As others have pointed out, this was a usability test to find out how long it took to set up a pre-IE versus a post-IE system, not a test of the relative speeds of the two OSes.
If my memory serves, Trumpet Winsock was a horrible, horrible product that took ages to get working properly. I also recall that Windows 3.1 also had no support for modem speeds above 19.2k, and that was pretty darn shaky as it was.
But I don't have a clue what this has to do with Internet Explorer integration. 99% of the work done to set up Windows 3.1 networking was spent getting Trumpet to work; the browser always worked as soon as you could ping a remote host using a domain name.
When Windows95 was introduced, there was an option called the "Plus Pack" which included IE. If you want to see the real benefit in user convenience of having IE "integrated", you would have to compare installing W98 with installing W95 and the Plus Pack (or Netscape on CD ROM). I would argue this difference is negligible.
As far as I know, nobody even attempts to dispute that it was a Good Thing for the consumer to have TCP/IP integrated into Windows 95, even though it surely damaged the competitive positions of a number of companies marketing Windows 3.x TCP/IP, including Trumpet.
D
Awfully low resolution for something this big.
on
50 inch Plasma TVs
·
· Score: 1
1024x768?
Faugh.
I get 1280x1024 on my 19" Sony, and I could probably go up to 1600x1200 if my video card could handle it.
I must admit a lust for Sony's new flat screen TV, which has a stunning picture, but it's $ 1,900, not $ 25,000.
A healthy percentage of us are Libertarians (including myself).
Libertarianism is probably the only political belief system that is entirely consistent, and that makes it appealing to computer types.
Basically, the upshot is: "Government is totally incompetent and restricts our freedoms; let's have as little of it as humanly possible in all respects".
How little that is, of course, is one of the biggest controversies in Libertarian circles. All Libertarians, however, agree that government is out of control in our present society and desperately needs to be reined in.
Be sounds like a cool venture, and the OS is certainly cheap enough. I'd love to support it, but I don't quite see where it fits in the OS ecology.
Won't MacOS X/Rhapsody eat it for lunch? Thanks to Carbon, Apple should have a strong, stable "Media OS" with an excellent track record and tons of applications.
BeOS sounds like a great system, but I don't see how it can beat the one-two punch of MacOS X (for the Media People) and Linux (for the geeks).
Windows CE would require substantial royalties, and the Linux world is obviously going to produce a cornucopia of software for the thing (based on the extremely high level of enthusiasm I see for it here).
I predict that it stays in Linux, but you may have to dig to find that out - I doubt that Linux will be used as a marketing tool by a mainstream company. They'll just package the best free applications and poof.
I think mapping software, a GPS receiver and a larger display would all be good ideas. This is one place where American cars have a significant advantage - their form factors for car stereos are much more generous. Pity I hate American cars for other reasons.:-(
Obviously I don't have a copy of the program, but it seems to me that it probably uses the Windows registry to find PGP and/or checks certain directories that are likely to contain.pgp files. I doubt that it scans the whole hard drive to find them, since that would slow things down too much.
If that's how it works, simply use the DOS version of PGP and put it in an obscure location (not containing the string PGP).
The rename of NT 5 to Windows 2000 indicates to me that they genuinely expected NT 5 to be the mainstream, consumer Windows product only a few short months ago.
So I would conclude that this/is/ big news, a strong indication that NT 5 development is out of control.
I still remember MS's Scalability Day a couple of years back. To celebrate this glorious event, Microsoft's web servers took a little nap.
Performance of MS's web servers has improved significantly in the last year or so, but I still have immense difficulty getting useful information from their "Index Server". I can only recommend that people not, on pain of death, use "Index Server" for their own web sites.
I don't know about that - I still like and use Yahoo's directory, be it ever so outdated... it's still very useful when you need certain types of information (like official company web sites).
As well as the practical reasons, SuSE has a quirky flair that I quite like. If you want to buy your Linux from people with a sense of humour, SuSE's the right distribution for you.:-)
After having used both, I think SuSE's X configurator's significantly more use-friendly than Red Hat's. They also have a very nice multi-font console driver; I was able to switch my console mode to a much more attractive font when using SuSE, something Red Hat doesn't offer.
I had to switch to Red Hat so I could get Libc 6 working, but with SuSE returning with a Libc 6 version, I'll probably switch back.
I don't mind supporting artists by paying for my CDs. I feel profoundly uneasy about paying for downloads with no physical component; what happens if my hard disk crashes?
Is it technically legal for me to copy a CD that I own into my car MP player (not distributing the CD or its contents to any third party)? And if not, would record companies seriously want to prosecute such infringements? (I don't see software companies seriously attempting to prosecute individuals [as opposed to corporations] that violate license agreements).
I didn't see the quote you mention above. The second article refers to a way of running Linux software under Windows NT.
In my view, this misses the point completely. The reason Linux fans love the system is that (i) it's far more reliable then NT, and (ii) it's open source. Running Linux on top of NT would appear to totally eliminate both advantages.
But then again, okay, I have a reason it might be useful. I have a machine running NT for consulting jobs. So if I want to browse the web, and look over my consulting work at the same time, I have to browse the web on the NT machine, something I consider to be very Politically Incorrect. With this product, in theory at least, I could put up a little X-session on my NT box and run Linux Netscape to browse the web while working in Word. Cute.
Unfortunately, it costs almost $ 600 for the X11 version, which is about the price of a complete additional machine to dedicate to Linux. Oops.
Worse yet, there's no downloadable demo (which I probably would have tried).
The suggestion of using the replace-string command with C-Q C-M as the string to replace and an empty string as the replacement string will, in fact, work. I've used it many times with success.
One automated way that you might not be aware of is to do the original transfer of the files from your DOS/Windows machine to a Unix box using the Internet. Use "ascii" mode in FTP, and your text files will be automatically converted.
D
A more constructive comment
on
e.themes.org
·
· Score: 2
Let's first bear in mind that themes.org is, as far as I can tell, a highly popular site run by a small number of people who have other things to do. In other words, it's a hobby effort, not a major business. It's not fair to judge such an effort against the uptime standards we have for sites with full-time management, heavy advertising revenue, etc, etc.
For all I know, the hardware might be a 386 sitting on someone's borrowed T1 someplace, in which case it's not performing any worse than we might expect.
However, I think it would help a lot of us - especially those who run small sites using mySQL (as I do) - if we could hear back from them to find out why this is happening. How many hits are we talking about here? What's failing? Are we running out of memory? Disk space? Something else? Are contributions of memory needed? More bandwith? A faster CPU? Let's find out.
If they could share the results, we can all work together to build better systems - which I think is exactly the point. Not putting each other down; making sure things like this don't happen again, or are far less common.
Okay, I'm really, really sorry about this, since it seems like it touches a nerve someplace... but what is/was the LSA and what did it do that was wrong?
I've had nothing but good fortune with the NEC monitors I've gotten - a 4FG, 5FG, XP21 and XV17+. All of them are still in service (although the 4 is looking a little tired)
But the new NEC monitors don't look as good as Sony. I now have a Sony 19" that looks better than my NEC 21.
When I first started buying monitors, there was an enormous difference between NEC and the competition. Now, virtually every montitor made is more or less usable, but I still pick the quality brands. A few years ago, monitors were sold that could make you blind from their sheer blurriness.
In my neck of the woods (Southern California), service in CompUSA is actually marginally better than Fry's. I once talked to an absolutely fantastic saleslady at the Culver City CompUSA, although I think she was in the more upscale corporate sales department.
Oddly enough, I found that the best deals on new brand-name computers are at Staples, Best Buy or Circuit City. That's where I got my last two computers. Of course after the purchase, I promptly visited Fry's for peripherals, but the raw computer price at Fry's for my HP Pavilion 6350 was $ 850, versus $ 699 at Staples.
Don't expect them to know anything about the merchandise, of course.
D
PS I thought Jon's article was hilarious - and outstanding. I'm rather stunned at the hostile quality of many of the posters. Hey, if you don't like Jon, don't read his stuff.
I wasn't really in the mood to read all the dense economic jargon, but two interesting (albiet contradictory) thoughts crossed my mind:
Windows is cheap because Microsoft is always running scared -- real competition or no
Windows is actually expensive, as a percentage of the cost of a new computer.
The market for operating systems is tied to the market for computers. The optimal number of operating systems will be sold by MS only if the total package is reasonably affordable. So a $ 500 price for Windows would be absurd, since many fewer computers would be sold.
I'd be curious to hear what others thing about this.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out, this was a usability test to find out how long it took to set up a pre-IE versus a post-IE system, not a test of the relative speeds of the two OSes.
If my memory serves, Trumpet Winsock was a horrible, horrible product that took ages to get working properly. I also recall that Windows 3.1 also had no support for modem speeds above 19.2k, and that was pretty darn shaky as it was.
But I don't have a clue what this has to do with Internet Explorer integration. 99% of the work done to set up Windows 3.1 networking was spent getting Trumpet to work; the browser always worked as soon as you could ping a remote host using a domain name.
When Windows95 was introduced, there was an option called the "Plus Pack" which included IE. If you want to see the real benefit in user convenience of having IE "integrated", you would have to compare installing W98 with installing W95 and the Plus Pack (or Netscape on CD ROM). I would argue this difference is negligible.
As far as I know, nobody even attempts to dispute that it was a Good Thing for the consumer to have TCP/IP integrated into Windows 95, even though it surely damaged the competitive positions of a number of companies marketing Windows 3.x TCP/IP, including Trumpet.
D
1024x768?
Faugh.
I get 1280x1024 on my 19" Sony, and I could probably go up to 1600x1200 if my video card could handle it.
I must admit a lust for Sony's new flat screen TV, which has a stunning picture, but it's $ 1,900, not $ 25,000.
D
A healthy percentage of us are Libertarians (including myself).
Libertarianism is probably the only political belief system that is entirely consistent, and that makes it appealing to computer types.
Basically, the upshot is: "Government is totally incompetent and restricts our freedoms; let's have as little of it as humanly possible in all respects".
How little that is, of course, is one of the biggest controversies in Libertarian circles. All Libertarians, however, agree that government is out of control in our present society and desperately needs to be reined in.
D
Be sounds like a cool venture, and the OS is certainly cheap enough. I'd love to support it, but I don't quite see where it fits in the OS ecology.
Won't MacOS X/Rhapsody eat it for lunch? Thanks to Carbon, Apple should have a strong, stable "Media OS" with an excellent track record and tons of applications.
BeOS sounds like a great system, but I don't see how it can beat the one-two punch of MacOS X (for the Media People) and Linux (for the geeks).
D
Why shouldn't it be in Linux?
:-(
Windows CE would require substantial royalties, and the Linux world is obviously going to produce a cornucopia of software for the thing (based on the extremely high level of enthusiasm I see for it here).
I predict that it stays in Linux, but you may have to dig to find that out - I doubt that Linux will be used as a marketing tool by a mainstream company. They'll just package the best free applications and poof.
I think mapping software, a GPS receiver and a larger display would all be good ideas. This is one place where American cars have a significant advantage - their form factors for car stereos are much more generous. Pity I hate American cars for other reasons.
D
Since when was mySQL not open source?
...
Last time I looked, the source downloads were most certainly available
D
I tried downloading an October 16 build from a site created by a chap who did Linux Mozilla builds.
When I try starting it, I get
error in loading shared libraries: lib/libnspr21.so: undefined symbol: __divdi3
Any idea how to find the missing symbol?
D
Obviously I don't have a copy of the program, but it seems to me that it probably uses the Windows registry to find PGP and/or checks certain directories that are likely to contain .pgp files. I doubt that it scans the whole hard drive to find them, since that would slow things down too much.
If that's how it works, simply use the DOS version of PGP and put it in an obscure location (not containing the string PGP).
D
The rename of NT 5 to Windows 2000 indicates to me that they genuinely expected NT 5 to be the mainstream, consumer Windows product only a few short months ago.
/is/ big news, a strong indication that NT 5 development is out of control.
So I would conclude that this
D
I still remember MS's Scalability Day a couple of years back. To celebrate this glorious event, Microsoft's web servers took a little nap.
Performance of MS's web servers has improved significantly in the last year or so, but I still have immense difficulty getting useful information from their "Index Server". I can only recommend that people not, on pain of death, use "Index Server" for their own web sites.
D
I don't know about that - I still like and use Yahoo's directory, be it ever so outdated ... it's still very useful when you need certain types of information (like official company web sites).
D
As well as the practical reasons, SuSE has a quirky flair that I quite like. If you want to buy your Linux from people with a sense of humour, SuSE's the right distribution for you. :-)
After having used both, I think SuSE's X configurator's significantly more use-friendly than Red Hat's. They also have a very nice multi-font console driver; I was able to switch my console mode to a much more attractive font when using SuSE, something Red Hat doesn't offer.
I had to switch to Red Hat so I could get Libc 6 working, but with SuSE returning with a Libc 6 version, I'll probably switch back.
D
Hmm, sure looked to me like it was the exact size and form factor of a car stereo.
I still want to know how the quality compares to CDs.
D
I don't mind supporting artists by paying for my CDs. I feel profoundly uneasy about paying for downloads with no physical component; what happens if my hard disk crashes?
Is it technically legal for me to copy a CD that I own into my car MP player (not distributing the CD or its contents to any third party)? And if not, would record companies seriously want to prosecute such infringements? (I don't see software companies seriously attempting to prosecute individuals [as opposed to corporations] that violate license agreements).
D
I didn't see the quote you mention above. The second article refers to a way of running Linux software under Windows NT.
In my view, this misses the point completely. The reason Linux fans love the system is that (i) it's far more reliable then NT, and (ii) it's open source. Running Linux on top of NT would appear to totally eliminate both advantages.
But then again, okay, I have a reason it might be useful. I have a machine running NT for consulting jobs. So if I want to browse the web, and look over my consulting work at the same time, I have to browse the web on the NT machine, something I consider to be very Politically Incorrect. With this product, in theory at least, I could put up a little X-session on my NT box and run Linux Netscape to browse the web while working in Word. Cute.
Unfortunately, it costs almost $ 600 for the X11 version, which is about the price of a complete additional machine to dedicate to Linux. Oops.
Worse yet, there's no downloadable demo (which I probably would have tried).
D
The suggestion of using the replace-string command with C-Q C-M as the string to replace and an empty string as the replacement string will, in fact, work. I've used it many times with success.
One automated way that you might not be aware of is to do the original transfer of the files from your DOS/Windows machine to a Unix box using the Internet. Use "ascii" mode in FTP, and your text files will be automatically converted.
D
Let's first bear in mind that themes.org is, as far as I can tell, a highly popular site run by a small number of people who have other things to do. In other words, it's a hobby effort, not a major business. It's not fair to judge such an effort against the uptime standards we have for sites with full-time management, heavy advertising revenue, etc, etc.
For all I know, the hardware might be a 386 sitting on someone's borrowed T1 someplace, in which case it's not performing any worse than we might expect.
However, I think it would help a lot of us - especially those who run small sites using mySQL (as I do) - if we could hear back from them to find out why this is happening. How many hits are we talking about here? What's failing? Are we running out of memory? Disk space? Something else? Are contributions of memory needed? More bandwith? A faster CPU? Let's find out.
If they could share the results, we can all work together to build better systems - which I think is exactly the point. Not putting each other down; making sure things like this don't happen again, or are far less common.
D
Which SQL server are you using? I had similar problems with mSQL, but I switched to mySQL (which I think /. uses) and haven't had trouble since.
:-(.
If you're using mySQL, I can start to worry
D
InnoSystems® InnoVator® provides best-of-breed support for applications in the enterprise.
I don't know why, but just hearing the same tired phrases repeated over and over again in articles makes me feel vaguely sick.
D
Okay, I'm really, really sorry about this, since it seems like it touches a nerve someplace ... but what is/was the LSA and what did it do that was wrong?
D
Humungous Bank: Your money is our money.
This is a very nicely disguised ad for Richmond Savings, a Canadian credit union.
D
But the new NEC monitors don't look as good as Sony. I now have a Sony 19" that looks better than my NEC 21.
When I first started buying monitors, there was an enormous difference between NEC and the competition. Now, virtually every montitor made is more or less usable, but I still pick the quality brands. A few years ago, monitors were sold that could make you blind from their sheer blurriness.
D
Oddly enough, I found that the best deals on new brand-name computers are at Staples, Best Buy or Circuit City. That's where I got my last two computers. Of course after the purchase, I promptly visited Fry's for peripherals, but the raw computer price at Fry's for my HP Pavilion 6350 was $ 850, versus $ 699 at Staples.
Don't expect them to know anything about the merchandise, of course.
D
PS I thought Jon's article was hilarious - and outstanding. I'm rather stunned at the hostile quality of many of the posters. Hey, if you don't like Jon, don't read his stuff.
I wasn't really in the mood to read all the dense economic jargon, but two interesting (albiet contradictory) thoughts crossed my mind:
I'd be curious to hear what others thing about this.
D
CPM is an advertising term meaning cost per thousand.
Not sure what net means - probably 1,000 unique viewers, not 1,000 page views.
D