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The Rare Glitch Project
Thinker was the first of about thirty million people who wrote to us regarding
CNN's coverage of "The Rare Glitch Project". Yes, join three student filmmakers as they descend into a building in Redmond, WA. Their mission: To find the legendary compact and stable version of Windows. Very amusing - I like the e-mail burial ground quite a bit.
But, Netscape, being a closed-source program, is hardly typical. Everything else I run, other than StarOffice (which I only use on occasion), is Free Software, and it doesn't tend to have those kinds of problems (and when it does, it gets fixed pretty quickly).
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If you don't do mutch with it. There are people out there that windows is the perfect choice for. Apparently only 10% of people...
But seriously, alot of these people claim that windows is unstable after f**king up their machines for years. Linux suffers the same slings and arrows from all of the people that complain that Linux won't work with their "insert hardware here".
When Linux is all beautiful and all of the apps are stable, I'll start worrying about forgetting the kill command. But until then, at least linux has the kill command.
~Jason Maggard
"A man can be a slave to irrational hate or irrational passion. Unfortunately the poor beast is only capable of being rational and even keel when he is dead."
Yes, humor news has its place on /., but those with humorless preferences shouldn't have to waste bandwidth on stories like this.
Besides, I like seeing the python foot in the icon bar. It almost compensates me, a lonely python bigot, for the fact that Java and Perl get their own slasdot topics but Python doesn't.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
numbers are at 92% and 8% now.. (as of 6:46 EST)
looks like the slashdot effect is working!!!
JMC
Is Windows 95/98 a buggy operating system?
Yes, It doesn't work too well for computers, maybe it WOULD kick ass on the new buggys.
+&x
The only change is now we're seeing more mainstream bias against Microsoft. And we're seeing some positive bias towards Linux, with rare mention of other alternatives such as FreeBSD or BeOS.
I got a few shallow chuckles out of it. But then, I'm easily amused. The telling point, though, is that I didn't bookmark it. It wasn't anything special, after all.
Why don't you just only read messages rated 2 and up? That gets you most of the good ones ... an no "first post" comment gets rated a 2 or 3 ...
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Does anyone else think something is wrong when a (supposedly) unbiased news site like CNN posts this story on its computing news front page? As much as I dislike Windows this is just biased as anything.
What makes you think that is the opinion of the "mainstream"? I don't know exactly how many viewers one can be expected to get from a link on slashdot, but consider that the polls here normally have like 30-50,000 votes. Also consider that the mainstream would have given up on that story before scrolling down to the poll (it might have been on the first page for you, but I bet you don't run 640*480 because reseting the res is too difficult either). And that NO geek could have passed by that one without voting.
I think the mainstream have no opinion on the subject. They have nothing to compare with, and Windows seldome crashes when in Solitaire...
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Now I think that mindless microsoft bashing is lame and annoying and done to death.
:)
And I think that mindless BWP bashing is lame and annoying and done to death.
But I think the way this article combined them both was pretty clever, and it got a few lols out of me. It wasn't meant to be a review of BWP or a critique of MS. It was meant to be funny.
The image is cool too, I like BG's eyes
But this should have been under "Humor" not "Microsoft." It's funny. Lighten up and Laugh.
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The following sentence is true.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
But what choice do they have?
I'm a fairly moderate fun of Linux. I use it at work and at home. I use it as primary workstations in both cases. But I also have windows machines at both locations. I would be limiting myself if I tried to completely go without Windows. Its a current fact of life. Having said that - a good 90% of what I do daily does not include Windows. But it would be impractical to go 100%.
The amusing thing is that I have some fairly cluefull friends who make their living within a Microsoft environment. They occasionally bash Microsoft too. Granted, they're a little more rational about it than your average foam-at-the-mouth Linux (or Mac) zealot. But even those who support Microsoft also criticize it.
Does this mean there's a love/hate relationship?
No. I would say its more of a relationship of practicality. The mainstream doesn't get passionate about an OS. And my tech friends? Their relationship with Microsoft is all business.
I'm not saying Windows is stable; I'm saying that the poll, like any other internet poll, is skewed.
> 10% of the voters thought that Windows was NOT
/. pools have demonstrated that 10% of the voters consistently chooses the funny option, when one is available. Draw your own conclusion.
> a buggy OS!!!
Incidentally, the
They are attempting to document the Rare Glitch Project, a legendary version of Microsoft Windows designed to be compact and stable.
Why does he feel the need to be so inflammatory? Such a thing already exists. It's called NT 3.51. Actually, I shouldn't even say that. There's nothing that wrong with NT 4, even, provided you've got good hardware. It's just that most of the applications Microsoft writes to run on top of NT that either aren't stable or just resource-consuming. For instance, you can run a machine with Exchange server for months, even years without rebooting, it's just a memory hog. On the other hand, Proxy server crashes fortnightly. The common thing about both products is that they really do some innovative awesome stuff, but are implemented poorly. If Proxy server never crashed, and Exchange took up 1/5 of the RAM it does, (and was a bit faster) they would be awesome products.
I'm just more than a little sick about people ragging so hard on Windows. Unless you are guided by truly altruistic beliefs, using only Free(tm) Software, and never releasing a non-GPLed source; use Linux/BSD when it's appropriate. Indeed, use NT when it's appropriate, because sometimes it is!
> But NT seems less buggy (because it prevents buggy software from doing buggy things).
No OS can prevent software from "doing buggy things". Nor is the (non-)bugginess of software necessarily any reflection on the OS. If I write a trashapp for someone's favorite OS, does that mean their fav wasn't really as good as they thought?
> And Linux software is generally buggier. Don't deny it.
I deny it. Cite some evidence and perhaps I'll concede that you're right. (Of course, it's going to be very difficult to cite evidence for a claim containing the word "generally". Perhaps you'd like to refine your claim a bit instead?)
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes 92% 7398 votes
No 8% 632 votes
Total: 8030 votes
Nice odds, yet if CNN asked the question, "Would you be willing to install Linux today" the numbers would be the same but with Yes and No reversed. I love it when the mainstream bashes M$ while they edit their stories using Word running on NT, holding a Microsoft mouse after putting the phone down and ordering W2k for 20 workstations. I'm starting to believe they think M$ bashing is exactly like Ralph Kramden threating to beat his wife, in they end they're still very much in love. Awwww.
"To the moon, Gates!"
Then again if that vote was slashdotted...
see, "funny" in this type of article usually happens when the target (in this case, Micros~1) is savagely skewered by a lethal combination of witty writing and ironic truth. The former was sorely lacking.
Was anybody crying with laughter over this article? I hope not, cuz it just wasn't good writing and it wasn't funny, and it certainly didn't say anything new. I could write a piece of crap like that in five minutes, easy.
I know humor is relative, but for stuff like this an exception has to be made. It reminds me of that "slashdot parody" site Roblimo posted called "hashsnot" or something like that. Ugh.
I'm not being a grouch and saying don't put humorous stuff up. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite - don't put up sorry attempts at humor. You guys should up your standards a little on what gets posted.
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
"CAPS LOCK FOR DUMMIES" ?
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I suggest a slashdot preference option:
Hide all First Post comments x (this would, of course, incude all variations and other dumb arse first post variants)... in fact, it would filter out *this* post, due to the FIRST POST in the subject and the comment. I'd be thrilled at this option... of course people would start first posting things like "Floof!" and "Nanotubule" instead, and soon we'd just have to decapitate them all......
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Trouble is, if 99% said Windows 95/98 _wasn't_ buggy, they'd be lying or simply conned. It's not a popularity contest, people, this says nothing about Windows and everything about people's perception of Windows. Windows _IS_ buggy. Most big software projects are, and Windows is particularly buggy and people have lived with it for _years_ and gotten well used to its weird and chaotic behavior. _Journalists_ whose paychecks are heavily subsidized by MS have taken to writing articles about how buggy it is: "Hey, Windows is buggy! I can't go three days without it crashing!" "Oh yeah? When I wrote about how buggy it was, I got _buried_ in email telling me how right I was!" "Oh yeah? It crashes every day for me!" "You were lucky, for me it dies every thrrree hoours..." "_Luxury_..." :) because their behavior is kind of psychotic, such a determined denial of trivially obvious reality can't be healthy :) ;)
It's more interesting to speculate on how many people actually understand how buggy Windows is, and what they propose to do about it, than to seriously argue about whether (ha!) Windows _is_ (hahaha!) buggy. (*ROFL*) Uh, if anybody is suggesting that Windows is _not_ buggy and that the constant and incessant reports of it being buggy are _jealousy_ or malicious lies... they should go see a mental health care specialist
Now, if you ask whether it's good to have people constantly making the same joke about it, that's another story- maybe you could make a case that this is a tragic situation that deserves sympathy and help and big donations to the Help Microsoft Afford To Pay For Debugging Fund. Surely it's only right to help poverty-stricken young startups like MS, who can't _afford_ to take the time to debug, help them get the tools and talent they need. With enough donations, somebody might be able to go through the source for RegEdit and take out almost a megabyte of completely unused resources that don't do anything! If only MS had the money to pay for somebody to do these little housekeeping tasks. Toss them a coin and utter a small prayer for them.
On the other hand, since they don't want to clean up their act, why not turn the knife in it as hard as you can? It's capitalism in action- it's a window of vulnerability- they are helping potential competitors create a market space for themselves, by shipping crapware all the time. Don't let them do it unchallenged, _lean_ on that vulnerability, it might make some consumer someday, about to purchase WindowsYetAgain(tm), pause and stop and go "Damn... who needs that?" and start down some other path of computing that they would enjoy just as much or more.
I'm more shocked that almost 10% _don't_ think W9* is buggy. o_O
The Author: Nick Petreley, a noted and repeated anti-microsoft (as opposed to pro-linux) grandstander The Theme: get traffic and ad impressions for CNN by trolling slashdot into citing their article The Bait: A limply humorous spoof on a moderately interesting movie. The Content: a puerile sissy-slap in the face of Microsoft, roughly equivalent to "nyah nyah, your OS is unstable" The Result: pay dirt. The gullible slashdot authority falls for it. Tens of thousands of ad impressions line CNN's pockets. Microsoft is *yawn* yet again trashed on slashdot. No provocation in the form of actual news is required. Humor Level: Three boston cream pies out of ten. Sucker Level: Off the charts.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!