them all have the slanted perspective of, "Is Linux ready for Windows users?"
Point 10 reminded me of a Gateway advertisement I saw recently for a computer that comes with the Internet:
10. Freedom. You can use the inter net with Windows XP. It's built in.
it will be a fully fledged OS. I'm hoping too see at least 9 different pinball tables with a good "hid the app the boss is coming" feature.
As users get more and more attached to windows, this actual becomes more and more true. Linux may now or in the future be ready for the desktop user, but even if linux were to look 95% like windows (see Lindows, Lycoris), will the average Joe user be ready to switch?
Even if it's somebody who's not used windows, or at least not often, will Joe User overcome the stigma that "Linux" is for geeks? And if it's a longtime windows user, will Joe U be mentally ready and willing to switch, especially when all his friends are using windows. People are notoriously resistant to change, even good change.
If 'nix crawls into the office desktop market, it stands a better chance of getting into the home desktop market. And the #1 reason it would get onto office desktops is of course: cost and licensing. Perhaps after we get 1 or 2 large companise sucessfully using a 'nix desktop, people will become more aware of linux as something other than a geek tool.
When the monitor is in Power Save mode, but the computer is on, the monitor should display something like "The Computer is on, but this monitor is in powersave mode. Hit any key to continue or move the mouse".
Doesn't displaying something on the monitor completely defeat the purpose of powersave mode -- to turn off the monitor?
And I don't believe the complaint about people turning off the computer because of monitor powersave mode. With the motherboard controlled powerswitch on most computers these days you most people don't even know how to turn the computer off, since you have to hold down the button for 3 seconds.
This article is one long nothing-new whine
From the article: Once the bugs are worked out, I would love to have Windows in my Chevy Nova
A perfect fit! It took a while for Chevy to figure out that "Nova" mean's "no go" in Spanish. With Windows installed, the car might finally live up to its name.
Windows revolutionized the Desktop for the masses.. the funny part about this article is.. it's still not ready for us!
Linux actually installed on a desktop!
Netcraft has announced that Windows 2000 server has finally gone for over 2 years without a reboot.
Here we find a nuanced jibe at Windows' stability with a faint but discernable reference to the "BSD is dying" troller. Another:
Here the author, with tum in cheek, seems to be advocating an OS based on the desktop colors even though very few people (Mac users excepted) care about how their PC looks. The underlying message is that XP is more about eye-candy than real computing power. Once again, a nugget wisdom with a veil of humor. Well-done.
[1]Whatever else you say about them, they have a more open and democratic story submission system than Slashdot.
Perhaps you were just pointing out that this is a rather ridculous and amusing truism but, in the case that you weren't, I'd like to interject. To the average non-techie, the colors of the software play any important role. For Windows, the default color scheme has to be a good one because when people pick up the box on store shelves or see it on a display computer, about the only way they can evaluate it is by determining whether they think it's appealing to the eye or not. They don't know any important questions to ask about an OS - to them multi-threading involves sewing a hole quickly and benchmarking is some type of flaw or defect in a seating-device. In software, I'd guess that 80% (a figure I pulled entirely from thin air, so don't ask for a source, I'm just guessing) of the market will be convinced and swayed by fun bells and whistles and not usuability or performance.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
This is only being posted here because it's attacking MS. As much as Windows eats one, some of what he says isn't even accurate. I agree with one thing: I'm tired of people saying RTFM when they're too lazy to give somebody a pointer. The primary reason I have not embraced Linux in my home is because of this attitude. Instead, our home is moving from Windows to Mac OS X. That community is not without its shortcomings, but at least when I ask them how to do USB printer sharing for Windows machines through OS X, somebody tells me how rather than gives me a lecture about how if I can't figure it out on my own, I shouldn't be running it.
I know the author of the article says he's sorta writing a satire of another article (yes, some of us do read the article) --- but one point he makes I think strikes home at some potential problems downline for Microsoft when he writesThe problem is that the development tools have indeed become too expensive. Long gone are the days where one could buy a simple 'Turbo' this or 'Visual' that compiler for $99.95. And along with that, goes much of the supportive development by independent programmers and small companies.
Similarly, have you seen what it takes in the way of system resources to write a simple COM component perhaps a XML-based web service on
Sure, J2EE is a behemoth as well, but at least you're not going to get licensed out the wazoo and knickle-n-dimed to death when you write your 150 lines to say "Hello World!"
Need proof? Turbo Pascal -- it changed the way we looked at the PC.
--- have you healed your church website?
Isn't he too busy trying to catch babes by pretending to be rich to use a computer?
The cake is a pie
The real question should be, 'Is Windows ready for Joe Redneck'? My friend works for a company that provides tech support for end-lusers with PC/Windows (In another life he was very, very bad). According to Joe Redneck and I quote "It don't werk." So while it may or may not be ready for 'Joe Longkneck', it is definately NOT ready for Joe Redneck.
No, really - why do we care? The real milestone will be when a desktop UI in the public domain is ready for Joe Sixpack - then the world will be a better place.
We should also realize that Joe Sixpack is going to naturally become a more proficient and knowledgeable computer user than he is today. He's decidedly better than he was five years ago. If Joe Sixpack is learning how to use a desktop UI, isn't it far, far better for everyone if he becomes familiar with a publicly owned desktop, instead of one controlled and sold by a private corporation?
Windows definitely *is* ready, however, for your friendly neighborhood trash compactor...
many of US are thinking that these guise all excrete through the same ceNTroll pourtoll.
va.msn.?net? phewww. pottIE payper as far as eyecons go.
Read the article, people. It is humor. Laugh, don't make serious rebuttals or get defensive.
Personally, I love joke about the new "better colors".
I doesn't think so.
Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't...
I know this is flamebait, but I think the place for windows IS on the desktop. The only time I ever oppose it is on the grounds of cost.
On the other hand, a Windows Server? What kind of moron would put up a windows server? Desktop fine, but that desktop had best connect to a Linux Router, then a Linux Server, protected by a Linux Firewall. That is unless you LIKE viruses and downtime.
I've got a client who called me up at 9:00am on Saturday wanting me to go down and patch up their MSSQL Server 2000 server to keep their precious precious data safe. It was a real pleasure to say, "Safe? Don't worry, your 150000 dollars worth of MS junk is safe behind the Linux firewall I put together out of a spare computer I found in a basement storeroom."
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In the article they point to netcraft which lists a windows 2000 box as being up for 2 years, in the same list (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.last.html ) they also have Mac OS X machines that have been up 1340 days which puts it's last reboot at 3.67 years ago, but the problem is Mac OS x was only released in early 2001, so it could have been up for at MOST 2 years, me thinks these stats arent worth anything.
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
What is a desktop? What do they look like? If I've seen one before, it must've been years ago.
Article has nothing to do with Linux on the desktop, at least, not directly. In other words, read the article!! (or at least the headline...)
All the kneejerk reaction posts about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop just go to show you how many slashdotters actually read before posting....
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Give it up... Joe Longneck already uses Windows. Joe Longneck only has a few applications :
Searching for pron on the 'net...
Maybe a little word processing...
Downloading MP3s...
and searching for more pron on the 'net.
Windows does these just fine. If it ain't broke, he's not gonna fix it...
The real question is are the rest of the mouthbreathers really to be using computers? The answer is no.
Firstly there is no wayo to make them totally idiot proof. Nature keeps evolving better idiots. There is a certain level of 'je ne sais quoi' necessary to run technology. You have to have some basic understanding of what youare doing and what the metaphors mean. to this day there are ppl in companies that use computers who can't make the logical connection between a document in the filing cabinet and a document on a computer disk. No amount of 'fixing' an OS can alleviate that. You cant fix a situation hat when ppl get a message onthe screen instead of readin it they clickthe cancel button and pretend it didnt happen. There has to be some thought going on in their head.
Let me give you guys an anecdote, i was workingon a womans computer who was using lotus notes everyday for more than 2 years. In case you dont know LN has a *very* distinctive login window. Anyway so I had to reinstall notes and i had to aveher login. She didn know which password to use, after about 5 different ones she got it. So i logged her ot of notes for the settings to take effect and i neded to have her login *30 seconds later* and she had forgotten which password to use.
This is the kind of situation you would have to design computers around, those who cannot retain information. The only hope for us support people and for those kind ofusers is tohave voice regonition and then you define broad terms to describe things like "I want to see my email" or "where is that damned sales report"
I have a nice dent im my wall if you wanna start pounding your head there now:)
Let's see if the site is still up after slashdot effect...two years without much traffic may be possible with Windows 2000 but how about under heavy load?
Which it is.
But then, every operating system has user-friendliness problems. This is an area where clearly we can all make a lot of progress. I wish the article would have had some more constructive (and less oversimplistic) suggestions as to how -- instead of alienating his readers with idealogic sarcasm.
I've always said that Windows isn't quite ready for the desktop. It's painful to install, unintuitive, a terrible resource hog and inflexible.
See what I've been reading.
I've also noticed that the login dialog is very user-unfriendly -- needs a password textbox with autocomplete.
I really didnt understand the post after the first read, but now that Ive actually read the article, (yes, I really did!), I see that Its a joke. Its amusing and all, but this one paragragh actually makes sense!
/s". But there's one thing that has always bothered me: What if I want to do a Clean Install and still have all my applications that I installed on let's say Win98? Here's what you can do: You can do a clean install beside Win98, but you won't have all your applications on XP. You can also upgrade win98 and most of your applications, if not all will move to XP. However, what if there is an application that I NEED that won't run on XP. Or what if XP dies. Then I have no Win98. I'd like to see an upgrade feature that let's me keep my existing Win98 installation as WELL as upgrade Windows 98 to XP at the same time. Until this happens, Windows is just not ready.
That leads to the install itself. Yes, windows installing has gotten 100 times better since the days of DOS. Finally, users don't have to type "a:/setup" or "a:/install" anymore. And thank God "Sys c:" is history. And for the sake of all that is holy, good riddance to "format c:
Just goes to show that even in humor there often lies truth....
(Lies truth???)
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
for 'joe public' windows IS the desktop. its not a desktop without windows in some form or another. of course its ready, for the average person windows invented the desktop (yeah i knows its not actually the case but try telling your mother that)
dybia felly dwi a hampster (i think therefore i am a hampster)
This is supposed to be funny?
Hasn't the novelty of amateur online satire worn off by now? "Wow it's a webpage so it looks like my mediocre humour is FOR REAL BIG TIME PUBLISHED! I'm sure the nerds on slashdot will LOVE it!"
Oh, I get it - it's funny because it's making fun of windows. Let's start a fight over which Linux distro is best on the desktop just to make sure we churn through all the tedious motions.
I like the following quote, "3. Stability. Netcraft has announced that Windows 2000 server has finally gone for over 2 years without a reboot." After checking netcraft, we can see their server is at byteandswitch.com. So fellow slashdotters, want to give them a hand?
interesting: 5 redundant: -1 flamebait: -2 troll: -2 Score = 0, oh nevermind
Everone who works at some computer support knows that Windows is far from ready for the masses.
REAL mice have THREE buttons...
I have this neato mouse that has 101 buttons. Unfortunately, it's a bit large and hard to move around, but I find this disadvantage is offset by the large number of buttons available for entering commands.
Now, there's some of you 31337 that are going to say RTMF. Or, WTF, WWF, or OMG. Or WWJD (Windows is What's on Jesus' Desktop)
.NET Framework SDK is FREE
... so what exactly was your point about not being able to develop for free?
No, you don't get the Visual Studio development environment, but you CAN compile VB.NET, C#, or C++ code with it.
If you want a visual dev environment and still don't want to pay for it, try sharpdevelop
If you'd done some research before posting, you'd have realized that your criticism is unfounded. Additionally, there's nothing stopping you from getting GCC running under windows as well. You also have perl, python, or any number of other languages
As we all know, for Windows to succeed on the desktop, it needs to ramp up compatibility with the current best desktop so it may gain marketshare ;)
Long gone are the days where one could buy a simple 'Turbo' this or 'Visual' that compiler for $99.95. And along with that, goes much of the supportive development by independent programmers and small companies.
Good. The shareware archives at Tucows and Download.com are filled to the gills with badly-written, badly-designed "applications" created by people who think a Microsoft wizard is the best way to create software. IMO, writing any application (at least one that's meant to be used by people other than you, on your PC) SHOULD require a few thousand dollars, a two-year class in programming, or the skill to debug and compile from the command line -- if not all three.
Creating any amount of computer code ought to be difficult, in direct proportion to the amount of damage it can inflict. The last thing we need is yet another screen saver showing nude photos of America's latest "it" girl while it quietly reformats the user's hard drive.
A middle-aged woman once hauled her entire computer setup - printer, monitor, cables, keyboard, manuals, everything - into our store and asked us if we could fix it. Our tech guy said, "What's wrong with it?" and she said, "I deleted the Internet." He said, "Really, the whole thing?" She said, "Yes, it's gone, I'm so sorry, I didn't even know you could do that." I said, "I think you mean that you deleted your web browser." She said, "No, the Internet is gone, there's no www or email." We were trying to understand what she was getting at, so our tech guy ventured another guess. "Oh, did you delete your dial-up connection?" She said, "No, we have cable." We went back and forth and eventually figured out that she deleted the AOL Installer icon that came pre-installed on her system, after she had tried to use email and the web without setting up any kind of Internet service. She'd heard about cable and since they already had basic cable, she thought they had the internet somehow magically flowing into her computer from the cable outlet, although she never physically connected them.
I don't blame her. My mother is not a stupid person and she still struggles to grasp when to single vs double click. She never had this stuff and it's intimidating. But nowadays she uses the web, books plane tickets and hotel books, uses email competantly, set up Quicken to download her banking stuff by herself, things she'd never have figured out on her own a year ago.
Needless to say, neither my mother or the woman who deleted the Internet will ever use Linux.
yes
An interesting thing I've noticed about Windows is that it isn't even satirisable. This piece isn't a great example because it's frankly baffling (it starts out as a weak attempt at humour, then seems to lose its way in genuine criticism). Linux satire is funny because some parts of Linux are still genuinely atrocious; focusing on those parts is like reviewing a so-bad-it's-funny B-movie, and the overall excellence of the underlying OS provides for ironic contrast. Mac satire is funny because the Mac really is slick, but also dogmatic and takes itself a wee bit too seriously sometimes (or its users do) - amusing yourself at the Mac OS's expense is like making a Matrix parody. In both cases, people really do like the OS, and they're thus able to laugh at them in good humour.
Windows is just so mediocre and generally almost-good-enough that reading a satire isn't ever really funny; it reminds you of the low-level frustration you deal with (or used to) on a daily basis. It's like a movie that's not worth watching because it's good, but also not worth watching because it's so bad. Possibly this is why this weird satire attempt so lost its way on the second page. You can try to have fun at Windows expense, but then you realise you're not. Having fun that is.
Anyone have any links to a really funny Windows lambasting? I'd enjoy being proven wrong.
I suppose bringing the subtleties of noun-noun hyphenation into the discussion, then, would be a Bad Thing? (j/k ;)
You make a good point. I think the government should mandate that all systems' UIs are as pretty as the OS is stable and usable. That way, MS would have to make the next version of Windows ugly and junky-looking, and Linux would get a much-needed face-lift. Then people would know not to buy Windows!
Of course, then Mac OS X could stay pretty much as it is...and people still wouldn't buy Macs.
(Not a troll...I'm a Mac user from way back, love the platform...)
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Nope, it's only an attempt to be a joke.
It reads like it was written by a 16 year old with no proof-reading skills.
The amusement value of a satirical piece is proportional to the quality of the writing: this piece has satirical content, but the presentation of that content is crap.
...what's Joe Longkneck using now ? Linux ? Unix ? Minix ? Xix ? Yeah, riiiight !!!
getSexySig();
He's a swarthy Eskimo. Will Windows XP be the best product for his whale-oil business? Or will he rely on Linux to make sure that he has enough harpoons in inventory? Tune in today and find out!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Does this make me elite?
P.S
I have a slashdot account setup, but I let Windoze remember my passwords. I had to do a reinstall, now I'm SOL.
(notice the elite use of "Windoze")
"That was a joke son, you missed it." -Foghorn Leghorn
Oh, what has the world come to, when kids can't even properly quote Foghorn Leghorn anymore! Allow me:
Lookit here son, I say son, did ya see that hawk after those hens? He scared 'em! That Rhode Island Red turned white. Then blue. Rhode Island. Red, white, and blue. That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is.
Bush Lies Watch
So, what is the Linux community going to do about it, besides sit around and bitch to each other about how powerful MS The Monopoly is?
is osnews.com ready for slashdot?
Answer: no!
Train a new PC user up on linux (say, mandrake), its ins-and-outs, and everything related, and you will have a competent pc user that can do most things windows users can do but slightly better.
I'm waiting for the OS that hides every technical detail from the user. I don't want to have to explain to my mom that you install software on C:, because C: is the hard drive. I'm waiting for the day that I can buy a piece of software, put the CD in the drive, and have it automagicly install and work on my computer without any interaction at all. I don't ever want to have to say C:\, because it sounds too much like watching a bad bowel movement.
I'm waiting for the OS that doesn't make me have to ever look for My Files after I save them on My Computer because they are My Documents and My Computer should know where they are. And, while I'm at it, I shouldn't have to tell the computer where to save my files, it should just know based on the type of file it is.
I don't ever want any technical knowledge just to type a fscking report on 18th century painters; the class is hard enough without the additional burden. I still don't like the typing out bit anyway; why hasn't voice recognition gotten really good yet?
Why do we put wallpaper on our desktop? Why do I have a Start button, a Quick Launch bar, and a system tray on my desktop? Why can I see the time, but not the date or the day of the week in the system tray?
Uhhh...Whine whine whine... Bitch bitch bitch... I'm done ranting now, you can move on. Nothing more to see here.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
The best part is that since they haven't rebooted in two years they must be missing many patches.
Boot.ini does not belong in the root directory. This does not make any sense. I've seen users delete this file. Perhaps there should be like /boot directory or something. Or even better a "Don't touch" directory.
Boot.ini is hidden on my machine. You just forgot to restore the system and hidden attributes after you edited it to boot an OS that was probably even less ready for the desktop than windows.
When it comes to stability, peformance, scalability, non-kludgy kernel code that gets rewritten very release because it was written wrong before, and the shell programming environement, I have to give my heartiest endorsement to FreeBSD.
Does anyone know specifically which article this satire was based on? I know there are plenty of similar articles but I thought it would be interesting to read the specific one used here.
Funny article ...
My Dad , a "Joe Longneck" indeed, really Likes Windows XP. Go figure. He digs the Media Player, the new GUI and the stability (he upgraded last year to a Dell P4 1.4 from a Whitebox P2 266 running Win 98)
His only complaint is that the GUI should have defaulted to the old look so he knew where everything was. Didnt take long for him to figure out ho to change it all back.
Go Dad !
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
if i recall correctly, i purchased an osx server in 1999... i actually just sold the boxed copy on ebay. it was bundled with webobjects post $50k price reduction. so, yes it is possible!
Its a joke you humor impaired moderators...
Not to be rude, but you're coming across as the kind of person who turns his nose up at crass humor, but loves Shakespeare (as if that isn't full of crass humor).
aside from the BSOD, the instalibility, my lack of control over it, the fact i have no clue what is running by just looking at the processes, the insanely annoying paperclip, the fact my DSL connection is not connected when XP starts, killing a process requires more than kill -9 PID, and the obviously homosexual windows XP GUI, being the most targeted system among script kiddies...i'm stopping here...the list is too long, besides the article i didn't read probably covered all this and more...
Try teaching your 42 years old father to use KDE. Than talk about Linux being ready for "The Desktop"
A big flashy shockwave thing that flashes "You are an idiot", and probably has some sort of sound. I didn't have my amp turned on though, so I couldn't tell you for certain.
Might be some malicious content in it, although again, I don't know. I'm not worried since I don't run Windows (alas, while it may be ready for the average desktop, it still doesn't quite do what I want).
Hope this clears it up for you.
How can we be duscussing if Windows is ready for the desktop if it is already deployed in (over?) 90% of the desktops out there? Whatever the answer to the question, what does it matter?
This is exactly why Apple is going to such great lengths with its "Switcher" ads and its courting of alpha-geeks . . . to dispel this kind of myopia. As far as consumer-oriented operating environments go, of course Microsoft Windows is the predominant brand. But Apple Mac OS X can do everything too [for certain smaller values of everything :)] The only thing that I've found can't be done in Apple Mac OS X that can in Microsoft Windows is that Apple Mac OS X can't be Microsoft Windows. But that's why we have Virtual PC!
If the distro had:
-an MSword clone (and plug and play printer support)
-a p2p app
-a CD/DVD player
-a CD burning app
-a browser
-an email client
if all these things had an icon on the desktop that they could just double-click and use; if all of these things had a decent UI so you could use them without having to learn how; if game developers started making the latest games available on linux; and if, and this is the most important if, if people understood that switching to linux would mean that their 1.8 ghz pentium 4 which right now runs like a 386 because it's so smothered in adware, spyware, and conflicting whatevers, would actually run as fast as it should AND it wouldn't crash 3 times a day; they would switch in a second.
If at any point they have to type "make," or even look at a CLI, forget about it.
c-hack.com |
That was my question I had from reading the article, are all of these users that aren't ready for windows using Linux right now? And is that better for them?
I really can't figure out the guys freaking point beyond blatant MS/OS bashing, and alot of the crap he's slamming MS for exist a plenty on other platforms. So again, just what the hell was his point?
Was it that the current state of GUI interfaces in general are stopping Joe Blow from using computers? (And if so, why pick on MS only?) Or that just windows are that bad. And if that's the case, why are all these Joe Blow's out there using windows already when they aren't ready for it as the article states? (These same users that aren't ready for it by the way, seem to have a lot of knowledge of a certain 5 year old OS, which is hard to explain if these same people still aren't ready for windows...)
And further, it almost seems that if this is all the case, that the best thing that could have been done in the authors opinion is to keep windows 98?
My god man!
Slam Gui's if you want but sheesh, at least slam them all on the same merits.
XP is a wonderful OS, compared to all previous OS's from redmond. And it has a GUI that is VERY comparable to ALL other GUI's in major use right now, including problems and limitations. Sure, maybe one is worse than others in certain areas, but just what soap box is this guy standing on?
I could write a very similar article slamming either Linus or Mac if I wanted to, and what would it mean? Fuck all, just like this one.
No Comment.
hahaha!!! thats great, thats the funniest thing i have heard today, shit maybe weeks! Holy shit that was hilarious. I couln't stop laughing. We need more stories like this, then maybe we won't have so many poeple OD-ing on prozac!!! You know why I keep hitting my self in the head with a hammer? Cause it feels so good when I stop!
As long as you continue to refer to average computer users as "idiots", they will not embrace your technology.
When I first glanced at this headline, I thought it was just another duplicate of "Is Linux Ready For the Desktop?". Then, upon seeing it was Windows, I thought, wow... that's a pretty odd article, considering Windows is already on 95% of desktops. Personally, I use Windows XP, dual-booted with Linux. There is one thing that keeps me using Windows instead of Linux. X. XWindows is an old and dying project. A whole new windowing system needs to be built for Linux, before I'd ever consider using it as a primary desktop OS. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux itself. I would never want to work in console, with anything other than Linux/Unix. On that note, I do have to give some credit to Apple. I used to be a hardcore Mac hater. And I probably would still hate them if they hadn't released OS 10 and turned around their entire OS. Forget everything about how it's all pretty and swishy. I like the fact that it works. And, that it's built on a stable BSD core. Perhaps Windows should take notice and learn something.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Games? no.
Well over a thousand titles have been released for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance platforms. Just connect a cartridge reader to your parallel port and install the cartridge reader's driver. Then insert your Game Pak into the cartridge reader and "dump" it into a file on your hard disk, which you can use with the VisualBoyAdvance emulator. You can emulate most PS1 games as well, and this time, the reader is already built into your computer because PS1 games come on CD-ROM discs. (I chose GBA and PS1 because of the ease of finding media readers for those platforms.)
"Games" does not mean "first-person shooters, real-time tactical simulations, and massively multiplayer online games". Some people prefer platformers such as "Metroid Fusion" for GBA to Quake clones. (Not that "Metroid Prime" is a Quake clone or anything.)
But if there is somethign you want your computer to do. And computers are capable of doing it. Then a computer with Windows is capable of doing it.
Really? Then why does the least expensive edition of Windows XP support only one processor per machine, encouraging vendors not to make dual-CPU machines in the home user price range? (*Linux and some *BSDs support symmetric multiprocessing out of the box.) And why does the Windows kernel limit the number of simultaneous open incoming TCP connections to a ridiculously low level unless you're running Advanced Server? (On *BSD and *Linux you can change this either by recompiling the kernel, by editing a text file, or by running a GUI app that does either of those.) And why do the headers to write a file system module cost $1000 to license, putting it far out of the CS student/hobbyist price range? (On *BSD and *Linux, the source code for several sample file systems comes with the kernel source code.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
1. "Joe Longkneck" 2. "blah blah blah at OSNews don't think so" Also, this article is complete tripe.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
its self-serving, kindergarten name-calling tripe like this that makes people just roll their eyes and refuse to take open-source software seriously. Open-source software's biggest enemy is not Microsoft, but the OSS advocates themselves. Thanks guys.
If you are so hung up on quality of writing, why are you reading /. ? It reads a lot better than anything written by the people I knew in college.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
I have this neato mouse that has 101 buttons.
Oh, you're trying to make a joke about combination keyboard/pointing devices. Some have trackballs; others have an "eraser" joystick between G, H, and B (assuming QWERTY); the one in front of me has a touchpad below the space bar.
Unfortunately, it's a bit large and hard to move around
That's why you get an iBook brand mouse, which even includes a built-in display.
Will I retire or break 10K?
And if you hurry now, they will throw in a USB=>PS2 convertor plug Absolutly free!
But you don't even need an adapter to plug a USB mouse into a PS2. You may need it for a PS/2, however.
</bad-ps2-joke>
Will I retire or break 10K?
I shit you not.
My mouse has 108 buttons...it's so hard to move that they didn't even bother putting a ball or a laser or anything in it...there's even a button for each letter and all the punctuation...the buttons are even labeled...they have to be, cause there's so many i would forget what they do otherwise...one row looks like this:
aoeuidhtns
When will people learn? Mice are for pointing, keyboards are for the complicated stuff. Power users can make do with keyboard shortcuts (as I do) or get a mouse with more buttons; for the basic users, the fewer buttons on the pointing device, the better--and that means that one button should be the default, since the people who need more are the ones who know how to get more.
Of course, that won't help all problems...
[Approximate transcript of helping my grandpa learn to use Microsoft Office 98 over the phone follows]
"Did you install it?"
"Yes..."
"Okay, the icon should be somewhere in your hard drive. Double-click the Macintosh HD icon..."
[five minutes later, still haven't found the suite on his HD]
"Okay, is the CD still in the drive from when you installed it?"
"What CD?"
"The CD the software is on. The CD that came in the box."
[opening the box for the first time] "Oh, there's a CD in there!"
Wanted to tell him to RTFM...he hadn't even thought of that...
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
C'mon guys, this site isn't even slow yet. Click on 'em.
Ah yes, its getting slow...
:)
I found it funny that their Stock index is called "B&S Index"...sounds kinda like BS Index to me
Could it be possible to STATE on the first page of /. that the article is a satire ? That way, I wouldn't have been seen at work with my jaws on the floor... ;-)
But seriously, would be cool. I thought the guys was serious at first, giving that even the submitter took a serious tone.
Consider it doen,
You know these kinds of vigelante actions make me read slashdot with a smile
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I do tech support for a government agency, and all that they really care about is how it looks. You replace someone's 15" CRT monitor with a 17" LCD, and the first they they whine about is that it doesn't match the color of their kb and mouse (none of them have yet to ever notice the tower behind all their space heaters, so that's not an issue.) They don't care about the performance of the monitor, or what it does for eyestrain, or what its maximum resolution is...all that they care about is that it isn't as pretty as the other one was. So yes, appearances are everything.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
That would have been pretty funny if it was... funny.
Or clever.
Or really anything but stupid.
And this reminds me of a job ad I spotted on a bulletin board when I was in college. In an otherwise reasonable list of job duties appeared:
The pay seemed a little low.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
There is one reason why Joe Longneck wants windows instead of linux and that is the large source of software from friends and relatives.. I get constant barrages from relatives asking if they can borrow my software, same as co-workers and friends... I give them the free/ open alternatives (OO.o in place of office 2000, the demo of Unreal2003, GLtron, AVir instead of norton... etc....)
Joe sixpack will gladly switch if the flow of free software from friends, relatives and acquaintances dries up...
microsoft is popular only because of the HUGE flow of illigitimate software... if they actually had to pay for it, they wouldnt want it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Byte and Switch is the National Enquirer of the storage world. (Or if you prefer, the Register of the storage world).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
" list a number of issues that needs to be solved before Windows is really ready for the masses and "Joe Longkneck"."
You mean, anymore ready than, say, any incarnation of Linux? The only real alternative 'Joe Longneck' has is to go Apple and it's really too bad that Apple can't possibly compete price-wise. We won't even talk about software compatibility here... Fact is, it's the best thing going, mainly because the competition is so self limiting it's beyond pathetic.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I'ts just like this whole ethernet thing... it's just a fad! I'm sticking with Dr DOS and LapLink!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Windows doesn't supply a compiler out of the box. So if I want to write my own little application in windows, I have to buy Windows developer tools or download and install open source tools that can run on Windows.
Almost all GNU/Linux distributions come with gcc, glibc, and KDE/Gnome development tools by default. I would assume BSDs also make these tools available. I had thought Mac OS X came with gcc and other developer tools preinstalled, but my recently-purchased e-Mac did not have them. I can download them for free from Apple's web site, however.
Granted, most home users don't write their own code, but those who want to cannot do so on Windows out of the box.
The only Joe I know has no neck at all. Is Linux *really* biased towards long necked people?
And maybe it doesn't need to be funny. There genuinely should be more real world articles that question whether Windows is ready for the desktop, whether Grandma can use it, whether or not you should bet the company on it.
The problem is that a lot of the people who write articles about whether Linux is ready for the desktop don't want it to be desktop-ready for any nice, warm, fuzzy, cuddly reason. They want it there so they can invest in it, so they can draw big graphs of climbing profits, so they can sink their bloodsucking greedy teeth in it.
Honestly, if I like Linux on my desktop, why should I care if anyone else does? I've got my fluxbox, my nethack, my vim, and those things aren't going to get any better because a bunch of Windows refugees decide to use them too.
I don't get it.
"Why not make a mouse that cannot double-click and make everything a single click."
I don't know about the rest of you, but my mouse doesn't "double-click". I do the double-clicking myself.
This post was generated by a Team of Elite Monkeys for br0ken2o0o (569914).
While I think Windows isn't without it's significant usability flaws, I have to say that I tried KDE 3 seriously for the first time today, and it was an absolute usability nightmare. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say that KDE is kindly-yet-computer-inexperienced-grandmother-frie ndly. I've been using computers seriously for 20 years now, and there were oodles of things that I either couldn't figure out how to do in the hour I used KDE, or that were incredibly unintuitive. I won't even begin to critique the KDE control panel. Talk about a nightmare of ambiguity, poor organization, and far too much complexity.
Not to mention - who thought up that hideous default sound scheme? I know that I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight. My skin was crawling for the few minutes it took me to figure out how to turn it off.
Not that Windows control panels are much better... Windows control panels are also hideously disorganized, with things in completely nonintuitive places (sometimes you have to access the control panel, other times you have to access certain features that you'd logically expect to be in control panels in menus instead, and other times you have to resort to running command line programs to get to windows that provide you with what you're looking for - e.g. ipconfig, msconfig), but I find that the user isn't quite so overwhelmed with options in Windows as they would be in KDE.
Mac OS X is the first operating system where the equivalent of the Control Panel (System Preferences) is logically organized and not overwhelming. I think that software designers should take a usability lesson here.
Whatever happened to the unwritten Linux creed, borrowed from Ghandi:
First they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
I know the article is supposed to be funny, but at its core it comes across as bitter and whiny. If Linux is better, then let it be better on its own merits, period.
What else can I say?
My plumber asked me about Linux today - he's considering making the switch.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
I don't understand why it's such a problem for you to know if you're going to move, copy or create a shortcut to an item when you drag and drop it.
The cursor changes to show you what you're doing. If there's a little plus sign, you're copying. If there's a "shortcut arrow" then you're creating a shortcut and if there's just the gray box, then you're moving. It seems simple enough to me.
I agree that it would be preferable to have the drag and drop always move unless modified by a key press, but knowing the result of a drag and drop is, IMHO, sufficiently obvious.
It's the fake desktop ones that do...
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Im not quite sure what they mean by desktop? Windows has been every where since at least 3.1, wtf do you mean is it ready? Every one and their grandma is using it.
----- The aluminum foil helmet is for my protection!
provide one, and only one, way to access the hierarchical list of files. If clicking on icons to open folders full of more icons is how people learn to use the window manager, then why doesn't the save file dialog box allow the same interface?
The user goes to Save the letter to Aunt Gazelda they just crafted, and all of a sudden they're thrust into a new universe - files listed by filename, with little "plus signs" next to folders! The "current directory" on their desktop is not the "current directory" of the file chooser! This new tiny window looks totally different than anything they ever saw on the desktop.
This single issue has been confusing my parents for many years now. When I visit them, I have to search around their hard drive to find all the files they accidentally threw in the top level directory, or other wrong directories.
The concept that you can have multiple views of your files and folders is just overwhelming, for some reason.
The questions is, is Windows ready for the Linux desktop
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
There have been many, many times when I was quite sure that Windows was definitely ready for my 'joe longneck'. The BSOD really sucks.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
I knew that a childish, unfunny potshot at Microsoft would get you a +5 insightful here at
We must be grammar/spelling masochists to endure the likes of /. No j/k.
Yep, that one's a serious screw-up. Ask any usability guy about where you can fastest reach with the mouse, and he'll tell you that it's exactly where it is, then the four corners of the screen, then the edges of the screen. It's much slower to move to somewhere slightly off an edge, or slightly away from the current position, because you don't have the inherent error correction in where the pointer winds up. Thus, having controls (including menus, buttons or whatever) just off the edges of the screen but not reaching right to the edge is a Usability Sin(TM) and should be banned. I'm amazed Microsoft's usability guys missed this one, and that they haven't yet fixed it...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I worked at my companies Hell Desk for all of about 15 minutes. I asked a user to right click on the task bar and select minimize all. For a second, there was no sound at all. Then, out of no where, I heard thousands of clicking sounds.
I asked the guy if there was a problem, and he replied that he was just doing what I asked. I gave him about 10 more clicks before I yelled into the phone "I SAID TWO GODDAMN CLICKS! WTF IS ALL THAT CLICKING?".
Needless to say, he wasn't impressed with my people skills. The upshot is that the next day, I was transfered into Network Infrastructure with nary a lUser in sight.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
A lot has to do with accepted norms, I think. I've seen a couple of surveys (sorry, no links off the top of my head) that looked at the top 10 or 20 most visited web sites and tried to identify common features. A couple of biggies were the fact that almost all of them used small to medium text in black on white, often in some sort of sidebar layout with the main content in the middle and links, search boxes etc. on the left and/or right.
Obviously, it doesn't prove a causal relationship, but if you can rely on almost anyone familiar with the web to have visited at least a couple of these sites fairly regularly (and you probably can) then they do a lot towards defining the accepted norm, and thus what people perceive to be easy to use, good style, etc.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why is this modded "Troll"?
Or maybe the site hasn't been down in two years, but their computers running it might have been upgraded one by one?
Green envy and spam
The Slashdot effect (tm): A legal and fun way to ddos attack websites.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Besides being the pioneering IDE (text editor, compiler, debugging runtime, runtime library), the whole freaking thing was a less than 40 kilobyte (yep kilobyte) image. My guess is that the runtime library was the first 10-12 kilobytes because that is what got grafted on to your apps. The rest was text editor (I still use the WordStar idioms with Borland editors to this day) and compiler. The belief is that the whole thing was written in assembly language, but my guess is that only the runtime library (largely Int 21 and Int 10 function calls -- remember those?) was in assembler -- no big deal as it was largely hooks into DOS -- and the rest was in my guess written in Turbo Pascal itself -- probably initially hand translated to bootstrap itself.
And you could peek and poke both memory and IO ports and make any DOS Int 21 or BIOS Int 10 or whatever calls you wanted that weren't in the runtime library -- who need assembly language, I used it to control everything from video cards to A/D boards.
And that runtime environment caught runtime errors and put you in the editor at that line number -- what a concept. Too bad something like that doesn't work today. I find that no current Borland product these days produces a useful runtime error line number anymore, mainly because the bombs I get these days are from supplying wrong parameters to the Windows API (as an old Turbo Pascal hacker I have no need for this Delphi VCL stuff, I program to the API), and Delphi throws up its hands because it can't trace crashes into the bowels of Windows.
Yes it's still up, and it's still a lot fucking faster than this Slashdot pile.
Edith Keeler Must Die
CodeTek VirtualDesktop provides ``focus follows mouse'' functionality.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
At twice the price of a comparably powerful PC. Apple isn't an option unless you're image concious. Accept it and get over it.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
I'll start out by saying that I'm a firm believer in Linux and GPL/GNU/Open Source/What have you. I use Linux for both my home and work stations and couldn't be happier with the setup.
Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to know why Joe really should switch. Everyone is always advocating "Linux for the masses" and the benefits of open source, however they seem to be oblivious to the fact that Joe probably doesn't care about that. Joe has been using Windows for years, Joe is comfortable with Windows. Sure, Linux is free if Joe knows how to download it (he is Joe after all), and he gets only online docs and community support with that. That means if Joe wants his Linux with his manual and cds he still has to pay for it. Now why would Joe pay for something he's uncomfortable with when he could just as well pay for something he's used for years?
It isn't as much a matter of "Which OS is better" as it is a matter of "What are all the Joes of the world more comfortable with?". Most "Joes" don't like the idea of radically changing the way they use their computers.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you kind sir - I needed that.
And does anyone else think that Mike Myers got his inspiration for "Fat Bastard" from Tim?
Just for your own edification, yeah, that's pretty much it. The kicker is, going from OS X at home, I saw this the 1st time and actually had time to do an Ellen-Feiss-style 'nugh?' and Now I still do that just for my own amusement, at XP's expense. It's the little things.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Also, I think we need more hardware support. I've been impressed with how much better it's gotten, but especially digital cameras and printers -- those are the two main peripherals that really need help.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
No, it's not a joke. There are two well-known problems with the 2000/XP series of Windows versions relating to refresh rates. In one case, the refresh rate gets set to the lowest available setting (usually 60Hz), typically due to changes in video mode when playing games. In another, Plug and Play monitors randomly change back into Default monitors, taking away the option of using higher rates with them. These issues are Windows-based not nVidia-specific, though the latter released a tool that fixes some of the problems for users of their cards.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, recently trying to install told me this was not so. After putting freebsd on, i then expected to simply be able to put an xp cd in, and have windows installed (and yes, i also expected windows to overwrite my mbr so it could boot itself).
Not so. NTLDR missing. I tried a fixmbr and fixboot C: from the recovery console. Still nothing. I formatted my fresh install of freebsd away: i was getting desperate. Fortunately I had booted a knoppix cd, so i booted that up to try and find out what was going on. And here was the answer at M$ support. I needed to get a win98 boot floppy and sys c:.
*sigh*
Hahah, i am not sure if this guy is serious or funny!
Because it's attempt at being patronising and sarcastic failed miserably, revealing a poorly written and thought out article.
Althoug I use windows primarily, I'm no MS zealot. It just pains me to see Linux advocacy done in such a shithouse manner. This article isn't too far off reading like a somethingawful.com article (I can't remember which author/character atm tho).
The third point is about a "Desktop" OS, and the author is bagging Windows 2000 server.
I'd love to know the relevance of netcraft and 2 year uptimes to "Joe Longneck"... And how windows 2000 server suddenly became a desktop OS.
There are plenty of shitty things about windows, such as XP changing the drive letters of all my logical drives when I upgraded from Win2k.
Things like that are worth writing an artile about, the article in question just reads like very juvenile humour. And bad humour at that.
But once I "let go" of expecting to run games on it and decided only to buy console games, it became a great computer for surfing, audio, etc. I started booting my PC with Knoppix on the rare occasion that I turn it on (it had been less than stable in Windows, and I really have gotten too old to enjoy reinstalling everything from scratch just to have a few months of "clean machine").
Now I can't deny that for certain genres of games, the consoles can't really offer a comparable alternative, and a lot of things suck about the "closed market" of consoles. However, it's really nice to have games work out of the box, run at the correct frame-rate, not crash or require updating drivers, not have weird sound problems, etc. To be honest, if you take games out of the equation, most people can be very satisfied with both a less powerful machine *and* a relatively small suite of application software. Linux still lacks good video solutions, and (IMHO) a competitive GUI. But these are solvable problems; wheras getting every new game to be ported to linux or run well under emulation is not realistic.
(this space for rent)
I've got six Windows 2000 Server boxes running at work. They've been on since August 2000. But after exactly 365 days, they lose network connectivity and have to be rebooted. Other machines on the net can see them, they can't see anything else. All hostnames are in local files, but they can't ping IPs either. No service packs have been installed. Anyone else seen or heard of this? Strange.
On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
Hey, you really don't like wallpaper!
It was a good idea, and it's a start.
It got better with left-click for system-wide menu, middle-click for user-configured menu, and right-click for common desktop control panel things.
It would be nice if more *nix apps/toolkits were like the GIMP and extended that metaphor into the application itself, so right clicking on the app (or a widget) brings up properties, middle click is a user-configurable toolbar (maybe empty), and left click is a bunch of common actions, or the "standard" way to invoke a widget.
Just a thought.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Do you pronounce it "Long-Kahnek"?
It's already on the desktop, whether it's ready or not.
Therefore it's a moot point.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
So what is best for the avg. user?
Macs?
I couldn't figure out how to get the fscking cd drives open for the longest time until I noticed a strange button on the keyboard.
Gee yeah it looks cool but can I have a button on the front of the drive or is that to practical?
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Try getting Joe Sixpack excited about anything that isn't up to par with Quake 3 or Unreal tournament.
Then why is Game Boy Advance outselling the Xbox? Heck, why is GBA outselling PS2? Hint: There is more to gaming than first person shooters.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Aren't you sick and tired of hearing the same shit said about Linux? *I* think it's funny. People spout untrue things all the time about ABM (anything but microsoft) ... why shouldn't we take our turn?
like
this ?
if the article weren't so petulant, it would be funny. or maybe my os x is showing. it loses it's zing pretty quickly and just sounds bitchy. ick.
/. zelots not getting the article!
Ohh for a "-1 Stupid Twat"
Is slashdot users ready to come out in the real world? Linux is not the remedy for all the problems in the world...
Yeah, MSSQL had a nice hole in it, but that was patched over 6 months ago, it's still the clueless people who didn't patch their systems that are to blame for a big part of it. I would like to see someone write a worm for a hole in something running on a Linux box (take Apache for instance) to see how many clueless people out there haven't patched their boxes yet. Will you say the same thing about Linux then?
It seems the author tried to be funny. He failed. Whats more to say about this article?
this barely qualifies as news...
[kent brockman - simpsons]
Linux as a desktop OS still requires far more Unix knowledge than most people want to deal with.
My wife must be a Linux geek then, since after I have set up Debian she had no problems using it for routine non-techy tasks (edit texts, browse the web and play solitaire).
Mind you, most PCs come with operating system pre-installed by equipment manufacturer. In case with Linux this would mean that you need not teach user how to install it, nor how configure X11/compile necessary kernel modules/whatever. Thus you can have reasonably pre-set Linux system that Joe Average can use out of the box.
Not enough vendors sell Linux preinstalled? Well, yes, but it has nothing to do with Linux being (un)ready for the destop. Contrary to popular belief, installing and configuring Windows on random hardware for an average user is a task next to impossible.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Heres a little story that has some similarity to Linux supporters tyring to gain desktop marketshare for their favourite OS.
Today is actually my last day working for British Telecom plc. I work at a large research center in eastern England (Adastral park, martlesham, suffolk for any of those interested or sceptical). Bt is a company that has always been plauged with infrastructure and mismanagement problems, and there are always different groups of people crying for their own ideas and how they could save the day.
There is the fibre people (like me!) who think that had BT simply spent all the 3G money on fibering up the UKs homes, everything would be gravy now.
Then theres the SDH people, who think that EVERYTHING should be done over SDH links.
Then theres the IP people, who think that all phones should be VOIP (notwithstanding the fact that its neither as clear nor as reliable as the Plain Old Telephone System.
All these groups have these 'great' ideas on how we can make things better, but they are using their definition of better, not what would help Joe Longneck.
The Phone system may not be perfect, but it can please enough of the people, enough of the time to make it viable, and it turns over a nice profit, whilst remaining inexpensive for the home user (talking about phones, broadband is a bit dear).
Its very similar to Linux. It is undoubtably a better OS, far more secure, faster, and better able to take advantage of powerful hardware, but windows is good enough, whilst being easy to use. The last Linux distro i used (i think it was by corel) was far easier to install and use than my first (S.u.S.E. 5.2) but still way harder to get into than windows. And to be fair, windows XP is not a bad OS. I personally do not like the 'teletubby' (you probably need to be from England to understand that one) GUI, but most people I know do. My mum uses it at home, and it doesnt crash half as often as windows 98 did, probably no more than once a fortnight.
No matter how good any of the Linux distros are, it is not only FUD (an acronym seriously overused by those with little to back up their argument) and ignorance keeping Linux from crushing windows. It is that Windows is 'good enough', and 'good enough' is always the winner.
Seb
(before you call me a troll, i post AC because work it policy states you cant sign into and use message boards)
Don't buy a BMW unless you like crashes... Baselinemag
For server development, using the 'free' marketing offer mentioned, IIS.net is required, this is of course more convienient and more integrated with .net than apache, but it does cost money/mindshare/time. Apache costs mindshare/time but one can move off windows into server land with apache/tomcat/jboss/bea-weblogic/...insert j2ee vendor advertisement here....
You can laugh at java, but it is where the jobs are, as a survey last week on slashdot pointed out (java was narrowly ahead of Microsoft Visual Basic).
Actually migration off IIS.net is (very close to) my job so I am interested in what real as apposed to marketing and FUD alternatives there are.
[My actual job is migrating people between databases [I actually get someone else to do the database part, while I do migrate the sql in the VB/ASP application]]
http://www.geocities.com/totierne
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
The typical company user doesn't need "All the latest" games. Some games as stress relief (like Freecell or Mines) should be enought.
Large company use requires more howver: Think about converting the old Word/Excel macro-ridden Templates (branding, automatic letters etc.).
Furthermore there is the issue of educating users to the new environment and creating a knowledgable support staff.
Hans Voss
---
"I have no special talents, I am just passionately curious" -- Albert Einstein
I think you need "savoir faire"
"Je ne sais quoi" translates roughly "I don't know what".
You mean to tell me there _isn't_ a 'distro' of Linux that includes p2p, media player and burning , browser, email client and MSOffice-clone apps? And there are actually people out there smart enough to code this OS who honestly wonder why it isn't competitive with Windows?
Ok looking at Microsoft Visual Basic as the also ran, rather than the also also ran just shows my seige mentality! The figures from the previous thread (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/ 01/04/2311217&mode=thread):
Java 2739 1000* 1957 27.82%
C++ 2103 1000* 1534 22.65%
Visual Basic 2070 969 1127 20.35%
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
The reason MS-Windows is still common is because it has been fscking difficult to buy a cheap (Intel) computer without it. In other words, OEMs determine consumer usage. C'mon, weren't you awake during the antitrust trial? Microsoft fights tooth and nail to keep their OEM agreements under wraps. They couldn't have achieved monopoly rents on their products without holding the OEMs.
Myself, I found that MS-Windows could not do the things I needed to do for work and the things I wanted to do for fun. When I found that Linux was much easier to install (if you have MS-Windows, you will re-install at least 3x per year) and maintain than Windows, I dropped it from the last of my machines, even though it was pre-installed, and migrated fully to Linux.
Last year, I upgraded to a PowerBook, intending to stick with Linux, but found that OS X was so good with both productivity apps and devel tools that I've kept it.
So in the end, even in my case, the OEM influence the system I used.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Carewolf writes "Is Windows ready for the desktop? We have heard it year after year, that now is the time for Windows on the desktop. But is it really time? Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't think so and has writen a piece that list a number of issues that needs to be solved before Windows is really ready for the masses and "Joe Longkneck"."
Replace that with doesn't think so.
I think it might have something to do with the GBA being portable, and having virtually no competition in that respect
Even though the NGPC, the Wonderswan, and the lovely GP32 never sold well here in the States, what about Palm? What about Pocket PC? What about cellphones?
Another angle: Why is the handheld GBA tying the three dvd consoles combined in units sold, if Joe Sixpack considers 2D games categorically inferior to 3D games?
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's what it comes down to, but you're making the assumption that the PC at hand will 'just work' better with Windows than any other os.
You've been brainwashed. Windows doesn't always 'just work', unless the PC came with the OS pre-loaded. Wait a second, the PC's that come with Linux preinstalled 'just work' also! Who'd have thought!
It has nothing to do with the OS, but how well you hardware matches up with the drivers included in whatever OS you have in your hand at the moment.
Yes, users shouldn't have to know anything about the OS, just their applications. I think when you say 'it just works', you mean those users already know how to use familiar applicatons, and a different version is too much for them.
That fact not only goes for using KWord on Linux, but it also applied to using OpenOffice or 123 on Windows.
Hardware support is NOT the issue, and is a cop out excuse for so-called System Analysts who can't support their users. I remember one 'Systems Analyst' I worked with who was convinced changing mail server settings via a web page was SO much better than editing a sendmail.cf file. "See if I want to relay, I just fire up a web browser, goto http://that.system:4439, enter my password, click admin, then put the relay host in the field, and click 'restart'" /etc/sendmail.cf, change the line that says 'Relay', and kill -HUP the process". There is no difference, you still have to know what you're doing. You just THINK editing data is easier through a web browser (or a registry editor?), because you've been brainwashed.
I said, "Or you could log into the machine, and run pico on
No, end users shouldn't be doing that, they should be buying pre-built systems where the OEM has taken care of all the configuring. If they want to muck around in there, THEN they need to know what they're doing (or pay someone who does - like a mechanic).
I don't know how the hell you got modded +5, you made changes to your default configuration, and then bitched that it didn't work. Then you bitch that nobody can help you - and you're a 'Systems Analyst'? Apparently, it's never occurred to you that NOBODY may have had the exact combination of hardware and software that you had. I PERSONALLY have given HP solutions because I've used hardware and software that they haven't tested, yet you come along and think that some guy 'on the internet' MUST have the answer without you doing a lick of work yourself? You must call OEMs, and never touch the machine again until they call you back, because they MUST know what you've done to the machine. You really think that everybody has gotten every possible combination of hardware and software to work, and you're going to get free support, just because you tried Linux?
FYI, as for credibility, I USED to be a Systems Analyst, then a 'Systems Analyst II', and now I'm a Manager. You won't move up if you can't research problems. I like:
Secondly, MS provides you with a UI to install, configure, and troubleshoot video card problems. If KDE or Gnome has something like that, I've yet to find it. Strike 2 against Linux.
Followed up by:
You Linux Zealots think the user has to know more about their computer than they should to make it work. It's your attitude that it's not called for.
So are users supposed to solve their own problems or not? Diags are not for end users. You're merely complaining that the Diag APPLICATION on Linux isn't the same as it is on Windows. boo hoo. Learn it, or don't try and fix it, but don't complain that you can't fix a problem because the tools are different. Oh no! I can't fix an NVidia problem, because the Control Panel interface isn't the same as ATI's!
I think my sig applies to you more than anyone..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
"You're merely complaining that the Diag APPLICATION on Linux isn't the same as it is on Windows. boo hoo."
No, I'm complaining about an application that simply didn't exist.
If you had read the other posts before responding to mine, you would have seen that the issue was that I'm running Redhat 7.3. It doesn't provide a GUI for changing resolutions. Turns out if I were using a more desktop friendly distro like SuSe or Mandrake, I'd have had better luck.
If you had taken the time to find out a little more about what was happening, and *gasp* been supportive (as opposed to trying to prove that the problem didn't exist and that I'm a liar), you would have saved yourself a lot of typing here.
I'm sitting here, trying to use Linux, and nearly everybody attacked me for having a legitimate complaint about one of the distros. I was in error in not realizing that the problem wasn't with Linux in general, just with my particular distro. And how was I supposed to know? I'm a newb! If the community's going to treat newbs like this, then Linux is going to have a long way to go towards desktop adoption.
Oh I forgot, I did:
A Google Search: "How do I change the resolution in Red Hat 7.3"
And got:
Configuring X (Red Hat Docs)
And
Change of screen resolution by toggling (solution found)- Red Hat mailing list
So, in short, no. I don't see where your complaint is coming from. You should have been able to change it in 5 minutes, even if you hunt and peck x-c-o-n-f-i-g-u-r-a-t-o-r.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
"So, in short, no. I don't see where your complaint is coming from. You should have been able to change it in 5 minutes, even if you hunt and peck x-c-o-n-f-i-g-u-r-a-t-o-r."
That'd be a good response if I had said "I can't change resolutions at all!". Actually what I was saying was "I had to research how to do that.", which is not a winning situation for Mr. Joe Longneck. All that just so I can fiddle with my resolution a bit. 7.3 could have at least provided a shortcut to run xconfigurator.
Oh well, doesn't matter anymore. I'm downloading Mandrake.
Thanks, that's great. A window still has to be in the foreground to have focus, but I think I can live with that. No more instant messages to the wrong person!