Re:Can IBM live up to it's marketting?
on
Eazel On The Ropes
·
· Score: 1
On the Mac, the "file manager" is also how you install software and drivers, and is usually the only convienent way to launch your programs.
To that end, there's some cool features on the old MacOS such as absence of hardcoded config paths and file names and directories that designed to be human readable and usable from the Finder.
In this respect, luser Mac users are usually a little more in touch with their filesystem than Windows users (where C:\ is sorta a blackbox underneath the GUI, and the explorer is often not used at all, in favor of the File Open/Save box). Explorer is probably a better file manager than Finder, but most users would rather not see the uglyness going on down on their filesystem, and if they touch anything other than document files, the whole thing breaks.
Unix systems (and I think that includes OS X,but I haven't used it) have the same problems as Windows -- File Management is essentially a power user activity because what's down there is just as ugly and confusing. --
A guy in mercedes almost ran into me on the 101 because he was getting his dick sucked. That doesn't mean anyone should be anti-getting their dick sucked in a nice car, they just need to keep their eyes on the road and not their cock. --
Re:Mozilla vs. Konq, development time...
on
QT Mozilla Port
·
· Score: 1
I was pleasantly suprised to see that Konq has nearly the same W3C DOM support as Mozilla:
I think the Konq advocates need to get the word out about this better. Especially because the rational for Mozilla was that it had to be big and heavy to fully support DOM and CSS, and other options such as Opera don't have this support.
[Saying "ECMAScript" or "JavaScript" support isn't quite the same thing (language versus API - IE3 supported ECMAScript for example). And the Konq web page just has some meaningless babble about "HTML bindings" (which could mean anything from NS3-style form bindings to something proprietary)]
--posted from Moz.81/Win32 --
Breaking implementation would help MS because it would prevent people from buying non MS products.
Note that Microsoft itself has got several implementations of the protocol -- everything from Windows For Workgroups to DOS to OS/2 to earlier versions of NT to Win 95/98 to "LanMan For Unix" are all slightly different. And they have promised to support these patforms.
They probably can't break Samba without accidentally pissing on their own customers (enterprise customers that is, they'll piss on you home users all they want but if tye). That is, unless they spent a large amount of time trying to find the exact breakage that applys to Samba and not any other SMB product.
The only thing that they probably really dislike is the PDC-emulation. Expect that to break (OS/2's PDC functionality on a NT network broke a long time ago). Solution: Keep your PDC on NT unless you are prepared to face the consequenses. Real Solution: Use something like NFS instead of a proprietary protocol. --
I'd guess doing that means that effective rights don't need to be computed for each file, making it slightly more efficent. Meaning that normally, share perms are probably just fine.
Real typical MCSE fodder, BTW (was one in a past life): Do This, Never Mind Why, Never mind when you shouldn't do this. --
Re:Mozilla vs. Konq, development time...
on
QT Mozilla Port
·
· Score: 2
If I were Steve Case, I'd be asking why they didn't just maintain Windows, Mac and Unix ports (keeping as much of the rendering engine cross-platform as possible) and make them each as good as possible.
Building the interface in Javascript was certainly one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things. It bought them the ability to run on BeOS and OS/2, and cost them a responsive browser on their primary platforms (the Mac port is so retarded, not to mention already obsolete that it's really just Windows and Linux).
A guy wrote the basic KMelon Win32 shell in a weekend - I figure if they put the XUL interface into legacy mode today (let the Be and the OS/2 people maintain it) and hired 3 engineers (GTK, Win32, Carbon) - they would have a decent, quick, professional, platform-consistant GUI done by Moz 1.0 in Q4 2001.
Note that one of the big driving factors of XUL was to get Unix developers on board without having a widget war situation. (GTK was beta, QT was proprietary, the Freenix people hated Motif). With Big Unix on board with GTK, that's pretty much been solved, this topic of this article excepted.
-- posted from Moz 0.81/Win32 --
Right on - Having different looking widgets is just a normal Unix annoyance. Having major projects like KWord(sic) and Gnumeric not be able to interoperate is very serious problem. --
Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions)
I'm curious about that. You aren't supposed to use share-level permissions anymore? They still work fine (and are easier for the newbie). --
It's kinda funny because I recall seeing a lot of the first gen (late 80s/early 90s) of corporate ethernet installations being junked about 5-6 years ago, usually because they made the same mistakes you listed (half-assed, not documented, damaged cable, etc). Now home installers have the same lessons to learn.
One common mistake back in the old days was laying cheap cable. There was a whole school of "Cat-3 is good enough" network installers out there, all of whom got schooled when 100BT came around. I would be thinking about what the next step beyond gigabit is going to require, or at least make sure that new cable can be easily installed to replace what you have. --
GNU's NOT UNIX was intended to be a joke. GNU only claims to not be "UNIX(tm)" to the extent that claiming to be Unix would get them sued. Looks like a DUCK(tm), walks like a DUCK(tm), quacks like a DUCK(tm) - it's a Duck.
The word "Unix" has been virtually completely disassociated with the tradename "UNIX" in the vernacular. That's why OpenVMS is UNIX, and FreeBSD is "real Unix", and Linux is a "Unix-like system", and UNIX System V Release 4 is "SCO UNIXWare", and I can make xeroxes from a Canon copier, and there's no congantive dissonance involved. --
It's not technically correct, but people use the term "BIOS" interchangably with "BIOS configuration user interface". As Pinball Wizard said: "you hit DEL typically to get into the bios". I think we all understand the difference.
But then, as pointed out, I never shut up. HAND. --
I don't know about Slashbots, but the FSF sided with Microsoft and put a ban down on porting GNU to Apple OSes. Which was unfortunate if you happened to be an A/UX user. --
Maybe one day, someone will invent a scripting language that a) Doesn't have a moronic syntax & b) Actually does something useful.
Javascript? True the function prototype-style objects are kinda messy, but I'm fairly comfortable with it. (Before the pop-up haters attack me, try it with something other than a browser DOM.) --
It was a doomed fight because the "hackers" chose a very stupid label to tar their opposition with.
The NY Times is never going to run a headline with the word "Crackers" in it, so the True Hackers might as well be trying to call the people who break into computers "Wetbacks" or "WOPs" or something.
Also, as the Steven Levy book pointed out, the so-called positive use of the term Hacker is based in a MIT/New Jersey tradition and is primarily limited today to the Unix subculture. Most professional programmers probably would view being called a "Hack" or "Hacker" as an insult, although they might "Hack" (a specific activity) at some code now and then.
So, until Hackers can think of respectable term for themselves and for The Other, it is a doomed battle. --
Well, they're fuzzy on the final Windows application, but it looks like that they wanted to keep the CGI/Module architecture in place instead of going to a runtime environment such as NET or Java. This makes sense because when you are already running 400 webservers, speed is a greater issue than shorter development cycles.
You're right that they didn't need to upgrade (even though Slashdot told me they were "About to Collapse Under Load"!) But any document where the "Business Justification" section fails to mention that they own both Hotmail and Windows and the obvious PR problem there, and instead blabbers about Unicode etc, really shouldn't be worthy of a/. flamefest.
It is interesting that they are using Interix in production, tho. --
Well, my ISP's news server has been down for weeks (and maybe forever!), so I've been using it quite a bit.
Compared to Deja, groups.google is extremely fast. The onlything I would like to see is slashdot-style nested threads, but I'm sure that they are working on something. (DejaNews' outline was nice, but verry slow). --
Well, in my experience "standard" BIOSes (and by this you mean the Phoenix BIOS) have been generally less reliable in terms of hardware detection and APM/ACPI support. I'd take a Compaq or Dell BIOS anyday, or (as on this machine) the "real" IBM BIOS. --
The BIOS is actually stored on a small partition on the beginning of the hard drive, which you probably blissfully FDISKed away. Normally you just press F10.
My DeskProXL once had NT, 98, OS/2, Linux, and Solaris installed simultaniously, and the config partition did not affect normal operation at all.
There was a good reason for this when Compaq made EISA machines - I never quite understood the reasoning for the ISA version, but if you understood how it works, it's really not worth hating.
The biggest problem I've had is a period 3-4 years ago when Compaq wouldn't ship a standard configuration for a particular model. You would get a "Compaq Video Adapter" or "Compaq NETIntellegant Ethernet Adapter", which in reality was any one of 10 things. That made supportability a real bitch, but I think they've fixed that issue with their newer boxes. --
As others pointed out, the Zip was already on the market, and pretty popular among Mac users (no/slow Internet + Graphic Design = need for removable media).
There was a sort of handshake agreement between major PC companies to standardize on the LS-120 in 1995 or so. Then a big cost-cutting war started between Compaq and Dell, and they kinda forgot about adding any bells+whistles. Anyway, the place I worked got a pallet full of Compaqs with LS-120s at no extra cost one month. The next shipment was back to standard 1.44 drives.
Since then, it just missed it's mark. Back in those days, hard drives were 540MB and 1G were just shipping, so 120MB was compartively a lot of storage. Now days, it seems most consumer machines ship with CD-RW, so there you go. --
I'm curious what Compaq products you've had experience with.
It's true that their consumer desktops (Presario) line is pretty piss-poor, but I've always found their corporate stuff reliable and their server stuff excellent.
Anyway, they're a big company - so big that maybe they don't realize that they're tarnishing their once top-of-the-industry reputation with a bunch of young users with those cheap crap home units.
My understanding is that the iPaq handheld comes out of the old DEC part of Compaq - take that for what it's worth. --
To the extent that modern journalism has defined "non-bias" as a methodolgy based on reporting the facts, I'd have to say that they are generally successful, if not that interesting while doing so. However, you are correct that all editorial actions are 'bias' in one way or another. --
Slashdot Mirror
On the Mac, the "file manager" is also how you install software and drivers, and is usually the only convienent way to launch your programs.
To that end, there's some cool features on the old MacOS such as absence of hardcoded config paths and file names and directories that designed to be human readable and usable from the Finder.
In this respect, luser Mac users are usually a little more in touch with their filesystem than Windows users (where C:\ is sorta a blackbox underneath the GUI, and the explorer is often not used at all, in favor of the File Open/Save box). Explorer is probably a better file manager than Finder, but most users would rather not see the uglyness going on down on their filesystem, and if they touch anything other than document files, the whole thing breaks.
Unix systems (and I think that includes OS X,but I haven't used it) have the same problems as Windows -- File Management is essentially a power user activity because what's down there is just as ugly and confusing.
--
A guy in mercedes almost ran into me on the 101 because he was getting his dick sucked. That doesn't mean anyone should be anti-getting their dick sucked in a nice car, they just need to keep their eyes on the road and not their cock.
--
I was pleasantly suprised to see that Konq has nearly the same W3C DOM support as Mozilla:
5 .h tml
.81/Win32
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?version
I think the Konq advocates need to get the word out about this better. Especially because the rational for Mozilla was that it had to be big and heavy to fully support DOM and CSS, and other options such as Opera don't have this support.
[Saying "ECMAScript" or "JavaScript" support isn't quite the same thing (language versus API - IE3 supported ECMAScript for example). And the Konq web page just has some meaningless babble about "HTML bindings" (which could mean anything from NS3-style form bindings to something proprietary)]
--posted from Moz
--
Breaking implementation would help MS because it would prevent people from buying non MS products.
Note that Microsoft itself has got several implementations of the protocol -- everything from Windows For Workgroups to DOS to OS/2 to earlier versions of NT to Win 95/98 to "LanMan For Unix" are all slightly different. And they have promised to support these patforms.
They probably can't break Samba without accidentally pissing on their own customers (enterprise customers that is, they'll piss on you home users all they want but if tye). That is, unless they spent a large amount of time trying to find the exact breakage that applys to Samba and not any other SMB product.
The only thing that they probably really dislike is the PDC-emulation. Expect that to break (OS/2's PDC functionality on a NT network broke a long time ago). Solution: Keep your PDC on NT unless you are prepared to face the consequenses. Real Solution: Use something like NFS instead of a proprietary protocol.
--
I'd guess doing that means that effective rights don't need to be computed for each file, making it slightly more efficent. Meaning that normally, share perms are probably just fine.
Real typical MCSE fodder, BTW (was one in a past life): Do This, Never Mind Why, Never mind when you shouldn't do this.
--
If I were Steve Case, I'd be asking why they didn't just maintain Windows, Mac and Unix ports (keeping as much of the rendering engine cross-platform as possible) and make them each as good as possible.
Building the interface in Javascript was certainly one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things. It bought them the ability to run on BeOS and OS/2, and cost them a responsive browser on their primary platforms (the Mac port is so retarded, not to mention already obsolete that it's really just Windows and Linux).
A guy wrote the basic KMelon Win32 shell in a weekend - I figure if they put the XUL interface into legacy mode today (let the Be and the OS/2 people maintain it) and hired 3 engineers (GTK, Win32, Carbon) - they would have a decent, quick, professional, platform-consistant GUI done by Moz 1.0 in Q4 2001.
Note that one of the big driving factors of XUL was to get Unix developers on board without having a widget war situation. (GTK was beta, QT was proprietary, the Freenix people hated Motif). With Big Unix on board with GTK, that's pretty much been solved, this topic of this article excepted.
-- posted from Moz 0.81/Win32
--
Right on - Having different looking widgets is just a normal Unix annoyance. Having major projects like KWord(sic) and Gnumeric not be able to interoperate is very serious problem.
--
Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions)
I'm curious about that. You aren't supposed to use share-level permissions anymore? They still work fine (and are easier for the newbie).
--
Always do it right.
It's kinda funny because I recall seeing a lot of the first gen (late 80s/early 90s) of corporate ethernet installations being junked about 5-6 years ago, usually because they made the same mistakes you listed (half-assed, not documented, damaged cable, etc). Now home installers have the same lessons to learn.
One common mistake back in the old days was laying cheap cable. There was a whole school of "Cat-3 is good enough" network installers out there, all of whom got schooled when 100BT came around. I would be thinking about what the next step beyond gigabit is going to require, or at least make sure that new cable can be easily installed to replace what you have.
--
GNU/Linux isn't UNIX and doesn't claim to be UNIX
GNU's NOT UNIX was intended to be a joke. GNU only claims to not be "UNIX(tm)" to the extent that claiming to be Unix would get them sued. Looks like a DUCK(tm), walks like a DUCK(tm), quacks like a DUCK(tm) - it's a Duck.
The word "Unix" has been virtually completely disassociated with the tradename "UNIX" in the vernacular. That's why OpenVMS is UNIX, and FreeBSD is "real Unix", and Linux is a "Unix-like system", and UNIX System V Release 4 is "SCO UNIXWare", and I can make xeroxes from a Canon copier, and there's no congantive dissonance involved.
--
It's not technically correct, but people use the term "BIOS" interchangably with "BIOS configuration user interface". As Pinball Wizard said: "you hit DEL typically to get into the bios". I think we all understand the difference.
But then, as pointed out, I never shut up. HAND.
--
I don't know about Slashbots, but the FSF sided with Microsoft and put a ban down on porting GNU to Apple OSes. Which was unfortunate if you happened to be an A/UX user.
--
Maybe one day, someone will invent a scripting language that a) Doesn't have a moronic syntax & b) Actually does something useful.
Javascript? True the function prototype-style objects are kinda messy, but I'm fairly comfortable with it. (Before the pop-up haters attack me, try it with something other than a browser DOM.)
--
It was a doomed fight because the "hackers" chose a very stupid label to tar their opposition with.
The NY Times is never going to run a headline with the word "Crackers" in it, so the True Hackers might as well be trying to call the people who break into computers "Wetbacks" or "WOPs" or something.
Also, as the Steven Levy book pointed out, the so-called positive use of the term Hacker is based in a MIT/New Jersey tradition and is primarily limited today to the Unix subculture. Most professional programmers probably would view being called a "Hack" or "Hacker" as an insult, although they might "Hack" (a specific activity) at some code now and then.
So, until Hackers can think of respectable term for themselves and for The Other, it is a doomed battle.
--
Well, they're fuzzy on the final Windows application, but it looks like that they wanted to keep the CGI/Module architecture in place instead of going to a runtime environment such as NET or Java. This makes sense because when you are already running 400 webservers, speed is a greater issue than shorter development cycles.
/. flamefest.
You're right that they didn't need to upgrade (even though Slashdot told me they were "About to Collapse Under Load"!) But any document where the "Business Justification" section fails to mention that they own both Hotmail and Windows and the obvious PR problem there, and instead blabbers about Unicode etc, really shouldn't be worthy of a
It is interesting that they are using Interix in production, tho.
--
Well, my ISP's news server has been down for weeks (and maybe forever!), so I've been using it quite a bit.
Compared to Deja, groups.google is extremely fast. The onlything I would like to see is slashdot-style nested threads, but I'm sure that they are working on something. (DejaNews' outline was nice, but verry slow).
--
I don't know if Jeff Minter was behind it, but I have an Atari Video Music from the 70s that's very trippy.
--
Actually the 6 and the 4 of the 8-6-4 were intended to be normal operation. I was responding to hypothetical have-it-both-ways of the post above.
Since you asked, I'd prefer the CPU sensor and the limp-home.
--
My first /. death threat! Next time, try quality name brand explosives instead of that 'work-alike' cheap clone stuff.
--
Well, in my experience "standard" BIOSes (and by this you mean the Phoenix BIOS) have been generally less reliable in terms of hardware detection and APM/ACPI support. I'd take a Compaq or Dell BIOS anyday, or (as on this machine) the "real" IBM BIOS.
--
Forgot to mention that - their laptops suck shit too, or at least have since about 1994.
--
The BIOS is actually stored on a small partition on the beginning of the hard drive, which you probably blissfully FDISKed away. Normally you just press F10.
My DeskProXL once had NT, 98, OS/2, Linux, and Solaris installed simultaniously, and the config partition did not affect normal operation at all.
There was a good reason for this when Compaq made EISA machines - I never quite understood the reasoning for the ISA version, but if you understood how it works, it's really not worth hating.
The biggest problem I've had is a period 3-4 years ago when Compaq wouldn't ship a standard configuration for a particular model. You would get a "Compaq Video Adapter" or "Compaq NETIntellegant Ethernet Adapter", which in reality was any one of 10 things. That made supportability a real bitch, but I think they've fixed that issue with their newer boxes.
--
As others pointed out, the Zip was already on the market, and pretty popular among Mac users (no/slow Internet + Graphic Design = need for removable media).
There was a sort of handshake agreement between major PC companies to standardize on the LS-120 in 1995 or so. Then a big cost-cutting war started between Compaq and Dell, and they kinda forgot about adding any bells+whistles. Anyway, the place I worked got a pallet full of Compaqs with LS-120s at no extra cost one month. The next shipment was back to standard 1.44 drives.
Since then, it just missed it's mark. Back in those days, hard drives were 540MB and 1G were just shipping, so 120MB was compartively a lot of storage. Now days, it seems most consumer machines ship with CD-RW, so there you go.
--
I'm curious what Compaq products you've had experience with.
It's true that their consumer desktops (Presario) line is pretty piss-poor, but I've always found their corporate stuff reliable and their server stuff excellent.
Anyway, they're a big company - so big that maybe they don't realize that they're tarnishing their once top-of-the-industry reputation with a bunch of young users with those cheap crap home units.
My understanding is that the iPaq handheld comes out of the old DEC part of Compaq - take that for what it's worth.
--
Or pick a subject not to report on.
To the extent that modern journalism has defined "non-bias" as a methodolgy based on reporting the facts, I'd have to say that they are generally successful, if not that interesting while doing so. However, you are correct that all editorial actions are 'bias' in one way or another.
--