Agreed. No one's going to be able to get the silly questions.
Why not post an email address where you can get on a list of people who'd have the questions mailed to them. I think I could stand to see the list appear in my Inbox. Hell, I'm probably not going to win the contest any way but I'd still like the list of questions so I could amuse myself for a few evenings.
``he was the first, or perhaps one of the first, to charge for software.''
Only if you believe that the first computer was the IBM PC.
Everyone was charging for software for a long time before that. A former boss was part of a team that wrote their own OS for an IBM 370 (or was a 360,... can't remember now) because IBM's was way too expensive. DEC certainly charged for their PDP-11 OSs.
``Free'' software was certainly available. Some of it even came from vendors (the DEC contributions to the DECUS library come to mind) but I would say that the vast majority of it did not come from the systems vendors.
``Have you ever paid close attention to how people use apps like word, excel, powerpoint - they spend 10% of there time making the content and about 90% of there time formating it. Doing ridiculas things like changing a font size/type here and there and then fiddiling with it again. The result is no two document of the same type in organisation ever have exactly the same style.''
Guess they've never figured out how to use document templates off the local file server, eh?.
Until bosses actually judge the quality of their employees work by results and content instead of just appearance, this'll continue to be a problem. BTW, there was a study done once to see why certain office employees were not more productive after having been given access to a PC. Prior to having a PC, a person was able to crank out a one page interoffice memo in about ten minutes. The one page memo was taking 15-20 minutes to create on a PC. The reason it was taking longer was the activity you described: tweaking fonts, etc. There are current reports that indicate the the massive computerization of business's office workforce hasn't result in any measurable productivity gains. The people who pooh-pooh these reports say things like: ``But the workers are able to accomplish much more complicated tasks...'' To which I would like to respond with: ``Yes, but how much of that complexity is being imposed on their job by the computer itself and/or the execrable software they're forced to use?''. Quite a lot I suspect.
On the boss problem: I worked with a guy back in the early '80s who I disagreed with on report formats. We both had people working for us that were to generate reports on their work. Some people were quite proficient with SCRIPT, which if you're not familiar with it was something very similiar to nroff but ran under IBM's VM/CMS operating system. PCs were beginning to be available in the labs and a few people were using WordPerfect and a couple of people were even using the sole Mac in the lab (an original tiny-memory Mac). This other guy would invariably gush over anyone's report that was done on the word processor regardless of the quality of the work being done of the quality of the reporting. Some of the best technical work was being done by people who preferred using SCRIPT yet this guy turned his nose up at all of it. The prettier report must have been about the more significant work. The saddest thing was that there was some truly great work being done whose reports were being run through SCRIPT (and sometimes, in a pinch, printed on greenbar on a DECwriter) that this guy never was able to appreciate. (I should point out that these were internal reports; anything going to the outside world was made suitably pretty.)
I had hoped someone like that'd be an aberration (Ahhh, I was young and idealistic), but we all know that's not the case. Lately, I encounter these types masquerading as the office ``power user''. They're the ones I wind up showing how to automatically create numbered paragraphs and headings. They always make a sound like a cave man seeing fire for the first time (and that always makes my day).
``I reckon powerpoint is the big missing X. I *still* use MS powerpoint.''
Yah... it sounds like the Gartner consultants couldn't switch from anything that didn't support their beloved Powerpoint. Maybe they don't have much else to do but give presentations.
Applix has a module that's pretty much the same as Powerpoint. I guess it depends on what you do with your PP presentations. If you schlepp them around on your laptop then you could switch. If you have to share with MS users you may have problems switching. Sorry, but I don't know if it can import Powerpoint files. The last time I had to mess with PP was a presentation that I did some time ago so I count myself as an extremely infrequent PP user at work -- Some people live in the damned program! I've only played with the demo files that come with the Applix presentation module. I usually do slide presentations using the Gimp or xv. I'm not interested in giving presentations that have to include bullet points that fade-in or slide around the screen (If that's what the audience is interested in seeing... well, you know).
``I like high-end quality h/w. Linux is devleoped by the poor and the hungry (figuratively speaking) so it's no wonder that SMP and SCSI support is so limited.''
Huh? I have been running an SMP system for, what, three years now? If memory serves, SMP was supported (although not as well as it is now) since something like the 1.0.14 kernel. I've been using SCSI in all my systems since those days. The SMP has three controllers in it, an Adaptec UW, an NCR Fast SCSI, and an old Adaptec 1542 (Hey, no flames. It's only for the tape drive and scanner) and they all work flawlessly.
``I don't build or spec boxes that have anything other than full SCSI, full PCI, full SMP support''
So you just pick whatever's in the Dell catalog, eh? Sorry... just couldn't resist. (BTW, I just got another one in the mail and it still doesn't have any mention Linux despite their public assertions that they support it. Michael: Why are you afraid to show this support in your printed material?)
``I know that if I were running a server with a single 486 processor and 16MB of RAM and all IDE devices then I might feel different.''
I still have one of those, a EISA bus 486/33 w/ 16MB, (running Linux) and I know I don't feel different but, then, my old '486 is running off an Adaptec 1740 -- no IDE for me, thank you. This is an old system that was running USL SVR4.2 for many years -- until I wanted to do some X programming and I didn't feel like spending a couple kilobucks for the development system binaries and libraries (and no sources).
``No, no, no - it's spelt Linux, but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'.''
I'm not sure that I agree with most of your comments (you seem to use your systems mostly for games; I don't).
Anyway... I started reading the MSN article first thing this marning and then got sidetracked. I should have read it first thing; funniest thing I've seen in a while.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who found most of the tips in this article contradicting quite a bit of what Microsoft says about its products. That is, IMHO, what makes this article worth reading.
Easier to install: Maybe but it sure looks like you'll have a sub-optimal or even screwed up installation if you accept the default options.
You'll make one or more of these ten mistakes if you don't read the instructions: Just like any other operating system installation. So what's so easy about installing Windows XX on a system? Oh yah, your OEM does it for you, I forgot. The problem with Microsoft's operating systems is that there really aren't any instructions. There sure weren't any for Win95, I don't recall the NT admins where I used to work having any available during their installs (That crappy little book with pages full of screen dumps and the license key on the cover doesn't count as documentation for me). At least with Linux, I have instructions, in the form of the various HOWTOs, etc., to refer to if something goes awry during installation (however, I haven't had an install go wacky since an early 1.0.x kernel Slackware distribution, i.e., a fairly long time ago).
I think the only thing that the MSN author said that I half agreed with was failing to make emergency boot disks when prompted. This isn't a problem with NT, though. I've met many a Linux user that blew off that step when installing their distribution only to regret it later (even done it my self).
I used to work for a company that ran hospitals and clinics. The commercial software package that we used to run the hospitals had the crappiest security you've ever seen. It pretty much required shared accounts to use some of the components. The developers at the vendor had no clue about how to write secure applications or even how to properly use the OS's (VMS) security. For those of you that have used VMS, how would you like to see applications running on the system that required that the user account have BYPASS privileges and to have this enabled by default? When we were getting fed up with the vendor's unwillingness to fix the software, as well as their general incompetance, we found that other vendors were no better.
IMHO, healthcare providers are going to have enough trouble avoiding problems with compliance with the Federal confidentiality regulations covering patient information on their non-Internet-connected systems let alone anything that's connected to the entire world. For example, a hospital could be in legal hot water if a nurse even looks at a patient's records without the patient's physician's express permission. A hospital was successfuly sued when something like this happened and information about their medical history was leaked. That's one reason we were looking for alternate vendors since our software could only log changes to online patient data and could not track accesses. Tracking access to online data is something that's going to soon be a requirement for hospitals (they already do it with the paper records), especially if they want to keep their accreditation and be able to treat any Medicare/Medicaid patients (which is, BTW, a huge source of income for hospitals).
Personally, I will be looking for a new doctor if I find that he or his partners decide to make any of their patient's information available via the Internet.
Also, let's not get into the argument that says ``If you've got nothing to hide... don't worry.'' Some employers do try to get a hold of a potential employee's medical history to see if they're going to hurt the company's insurance premiums. (My wife has a friend that's been through this scenario.)
``We've all spent years learning how to type, so we have a large investment in a QWERTY layout, while those few people who've spent the even larger investment to relearn a DVORAK keyboard are extremely unlikely to turn around and admit (even if only to themselves) that this was a mistake!''
Sounds like human nature to me. Rare is the person who spends a lot of effort learning something like that and then turns around and says (either to themselves or out loud): ``Hey! What a waste of time that was!''.
Consider people you know who have invested a considerable amount of time and/or money becoming proficient in a particular activity and think about how open they are to different ways of doing things. For example,
People who've climbed the learning curve for UNIX and how they feel about people who only know point-and-click WinXX users.
Drivers who took the time to drive a standard transmission and what they think about automatics.
People who go out and buy exotic speakers for big bucks and insist that they sound so much better than yours even though hideously expensive test equipment can barely measure the difference in sound.
Psychiatrists who spends years studying a particular method of analysis and dismiss anyone who studied any other method.
...
I don't think we have to work very hard to think of many more examples.
Question: If Dvorak was supposed to be easier to use how come I had so damned much trouble back when I remapped my keyboard with Prokey and mvoed all my keycaps? And, since, I never really learned how to type (I consider my typing ability something like advanced ``hunting and pecking''.) it couldn't have been having to ``unlearn'' an old typing technique.
``My read of the new Transmeta patent confirmed that yes, the processor will "emulate" other instruction sets... but that is not the important heart of the patent.''
I hope you're right. I distinctly remember reading in one of the IEEE Transactions back in the late '80s about a researcher, at UofI/Urbana I think, that made a VLIW processor emulate an i386 and it performed at some fantastic amount faster than the real thing. I'm no patent attorney, but it seems to me that if all it takes to get awarded a patent is to dredge up some University research papers and IEEE reprints, make an application, and get a patent, then things have gotten totally out of hand at the Patent Office. (Well they may be already with respect to software patents but that's another story.)
``...no one has seen paper wasted the way it is done in a mainframe shop.''
Or in a shop that used to be a mainframe shop; I guess old habits die hard.
I used to admin in a bank and the operations people (and sometimes me if they were already swamped) used to get requests for multiple copies of a 1500 page financial report. And these reports were available online. The trouble was that the online reports were sucked into an imaging system and, using the Windows viewer software, you couldn't search for specific portions of the report unless you knew the page number you wanted. Viewing online documents will continue to be a major pain until they're more easily navigable.
Plus... When I stepped up to a 19-inch monitor & new video card at home and nearly quadrupling the # of pixels on the display the result was astounding. But, it's still a poor substitute to the readability of the printed page so I have to disagree with the poster who thought that 1600x1200 resolution monitors will solve the problem of people using paper. Sorry but my fairly low end laser printer can already print at 600x1200 per inch. My eyes really appreciate the higher resolution. When my computer can display at those sort of resolutions maybe then paper will become obsolete.
Hear! Hear! I think that electronic documents have two big things going against them:
Ergonomics. As you mentioned:
``If you want to read something on screen, you have to sit motionless and stare at it.''
There's no way this is easier than reading paper.
Usability:
``Also, when reading source code, it's easy to stick your fingers in a few places and flip back and forth rapidly.''
(I'd include any printed manual as well.)
A previous poster called anyone who preferred paper a Luddite. What a crock! I prefer paper manuals because they're easier to use!
If you've done any programming on a complex system, you are likely to have to consult several manuals in order to get past all the ``gotchas'' you might encounter when using some of the system calls. (Oh, I'm sure all those proponents of paperless computing have all the system calls memorized and know how to use all of the system utilities with their eyes closed.) I used to take a lot of documentation home or to another quiet place at work and spread it out to read several manuals at the same time (not as much anymore... it's hardly available anymore). Vendors insist that I spend all my time sitting in front of a CRT nowadays. And after 10-12 hours of doing that all day -- and that's in front of 19 inch monitors at work as well as at home -- my eyes are exhausted.
Companies have been trying to stop printing manuals for years. I had an infuriating conversation with a polling firm that was hired by DEC about ten years ago. It went something like:
Pollster:
Would you still buy printed manuals if all the documentation were available on CD-ROM? Me:Yes, at least one copy. What do I do if the system's down or I'm not in front of a monitor? Pollster:But, but,...
They were flabbergasted (apparently no one else wanted printed manuals). I got no response to my question (well, they were a pollster and not DEC after all).
Most of the online manual browsers are terrible. I've had the (mis)fortune to have to use a lot of online manual systems over the years. They all stink (stank?). Back when that pollster called we had toyed around with the Bookreader program under DECwindows. Well it required Motif (great, there's another separate license) and the docs came on three CDS and we only have one CD-ROM drive. That's real convenient. Nowadays both Gnome and KDE include a help browser: I can't decide which one is the worst. The vast majority of the vendors now ship their manuals in PDF format with no navigable table of contents or index and the page numbers have no connection with what page numbers you need to specify while viewing the document in Acrobat. While you can sometimes (depending on the viewer) put bookmarks in a help system but you still limited to point and click speed. And on a laptop? Forget it. And, as you mentioned, the navigation tools suck like a tornado. The closest thing I've found that's only remotely acceptable is multiple xman windows (or multiple xterms running info) and that's still not as useful as a paper manual with bookmarks in it. Is it any wonder people still print the manuals from the PDF file?
I can take a paper manual over to someone's desk and talk to them about something in it. We can look at the same page and make notes on it. Try that with a monitor. I'd have to interrupt my coworkers computing session (``Damn, Mike! Don't you have an X server running on your Windows laptop?!''), have them bring up the document online, then we'd have to fool around trying to find the section that I wanted to speak to them about... And we wonder why computerization hasn't brought about greater productivity.
I suspect that people who advocate eliminating paper never read many books before they became computer geeks. I'll bet their handwriting is illegible as well.
IMHO, the only advantage that electronic manuals have over printed manuals is a slight reduction in paper cuts.
My first experience with Visio was with a sample version that was shipped on a Microsoft marketing floppy (extoling the virtues of upgrading to Windows for Workgroups) around, I think, 1992. The Visio app was limited to single page drawings but good enough that I used it for about four years. It, along with the copy of Tetrahex, were the only worthwhile things on the floppy. In those days, even the full version of Visio wasn't much more than a simple flowchart/org chart/block diagram/floor plan drawing tool.
Visio was trying to become more ``high-end'' and then they decided to buy a network diagramming package, whose name escapes me at the moment, from Microsystems Engineering Corp. (the people who wrote the MASS-11 word processor for the PDP-11s). It was considered the Cadillac of network drawing packages. We used this package at a large bank that I used to work for and it was used, reportedly, by some of the larger telecomm firms to diagram their networks (our's was global and damned complicated). The number of images for network equipment was incredible and updates came out whenever a vendor introduced new hardware. Until they bought MEC's software, when using Visio you were more often than not just creating block diagrams with labels; the included``icons'' were awfully generic and, generally, crappy-looking. Personally, I find the simple block diagrams entirely satisfactory but some people like the fancier drawings (they're just too ``busy'' for my taste and I always end up writing on them which would render the fancier drawings almost unreadable).
Visio was getting to be a darned BIG package as of a couple of years ago (last time I installed a version of it). If Visio is going to become part of Office, um, how many CDs will the entire Office package ship on? How much disk space you need? Will Macrosoft begin shipping a 2GB hard disk and cable along with the Office suite?
``Restricting pornography or violence on the internet hardly qualifies for the Farenheit 451 or the 1984 scenarios you portray. Ones right to express ones views are not limited by this kind of regulation.''
It's been said before but I'll repeat it again... just for you.
If one is forced to rate their speech before posting it it will have a chilling effect (Gawd, I've always hated that term but it's so appropriate here) on any speech. Just try it yourself: How often would you post a comment on a website if you had rate it before clicking on ``Submit''? How often would you voice an opinion in public if you had to preceed it with a rating or a disclaimer? Gotten tired of doing that yet? I'll bet you have. Guess what! Your speech is now censored. That fact that you've done it yourself instead of some faceless bureaucrat or librarian is meaningless. You're now censored and your speech ain't so free anymore is it?
You cannot keep children from seeing anything that they decide they want to see. You cannot stop children from smoking cigarettes or drinking if they want to. And there are already U.S. laws that purport to stop that from happening. Just what makes you think that something that filters out ``inappropriate'' Internet content, a definition that differs from household to household, will stop them from seeing whatever it is that they want to see?
Get your head out of the sand, go to the library, and read a bit about what happened when Prohibition was foisted upon the U.S. Did that stop alcohol consumption? No. It flourished. It also had no small part in the rise of organized crime in the U.S. as well; something that, I'm sure, the creators of the Prohibition Amendment didn't foresee (or, perhaps, chose to ignore?).
I'm not normally prone to agree with ``slippery slope'' type of arguments. But, I think that this proposal is one of those that has me worried.
We all laughed when Jerry Falwell (or was it Pat Robertson, eh, who cares) complained that Teletubbies were somehow promoting a homosexual lifesyle. I personally find them nauseating and stupid (luckily my girls do too) but a lot of people think they're great for kids (that's teletubbies... not Falwell and Robertson:-) ). Unfortunately, guess who's going to have a bigger say in what my kids can or cannot see if page labelling gets adopted on a widespread basis? Little Old Me or some public figure like a Jerry Falwell or Tipper Gore who's trying to either A.) enhance their own ego and public image, B.) make a buck, or C.) get elected to public office and uses the old ``I'm for protecting children'' line?
I don't think we'll always be so lucky to have people like Falwell, whose reputation as a major crackpot pretty much invalidated his public statements about purple teletubbies, being the point person on censorship. Some oily sleaze will dress up censorship and sell it to the masses and before you know it you won't be able to complain ( ``Hey there's no Page Rating for 'Anti-Censorship Argument'!'').
And, finally, another thing:
Why is it that 99.99% of the people who are in favor of censorship policies, such as that being proposed, post as Anonymous Coward?
This whole thing reminds of the period when the printing press was invented and the Church was none too happy about it. Just look what happened once information was available that didn't have to be obtained from an elite group (the Church hierarchy and their scribes).
Modern day governments, like the medieval churchs, seem to be clinging to the notion that they, and only they, are the one true source of information and power. The Internet threatens their position of authority. You can attempt to cloak it in ``we're protecting children'' but, IMHO, what's happening is an attempt to diminish the utility of the Internet by assorted govts who fear what it brings.
...that doesn't have a damned magnetic strip on it anymore. Currently, my driver's license and the picture of my daughters are about the only thing that don't.
It's getting to the point where you're afraid to walk near heavy machinery for fear of erasing your access to half the stuff you use on a daily basis.
Next thing you know, the Secret Service will want Detroit and anyone else that sells a car in the U.S. to make it necessary to swipe your driver's license in a reader before you car will start. You don't want those illegal aliens and terrorists driving around, you know.
Question: Since when did the Secret Service get interested in illegal aliens. Isn't that the concern of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (yah, Service, that's a good one; ``We're from the Government and we're here to help you.'' and all that).?
IMHO, the Microsoft spinmeisters must have been asleep on this one.
Why, you ask? Well, I was up late last night reading and listening to the radio and the news on one of the local mass-media radio stations ran the story on the Hotmail security hole. More and more people are going to start hearing more and more about the gaping security holes and start questioning whether they want anything to do with MS software. Those who already understand why the lastest virus scare is a problem and how it works must already be asking themselves ``Why did I spend my hard earned money on this stuff?''
(Normally I despise the news media feeding frenzies but when it's directed in the right place, it's actually sort amusing. We may not be seeing one just yet but MS has a few cuts and there might be enough blood in the water...)
I distinctly remember a co-worker tearing his hair out over BSODs he was getting while installing NT on a right-out-of-the-box HP Netserver. I guess HP makes crappy hardware or they're were fibbing about the server being capable of running NT.
...just give the state electronic access to your bank account. That way they can merely do a funds transfer without bothering you.
Seriously, IMHO, dealing with traffic offenses should be as big a pain in the ass as the government can possibly make it. Perhaps then people will treat driving as the privilege that it is and not a right.
In Illinois, there is a fairly big to-do about cities that ticket people, take the money, and don't report the offenses to the state so that the points never go against your license. That's great. You could get hit, and possibly killed, by some jerk who was speeding and should never have even been on the road as, if his offenses had been reported properly, they'd be off the road since their license would have been revoked. If it becomes so easy to ticket people and they can pay for the picket right then and there, using their cellphone, while the officer waits, what's to stop these cities from ticketing you silly stuff like going 0.1 MPH over the limit or stopping 2 inches beyond the stop sign? The city makes additional money (``Hizzoner wants to make our city a better place to live and we think that's best accomplished by getting some mahogony conference room furniture...'') and they'll claim that they're just making the streets safer.
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Agreed. No one's going to be able to get the silly questions.
Why not post an email address where you can get on a list of people who'd have the questions mailed to them. I think I could stand to see the list appear in my Inbox. Hell, I'm probably not going to win the contest any way but I'd still like the list of questions so I could amuse myself for a few evenings.
Lately it's been a mix that's all over the map:
My main goal is to keep outside conversations from distracting me.
Only if you believe that the first computer was the IBM PC.
Everyone was charging for software for a long time before that. A former boss was part of a team that wrote their own OS for an IBM 370 (or was a 360,... can't remember now) because IBM's was way too expensive. DEC certainly charged for their PDP-11 OSs.
``Free'' software was certainly available. Some of it even came from vendors (the DEC contributions to the DECUS library come to mind) but I would say that the vast majority of it did not come from the systems vendors.
Whew! Sounds like one AC has some problems to work out in the area of ``interpersonal relationships''.
Guess they've never figured out how to use document templates off the local file server, eh?.
Until bosses actually judge the quality of their employees work by results and content instead of just appearance, this'll continue to be a problem. BTW, there was a study done once to see why certain office employees were not more productive after having been given access to a PC. Prior to having a PC, a person was able to crank out a one page interoffice memo in about ten minutes. The one page memo was taking 15-20 minutes to create on a PC. The reason it was taking longer was the activity you described: tweaking fonts, etc. There are current reports that indicate the the massive computerization of business's office workforce hasn't result in any measurable productivity gains. The people who pooh-pooh these reports say things like: ``But the workers are able to accomplish much more complicated tasks...'' To which I would like to respond with: ``Yes, but how much of that complexity is being imposed on their job by the computer itself and/or the execrable software they're forced to use?''. Quite a lot I suspect.
On the boss problem: I worked with a guy back in the early '80s who I disagreed with on report formats. We both had people working for us that were to generate reports on their work. Some people were quite proficient with SCRIPT, which if you're not familiar with it was something very similiar to nroff but ran under IBM's VM/CMS operating system. PCs were beginning to be available in the labs and a few people were using WordPerfect and a couple of people were even using the sole Mac in the lab (an original tiny-memory Mac). This other guy would invariably gush over anyone's report that was done on the word processor regardless of the quality of the work being done of the quality of the reporting. Some of the best technical work was being done by people who preferred using SCRIPT yet this guy turned his nose up at all of it. The prettier report must have been about the more significant work. The saddest thing was that there was some truly great work being done whose reports were being run through SCRIPT (and sometimes, in a pinch, printed on greenbar on a DECwriter) that this guy never was able to appreciate. (I should point out that these were internal reports; anything going to the outside world was made suitably pretty.)
I had hoped someone like that'd be an aberration (Ahhh, I was young and idealistic), but we all know that's not the case. Lately, I encounter these types masquerading as the office ``power user''. They're the ones I wind up showing how to automatically create numbered paragraphs and headings. They always make a sound like a cave man seeing fire for the first time (and that always makes my day).
IMHO, these are just the weasel words that the author will use when others come to him later to point out how wrong he was.
Yah... it sounds like the Gartner consultants couldn't switch from anything that didn't support their beloved Powerpoint. Maybe they don't have much else to do but give presentations.
Applix has a module that's pretty much the same as Powerpoint. I guess it depends on what you do with your PP presentations. If you schlepp them around on your laptop then you could switch. If you have to share with MS users you may have problems switching. Sorry, but I don't know if it can import Powerpoint files. The last time I had to mess with PP was a presentation that I did some time ago so I count myself as an extremely infrequent PP user at work -- Some people live in the damned program! I've only played with the demo files that come with the Applix presentation module. I usually do slide presentations using the Gimp or xv. I'm not interested in giving presentations that have to include bullet points that fade-in or slide around the screen (If that's what the audience is interested in seeing... well, you know).
It's not like you couldn't be totally MS free...
Huh? I have been running an SMP system for, what, three years now? If memory serves, SMP was supported (although not as well as it is now) since something like the 1.0.14 kernel. I've been using SCSI in all my systems since those days. The SMP has three controllers in it, an Adaptec UW, an NCR Fast SCSI, and an old Adaptec 1542 (Hey, no flames. It's only for the tape drive and scanner) and they all work flawlessly.
So you just pick whatever's in the Dell catalog, eh? Sorry... just couldn't resist. (BTW, I just got another one in the mail and it still doesn't have any mention Linux despite their public assertions that they support it. Michael: Why are you afraid to show this support in your printed material?)
I still have one of those, a EISA bus 486/33 w/ 16MB, (running Linux) and I know I don't feel different but, then, my old '486 is running off an Adaptec 1740 -- no IDE for me, thank you. This is an old system that was running USL SVR4.2 for many years -- until I wanted to do some X programming and I didn't feel like spending a couple kilobucks for the development system binaries and libraries (and no sources).
``No, no, no - it's spelt Linux, but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'.''
I'm not sure that I agree with most of your comments (you seem to use your systems mostly for games; I don't).
Anyway... I started reading the MSN article first thing this marning and then got sidetracked. I should have read it first thing; funniest thing I've seen in a while.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who found most of the tips in this article contradicting quite a bit of what Microsoft says about its products. That is, IMHO, what makes this article worth reading.
Easier to install: Maybe but it sure looks like you'll have a sub-optimal or even screwed up installation if you accept the default options.
You'll make one or more of these ten mistakes if you don't read the instructions: Just like any other operating system installation. So what's so easy about installing Windows XX on a system? Oh yah, your OEM does it for you, I forgot. The problem with Microsoft's operating systems is that there really aren't any instructions. There sure weren't any for Win95, I don't recall the NT admins where I used to work having any available during their installs (That crappy little book with pages full of screen dumps and the license key on the cover doesn't count as documentation for me). At least with Linux, I have instructions, in the form of the various HOWTOs, etc., to refer to if something goes awry during installation (however, I haven't had an install go wacky since an early 1.0.x kernel Slackware distribution, i.e., a fairly long time ago).
I think the only thing that the MSN author said that I half agreed with was failing to make emergency boot disks when prompted. This isn't a problem with NT, though. I've met many a Linux user that blew off that step when installing their distribution only to regret it later (even done it my self).
I used to work for a company that ran hospitals and clinics. The commercial software package that we used to run the hospitals had the crappiest security you've ever seen. It pretty much required shared accounts to use some of the components. The developers at the vendor had no clue about how to write secure applications or even how to properly use the OS's (VMS) security. For those of you that have used VMS, how would you like to see applications running on the system that required that the user account have BYPASS privileges and to have this enabled by default? When we were getting fed up with the vendor's unwillingness to fix the software, as well as their general incompetance, we found that other vendors were no better.
IMHO, healthcare providers are going to have enough trouble avoiding problems with compliance with the Federal confidentiality regulations covering patient information on their non-Internet-connected systems let alone anything that's connected to the entire world. For example, a hospital could be in legal hot water if a nurse even looks at a patient's records without the patient's physician's express permission. A hospital was successfuly sued when something like this happened and information about their medical history was leaked. That's one reason we were looking for alternate vendors since our software could only log changes to online patient data and could not track accesses. Tracking access to online data is something that's going to soon be a requirement for hospitals (they already do it with the paper records), especially if they want to keep their accreditation and be able to treat any Medicare/Medicaid patients (which is, BTW, a huge source of income for hospitals).
Personally, I will be looking for a new doctor if I find that he or his partners decide to make any of their patient's information available via the Internet.
Also, let's not get into the argument that says ``If you've got nothing to hide... don't worry.'' Some employers do try to get a hold of a potential employee's medical history to see if they're going to hurt the company's insurance premiums. (My wife has a friend that's been through this scenario.)
(What's the emoticon for leaning over and rocking in your chair?)
Sounds like human nature to me. Rare is the person who spends a lot of effort learning something like that and then turns around and says (either to themselves or out loud): ``Hey! What a waste of time that was!''.
Consider people you know who have invested a considerable amount of time and/or money becoming proficient in a particular activity and think about how open they are to different ways of doing things. For example,
I don't think we have to work very hard to think of many more examples.
Question: If Dvorak was supposed to be easier to use how come I had so damned much trouble back when I remapped my keyboard with Prokey and mvoed all my keycaps? And, since, I never really learned how to type (I consider my typing ability something like advanced ``hunting and pecking''.) it couldn't have been having to ``unlearn'' an old typing technique.
I hope you're right. I distinctly remember reading in one of the IEEE Transactions back in the late '80s about a researcher, at UofI/Urbana I think, that made a VLIW processor emulate an i386 and it performed at some fantastic amount faster than the real thing. I'm no patent attorney, but it seems to me that if all it takes to get awarded a patent is to dredge up some University research papers and IEEE reprints, make an application, and get a patent, then things have gotten totally out of hand at the Patent Office. (Well they may be already with respect to software patents but that's another story.)
Or in a shop that used to be a mainframe shop; I guess old habits die hard.
I used to admin in a bank and the operations people (and sometimes me if they were already swamped) used to get requests for multiple copies of a 1500 page financial report. And these reports were available online. The trouble was that the online reports were sucked into an imaging system and, using the Windows viewer software, you couldn't search for specific portions of the report unless you knew the page number you wanted. Viewing online documents will continue to be a major pain until they're more easily navigable.
Plus... When I stepped up to a 19-inch monitor & new video card at home and nearly quadrupling the # of pixels on the display the result was astounding. But, it's still a poor substitute to the readability of the printed page so I have to disagree with the poster who thought that 1600x1200 resolution monitors will solve the problem of people using paper. Sorry but my fairly low end laser printer can already print at 600x1200 per inch. My eyes really appreciate the higher resolution. When my computer can display at those sort of resolutions maybe then paper will become obsolete.
Hear! Hear! I think that electronic documents have two big things going against them:
A previous poster called anyone who preferred paper a Luddite. What a crock! I prefer paper manuals because they're easier to use!
If you've done any programming on a complex system, you are likely to have to consult several manuals in order to get past all the ``gotchas'' you might encounter when using some of the system calls. (Oh, I'm sure all those proponents of paperless computing have all the system calls memorized and know how to use all of the system utilities with their eyes closed.) I used to take a lot of documentation home or to another quiet place at work and spread it out to read several manuals at the same time (not as much anymore... it's hardly available anymore). Vendors insist that I spend all my time sitting in front of a CRT nowadays. And after 10-12 hours of doing that all day -- and that's in front of 19 inch monitors at work as well as at home -- my eyes are exhausted.
Companies have been trying to stop printing manuals for years. I had an infuriating conversation with a polling firm that was hired by DEC about ten years ago. It went something like:
They were flabbergasted (apparently no one else wanted printed manuals). I got no response to my question (well, they were a pollster and not DEC after all).
Most of the online manual browsers are terrible. I've had the (mis)fortune to have to use a lot of online manual systems over the years. They all stink (stank?). Back when that pollster called we had toyed around with the Bookreader program under DECwindows. Well it required Motif (great, there's another separate license) and the docs came on three CDS and we only have one CD-ROM drive. That's real convenient. Nowadays both Gnome and KDE include a help browser: I can't decide which one is the worst. The vast majority of the vendors now ship their manuals in PDF format with no navigable table of contents or index and the page numbers have no connection with what page numbers you need to specify while viewing the document in Acrobat. While you can sometimes (depending on the viewer) put bookmarks in a help system but you still limited to point and click speed. And on a laptop? Forget it. And, as you mentioned, the navigation tools suck like a tornado. The closest thing I've found that's only remotely acceptable is multiple xman windows (or multiple xterms running info) and that's still not as useful as a paper manual with bookmarks in it. Is it any wonder people still print the manuals from the PDF file?
I can take a paper manual over to someone's desk and talk to them about something in it. We can look at the same page and make notes on it. Try that with a monitor. I'd have to interrupt my coworkers computing session (``Damn, Mike! Don't you have an X server running on your Windows laptop?!''), have them bring up the document online, then we'd have to fool around trying to find the section that I wanted to speak to them about... And we wonder why computerization hasn't brought about greater productivity.
I suspect that people who advocate eliminating paper never read many books before they became computer geeks. I'll bet their handwriting is illegible as well.
IMHO, the only advantage that electronic manuals have over printed manuals is a slight reduction in paper cuts.
The licensing fees aren't what's so costly. It's the support contract that can cost you an arm and a leg.
I think the AC was trying to inject a funny. At least it seemed that way to me.
No, you're not far off.
My first experience with Visio was with a sample version that was shipped on a Microsoft marketing floppy (extoling the virtues of upgrading to Windows for Workgroups) around, I think, 1992. The Visio app was limited to single page drawings but good enough that I used it for about four years. It, along with the copy of Tetrahex, were the only worthwhile things on the floppy. In those days, even the full version of Visio wasn't much more than a simple flowchart/org chart/block diagram/floor plan drawing tool.
Visio was trying to become more ``high-end'' and then they decided to buy a network diagramming package, whose name escapes me at the moment, from Microsystems Engineering Corp. (the people who wrote the MASS-11 word processor for the PDP-11s). It was considered the Cadillac of network drawing packages. We used this package at a large bank that I used to work for and it was used, reportedly, by some of the larger telecomm firms to diagram their networks (our's was global and damned complicated). The number of images for network equipment was incredible and updates came out whenever a vendor introduced new hardware. Until they bought MEC's software, when using Visio you were more often than not just creating block diagrams with labels; the included``icons'' were awfully generic and, generally, crappy-looking. Personally, I find the simple block diagrams entirely satisfactory but some people like the fancier drawings (they're just too ``busy'' for my taste and I always end up writing on them which would render the fancier drawings almost unreadable).
Visio was getting to be a darned BIG package as of a couple of years ago (last time I installed a version of it). If Visio is going to become part of Office, um, how many CDs will the entire Office package ship on? How much disk space you need? Will Macrosoft begin shipping a 2GB hard disk and cable along with the Office suite?
It's been said before but I'll repeat it again... just for you.
If one is forced to rate their speech before posting it it will have a chilling effect (Gawd, I've always hated that term but it's so appropriate here) on any speech. Just try it yourself: How often would you post a comment on a website if you had rate it before clicking on ``Submit''? How often would you voice an opinion in public if you had to preceed it with a rating or a disclaimer? Gotten tired of doing that yet? I'll bet you have. Guess what! Your speech is now censored. That fact that you've done it yourself instead of some faceless bureaucrat or librarian is meaningless. You're now censored and your speech ain't so free anymore is it?
You cannot keep children from seeing anything that they decide they want to see. You cannot stop children from smoking cigarettes or drinking if they want to. And there are already U.S. laws that purport to stop that from happening. Just what makes you think that something that filters out ``inappropriate'' Internet content, a definition that differs from household to household, will stop them from seeing whatever it is that they want to see?
Get your head out of the sand, go to the library, and read a bit about what happened when Prohibition was foisted upon the U.S. Did that stop alcohol consumption? No. It flourished. It also had no small part in the rise of organized crime in the U.S. as well; something that, I'm sure, the creators of the Prohibition Amendment didn't foresee (or, perhaps, chose to ignore?).
I'm not normally prone to agree with ``slippery slope'' type of arguments. But, I think that this proposal is one of those that has me worried.
We all laughed when Jerry Falwell (or was it Pat Robertson, eh, who cares) complained that Teletubbies were somehow promoting a homosexual lifesyle. I personally find them nauseating and stupid (luckily my girls do too) but a lot of people think they're great for kids (that's teletubbies... not Falwell and Robertson :-) ). Unfortunately, guess who's going to have a bigger say in what my kids can or cannot see if page labelling gets adopted on a widespread basis? Little Old Me or some public figure like a Jerry Falwell or Tipper Gore who's trying to either A.) enhance their own ego and public image, B.) make a buck, or C.) get elected to public office and uses the old ``I'm for protecting children'' line?
I don't think we'll always be so lucky to have people like Falwell, whose reputation as a major crackpot pretty much invalidated his public statements about purple teletubbies, being the point person on censorship. Some oily sleaze will dress up censorship and sell it to the masses and before you know it you won't be able to complain ( ``Hey there's no Page Rating for 'Anti-Censorship Argument'!'').
And, finally, another thing:
This whole thing reminds of the period when the printing press was invented and the Church was none too happy about it. Just look what happened once information was available that didn't have to be obtained from an elite group (the Church hierarchy and their scribes).
Modern day governments, like the medieval churchs, seem to be clinging to the notion that they, and only they, are the one true source of information and power. The Internet threatens their position of authority. You can attempt to cloak it in ``we're protecting children'' but, IMHO, what's happening is an attempt to diminish the utility of the Internet by assorted govts who fear what it brings.
...that doesn't have a damned magnetic strip on it anymore. Currently, my driver's license and the picture of my daughters are about the only thing that don't.
It's getting to the point where you're afraid to walk near heavy machinery for fear of erasing your access to half the stuff you use on a daily basis.
Next thing you know, the Secret Service will want Detroit and anyone else that sells a car in the U.S. to make it necessary to swipe your driver's license in a reader before you car will start. You don't want those illegal aliens and terrorists driving around, you know.
Question: Since when did the Secret Service get interested in illegal aliens. Isn't that the concern of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (yah, Service, that's a good one; ``We're from the Government and we're here to help you.'' and all that).?
IMHO, the Microsoft spinmeisters must have been asleep on this one.
Why, you ask? Well, I was up late last night reading and listening to the radio and the news on one of the local mass-media radio stations ran the story on the Hotmail security hole. More and more people are going to start hearing more and more about the gaping security holes and start questioning whether they want anything to do with MS software. Those who already understand why the lastest virus scare is a problem and how it works must already be asking themselves ``Why did I spend my hard earned money on this stuff?''
(Normally I despise the news media feeding frenzies but when it's directed in the right place, it's actually sort amusing. We may not be seeing one just yet but MS has a few cuts and there might be enough blood in the water...)
I particularly enjoyed the second paragraph of the Unisys page:
You qualify for the privilege of having our legal department harass you. You qualify for the right to send us a check for US$7500.
You may already be a wiener!
Funny.
I distinctly remember a co-worker tearing his hair out over BSODs he was getting while installing NT on a right-out-of-the-box HP Netserver. I guess HP makes crappy hardware or they're were fibbing about the server being capable of running NT.
...just give the state electronic access to your bank account. That way they can merely do a funds transfer without bothering you.
Seriously, IMHO, dealing with traffic offenses should be as big a pain in the ass as the government can possibly make it. Perhaps then people will treat driving as the privilege that it is and not a right.
In Illinois, there is a fairly big to-do about cities that ticket people, take the money, and don't report the offenses to the state so that the points never go against your license. That's great. You could get hit, and possibly killed, by some jerk who was speeding and should never have even been on the road as, if his offenses had been reported properly, they'd be off the road since their license would have been revoked. If it becomes so easy to ticket people and they can pay for the picket right then and there, using their cellphone, while the officer waits, what's to stop these cities from ticketing you silly stuff like going 0.1 MPH over the limit or stopping 2 inches beyond the stop sign? The city makes additional money (``Hizzoner wants to make our city a better place to live and we think that's best accomplished by getting some mahogony conference room furniture...'') and they'll claim that they're just making the streets safer.