This problem will eventually solve itself as more housing units are built
Unfortunately, in the Silicon Valley, this isn't going to happen. The geography of the SF Bay Area is a large body of water surrounded by a relatively narrow strip of flat land surrounded by a set of hills that are largely undevelopable. The flatlands are largely full - there simply isn't any more land to build.
Furthermore, the built part of the SV consists largely of poorly planned 60s and 70s low density large lot development. With land values the way they are, one would think that increasing density would be a no-brainer, but try telling that to the home owning political constitancy in Mountain View or Cupertino. Ain't going to happen.
So, yes, new housing is being built - in Livermore and the Central Valley. Same sort of inefficent sprawl development, except this time on valuable farmland. Some of these developments are closer to Sacramento than San Jose. The Freeway system connecting these new housing developements to the jobs is already way over capacity -- commute times between Livermore and San Jose will soon be about 2 hours. Is it reasonable to expect people to do this?
Would companies relocate to the edge? Some (like PeopleSoft) have, but this makes doing business with them inconvient for the other 8 million people in the bay area. Unfortunately, where the executives live generally has more influence over a company's location than where affordable housing is. Remote offices just make it even more expensive to do business in the bay area.
You're right that there's not much that could be done here from a regaltory standpoint. Not unless you can convince the average SV suburb's planning board to throw out their master and start redeveloping everything. The problem could be fixed for the new developments, but the chance that Tracy or Gilroy is going to look past the big pile of developer dollars waving in their face is pretty low.
And, yes, there is a lot of land speculation going on. Much of this is due to the pent-up demand created by the burst of the last land speculation bubble in the late 1980s. Your're correct that this bubble is bound to burst too. There's also an enourmous amount of wage inflation, much of it required to attract talent to SV. Anyway, Hang on, because things will bottom out eventually! --
Brand Name NICs are one of the few pieces of hardware that support almost everything: NDIS DOS drivers, ODI OS/2 drivers, NT 3.5, Netware 3.1, OS/2 1.x, wierd packet drivers -- you name it is on your average NIC disk.
You'd think it'd be a no-brainer to put Linux drivers on the disk, but generally the kernel support for network cards is pretty good, so it's probably unnecessary in most cases. --
A couple places I know of have a "Technicians shall not open the case" policy. Even though the computers are standard stuff, the cases might as well as be welded shut.
Thinking about this, it made sense. I suppose they're paying the body-shop $75/hour for the desktop techs, it's just a dumb move blow 2-3 hours (a few hundred bucks ~= new elcheap PC) of labor trying upgrade an older PC that's only going to be replaced in a year or so. --
>>"Hard coded file paths are NEVER used in the MacOS". >That's a blatant lie.
OK - I owned a Mac for 8 years, although I haven't had one for the last couple. The *only* applications that ever ran into with hardcoded paths was MS Office 4.2, which was widely considered broken for exactly that reason. Admittedly I didn't use every Mac application, but I sure used a lot and never found a path dependancy.
(And even if there are a few, it beats Windows and Unix where all but the most simple programs are path dependant.)
If I read correctly, multiuser is being added to MacOS 8.x as we speak.
And by the way, "I don't like the Mac" doesn't necessarily mean that "Every feature the Mac UI has is automatically wrong". --
My point is that if your EXE is buried six directories deep, and is one of 100 files in that directory, and has a 8.3 file name, who's going to bother. --
What you describe is a workaround for a broken netscape-communicator application. What if you accidentially delete that icon? You might be able to reconstruct it, but would an average user and/or desktop technician?
An intuitive system would do exactly what your script does. For example, Windows' IEXPLORE.EXE does exactly what your Gnome icon does, without the shell voodoo. --
Yeah, the floppy "shadow" was originally a feature back in the days when the system had 1 400K floppy disk and no hard drive. The fact that they system could remember previously mounted floppies made it easier to use multiple programs and avoided "COMMAND.COM not found" errors and the like.
What was a big mistake was to extend this metaphor to things like CD-ROM drives and Zip disks. The MacOS disables the eject button on the front of the drive, forcing you to use the trash can. That's unintitive, and considering all the UI geniuses at Apple, fairly retarded also. It has been the most cited "Bad Design Item" for what, 12 years?, but no fix yet.
(I should note that Apple has fixed this if you buy a two button mouse. You now can right-click+Eject a removable volume.) --
The windows system, like the Mac system, is horrible. Having a seperate directory structure for programs and data is the way to go.
It should be noted that modern versions of Windows and MacOS are set up so that the file dialog defaults to a "Documents" folder. (Hard Drive:Documents on the Mac, and \WINNT\Profiles\$USERNAME\Personal on WinNT) --
Windows is no better-this whole start menu is awful because you have to deal with 2 different directory representations instead of one
I think one thing thats often overlooked with the Macintosh is that the file system is layed-out so that the user can easily interact with the structure. The MacOS is the the only GUI where you launch programs by actually acting on the excutable file. (The Apple menu is generally only used for small programs such as the Calculator.)
Every other GUI requires you to interact with some shortcut or alias or another alternative representation of your file structure. This adds confusion and just makes the whole GUI that much more fragile.
The MacOS works because the directory structure was layed-out so that users can actually comprehend what is going on. "Netscape Navigator" is in your "Netscape" folder at the root of the hard drive, not in "opt/netscape/communicator/bin" or in "Program Files\Netscape\Program\bin" or whereever. Your hardware drivers are in the "System Folder:Extensions" folder, not in "WINNT\System32\Drivers" and so on. You can actually drag a driver out of the Extensions folder and not break anything.
The UNIX and Windows file systems were designed with system efficency in mind and *not* user efficiency. All of the gee-whiz GUI stuff can't cover this up.
Another key feature in making this all work is the Desktop Database -- Hard coded file paths are NEVER used in the MacOS. For example, A user can actually rename their "Netscape" folder to "My Web Browser", and nothing is going to break. Likewise they can copy the Netscape folder to an entirely different hard drive, and all will still work. (This system applies to Alias links also, so that if the user is using the Apple Menu or another representation, moving a folder won't break the alias.)
The UNIX file system is so established in Linux that it will probably never go away. Still, I'd like to see some of these file system features adapted in a Linux GUI. This stuff is something Microsoft never figured out, and it'd be nice if Linux could beat them to the punch. --
In short, I'll believe their promises about Janus when they can switch Hotmail over to NT, IIS, MS SQL Server and Exchange.
I wouldn't be suprised to see them switch to an architecture based on Win2000/IIS5/SQL7/Exchange6 next year sometime. (Even if it takes twice as much hardware!) Don't think they've dropped the idea.
It'll be one less flamethrower for the Unix advocacy arsenel, which is fine because this one is getting a little boring.
--
Re:Try to install Off95 without admin rights.
on
BO2K cracked
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· Score: 2
Running MS Office under a "secure" NT install is fairly well documented. Look around a bit. --
Re:get an education about NT before talking...
on
BO2K cracked
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· Score: 2
The MS resource kit SU works fine (although only for command lines, as far as I can tell).
However, MS SU is not part of the OS, and requires installing it as a service. So the average NT workstation probably will never have this capcity, unless MS gets a clue and bundles it with Win2000. --
Apologies for missing the subtleties in your point. However, I'm still not convinced that it 'holds' with regard to the WinWord versus WordPerfect/DOS comparison:
WP/DOS required a fairly steep learning curve even to get a decent looking document on a laser printer (mainly do to being designed for monospaced line printers). However, figuring out how to do tables also was a steep climb. Furthermore your knowledge about tables didn't really help you with mail merges and so on. The curve to reach efficient use of all features seemed pretty linear, and steep. People were justifiably proud of their abilities to master WordPerfect, but there was no inner circle of improved efficiency once you learned all of the bits it could do. (Unlike, say, unix commandline usage.)
WinWord (and WordPerfect for Windows, etc.), on the other hand, presents the feature set in a much more accessible fashion. Just having a wysiwyg view on your work makes it easier to experiment and learn what the functions are. The curve is still linear (until you get to the macro language), but is much shallower.
The biggest problems with Word is that it just doesn't scale very well, so much of it's huge feature set is really moot, because no one in their right mind would try to do a very long document in it. That and all of the auto-correct stuff, which actually makes the program less predictable and harder to learn, IMO.
(Referring to "lazy Word drone who couldnt go up a curve" is uncalled for, and appears to be an elitist attempt to diminish GUI and/or Microsoft users. A two page memo shouldn't take anything more than a drone, and the drones aren't doing the complex stuff. Using Word as the target of derision is especially bad, because it's probably the most customizable and extendible GUI program I've ever used.
Disclaimer: I'd rather use FrameMaker anyday for most of my writing work. But since my average document is less than 100 pages, I deal with Word for the standard file format compatibility reasons{99.5% of my customers seem to use Word}.)
Saying that MS will be gone in 5 years is stretching a bit, but bad things could happen:
1) Customers skip Office 2000 upgrade - lots of missing revenue 2) Customers go ahead and slowly install Windows 2000 workstation, but skip the Windows 2000 file+print server upgrade (quite possible, it happened to Novell with NetWare 4.x) - more missing revenue. 3) Customers start to use more Linux/Unix for database servers, application servers, etc (already happening) - Win2000 never gets the big piece of the midrange market that MS is betting on. 4) MS+DOJ comes to settilement, Microsoft's ability to tie products together is limited. 5) MS's investments in MSN, MSNBC, cable companies, and so on fail to show any profit. 6) Stockholders start to notice that revenues ain't as good as they used to be, stock price drops. 7) Loads of talent betting on their stock options coming through see that the options aren't worth so much anymore, quit and go work for someone competing with MS. 8) More projects get delayed or off track = revenues fall further in the long run.
So, Microsoft could look a lot less invincible in 5 years, but they've got enough cash in the bank to coast for a long time. (See Apple.)
So why does M$, Apple, and every other major vendor like the shallow learning curve over the more efficient use?
I think it's the *customers* (aka computer-using white-collar) businesses that want the shallow learning curve. The vendors are responding to this demand. Consider back in the DOSsy days, being able to do a presentable document in WordPerfect was actually a marketable skill, with a higher salary to go along with it. Using MS Word is just another $7/hour job.
Now, I don't think anyone would disagree that system administration or programming can be more "efficient" with a GUI. However, normal users do very little system admining or programming. In fact most users don't even copy files all that frequently, instead managing their files through the File+Open and File+Save commands (and even back in the DOS days, after a four hour class most folks could 'get' COPY, XCOPY, and DEL.)
But can you say the same thing for text-mode user applications with psuedo-GUIs? Is WordPerfect or pine* really anymore "efficient" or powerful than a GUI equivalent? (Hint - users like WYSIWYG printing). You mention vi - how much more efficient can the expert vi user be over the moderate WIMP text editor user (assuming the WIMP editor has the same feature set)? You might be saving a few seconds with vi prowness, but I doubt it's even that quantifiable.
In short, once you're talking about user-level applications with any complexity, the whole GUI = inefficient argument goes right out the window. (And nobody is going to take the CLI stuff out of Linux anyways.)
(* I mention pine, because my sister failed in using it because nowhere in the app does it mention that the caret, "^", actually means hold the control key down. So, she couldn't figure out how to send her mail. Of course, every old timer knows this, but in this case it was hours wasted on the learning curve.) --
Re:get an education about NT before talking...
on
BO2K cracked
·
· Score: 3
This isn't a flaw in NT, it's a flaw in the NT admin.
True, sadly, most NT Workstations seem to be set up with local administrative authority for the users.
I don't know if this is done to make the transition from Win9x easier, or to just reduce the workload of technicians, or because admins don't consider desktop security that important (after all, you could just steal the hard drive!) -- but in any case, it's a pretty stupid approach. Hopefully BO will get people to rethink this.
Note that if Linux ever starts getting used on the desktop, I wouldn't be suprised to see people give the users root authority too.
Wasn't one of the last few real Amigas a convergance device? I belive it was called the CD32, and was sold as a game/multimedia machine. Anyway, it's a market that makes sense, although certain companies (ahhm, Microsoft) are already positioned there.
Either Amiga wants to try to infiltrate the entire computer market en-masse,...
Well, the general computer market has grown one hundred times over since the Amiga was sold. Most people using computers now days have never heard of "Amiga", and a good portion of those who have wouldn't even bother. (Same goes for standard Linux, by the way.)
If this thing is marketed towards the general computing market, they're dead even before they started.
Thanks for the correction. It should be noted also that the IBM MWave is a DSP modem/soundcard that runs under DOS, OS/2, and Windows. There might be some Linux support, but it seems like a common complaint that there isn't. --
Hah! For years the biggest thing holding up the Alpha platform were the three letters D, E, and C. Digital might have had it's day, but for years they've had the reputation of "legacy" and "going out of business".
Since Compaq took over, they've discovered there's a pretty big pent-up-demand for Alpha systems and Tru64/DU - People who loved the technololgy, but couldn't pull the trigger on the vendor. Right or Wrong, that's the case.
In short, Digital Equipment's brand name hasn't really had any weight for the last two or three generations of IT people. (Perhaps, it's still magic in the VMS market.) If Compaq hadn't bought DEC, they would have probably pulled a Borland and renamed themselves. --
Well, I don't know about this thing, but the file format for older versions of Photoshop essentially were just TIFF files. --
Re:Show that Linux users don't play favourites..
on
PCI Modems and Linux?
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· Score: 2
One can make cheap and perfectly usable PC with supported modem, cheap or expensive, PCI or ISA.
What's the real cost difference to the manufacturer? $1? $5? Does anyone know?
Hopefully, the WinModem trend is dying out. I know a couple companies that refuse to buy any equipment that ships with a winmodem. This rules out a bunch of laptops that might otherwise be considered. (Of course this is commercial equipment and commercial pricing. I have to think that a $500 PC is going to be problematic hardware-wise, even with Windows.) --
Look for DOS and/or OS/2 compatibility advertised. As far as I know, WinModem drivers have never been released for DOS, so you can be sure it's a real modem. --
Re:What could be the worst solution...
on
Austria Bans Spam
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· Score: 2
Yeah - I almost brought that up. "DNS with Authentication" seems like a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft to embrace and extend ActiveDirectory out to general Internet usage.
What I don't see is SMTP going away in favor of some proprietary RPC protocol. Even MS and Lotus are moving to (E)SMTP as their "native" protocol (with HTML/MIME instead of propritary RTF). The "lock-in" for corporate e-mail systems never happened, and now coprorate customer are demanding interoperablity. --
Slashdot Mirror
This problem will eventually solve itself as more housing units are built
Unfortunately, in the Silicon Valley, this isn't going to happen. The geography of the SF Bay Area is a large body of water surrounded by a relatively narrow strip of flat land surrounded by a set of hills that are largely undevelopable. The flatlands are largely full - there simply isn't any more land to build.
Furthermore, the built part of the SV consists largely of poorly planned 60s and 70s low density large lot development. With land values the way they are, one would think that increasing density would be a no-brainer, but try telling that to the home owning political constitancy in Mountain View or Cupertino. Ain't going to happen.
So, yes, new housing is being built - in Livermore and the Central Valley. Same sort of inefficent sprawl development, except this time on valuable farmland. Some of these developments are closer to Sacramento than San Jose. The Freeway system connecting these new housing developements to the jobs is already way over capacity -- commute times between Livermore and San Jose will soon be about 2 hours. Is it reasonable to expect people to do this?
Would companies relocate to the edge? Some (like PeopleSoft) have, but this makes doing business with them inconvient for the other 8 million people in the bay area. Unfortunately, where the executives live generally has more influence over a company's location than where affordable housing is. Remote offices just make it even more expensive to do business in the bay area.
You're right that there's not much that could be done here from a regaltory standpoint. Not unless you can convince the average SV suburb's planning board to throw out their master and start redeveloping everything. The problem could be fixed for the new developments, but the chance that Tracy or Gilroy is going to look past the big pile of developer dollars waving in their face is pretty low.
And, yes, there is a lot of land speculation going on. Much of this is due to the pent-up demand created by the burst of the last land speculation bubble in the late 1980s. Your're correct that this bubble is bound to burst too. There's also an enourmous amount of wage inflation, much of it required to attract talent to SV. Anyway, Hang on, because things will bottom out eventually!
--
Brand Name NICs are one of the few pieces of hardware that support almost everything: NDIS DOS drivers, ODI OS/2 drivers, NT 3.5, Netware 3.1, OS/2 1.x, wierd packet drivers -- you name it is on your average NIC disk.
You'd think it'd be a no-brainer to put Linux drivers on the disk, but generally the kernel support for network cards is pretty good, so it's probably unnecessary in most cases.
--
come on, realistically, companies like cheap
A couple places I know of have a "Technicians shall not open the case" policy. Even though the computers are standard stuff, the cases might as well as be welded shut.
Thinking about this, it made sense. I suppose they're paying the body-shop $75/hour for the desktop techs, it's just a dumb move blow 2-3 hours (a few hundred bucks ~= new elcheap PC) of labor trying upgrade an older PC that's only going to be replaced in a year or so.
--
>>"Hard coded file paths are NEVER used in the MacOS".
>That's a blatant lie.
OK - I owned a Mac for 8 years, although I haven't had one for the last couple. The *only* applications that ever ran into with hardcoded paths was MS Office 4.2, which was widely considered broken for exactly that reason. Admittedly I didn't use every Mac application, but I sure used a lot and never found a path dependancy.
(And even if there are a few, it beats Windows and Unix where all but the most simple programs are path dependant.)
If I read correctly, multiuser is being added to MacOS 8.x as we speak.
And by the way, "I don't like the Mac" doesn't necessarily mean that "Every feature the Mac UI has is automatically wrong".
--
My point is that if your EXE is buried six directories deep, and is one of 100 files in that directory, and has a 8.3 file name, who's going to bother.
--
What you describe is a workaround for a broken netscape-communicator application. What if you accidentially delete that icon? You might be able to reconstruct it, but would an average user and/or desktop technician?
An intuitive system would do exactly what your script does. For example, Windows' IEXPLORE.EXE does exactly what your Gnome icon does, without the shell voodoo.
--
Yeah, the floppy "shadow" was originally a feature back in the days when the system had 1 400K floppy disk and no hard drive. The fact that they system could remember previously mounted floppies made it easier to use multiple programs and avoided "COMMAND.COM not found" errors and the like.
What was a big mistake was to extend this metaphor to things like CD-ROM drives and Zip disks. The MacOS disables the eject button on the front of the drive, forcing you to use the trash can. That's unintitive, and considering all the UI geniuses at Apple, fairly retarded also.
It has been the most cited "Bad Design Item" for what, 12 years?, but no fix yet.
(I should note that Apple has fixed this if you buy a two button mouse. You now can right-click+Eject a removable volume.)
--
The windows system, like the Mac system, is horrible. Having a seperate directory structure for programs and data is the way to go.
It should be noted that modern versions of Windows and MacOS are set up so that the file dialog defaults to a "Documents" folder. (Hard Drive:Documents on the Mac, and \WINNT\Profiles\$USERNAME\Personal on WinNT)
--
Windows is no better-this whole start menu is awful because you have to deal with 2 different directory representations instead of one
I think one thing thats often overlooked with the Macintosh is that the file system is layed-out so that the user can easily interact with the structure. The MacOS is the the only GUI where you launch programs by actually acting on the excutable file. (The Apple menu is generally only used for small programs such as the Calculator.)
Every other GUI requires you to interact with some shortcut or alias or another alternative representation of your file structure. This adds confusion and just makes the whole GUI that much more fragile.
The MacOS works because the directory structure was layed-out so that users can actually comprehend what is going on. "Netscape Navigator" is in your "Netscape" folder at the root of the hard drive, not in "opt/netscape/communicator/bin" or in "Program Files\Netscape\Program\bin" or whereever. Your hardware drivers are in the "System Folder:Extensions" folder, not in "WINNT\System32\Drivers" and so on. You can actually drag a driver out of the Extensions folder and not break anything.
The UNIX and Windows file systems were designed with system efficency in mind and *not* user efficiency. All of the gee-whiz GUI stuff can't cover this up.
Another key feature in making this all work is the Desktop Database -- Hard coded file paths are NEVER used in the MacOS. For example, A user can actually rename their "Netscape" folder to "My Web Browser", and nothing is going to break. Likewise they can copy the Netscape folder to an entirely different hard drive, and all will still work. (This system applies to Alias links also, so that if the user is using the Apple Menu or another representation, moving a folder won't break the alias.)
The UNIX file system is so established in Linux that it will probably never go away. Still, I'd like to see some of these file system features adapted in a Linux GUI. This stuff is something Microsoft never figured out, and it'd be nice if Linux could beat them to the punch.
--
In short, I'll believe their promises about Janus when they can switch Hotmail over to NT, IIS, MS SQL Server and Exchange.
I wouldn't be suprised to see them switch to an architecture based on Win2000/IIS5/SQL7/Exchange6 next year sometime. (Even if it takes twice as much hardware!) Don't think they've dropped the idea.
It'll be one less flamethrower for the Unix advocacy arsenel, which is fine because this one is getting a little boring.
--
Running MS Office under a "secure" NT install is fairly well documented. Look around a bit.
--
The MS resource kit SU works fine (although only for command lines, as far as I can tell).
However, MS SU is not part of the OS, and requires installing it as a service. So the average NT workstation probably will never have this capcity, unless MS gets a clue and bundles it with Win2000.
--
Yeah, the one that coasted for a longtime before their big comeback.
--
Apologies for missing the subtleties in your point. However, I'm still not convinced that it 'holds' with regard to the WinWord versus WordPerfect/DOS comparison:
WP/DOS required a fairly steep learning curve even to get a decent looking document on a laser printer (mainly do to being designed for monospaced line printers). However, figuring out how to do tables also was a steep climb. Furthermore your knowledge about tables didn't really help you with mail merges and so on. The curve to reach efficient use of all features seemed pretty linear, and steep. People were justifiably proud of their abilities to master WordPerfect, but there was no inner circle of improved efficiency once you learned all of the bits it could do. (Unlike, say, unix commandline usage.)
WinWord (and WordPerfect for Windows, etc.), on the other hand, presents the feature set in a much more accessible fashion. Just having a wysiwyg view on your work makes it easier to experiment and learn what the functions are. The curve is still linear (until you get to the macro language), but is much shallower.
The biggest problems with Word is that it just doesn't scale very well, so much of it's huge feature set is really moot, because no one in their right mind would try to do a very long document in it. That and all of the auto-correct stuff, which actually makes the program less predictable and harder to learn, IMO.
(Referring to "lazy Word drone who couldnt go up a curve" is uncalled for, and appears to be an elitist attempt to diminish GUI and/or Microsoft users. A two page memo shouldn't take anything more than a drone, and the drones aren't doing the complex stuff. Using Word as the target of derision is especially bad, because it's probably the most customizable and extendible GUI program I've ever used.
Disclaimer: I'd rather use FrameMaker anyday for most of my writing work. But since my average document is less than 100 pages, I deal with Word for the standard file format compatibility reasons{99.5% of my customers seem to use Word}.)
--
Saying that MS will be gone in 5 years is stretching a bit, but bad things could happen:
1) Customers skip Office 2000 upgrade - lots of missing revenue
2) Customers go ahead and slowly install Windows 2000 workstation, but skip the Windows 2000 file+print server upgrade (quite possible, it happened to Novell with NetWare 4.x) - more missing revenue.
3) Customers start to use more Linux/Unix for database servers, application servers, etc (already happening) - Win2000 never gets the big piece of the midrange market that MS is betting on.
4) MS+DOJ comes to settilement, Microsoft's ability to tie products together is limited.
5) MS's investments in MSN, MSNBC, cable companies, and so on fail to show any profit.
6) Stockholders start to notice that revenues ain't as good as they used to be, stock price drops.
7) Loads of talent betting on their stock options coming through see that the options aren't worth so much anymore, quit and go work for someone competing with MS.
8) More projects get delayed or off track = revenues fall further in the long run.
So, Microsoft could look a lot less invincible in 5 years, but they've got enough cash in the bank to coast for a long time. (See Apple.)
--
So why does M$, Apple, and every other major vendor like the shallow learning curve over the more efficient use?
I think it's the *customers* (aka computer-using white-collar) businesses that want the shallow learning curve. The vendors are responding to this demand. Consider back in the DOSsy days, being able to do a presentable document in WordPerfect was actually a marketable skill, with a higher salary to go along with it. Using MS Word is just another $7/hour job.
Now, I don't think anyone would disagree that system administration or programming can be more "efficient" with a GUI. However, normal users do very little system admining or programming. In fact most users don't even copy files all that frequently, instead managing their files through the File+Open and File+Save commands (and even back in the DOS days, after a four hour class most folks could 'get' COPY, XCOPY, and DEL.)
But can you say the same thing for text-mode user applications with psuedo-GUIs? Is WordPerfect or pine* really anymore "efficient" or powerful than a GUI equivalent? (Hint - users like WYSIWYG printing). You mention vi - how much more efficient can the expert vi user be over the moderate WIMP text editor user (assuming the WIMP editor has the same feature set)? You might be saving a few seconds with vi prowness, but I doubt it's even that quantifiable.
In short, once you're talking about user-level applications with any complexity, the whole GUI = inefficient argument goes right out the window. (And nobody is going to take the CLI stuff out of Linux anyways.)
(* I mention pine, because my sister failed in using it because nowhere in the app does it mention that the caret, "^", actually means hold the control key down. So, she couldn't figure out how to send her mail. Of course, every old timer knows this, but in this case it was hours wasted on the learning curve.)
--
This isn't a flaw in NT, it's a flaw in the NT admin.
True, sadly, most NT Workstations seem to be set up with local administrative authority for the users.
I don't know if this is done to make the transition from Win9x easier, or to just reduce the workload of technicians, or because admins don't consider desktop security that important (after all, you could just steal the hard drive!) -- but in any case, it's a pretty stupid approach. Hopefully BO will get people to rethink this.
Note that if Linux ever starts getting used on the desktop, I wouldn't be suprised to see people give the users root authority too.
--
Wasn't one of the last few real Amigas a convergance device? I belive it was called the CD32, and was sold as a game/multimedia machine. Anyway, it's a market that makes sense, although certain companies (ahhm, Microsoft) are already positioned there.
Either Amiga wants to try to infiltrate the entire computer market en-masse,
Well, the general computer market has grown one hundred times over since the Amiga was sold. Most people using computers now days have never heard of "Amiga", and a good portion of those who have wouldn't even bother. (Same goes for standard Linux, by the way.)
If this thing is marketed towards the general computing market, they're dead even before they started.
--
Thanks for the correction. It should be noted also that the IBM MWave is a DSP modem/soundcard that runs under DOS, OS/2, and Windows. There might be some Linux support, but it seems like a common complaint that there isn't.
--
Hah! For years the biggest thing holding up the Alpha platform were the three letters D, E, and C. Digital might have had it's day, but for years they've had the reputation of "legacy" and "going out of business".
Since Compaq took over, they've discovered there's a pretty big pent-up-demand for Alpha systems and Tru64/DU - People who loved the technololgy, but couldn't pull the trigger on the vendor. Right or Wrong, that's the case.
In short, Digital Equipment's brand name hasn't really had any weight for the last two or three generations of IT people. (Perhaps, it's still magic in the VMS market.) If Compaq hadn't bought DEC, they would have probably pulled a Borland and renamed themselves.
--
If you can guess the secret part number, you can get a beta of OS/2 on a PPC microkernel. (No joke.)
--
Well, I don't know about this thing, but the file format for older versions of Photoshop essentially were just TIFF files.
--
One can make cheap and perfectly usable PC with supported modem, cheap or expensive, PCI or ISA.
What's the real cost difference to the manufacturer? $1? $5? Does anyone know?
Hopefully, the WinModem trend is dying out. I know a couple companies that refuse to buy any equipment that ships with a winmodem. This rules out a bunch of laptops that might otherwise be considered. (Of course this is commercial equipment and commercial pricing. I have to think that a $500 PC is going to be problematic hardware-wise, even with Windows.)
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Look for DOS and/or OS/2 compatibility advertised. As far as I know, WinModem drivers have never been released for DOS, so you can be sure it's a real modem.
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Yeah - I almost brought that up. "DNS with Authentication" seems like a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft to embrace and extend ActiveDirectory out to general Internet usage.
What I don't see is SMTP going away in favor of some proprietary RPC protocol. Even MS and Lotus are moving to (E)SMTP as their "native" protocol (with HTML/MIME instead of propritary RTF). The "lock-in" for corporate e-mail systems never happened, and now coprorate customer are demanding interoperablity.
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