It's a pretty pathetic excuse for a command line compared to, say, bash, but you can do what you ask.
Type
cd "c:\program files"
and the logical thing will happen.
The problem, of course, is that the long directory names they use are too hard to type, and there's no shortcut mechanism at all - you can't hit tab to complete the name, and you can't say "cd \progra*" to have the shell expand the name, because there's no file name expansion.
Ironically enough, for a lot of those file names, typing
cd c:\micros~1
would be easier. Unfortunately, NTFS is a "real" file system, so that won't work if you're using it (as I am on my NT system).
Hope that helps; I do 99% of my work in Linux, BeOS or MacOS nowadays, but I remember all too well the days when I had to use a Windows system all the time.
A good example of a government standard is the French Minitel system. They built up a framework for consumers by putting telephone information on a terminal made available to everyone. Then they let private industry develop value-added services upon it,in cost and concept much like our 900 and 976 numbers.
This technology was made obsolete by the Internet, but I believe the French are only just making the transition now.
So the problem with a government-backed standard is that it avoids the vigourous competition that generates continuous improvement. That's the strength our system has; however bad Microsoft is, it's impossible to deny that they do continuously improve their products in the face of what they perceive as a competitive threat.
The biggest strength of our system is that consumers can defy bad standards and select alternatives, whether Apple or Linux or just sticking with what they have.
The biggest weakness is that, as you say, consumers just want to get their job done, and often don't care about how good their tools are, as long as they exist. This is the mentality that buys an e-Machines computer, say, simply because it's the cheapest available.
I'm not sure how this could be dealt with. Better education in the nature of the alternatives is obviously part of the solution. But on the whole, the unsettling truth is that the Microsoft standard serves many people adequately, and they don't have the burning desire we have to get rid of it.
This is where Microsoft's underhanded tactics work. If, for example, an OEM could have loaded BeOS alongside Windows without being sued by Microsoft, BeOS might well have gained strength. Microsoft knew this would be extremely bad news for them, and they behaved accordingly -- even though Be was and is a tiny, almost pathetic, competitor.
It is my view that the reason for Microsoft's hyper-competitive nature is that inside their bunkers in Redmond, they know perfectly well they have a lousy product. They know that anything even close to competition would be horrible for them.
So far, quite honestly, I think they've been more lucky than smart. It is Microsoft's blessing that every time they've faced competition since the birth of Windows, they've either held all the cards (secret Windows APIs, marketing advantages, anti-competitive agreements with OEMs) or confronted inferior competition that made numerous strategic errors (Lotus, WordPerfect).
So, how to improve matters? I don't know. Obviously using competing products in your personal life is step one, and supporting alternative OS vendors is step two. I bought my version of BeOS R5 Pro last weekend not because I needed it, but because I wanted to show the company my support. If you like what Be's done, you should too. If you're a Linux fan, buy a packaged distribution or two (as I have as well). Support the nascent alternative OS industry, and maybe - just maybe - it will become big and strong enough to fight.
I have my doubts, personally -- but really, if a world exists where you personally don't need to use Windows, is that not a major victory? I'd say we're at that point right now, and that's undoubtably a Good Thing.
With a government-promulgated standard, guess what? Nothing but Windows would exist - and that's reason enough for me to support as free a world as we can find.
I remember on one BBS there was a fellow who wrote long humourous messages who used the slug-like 300bps modem speed to good effect. When he wanted to create suspense, he would put a bunch of characters out like this:
* * *
And of course they would glide out, space by space, and you would feel a delicious anticipation as you awaited the upcoming punch line.
It was almost sad to go to 1200 baud and lose the effect.
I live in a house in Woodland Hills, California, an extremely hot part of the world. It will probably get above 100degF today.
Obviously I don't want to walk into a 110degF house when I get home, so I leave the air conditioner running continuously. This is expensive (about $ 200 a month), but ensures that, whenever I get home, I will walk into a cool, comfy house.
If I owned the house (instead of renting), I'd probably get a timer to automatically turn on the air conditioner before I got back home. So at 5:00 pm, it would switch itself on, and by 5:30 when I got home, all would be cool.
But what if I can't safely predict when I leave? I should be able to call up the air conditioner and tell it to switch on about 30 minutes before my departure. That way, I could save significant amounts of money on electricity over the course of a cooling season. So if I leave at 4:00 or 8:00, or even have lunch at home at 12:00, I should be able to tell my air conditioner to give me a cool, comfortable house no matter what.
That's an application that might well justify the cost of such a system, and it could give significant extra comfort over all solutions other than running the AC continuously.
Actually, this sort of thing has done a lot for my understanding of the world. Like the original poster, I'm an INTP, and I have an ENFP boss. Understanding the underlying characteristics of both lets me work better with him because I understand many things about him most people don't.
Incidentally, Bill Clinton is an ENFP too. Check out what the test says about an ENFP and it gives you some interesting insights as to why Bill is what he is.
D
----
Luck, Arrogance and Selfishness
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 2
It's not all luck. I'd say at least 95% of the population doesn't have the brains needed to do what we do well. 99% doesn't have the brains or the interest.
Nowadays, those with the brains are extremely likely to be exposed to computers. True, that wasn't so 20 years ago, but now it is.
Heck, my boss asks me for advice on his marketing campaigns, not just on computer-related stuff. That's because I have a brain and we relate well to each other. I could have probably had a career in advertising or marketing and been darn good at it (and quite well off, just as I am now) if things had been just a little different.
Now, arrogance is annoying in and of itself. Ask anyone at my work - I'm genial, courteous and always try to be helpful. Arrogance is not a good thing, since it pushes you away from people. But feeling embarassed for doing well isn't a good thing either. Ideally, smart people of all types should strike a happy medium, which I personally think I have.
But one other thing does deserve mention. Selfishness and a desire for freedom go hand in hand. If we are not selfish, if we bow down to the collective will, we are surely not free. This is the contradiction Communism tried to fight, and this is why it failed miserably.
D
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Re:Random ramblings-REALITY CHECK
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 2
Actually, as long as these toys make people money, we're fine.
boo.com had some cool technology, but that didn't save it from a sadly well-deserved oblivion. It failed that crucial test, and that made it history.
When I used X there, I meant it as a shorthand for MacOS X - I'm aware that MacOS isn't X-Windows.
When I was at Fry's last night, I also noticed that an e-machine is a bit more expensive than I thought - so I think the iMac might be more price-competitive than I said previously.
The real problem with script kiddies is not their menacing large, well-funded sites like Yahoo. Yahoo and their ilk have lots of resources they can use to close all the security holes they find.
No, the problem is sites like my amazing.com or Kiro5hin, which are run by an amateur or amateurs and simply don't have the resources to track down every security patch and close every hole.
I was blasted off the net for over a month because of one security hole in the Cobalt Raq server I bought. I had the money to buy the server, but not the time to keep it safe.
Kiro5hin had a staff, but when confronted with the type of attack Yahoo's sysadmins get paid big money to guard against, they weren't able to help. Part of the problem was that they were unpaid volenteers, and I'm sure they - like me - had a boss yelling at them for not doing the work they were hired to do while attempting feverishly to deal with the problem.
This is why the script kiddie is such a big problem in my mind; it threatens what's left of the non-profit, more or less communal/genteel part of the net. I'm as much of a capitalist as anyone, but I still have a special spot in my mind for this kind of thing.
I am all for a policy that avoids any disclosure of security holes. I don't even care if my machine is secure; everything on it is public anyway. I don't want to have to care if my machine is secure, and neither should anyone else who sets up a volenteer or individually-run site for the joy of sharing interesting stuff with the world.
Unfortunately, revenge on the script kiddie, sweet as it might be, takes resources. Yahoo has 'em and can catch 'em if it wants to; I simply don't have the time and don't want to take the effort. So my machine is vunerable, and I don't know what to do about it other than shutting the whole thing down.
Maybe people are just shocked to see colours other than white and grey on a computer?
From the screenshots, I thought it was really appealing. I'll admit the dock seems to take an appalling amount of screen space, but since I normally run at 1280x1024 resolution it would probably work just fine for me in practice.
Yes, I knew that, and that's one of the major control mechanisms you can use.
But even if you give Netscape, say, 50mb, it will use it all and force you to reboot. (You can normally switch to other applications and save first, though).
I don't know if IE is any better - it's likely to be coded more cleanly, but MS is legendary for leaky programs, so I wouldn't bet on it being an improvement.
Have you been able to play with a pre-release of MacOS X? I'd be curious to hear what you think.
The interesting thing about MacOS 8 (I haven't tried 9 yet) is that most of the crashes occur because programs run out of their pre-allocated memory supply. If you keep a wary eye on RAM consumption, MacOS is more reliable than Windows. If you don't, I'd say it's about the same.
It's a primitive solution, granted, but it does keep the user in more control than Windows does.
That aside, only SGI has a more appealing interface than MacOS in my mind. Enlightenment would be pretty nice if they could fix those god-awful fonts. And no, I don't have 5 hours to figure out how to use better fonts; it should just be built into a distribution.
This is exactly why I'm proud to be a VA Linux customer. I got my company to invest in a dual PIII/700 system with RAID and 1GB RAM, and it's worked perfectly, without flaw. I'd warmly endorse them any day of the week, for that and the excellent support they give back to the Linux community.
An emachine certainly does have lower perceived quality than an iMac, and it's not as designer-friendly, but most people nowadays are just looking for the cheapest possible solution.
One major reason people choose Windows over the Mac, incidentally, is that the software is loads easier to pirate due to the large numbers of Windows users. I was quite surprised to find that out, being someone who doesn't think much of software theft. But tis true.
Mac users are much more likely to pay for software than Linux users. The audience is more affluent, and it's used to paying for what it gets.
I predict success for MacOS X, mainly because they've rejiggered things like Carbon to make it easy to port applications to it. The "cool factor" of Aqua is hard to ignore, too.
I think the Mac has a good chance of attracting a sizable crop of new adherents with X and the spiffy new systems. The biggest problem at this point is continued high pricing. An eMachine costs around $ 450, plus a $ 120 monitor is $570. $799 is still a far cry from that, especially with the dearth of dealer discounts I've noticed in Mac-land.
Every document I've seen printed using TeX uses the same rather odd looking default font. Once you know that, you can recognize documents created using TeX - for good or ill - in seconds.
I've never seen that font outside of the TeX world.
Sadly, I echo the original poster's viewpoint - they may have digitized an entire encyclopedia into the Brain of the Paperclip, such as it is, but it sure is tough to get anything out of the little critter. And that's all that matters in the end, isn't it?
I always find the arguments between the LATex folks and the regular word processor people interesting. I'm sort of in between - I write everything in xemacs, put it in HTML, put it into a web page, and - if I have to - print it out.
But I know that's not for everyone, since the learning curve is almost vertical for stuff like that. You pretty much need to be an old computer hand to appreciate the advantages. I can edit text with a speed that awes everyone who sees me, simply because I took the time to learn emacs. I encourage anyone who's up to a technical challenge that improves their abilities enormously in the long run to follow me on that path; but I realize it's simply not something mainstream people care to do.
So we need word processors, and sure as shooting we need something other than those god-awful fonts.
I can't help but wonder if many Linux fans won't cross over to the Macintosh side when MacOS X comes out. I mean, here we have a platform that has the guts of Unix that we love, combined with the brilliance of a designer interface created with panache anyone in open source will have a tough time with.
Yes, I know MacOS X isn't open source, but the underpinnings are, and all the applications mainstream people love are there. I think it's worth a look, simply because it could solve a lot of problems.
I plan to buy a dual-processor Mac as soon as I'm reasonably assured MacOS X is out and functioning well.
I love SGI, personally, but unfortunately this is (as others have said) a compute powerhouse that lacks the wonderful graphics features for which SGI is so famous.
I fear the electrical demand might put a serious dent in your school's budget, and in that case you might be wise to trade it for something else (perhaps an Indigo2 or two, or some O2s or Indys if you'd like to stick with SGI).
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, it works!
Wonder why they didn't just make that the default.
D
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I looked for it on my NT Server 4.0 system and it wasn't there - is this new for Windows 2000?
Maybe it really is time to upgrade, although all that silly fading in and out stuff drove me bats when I saw it.
D
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I'll be darned, you're right!
(Even under NT 4.0, which is what I'm using).
D
----
It's a pretty pathetic excuse for a command line compared to, say, bash, but you can do what you ask.
Type
cd "c:\program files"
and the logical thing will happen.
The problem, of course, is that the long directory names they use are too hard to type, and there's no shortcut mechanism at all - you can't hit tab to complete the name, and you can't say "cd \progra*" to have the shell expand the name, because there's no file name expansion.
Ironically enough, for a lot of those file names, typing
cd c:\micros~1
would be easier. Unfortunately, NTFS is a "real" file system, so that won't work if you're using it (as I am on my NT system).
Hope that helps; I do 99% of my work in Linux, BeOS or MacOS nowadays, but I remember all too well the days when I had to use a Windows system all the time.
D
----
A good example of a government standard is the French Minitel system. They built up a framework for consumers by putting telephone information on a terminal made available to everyone. Then they let private industry develop value-added services upon it,in cost and concept much like our 900 and 976 numbers.
This technology was made obsolete by the Internet, but I believe the French are only just making the transition now.
So the problem with a government-backed standard is that it avoids the vigourous competition that generates continuous improvement. That's the strength our system has; however bad Microsoft is, it's impossible to deny that they do continuously improve their products in the face of what they perceive as a competitive threat.
The biggest strength of our system is that consumers can defy bad standards and select alternatives, whether Apple or Linux or just sticking with what they have.
The biggest weakness is that, as you say, consumers just want to get their job done, and often don't care about how good their tools are, as long as they exist. This is the mentality that buys an e-Machines computer, say, simply because it's the cheapest available.
I'm not sure how this could be dealt with. Better education in the nature of the alternatives is obviously part of the solution. But on the whole, the unsettling truth is that the Microsoft standard serves many people adequately, and they don't have the burning desire we have to get rid of it.
This is where Microsoft's underhanded tactics work. If, for example, an OEM could have loaded BeOS alongside Windows without being sued by Microsoft, BeOS might well have gained strength. Microsoft knew this would be extremely bad news for them, and they behaved accordingly -- even though Be was and is a tiny, almost pathetic, competitor.
It is my view that the reason for Microsoft's hyper-competitive nature is that inside their bunkers in Redmond, they know perfectly well they have a lousy product. They know that anything even close to competition would be horrible for them.
So far, quite honestly, I think they've been more lucky than smart. It is Microsoft's blessing that every time they've faced competition since the birth of Windows, they've either held all the cards (secret Windows APIs, marketing advantages, anti-competitive agreements with OEMs) or confronted inferior competition that made numerous strategic errors (Lotus, WordPerfect).
So, how to improve matters? I don't know. Obviously using competing products in your personal life is step one, and supporting alternative OS vendors is step two. I bought my version of BeOS R5 Pro last weekend not because I needed it, but because I wanted to show the company my support. If you like what Be's done, you should too. If you're a Linux fan, buy a packaged distribution or two (as I have as well). Support the nascent alternative OS industry, and maybe - just maybe - it will become big and strong enough to fight.
I have my doubts, personally -- but really, if a world exists where you personally don't need to use Windows, is that not a major victory? I'd say we're at that point right now, and that's undoubtably a Good Thing.
With a government-promulgated standard, guess what? Nothing but Windows would exist - and that's reason enough for me to support as free a world as we can find.
D
----
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I forgot that HTML compresses large numbers of spaces. Funny how life has changed.
D
----
I remember on one BBS there was a fellow who wrote long humourous messages who used the slug-like 300bps modem speed to good effect. When he wanted to create suspense, he would put a bunch of characters out like this:
* * *
And of course they would glide out, space by space, and you would feel a delicious anticipation as you awaited the upcoming punch line.
It was almost sad to go to 1200 baud and lose the effect.
Almost.
D
----
I live in a house in Woodland Hills, California, an extremely hot part of the world. It will probably get above 100degF today.
Obviously I don't want to walk into a 110degF house when I get home, so I leave the air conditioner running continuously. This is expensive (about $ 200 a month), but ensures that, whenever I get home, I will walk into a cool, comfy house.
If I owned the house (instead of renting), I'd probably get a timer to automatically turn on the air conditioner before I got back home. So at 5:00 pm, it would switch itself on, and by 5:30 when I got home, all would be cool.
But what if I can't safely predict when I leave? I should be able to call up the air conditioner and tell it to switch on about 30 minutes before my departure. That way, I could save significant amounts of money on electricity over the course of a cooling season. So if I leave at 4:00 or 8:00, or even have lunch at home at 12:00, I should be able to tell my air conditioner to give me a cool, comfortable house no matter what.
That's an application that might well justify the cost of such a system, and it could give significant extra comfort over all solutions other than running the AC continuously.
D
----
Actually, this sort of thing has done a lot for my understanding of the world. Like the original poster, I'm an INTP, and I have an ENFP boss. Understanding the underlying characteristics of both lets me work better with him because I understand many things about him most people don't.
Incidentally, Bill Clinton is an ENFP too. Check out what the test says about an ENFP and it gives you some interesting insights as to why Bill is what he is.
D
----
It's not all luck. I'd say at least 95% of the population doesn't have the brains needed to do what we do well. 99% doesn't have the brains or the interest.
Nowadays, those with the brains are extremely likely to be exposed to computers. True, that wasn't so 20 years ago, but now it is.
Heck, my boss asks me for advice on his marketing campaigns, not just on computer-related stuff. That's because I have a brain and we relate well to each other. I could have probably had a career in advertising or marketing and been darn good at it (and quite well off, just as I am now) if things had been just a little different.
Now, arrogance is annoying in and of itself. Ask anyone at my work - I'm genial, courteous and always try to be helpful. Arrogance is not a good thing, since it pushes you away from people. But feeling embarassed for doing well isn't a good thing either. Ideally, smart people of all types should strike a happy medium, which I personally think I have.
But one other thing does deserve mention. Selfishness and a desire for freedom go hand in hand. If we are not selfish, if we bow down to the collective will, we are surely not free. This is the contradiction Communism tried to fight, and this is why it failed miserably.
D
----
Actually, as long as these toys make people money, we're fine.
boo.com had some cool technology, but that didn't save it from a sadly well-deserved oblivion. It failed that crucial test, and that made it history.
D
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Tour the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
D
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When I used X there, I meant it as a shorthand for MacOS X - I'm aware that MacOS isn't X-Windows.
When I was at Fry's last night, I also noticed that an e-machine is a bit more expensive than I thought - so I think the iMac might be more price-competitive than I said previously.
D
----
The real problem with script kiddies is not their menacing large, well-funded sites like Yahoo. Yahoo and their ilk have lots of resources they can use to close all the security holes they find.
No, the problem is sites like my amazing.com or Kiro5hin, which are run by an amateur or amateurs and simply don't have the resources to track down every security patch and close every hole.
I was blasted off the net for over a month because of one security hole in the Cobalt Raq server I bought. I had the money to buy the server, but not the time to keep it safe.
Kiro5hin had a staff, but when confronted with the type of attack Yahoo's sysadmins get paid big money to guard against, they weren't able to help. Part of the problem was that they were unpaid volenteers, and I'm sure they - like me - had a boss yelling at them for not doing the work they were hired to do while attempting feverishly to deal with the problem.
This is why the script kiddie is such a big problem in my mind; it threatens what's left of the non-profit, more or less communal/genteel part of the net. I'm as much of a capitalist as anyone, but I still have a special spot in my mind for this kind of thing.
I am all for a policy that avoids any disclosure of security holes. I don't even care if my machine is secure; everything on it is public anyway. I don't want to have to care if my machine is secure, and neither should anyone else who sets up a volenteer or individually-run site for the joy of sharing interesting stuff with the world.
Unfortunately, revenge on the script kiddie, sweet as it might be, takes resources. Yahoo has 'em and can catch 'em if it wants to; I simply don't have the time and don't want to take the effort. So my machine is vunerable, and I don't know what to do about it other than shutting the whole thing down.
A very depressing choice, let me tell you.
D
----
Maybe people are just shocked to see colours other than white and grey on a computer?
From the screenshots, I thought it was really appealing. I'll admit the dock seems to take an appalling amount of screen space, but since I normally run at 1280x1024 resolution it would probably work just fine for me in practice.
D
----
Yes, I knew that, and that's one of the major control mechanisms you can use.
But even if you give Netscape, say, 50mb, it will use it all and force you to reboot. (You can normally switch to other applications and save first, though).
I don't know if IE is any better - it's likely to be coded more cleanly, but MS is legendary for leaky programs, so I wouldn't bet on it being an improvement.
D
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I wouldn't have made the request if the pricing and quality weren't competitive -- they were and are.
D
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Have you been able to play with a pre-release of MacOS X? I'd be curious to hear what you think.
The interesting thing about MacOS 8 (I haven't tried 9 yet) is that most of the crashes occur because programs run out of their pre-allocated memory supply. If you keep a wary eye on RAM consumption, MacOS is more reliable than Windows. If you don't, I'd say it's about the same.
It's a primitive solution, granted, but it does keep the user in more control than Windows does.
That aside, only SGI has a more appealing interface than MacOS in my mind. Enlightenment would be pretty nice if they could fix those god-awful fonts. And no, I don't have 5 hours to figure out how to use better fonts; it should just be built into a distribution.
D
----
This is exactly why I'm proud to be a VA Linux customer. I got my company to invest in a dual PIII/700 system with RAID and 1GB RAM, and it's worked perfectly, without flaw. I'd warmly endorse them any day of the week, for that and the excellent support they give back to the Linux community.
D
----
An emachine certainly does have lower perceived quality than an iMac, and it's not as designer-friendly, but most people nowadays are just looking for the cheapest possible solution.
One major reason people choose Windows over the Mac, incidentally, is that the software is loads easier to pirate due to the large numbers of Windows users. I was quite surprised to find that out, being someone who doesn't think much of software theft. But tis true.
D
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This might do pretty well:
http://www.sgi.com/flatpanel/
1600x1024 resolution, exceptional quality by all accounts.
D
----
Mac users are much more likely to pay for software than Linux users. The audience is more affluent, and it's used to paying for what it gets.
I predict success for MacOS X, mainly because they've rejiggered things like Carbon to make it easy to port applications to it. The "cool factor" of Aqua is hard to ignore, too.
I think the Mac has a good chance of attracting a sizable crop of new adherents with X and the spiffy new systems. The biggest problem at this point is continued high pricing. An eMachine costs around $ 450, plus a $ 120 monitor is $570. $799 is still a far cry from that, especially with the dearth of dealer discounts I've noticed in Mac-land.
D
----
Every document I've seen printed using TeX uses the same rather odd looking default font. Once you know that, you can recognize documents created using TeX - for good or ill - in seconds.
I've never seen that font outside of the TeX world.
D
----
Sadly, I echo the original poster's viewpoint - they may have digitized an entire encyclopedia into the Brain of the Paperclip, such as it is, but it sure is tough to get anything out of the little critter. And that's all that matters in the end, isn't it?
I always find the arguments between the LATex folks and the regular word processor people interesting. I'm sort of in between - I write everything in xemacs, put it in HTML, put it into a web page, and - if I have to - print it out.
But I know that's not for everyone, since the learning curve is almost vertical for stuff like that. You pretty much need to be an old computer hand to appreciate the advantages. I can edit text with a speed that awes everyone who sees me, simply because I took the time to learn emacs. I encourage anyone who's up to a technical challenge that improves their abilities enormously in the long run to follow me on that path; but I realize it's simply not something mainstream people care to do.
So we need word processors, and sure as shooting we need something other than those god-awful fonts.
I can't help but wonder if many Linux fans won't cross over to the Macintosh side when MacOS X comes out. I mean, here we have a platform that has the guts of Unix that we love, combined with the brilliance of a designer interface created with panache anyone in open source will have a tough time with.
Yes, I know MacOS X isn't open source, but the underpinnings are, and all the applications mainstream people love are there. I think it's worth a look, simply because it could solve a lot of problems.
I plan to buy a dual-processor Mac as soon as I'm reasonably assured MacOS X is out and functioning well.
D
----
I love SGI, personally, but unfortunately this is (as others have said) a compute powerhouse that lacks the wonderful graphics features for which SGI is so famous.
I fear the electrical demand might put a serious dent in your school's budget, and in that case you might be wise to trade it for something else (perhaps an Indigo2 or two, or some O2s or Indys if you'd like to stick with SGI).
D
----