Most of us are open to all software (even the dominating ones). Would you put the letters "M$" down on a budget sheet for your boss?
No, I would not. I would not recommend a new Microsoft purchase and considering it is not a mater of maturity of openness but of ignorance. The old stuff will work till it dies and by then it will be replaced by less expensive and more reliable free software. People who insist on Microsoft as a "consideration" for all things are Zealots who ignore poor past performance, high costs and bad attitudes.
In any case, I'll consider to call Micro$oft expensive any way I please. The only thing more boring and irritating than reading M$ is reading the cloud of Astroturf recommending against it. I've read more ugly and insulting posts about this one topic than any other. Fuck off.
Funny how you would cut and paste a troll post as a defense against smearing a "Baby Bill" for daring to say the M$ is not all it's cracked up to be. I'm not ashamed of my writing and anyone who bothers to check that thing will see why it's posted anonymously. That it's been posted after every single post for months is more evidence to me of the trouble Microsoft will go to in order to smear anyone, however small, who would bother to remember all of their bad behavior. What a waste of effort and money.
If you want to get personal, I've got some time to burn and refuting a single post is hardly personal. jmulvey, you are not worth your what you are paid two write. You might check this post where I conclude your smear of Reifman is dishonest as well as unconvincing. Your posting history is full of such M$ shilling and noise. I can't imagine anyone who is not paid to do so, defending Microsoft's registry systems, as a "standard" rather than the mixed binary/human readable no standards set piece of planned obsolescence that it is. Here is display of M$ professionalism for you. There's more of course, and you seem to be followed by the likes of Klez, talking goats and other obnoxious trolls.
I think the parent offered some, albeit circumstantial, evidence to show that perhaps Reifman had ulterior motives for writing this editorial and it should be considered as a whole (the editorial and his background).
The parent attempted to make Reifman look like an idiot with a gurdge and so deflect Reifman's careful criticism of M$ junk. He pointed to an article that called Reifman a "Baby Bill", a Microsoft made millionair with philanthropic goals. He used this and Reifman's refusal to stay at M$ for 2 months to gain another $200,000 of stock options as evidence of Reifman's stupidity and bitterness. It's unconvincing at best and the parents omission of Reifman's lack of concern about money amounts to dishonesty. This was done instead of addressing the very real shortcomings of Microsoft's latest and greatest software.
There's a whole pack of apologists here doing more of the same, but jmulvey has really gone off the deep end.
That's a cool article you linked to. You might have mentioned that Reifman did not care about money and could not possibly be bitter about any business failure. Indeeed, his start-up was acquired and we don't really know that he lost money at all besides that $200,000 he did without years ago. Your article says:
But for Reifman, who owns two non-profit coffeehouses on Capitol Hill, it has never been about the money. It is more about creating a company that makes a difference.
"A lot of what I am doing is motivated by philanthropic causes," said Reifman, who is setting up a program at GiftSpot.com so his online customers can donate their spare change to charity....
But Reifman also said Microsoft, which has grown to 30,200 employees, is a more bureaucratic company than the one he joined eight years ago. That was part of his reason for leaving.
"Bureaucratic" is a nice way of saying "stupid".
I don't see where you get off calling the man bitter. He is currently gainfully employed and his gushing praise of Macs and Linux is anything but bitter. Indeed, the whole article is carefully considered and constructive criticism. M$ regularly pays for astroturf and smear, but, jmulvey, you really have set a new low standard by accusing a man driven by philanthropy of bitterness about money.
Fanboys never cease to amaze me with their vehemence, twitsted logic and bile. Reifman has argued persuasively that the Microsoft experience is not all it's cracked up to be and that alternatives require far less effort to work and are earning loyalty. Deal with it, if you can, without slandering the speaker. It's a turn off and always has been.
The win98 comment was part sarcasm,... Meaning that his XP system is ridiculously mismanaged if he's having so many problems.
That was not apparent, sorry to call you a dummy over it. It seemed so obvious that the author was a died in the wool softie who used the latest and greatest M$ everything and would never hesitate to follow any M$ instructions to the letter. More importantly, his eXPerience, despite his great knowledge, is the norm rather than the exception.
What particular XP design flaws are you talking about? I'm not doubting you, just would like to get a better idea of what is tripping people up.
My XP knowledge comes from a recent six month stint of PC service work. It was impossible for home and business users to keep it clean of spyware, malware and it was a nightmare compared to my last work back in 1998-99. Things have become less stable and more difficult to fix. The author lists a pile of feature problems that make it look like the applications are no longer even worth the security problems and I blame them all on poor design features: a kernel that does not really know all processes, a filesystem that does not have real user based permissions, internet connected services that run as root and accept run code sent by email from anywhere and the list goes on. Even Windows 2000, the last M$ OS I was forced to work with at a job, was unstable. Like you, I used Mozilla for browsing and mail, but it did not really help and the last Microsoft system I used this way started flaking after less than four months.
I can contrast poor performance like that to Linux systems that I have no problems with. I almost never have to reboot them and I use hardware literally from the garbage. Newer distributions offer me features that cost thousands of dollars in the Microsoft world. I've got stable systems from a 486 gateway and a 75MHz PI laptop that surfs wireless to Athlon systems with all the bells and whistles that have grown by leaps and bounds each year. The only reason I turn any of them off is to add hardware or on power failure.
Sorry but this guy wants Microsoft to produce Macs, it's too obvious, he's not credible.
No, he just wants the feature set and a computer that works. A PC with XP can't do those things without lots and lots of effort. The same PC with an Linux distro can easily do those things. Most of them are built into KDE. The fact that I can run the same software on a Mac and that Mac's native software does all of the same things too does not excuse M$ from all of the above shortfalls. Indeed, Microsoft's position to demand hardware drivers and software contributions from everyone in the industry makes the sad state of their software hard to believe. It's pure mismanagement.
As for credibility, I give high marks to a man who's used M$ for 23 years, worked for the company for 8 years and is still not able to get satisfactory results from the junk.
I'm not sure why geeks hate Windows in particular.
But the author has told you. He thinks Winblows is getting worse, not better and that this is inexcusable. He has a detailed shit list of bugs that got to him, which I've not seen because I got out own the Winblows suck years ago. I'll just quote him:
... I always believed that the Soft did its best to improve products over time, as it did with Windows XP. But recently, I've had a crisis of faith. Perhaps I've rebooted Windows one too many times.
Over the past year, my frustration with Windows grew...
I'm tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company' e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn't solved more of these problems.
I have to agree with him and see the decline as a trend as old as the Soft. Like the author, I've used Microsoft for 20 years or so, since DOS 3.2 on an XT. Every release they have made became more complicated and more buggy, despite "Best Ever!" hype. I decommissioned that first XT in 1997. It still worked as good as it ever had with University and AOL dial up service, a hand scanner, a logitec bus mouse, Word Perfect and a fortran compiler, it was an adequate machine that never hung. It's replacement, a 486 with windoze 3.1 lasted about half as long and every M$ OS I've had in my house followed this trend. 95 did not last as long as 3.1 and 98 was buggier than 95. The record goes to my little brother's XP box that lasted only six months.
Linux distributions, on the other hand have grown in quality and polish every year. I've used Red Hat since 1998 but have moved to Debian and Mepis. Newer distributions, such as Mepis, are now easier to set up and run, have more features and are far more stable than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.
I'm not sure why geeks hate Windows in particular.
But the author has told you. He thinks Winblows is getting worse, not better, and has a detailed shit list that got to him:
... I always believed that the Soft did its best to improve products over time, as it did with Windows XP. But recently, I?ve had a crisis of faith. Perhaps I?ve rebooted Windows one too many times.
Over the past year, my frustration with Windows grew...
I?m tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company?s e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command?it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
... I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn?t solved more of these problems.
I have to agree with him and see the decline as a trend as old as the Soft. Like the author, I've used Microsoft for 20 years or so, since DOS 3.2 on an XT. Every release they have made became more complicated and more buggy, despite "Best Ever!" hype. I decommissioned that first XT in 1997. It still worked as good as it ever had with University and AOL dial up service, a hand scanner, a logitec bus mouse, Word Perfect and a fortran compiler, it was an adequate machine that never hung. It's replacement, a 486 with windoze 3.1 lasted about half as long and every M$ OS I've had in my house followed this trend. 95 did not last as long as 3.1 and 98 was buggier than 95. The record goes to my little brother's XP box that lasted only six months.
Linux distributions, on the other hand have grown in quality and polish every year. I've used Red Hat since 1998 but have moved to Debian and Mepis. Newer distributions, such as Mepis, are now easier to set up and run, have more features and are far more stable than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.
It looks like the author needs to stop running Windows 98. Seriously, what ridiculously mismanaged system is he running?
The author implies that he's been running XP as well as those other latest and greatest programs that are causing him no end of grief:
While aware of Microsoft?s shortcomings, I always believed that the Soft did its best to improve products over time, as it did with Windows XP.
While there's no excuse for 98 to act that way either, I've found it to be more stable than newer M$ junk. Sitting behind a nice Debian firewall and blinded to my network, my wife's Windoze 98 partition has been working as good as it ever did for the last three years. We use it to operate a scanner and a few USB devices. Most of the time it's booted to Debian testing because my wife mostly web surfs and emails. My little brother's XP box lasted about six months on the same network in part because he unwisely used it for internet stuff but mostly because of the many compounding Microsoft design flaws. It crashed and burned on him one day and he had lost his XP CD and put Fedora on it. Now it works great. Anyone working the PC industry knows that my little brother's case is typical and that Microsoft computing has become more not less frustrating.
I dismissed those who did as impractical, elitist hipsters, and I mocked the Mac ?switch? ads on TV.
But in the first five minutes on my new Mac, I was surfing the Internet, sending e-mail, and ripping a CD. OS X has been a breath of badly needed fresh air after Windows.
Well, sure. Who else would be dumb enough to try to patent double clicking? Excluding people from useful ideas is what Microsoft has always been about. From Bill Gate's infamous "open letter" in 1976, they have been champions of the NDA and destructive selfishness. The only surprise is that the US granted them what they asked for.
May just be my employer's advertising blocking software, but this was the hardest to read article I've seen in a long time. Text on top of text for 3/4ths of the article (the length of the left side menu bar) in IE 6.0...
But your software is correct to make things difficult, it was an advert. This is more of M$'s attack on email and an attempt to push their new and improved versions. This statement is key:
If Time Inc. wants to keep its communications safe, it should invest in some sort of encryption software that allows privileged readers to open the mail but prevents them from forwarding, printing, or otherwise duplicating it. Microsoft, which publishes Slate, even makes a product for such occasions.
Let's look at all the stones thrown:
Time, a competitor, is the example. Surely, M$ has their own set of dumb disclaimers.
Email is, gasp, "uncontrolled". God only knows what unintended recipients will do with anything not written in DRM invisible ink!
Email is easy to intercept.
Blah, blah, blah.
The answer, of course, is to buy some new spiffy new M$ junk to replace your old spiffy M$ junk and forgo traditional email. Some solution.
You have to love an end to end M$ solution. Served on IIS/5.0 by a M$ owned company and read by someone using IE. I had no trouble reading the article using KDE 3.2, despite blocking 25% of the obvious adverts. I don't think I'd have a problem printing or redistributing it either. I'm sorry to hear that your employer's choice of browser won't even render the junk. Billy Gates promises to make sure you can't print or share it either, even if you could read it. So the clueless inflict suffering.
Next time, just ssh into your home box and use lynx or links. Lynx rendered just fine and I know that lynx does better. Beware your employer's keyloggers and those installed by trojans, however, and use a disposable box with different passwords than normal.
Phones? Laptops? Camcorders? Start looking for the ladies being banged on the back seats and then you use YOUR camcorder;)
Where have you been? The goggles already have recording, for "evidence". Thanks God for DRM in those things. It's bad enough I have to see other people's O faces, I would not want that kind of trash floating around the internet. Let me put it to you this way, Paul Rubens took a big interest in this "screening". Got the picture yet? Be glad you don't!
No, Twitter is not in the UK and has never been an Usher nor seen a Hary Potter (TM) movie. The above is fictional and designed for your amusement only.
I wonder... If I stop paying my "subscription", will a van will stop by and repo my hardware?
That's an interesting question.
The answer seems easy, no, they won't bother. Someone else mentioned cell phones and that's a good example of how this will work. Why bother to go get those? Your subscription fee will already have paid for the device many times over. No one else will want your used equipment and it will cost money to collect. Because the software is not free (libre), they can turn a remote kill switch and make it useless to you so that you have to purchase another one. If you refuse to mail the hardware back to them at your cost, you will be charged some absurd fee as per your contract. No repo van required.
The article claims that Schwartz thinks, - the hardware, software, storage and its interlinks - is fast becoming a commodity.
He's very confused, evil or misquoted. Hardware already is a commodity but commodities still cost money, just like corn, wheat and other honest stuff. It's shocking that someone at such a high level of a firm that excels in hardware design would have failed to notice that. Once can only conclude that Schwartz has decided to collude with Microsoft in their mad attempt to eliminate free software.
Sun is doomed. The traditional commercial software development process ran out of steam twenty years ago. Proprietary software can not compete with free software and those who cling to it will be swept away. Schwartz is going to run Sun into the ground. I really hope Schwartz was misquoted, but that does not seem to be the case.
The combination of KDE/X makes an Athlon 800 unusably slow
You must be doing something wrong. I've run KDE 3.1 on a 333MHz PII and it ran fine. My favorite machine is a 650 Athlon Slot and KDE 3.2.2 works without a hitch. The only thing that's slow is Kmail's mail fetching utility, but you can speed things up with kcron and fetchmail and then simply checking your local mail. KDE is large and offers lots of services, but the whole point was to lessen the burden of those services by creating a rational framework. KDE, which easily fits on live CD's, within your computer's RAM and even on embedded devices is wildly successful at meeting it's goals.
Other nonsense you write about Microsoft's development project compared to KDE's is pure M$ propaganda. Microsoft is incapable of implementing the vast array of changes that people want but free software does so by it's nature. Anyone who might be scared off from trying KDE by comments like this can debunk them in about five minutes by trying out a copy of Knoppix or Mepis.
This is a PR move. Clustering is just another thing that Windows can't do. All the Linux clusters popping up everywhere, especially at universities, demonstrate this to PHB and "influential" types. It tends to tarnish the wizz-bang image M$'s has carefully built among the clueless. Microsoft knows that PHBs will never run a cluster, a Hotmail or anything other than Word. By making one or two announcements, they can convince the clueless that M$ is all they will ever need.
but teh twit, wehere is teh M$ angle on all this???? tell us, teh twit!!
I'd say M$ is paying you to astroturf this site to be as disruptive as possible. Bullshit and bluster were all Bill and company every were good at. Keep wasting your money Bill. Rational conversation happens here despite the effort.
The PROTECT Act - officially Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today - gave authorities the right to tap into a suspect's computer to catch child abusers, including Internet pornographers....
When Sacramento agents made their request in August 2003, the wiretap provision had not yet been used, and authorities had to convince a federal judge to grant the authority.
That article is very disturbing. It admits that the old system worked while glorifying the newfound ability of police to wiretap anyone they feel like. It's hard for me to understand how the reporters, Stanton and Walsh, were able to twist their brains into missing the big picture.
How on Earth can this case be seen a triumph of ghastly new police powers? This creep was caught despite the inconvenience of judicial oversite and due process. The issue is a simply put in the US Bill of Rights, amendment 4 to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That is, your house will not be violated unless reasonable evidence presented and sworn too in a public court of law.
"Terrorism" and kiddie porn are declared serious enough to remove this protection but the removal for some crimes eliminates the protection for everyone. Without that public record and oversight, anyone can be tapped as a "suspect". The potential for abuse is enormous. PROTECT is a perverse name indeed.
This is a very narrow case and Monsanto will be able to levee a tax on any farmer who's crops are contaminated, eventually everyone. If the genetic modification is designed to produce higher yields, Monsanto can claim a portion of the victim's profit by pointing to their own studies that prove higher yields. It is ludicrous that a farmer will have to pay for something he neither desires nor can avoid, but that's what this case sets up.
The Schmeissers admitted that they were aware it was RoundupReady Canola (having tested it specifically), and then they saved the seeds & sowed it the next year in their fields.
A traditional farmer can't avoid this. A farmer who gets most of his seed from his own crops will end up with someone else's patented seeds in his own unless those patented seeds are incapable of pollinating other plants. Contamination of crops is impossible to avoid. Eventually, everyone will be beholden to the holders of the patents. This is insidious and the Canadian Supreme court is insane.
Let's try again. The article says that 71% of surveyed spam sites are in China. This article shows that most of the spam itself is from the USA, and most of that from broken cable boxes. The one thing that those cable boxes share with the rest of the worlds broken cable boxes is a crappy commercial OS from Redmond. Oh yeah, one more thing, China's great internet wall is working about as well as the original stone one.
The source of the problem is a poorly designed US operating system pushed by a greedy and embarrassing company. To block them, you have to remove or fix that OS. Because the only people who can fix that OS have not, removal is the best option.
You can help solve the problem by turning to other, much better made OS such as Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mepis, Xandros, Feather, Peanut and so on, which is founded on some rather solid US notions of freedom. Yes, I'm still proud to be an American.
Think of it as a filing system. Would you allow users to randomly create directories off root or/usr or even/home? No, only a fuckwit would do that but this is essentially what ICANN are doing.
fuckwit is not a nice word. Lose it and your rant would look less like a rant.
In any case, I like the idea that I can create my own structure without some librarian's assistance. Something like:
news.google.com
maps.yahoo.com
The solution to domain squatting is to punish the squatters, but it seems that the powers that be are not up to the task. Unless you can distribute your system, I don't think it will make a difference. Fred the plumber in New York will have the same kinds of problems under any centralized system. Under yours, he will also have to pay up for his personal site and any other business site he wants to run that's not plumbing.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I would not. I would not recommend a new Microsoft purchase and considering it is not a mater of maturity of openness but of ignorance. The old stuff will work till it dies and by then it will be replaced by less expensive and more reliable free software. People who insist on Microsoft as a "consideration" for all things are Zealots who ignore poor past performance, high costs and bad attitudes.
In any case, I'll consider to call Micro$oft expensive any way I please. The only thing more boring and irritating than reading M$ is reading the cloud of Astroturf recommending against it. I've read more ugly and insulting posts about this one topic than any other. Fuck off.
If you want to get personal, I've got some time to burn and refuting a single post is hardly personal. jmulvey, you are not worth your what you are paid two write. You might check this post where I conclude your smear of Reifman is dishonest as well as unconvincing. Your posting history is full of such M$ shilling and noise. I can't imagine anyone who is not paid to do so, defending Microsoft's registry systems, as a "standard" rather than the mixed binary/human readable no standards set piece of planned obsolescence that it is. Here is display of M$ professionalism for you. There's more of course, and you seem to be followed by the likes of Klez, talking goats and other obnoxious trolls.
The parent attempted to make Reifman look like an idiot with a gurdge and so deflect Reifman's careful criticism of M$ junk. He pointed to an article that called Reifman a "Baby Bill", a Microsoft made millionair with philanthropic goals. He used this and Reifman's refusal to stay at M$ for 2 months to gain another $200,000 of stock options as evidence of Reifman's stupidity and bitterness. It's unconvincing at best and the parents omission of Reifman's lack of concern about money amounts to dishonesty. This was done instead of addressing the very real shortcomings of Microsoft's latest and greatest software.
There's a whole pack of apologists here doing more of the same, but jmulvey has really gone off the deep end.
Still in high school?
That would not be easy for someone who's been using and working on PCs for more than 20 years.
Ask me something useful or shut up. Stupid and loud is such a nasty combination.
But for Reifman, who owns two non-profit coffeehouses on Capitol Hill, it has never been about the money. It is more about creating a company that makes a difference. "A lot of what I am doing is motivated by philanthropic causes," said Reifman, who is setting up a program at GiftSpot.com so his online customers can donate their spare change to charity. ...
But Reifman also said Microsoft, which has grown to 30,200 employees, is a more bureaucratic company than the one he joined eight years ago. That was part of his reason for leaving.
"Bureaucratic" is a nice way of saying "stupid".
I don't see where you get off calling the man bitter. He is currently gainfully employed and his gushing praise of Macs and Linux is anything but bitter. Indeed, the whole article is carefully considered and constructive criticism. M$ regularly pays for astroturf and smear, but, jmulvey, you really have set a new low standard by accusing a man driven by philanthropy of bitterness about money.
Fanboys never cease to amaze me with their vehemence, twitsted logic and bile. Reifman has argued persuasively that the Microsoft experience is not all it's cracked up to be and that alternatives require far less effort to work and are earning loyalty. Deal with it, if you can, without slandering the speaker. It's a turn off and always has been.
That was not apparent, sorry to call you a dummy over it. It seemed so obvious that the author was a died in the wool softie who used the latest and greatest M$ everything and would never hesitate to follow any M$ instructions to the letter. More importantly, his eXPerience, despite his great knowledge, is the norm rather than the exception.
What particular XP design flaws are you talking about? I'm not doubting you, just would like to get a better idea of what is tripping people up.
My XP knowledge comes from a recent six month stint of PC service work. It was impossible for home and business users to keep it clean of spyware, malware and it was a nightmare compared to my last work back in 1998-99. Things have become less stable and more difficult to fix. The author lists a pile of feature problems that make it look like the applications are no longer even worth the security problems and I blame them all on poor design features: a kernel that does not really know all processes, a filesystem that does not have real user based permissions, internet connected services that run as root and accept run code sent by email from anywhere and the list goes on. Even Windows 2000, the last M$ OS I was forced to work with at a job, was unstable. Like you, I used Mozilla for browsing and mail, but it did not really help and the last Microsoft system I used this way started flaking after less than four months.
I can contrast poor performance like that to Linux systems that I have no problems with. I almost never have to reboot them and I use hardware literally from the garbage. Newer distributions offer me features that cost thousands of dollars in the Microsoft world. I've got stable systems from a 486 gateway and a 75MHz PI laptop that surfs wireless to Athlon systems with all the bells and whistles that have grown by leaps and bounds each year. The only reason I turn any of them off is to add hardware or on power failure.
No, he just wants the feature set and a computer that works. A PC with XP can't do those things without lots and lots of effort. The same PC with an Linux distro can easily do those things. Most of them are built into KDE. The fact that I can run the same software on a Mac and that Mac's native software does all of the same things too does not excuse M$ from all of the above shortfalls. Indeed, Microsoft's position to demand hardware drivers and software contributions from everyone in the industry makes the sad state of their software hard to believe. It's pure mismanagement.
As for credibility, I give high marks to a man who's used M$ for 23 years, worked for the company for 8 years and is still not able to get satisfactory results from the junk.
I'm not sure why geeks hate Windows in particular.
But the author has told you. He thinks Winblows is getting worse, not better and that this is inexcusable. He has a detailed shit list of bugs that got to him, which I've not seen because I got out own the Winblows suck years ago. I'll just quote him:
... I always believed that the Soft did its best to improve products over time, as it did with Windows XP. But recently, I've had a crisis of faith. Perhaps I've rebooted Windows one too many times.
Over the past year, my frustration with Windows grew ...
I'm tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company' e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn't solved more of these problems.
I have to agree with him and see the decline as a trend as old as the Soft. Like the author, I've used Microsoft for 20 years or so, since DOS 3.2 on an XT. Every release they have made became more complicated and more buggy, despite "Best Ever!" hype. I decommissioned that first XT in 1997. It still worked as good as it ever had with University and AOL dial up service, a hand scanner, a logitec bus mouse, Word Perfect and a fortran compiler, it was an adequate machine that never hung. It's replacement, a 486 with windoze 3.1 lasted about half as long and every M$ OS I've had in my house followed this trend. 95 did not last as long as 3.1 and 98 was buggier than 95. The record goes to my little brother's XP box that lasted only six months.
Linux distributions, on the other hand have grown in quality and polish every year. I've used Red Hat since 1998 but have moved to Debian and Mepis. Newer distributions, such as Mepis, are now easier to set up and run, have more features and are far more stable than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.
I'm not sure why geeks hate Windows in particular.
But the author has told you. He thinks Winblows is getting worse, not better, and has a detailed shit list that got to him:
Over the past year, my frustration with Windows grew ...
I?m tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company?s e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command?it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
... I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn?t solved more of these problems.
I have to agree with him and see the decline as a trend as old as the Soft. Like the author, I've used Microsoft for 20 years or so, since DOS 3.2 on an XT. Every release they have made became more complicated and more buggy, despite "Best Ever!" hype. I decommissioned that first XT in 1997. It still worked as good as it ever had with University and AOL dial up service, a hand scanner, a logitec bus mouse, Word Perfect and a fortran compiler, it was an adequate machine that never hung. It's replacement, a 486 with windoze 3.1 lasted about half as long and every M$ OS I've had in my house followed this trend. 95 did not last as long as 3.1 and 98 was buggier than 95. The record goes to my little brother's XP box that lasted only six months.
Linux distributions, on the other hand have grown in quality and polish every year. I've used Red Hat since 1998 but have moved to Debian and Mepis. Newer distributions, such as Mepis, are now easier to set up and run, have more features and are far more stable than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.
It looks like the author needs to stop running Windows 98. Seriously, what ridiculously mismanaged system is he running?
The author implies that he's been running XP as well as those other latest and greatest programs that are causing him no end of grief:
While aware of Microsoft?s shortcomings, I always believed that the Soft did its best to improve products over time, as it did with Windows XP.
While there's no excuse for 98 to act that way either, I've found it to be more stable than newer M$ junk. Sitting behind a nice Debian firewall and blinded to my network, my wife's Windoze 98 partition has been working as good as it ever did for the last three years. We use it to operate a scanner and a few USB devices. Most of the time it's booted to Debian testing because my wife mostly web surfs and emails. My little brother's XP box lasted about six months on the same network in part because he unwisely used it for internet stuff but mostly because of the many compounding Microsoft design flaws. It crashed and burned on him one day and he had lost his XP CD and put Fedora on it. Now it works great. Anyone working the PC industry knows that my little brother's case is typical and that Microsoft computing has become more not less frustrating.
I dismissed those who did as impractical, elitist hipsters, and I mocked the Mac ?switch? ads on TV. But in the first five minutes on my new Mac, I was surfing the Internet, sending e-mail, and ripping a CD. OS X has been a breath of badly needed fresh air after Windows.
Someone send this man Knoppix!
May just be my employer's advertising blocking software, but this was the hardest to read article I've seen in a long time. Text on top of text for 3/4ths of the article (the length of the left side menu bar) in IE 6.0 ...
But your software is correct to make things difficult, it was an advert. This is more of M$'s attack on email and an attempt to push their new and improved versions. This statement is key:
If Time Inc. wants to keep its communications safe, it should invest in some sort of encryption software that allows privileged readers to open the mail but prevents them from forwarding, printing, or otherwise duplicating it. Microsoft, which publishes Slate, even makes a product for such occasions.
Let's look at all the stones thrown:
The answer, of course, is to buy some new spiffy new M$ junk to replace your old spiffy M$ junk and forgo traditional email. Some solution.
You have to love an end to end M$ solution. Served on IIS/5.0 by a M$ owned company and read by someone using IE. I had no trouble reading the article using KDE 3.2, despite blocking 25% of the obvious adverts. I don't think I'd have a problem printing or redistributing it either. I'm sorry to hear that your employer's choice of browser won't even render the junk. Billy Gates promises to make sure you can't print or share it either, even if you could read it. So the clueless inflict suffering.
Next time, just ssh into your home box and use lynx or links. Lynx rendered just fine and I know that lynx does better. Beware your employer's keyloggers and those installed by trojans, however, and use a disposable box with different passwords than normal.
Where have you been? The goggles already have recording, for "evidence". Thanks God for DRM in those things. It's bad enough I have to see other people's O faces, I would not want that kind of trash floating around the internet. Let me put it to you this way, Paul Rubens took a big interest in this "screening". Got the picture yet? Be glad you don't!
No, Twitter is not in the UK and has never been an Usher nor seen a Hary Potter (TM) movie. The above is fictional and designed for your amusement only.
That's an interesting question.
The answer seems easy, no, they won't bother. Someone else mentioned cell phones and that's a good example of how this will work. Why bother to go get those? Your subscription fee will already have paid for the device many times over. No one else will want your used equipment and it will cost money to collect. Because the software is not free (libre), they can turn a remote kill switch and make it useless to you so that you have to purchase another one. If you refuse to mail the hardware back to them at your cost, you will be charged some absurd fee as per your contract. No repo van required.
He's very confused, evil or misquoted. Hardware already is a commodity but commodities still cost money, just like corn, wheat and other honest stuff. It's shocking that someone at such a high level of a firm that excels in hardware design would have failed to notice that. Once can only conclude that Schwartz has decided to collude with Microsoft in their mad attempt to eliminate free software.
Sun is doomed. The traditional commercial software development process ran out of steam twenty years ago. Proprietary software can not compete with free software and those who cling to it will be swept away. Schwartz is going to run Sun into the ground. I really hope Schwartz was misquoted, but that does not seem to be the case.
You must be doing something wrong. I've run KDE 3.1 on a 333MHz PII and it ran fine. My favorite machine is a 650 Athlon Slot and KDE 3.2.2 works without a hitch. The only thing that's slow is Kmail's mail fetching utility, but you can speed things up with kcron and fetchmail and then simply checking your local mail. KDE is large and offers lots of services, but the whole point was to lessen the burden of those services by creating a rational framework. KDE, which easily fits on live CD's, within your computer's RAM and even on embedded devices is wildly successful at meeting it's goals.
Other nonsense you write about Microsoft's development project compared to KDE's is pure M$ propaganda. Microsoft is incapable of implementing the vast array of changes that people want but free software does so by it's nature. Anyone who might be scared off from trying KDE by comments like this can debunk them in about five minutes by trying out a copy of Knoppix or Mepis.
but teh twit, wehere is teh M$ angle on all this???? tell us, teh twit!!
I'd say M$ is paying you to astroturf this site to be as disruptive as possible. Bullshit and bluster were all Bill and company every were good at. Keep wasting your money Bill. Rational conversation happens here despite the effort.
That article is very disturbing. It admits that the old system worked while glorifying the newfound ability of police to wiretap anyone they feel like. It's hard for me to understand how the reporters, Stanton and Walsh, were able to twist their brains into missing the big picture.
How on Earth can this case be seen a triumph of ghastly new police powers? This creep was caught despite the inconvenience of judicial oversite and due process. The issue is a simply put in the US Bill of Rights, amendment 4 to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That is, your house will not be violated unless reasonable evidence presented and sworn too in a public court of law.
"Terrorism" and kiddie porn are declared serious enough to remove this protection but the removal for some crimes eliminates the protection for everyone. Without that public record and oversight, anyone can be tapped as a "suspect". The potential for abuse is enormous. PROTECT is a perverse name indeed.
A traditional farmer can't avoid this. A farmer who gets most of his seed from his own crops will end up with someone else's patented seeds in his own unless those patented seeds are incapable of pollinating other plants. Contamination of crops is impossible to avoid. Eventually, everyone will be beholden to the holders of the patents. This is insidious and the Canadian Supreme court is insane.
The source of the problem is a poorly designed US operating system pushed by a greedy and embarrassing company. To block them, you have to remove or fix that OS. Because the only people who can fix that OS have not, removal is the best option.
You can help solve the problem by turning to other, much better made OS such as Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mepis, Xandros, Feather, Peanut and so on, which is founded on some rather solid US notions of freedom. Yes, I'm still proud to be an American.
fuckwit is not a nice word. Lose it and your rant would look less like a rant.
In any case, I like the idea that I can create my own structure without some librarian's assistance. Something like:
The solution to domain squatting is to punish the squatters, but it seems that the powers that be are not up to the task. Unless you can distribute your system, I don't think it will make a difference. Fred the plumber in New York will have the same kinds of problems under any centralized system. Under yours, he will also have to pay up for his personal site and any other business site he wants to run that's not plumbing.