Well yes. I remember some years ago when CPUs were below 1GHz, I wanted a faster PC because the one I had was too slow, and not only too slow for games. It was slow. I wanted to upgrade (which in my case meant buying the new parts and not a whole PC).
Now my PC does everything I want (including playing games, Borderlands and Bioshock2 run well at 1600x1200 everything at max except AA and AF) even thought I built it 3 years ago and apart from a RAM upgrade it still is the same.
If my 4.5 year old laptop breaks beyond repair, I will buy a new one, it will probably come with Vista or 7. I will try to install XP on it, but I may not be able to due to lack of drivers. Then I will just use 7, but not before making it look and act just like XP.
And this is great, but we are using Linux where I work. "It is fully compatible with MS Office.doc and.xls files, can browse the web, there are less viruses made for it and we won't need to pay for it and it will be legal". This is a small company with a few computers and no custom software, people are mostly using OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox and almost nothing else.
Not running as admin by default does not really help. I once thought that the Linux model, where you only log in as root to change system settings was clearly superior until I had to explain it to someone who did not understand it. I summed it up like this: "Well, a virus or some malicious program if launched by the standard user cannot change any of the system settings or delete system files. The worst it can do is erase all of the users files, but the OS will still work." Then I thought that losing all user files is just as bad as erasing every file on the computer, unless the computer is used by more than one user (not likely).
The software also allows changing of various drive settings (automatic bad block reallocation on read and write, read and write caches, number of cache segments). Some settings are grayed out (performance mode desktop/server and acoustic management) presumably because my drive is too old and does not support them. The software only works with Seagate SCSI drives (if you select a non-Seagate or a very old drive it can only perform a drive test, basically verify every single sector).
In my country fuel economy is measured in L/100km. I guess it is because this is easier to measure (measure the amount of fuel in the car, drive 100km, measure the remaining fuel, subtract if from the original) accurately than would be if, for example, we used km/L (which would mean pour 1L of fuel to your car and see how far you go), because shorter distances would cause inaccuracies (say, the fuel in the carburetor, the fuel needed to start the engine and so on). Not that it's not possible to convert the units, it's just how it is here.
I am not a baker, so I can't say it with full confidence, but wouldn't it be just the same to measure, say 7g of something as it would 0.25oz? I can give you half, it would be easy to get a half of a cup (not the unit) but 1/4 or 1/8 seems kinda difficult, unless you have a measuring cup (in which case you can measure any arbitrary volume smaller than the cup itself, for example 115ml) or you have a cup that is the same volume as the volume you are trying to measure.
Woodworking - If you have a log that is 1m in length and you want to cut in to 3 equal pieces you end up with ~33.3cm length pieces (you will lose twice the thickness of your saw) - if your tape measure has mm grades, you can put a mark just as easily as you would with other units. 1/4 and 1/8 are 0.25 and 0.125 and can be measured exactly (1m/8 = 12.5cm). Now, let's say there was a new unit of length, equal to 33.3cm (or 1/3m). Would it make cutting the 1m log in three equal pieces simpler?
Using different units for different industries would be OK as long as the end user would not have to deal with the different units. As my country only uses metric units (and has been for a long time) I fail to see what would be gained by adding more units.
He means that metric makes prefix-changing calculations easier, even though no one ever does those outside of middle school science classes. And he's assuming that you'll ignore the fact the most real-world calculations involve a coefficient that isn't a multiple of 10 because the physical world is not dictated by our measurement system, even when using SI units -- is 6.67300 × 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 somehow easier to use than 1.06891206 × 10^-9 feet^3 pounds-force^-1 s^-2?
Prefix changing calculations are used a lot even outside middle school. If you have measurements in smaller units (mL, cups) and need to convert them to larger units (m^3, ft^3) because you have some table which only lists the larger units (for example a table of volume densities of various materials), then you need to do more complex calculations in the imperial system.
1mL=1e-6 m^3 1cup = 0.00835503472 ft^3
and here is when you get the extra complexity.
that's the point. While the coefficients that were observed in the real world rarely match our units evenly, with metric system at least the units themselves are a power of 10 of larger and smaller units.
Now I wonder why a hard drive company feels the need to have it's hardware LIE to the OS?
So the hardware is compatible with more software. For example, hard drives still report some number of cylinders, heads and sectors to the BIOS and the OS, but hard drives have been using ZBR for 20 years now (IIRC) so the sector number is meaningless.
But, as it is now, if my old system needs a new hard drive, I do not need to find an old drive to be compatible with my system (as long as it is IDE or SCSI, I don't know of any adapter from the newer interfaces to ESDI or ST-506, but they probably exist).
They could have made it a jumper setting set to 512B by default though. I assume the hard drive is faster using 4KB sectors instead of true 512B sectors, they could have made an option to reformat the drive to 512B (or maybe it's not possible with modern drives, I have an old 4GB SCSI drive that can be reformatted to a different sector size (I never tried it though)).
Records sound good, but I could not tell you how they compare to SACD or DVDA becasue I do not have a player for them. However, most of the time records sound better than regular CDs. While CD as a medium is high quality and probably higher quality than the record (especially dynamic range) current CDs are so compressed that they sound horrible. Old records were made before the loudness war escalated to the level it is at today.
What I do not like about modern cars is their look and complexity. Yes, the car is very aerodynamic and such, but the difference probably is only evident only when you are going 200km/h, in which case you will still pay more to the police officer when he stops you for speeding (max speed in my country is 130km/h). Complexity is also bad, for example, a car that can only be unlocked by remote control is not much more protected than a regular car but has one more point of failure.
As for other old tech it is usually better built, using more durable materials (for example metal instead of plastic) and/or making the parts thicker.
btw, I have an old printer (HP Professional Color 2500CM) and I like it - ink can be easily refilled and it is cheap. The printer itself is better built than current inkjet printers.
Perhaps you should have googled it [tomshardware.com] before wasting your time.
Windows 2003 32bit supports up to 64GB RAM IIRC (anyway, the PC only supports 16GB anyway). With all modules enabled, Windows did not boot. Memtest (and knoppix) only saw 4GB, but if I disabled other modules and left the suspect ones enabled, memtest froze and Windows still did not boot.
This kinda points to a memory problem.
For now 3GB is enough for me, when I manage to fill it, I'll try to isolate a bad RAM stick or a bad slot so I can disable it from BIOS and hope that everything works (interesting thing - if I want to add memory, I have to add 4 matched sticks, but I can disable any slot from BIOS, it does not disable the remaining slots in the "bank").
You either have a very big UPS or your power never goes out long enough for your UPS to discharge completely.
My main UPS (APC Smart UPS 2200I) can only sustain my computers for about 30 minutes (or so it says, load is 38% at the moment) unless I am present and can start turning off the less important ones (or faster booting ones) to keep the other ones working.
The total up/downtime was used to calculate availability, which was ~99.92%. So, during that time(2009 03 27 - 2010 02 12), the computer was working 321 days (not continuously) and not working 5 hours (also not continuously) with a total of 11 reboots during that time which means average 29 days between reboots (even though most of those reboots were used all one after the other when fixing a hardware problem).
I think this is pretty stable. As I said, only one reboot was because the PC froze (and as such could be blamed on Windows, I do not know the actual cause), others were because of a hardware problem, hardware addition or power failure, all of which cannot be blamed on Windows.
And that is probably why linux has a different model. I, for example, like that I can record the installs of various software to a CD or DVD and then install it on another PC which may not have internet connection (or the connection is too slow).
Repositories are good when they work (internet connection works, the program is in the repository etc), because you do not need to look for the software, but I still like the ability to install software on a computer without internet connection (with the software I bought or downloaded using another PC).
As for the incompatibilities, I don't remember encountering one apart from DRM. I once tried to install some program (don't remember the name) which was not in the repository and needed some special version of some lib which was incompatible with everything else in the system (at least it warned me). Windows (>=XP IIRC) solve this by keeping both versions of the.dll file and providing the one the program needs. I don't know, maybe Linux does that too nowadays, as I said, my knowledge about Linux is a bit old.
Well only small part of software on Windows need a reboot and majority of that can actually do without. The ones that can't usually install some kernel mode drivers which (I assume) can only start during the system start.
I haven't used a recent linux distro, so my knowledge may be outdated, but I remember restarting after installing some software (also, installing software that is not in the (yum|apt|whatever) repository is worse than a reboot).For some reason Windows got the install process right or at east better than linux.
This box is on all the time and does two things: runs uTorrent and VmWare Server with two guest OSs at the moment (that's why I needed more RAM).
If I want I can also run it as a dedicated game server (my connection speed does not allow me to run a game server all the time - it's either games or uTorrent).
So you mean to say, if you want a stable running system, you can't install some software?
No, if software wants to reboot the PC, I don't think that it makes the PC crash, however, it does reset the uptime.
You also imply that you only rarely run windows update, else you would reboot monthly (or biweekly at the worst of times)
In 3 cases: A patch that affects me and how I use that computer, when I am rebooting anyway and after the PC rebooted because of one or more of the reasons I stated above.
Also, while command line may be faster than GUI, GUI is easier and here's why: if I want to do some task, I can look at the toolbars and in the menus to fins an item that looks like what I need to do (for example, if I want to find a file, I'll look for a button or menu item named "Search", "Find" or something like that. I will recognize it when I see it), but on a command line, I basically need to remember the exact command for doing what I want to do, for example, I would need to remember the whole "dir *foo*.ext/s | more" command if I want to find the file, it won't work if I type ls instead of dir or if I type search instead of find or I forget to write the/s. For less used commands this gets difficult.
Linux is great, but only when it works right after install and you do not need to install other programs. Otherwise it gets very difficult very fast.
Microsoft Windows is not a new product. If you don't know that it can't be counted on to work like a normal computer, that doesn't just mean you're not technical. It means you have been living under a rock for 20 years.
Strange, under my rock, Windows XP/2003 work well, I rarely have to restart my computers and when I do it is usually because of a hardware problem, long power outage (long enough to discharge UPS batteries) or because I am installing some software that needs a reboot. I get bluescreens very rarely.
for example:
Current System Uptime: 28 day(s), 3 hour(s), 27 minute(s), 48 second(s)
Since 2009.03.27:
System Availability: 99.9270%
Total Uptime: 321d 11h:16m:42s
Total Downtime: 0d 5h:38m:22s
Total Reboots: 11
Mean Time Between Reboots: 29.25 days
Total Bluescreens: 0
Those 5 hours? Most of them were spent when I added more RAM, but had either a bad module or a bad slot, so I took that long to finally give up and disable 4 modules from BIOS, leaving 3GB (instead of 5GB what I wanted and 1GB of what was before). That was ~28 days ago. Then there were a few power outages and this PC was connected to a smaller UPS. IIRC only one of those 11 reboots was because the PC froze for some reason.
Pirates -- when you get sick of grandma being accused of stealing windows, and she won't eat tuna for 2 months to find the money for $300 for windows 7, maybe you'll spend 30 minutes finding a crack and applying it. Purchasers -- when you get sick of windows accusing you of stealing your copy when you upgrade too many pieces, keep in mind that your copy that you downloaded for free using BitTorrent won't complain
Oh, I know! Games, certain programs that require Windows, no need to use command line to do routine tasks (like installing software), familiar UI, no need to edit huge text files to configure something, drive letters, binary compatibility with almost all other PCs, hardware driver support, ability to install software without that software being on some list.
That's probably it.
Oh, and Linux would have just as many viruses as Windows if it was used by more people. Currently, the virus authors don't see a point in making a virus that only works on a small minority of PCs (just like some hardware or software makers don't care that their product does not work in a minority of PCs).
If I write fast enough to be able to keep up, then it's almost impossible to decipher, if I write so it is legible, I end up writing every second word or so. I type a bit faster than I write (when I try to write legibly) but still not fast enough. So I found a solution: a tape recorder. A reel of tape is good for 3-6 hours (at 2.4cm/s speed) and then I need to turn it over (lectures last only 1.5 hours so I don't have to do it during a lecture, but I cannot use cassettes, since they are 1 hour per side at the most). If I need to save what is written on the board, I can take a picture with my Nokia N93. 3Mpx resolution and 3x optical zoom makes it easy to do so. On my paper notebook I write the topics (or sub topics) of the lecture and,.if I can, times when the sub topic started, so I can find it on the tape easier. I also write which tape and track it is (the tape recorder is 4 track) and what the tape counter showed at the beginning of the lecture.
Sure they can, they can make the browser use system codecs. Windows 7 has h264 codec installed by default and everyone else can go download the codec (and a lot of people already have it downloaded (those who watch h264 videos outside of a browser).
And they are taking the exact opposite stance - they are cool with almost everyone not being able to watch most of the videos on the 'net just so few could watch videos comfortably (and only from specific sites - are there any sites that actually use HTML5 and Theora?).
How about we turn this around - instead of nobody being able to watch the videos, how about those who cannot download the codec (for whatever reasons) continue to use flash, while those who can, watch the video without flash.
If I could program... I could make a version of FF that uses system codecs, or would just somehow splice ffmpeg into it and distribute this version from a server outside the US (I don't live in the US either). I wonder how many downloads I would get. But I can't program and this is why there is no difference to me between an open source and a closed source program, as long as they cost the same.
Oh, maybe someone has already done this, time to go to google.
That's a selfish attitude. Everyone should be able to browse the Web with a free software stack without having to jump through arcane hoops to download and install software (whose use is legally questionable).
And the current situation is even better. I cannot make firefox show h264 videos no matter how many hoops I jump.
I don't like chrome (each tab = process) and safari, so I am forced to use flash or to just download the video and watch it in a separate media player program. Well, that is surely less hoop jumping than downloading a codec, right?
Oh wait, I had to download and install flash too. So yea, let's compare:
1.Firefox uses system codecs. Pros: It is possible to watch h264 videos. It is possible to do so without flash. Cons: Some users will have to download and install a small program (the codec).
2.Sites continue to use flash to support Firefox. Pros: It is possible to watch h264 videos. Cons: Flash players are usually buggy and slow. All users will have to download and install a small program (the plugin).
3.No flash and no h264 support in Firefox. Pros: You don't need to download and install a small program. Cons: You cannot watch h264 videos. If you want to watch them, you will have to download and install a small program (the same as in option 1), also you will have to download and install another program (the player), also you will have to manually download the videos and then play them, no more streaming (some players actually support playing files that the downloading is still in progress).
4.Use another browser Pros: You can watch h264 videos without using flash. Cons: Maybe the browser is inferior to Firefox in other areas, so you will have to use two browsers - one to watch videos, another for everything else.
Clearly option #2, #3 or #4 is less hoop jumping for the users than option #1.
This looks to me like the IE thing all over again.
IE6 did not support a lot of standards (for example some CSS properties), so web developers used workarounds to make the web sites work with IE. Since IE6 was the most used browser, some of them did not make a version of the site that is standards compliant. The result - some sites did not work without IE. Another result - the development of web standards was delayed a lot. But that was Microsoft, they wanted an MS only internet.
Now Firefox has a lot of market share and Mozilla has ideological issues with h264 codec. So they refuse to implement the codec, even though it is possible for them to do so (use system codecs). Of course others hate Theora and refuse to implement it, but h264 has already become a de-facto standard, a lot of mobile devices support it. So, the HTML5 standard will be delayed, video tag, will be delayed and we will use flash players for a long time. Unless everybody starts using Chrome or Safari.
Oh, and Microsoft does not like the video tag, great combination. Mozilla + MS should make a very good standards delaying team. MS has a lot of experience in that area, which will surely help Mozilla too.
So, thank you, Mozilla (and MS), for fighting the fight for our freedom to continue to use flash players for watching videos on Youtube and other sites.
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Well yes. I remember some years ago when CPUs were below 1GHz, I wanted a faster PC because the one I had was too slow, and not only too slow for games. It was slow. I wanted to upgrade (which in my case meant buying the new parts and not a whole PC).
Now my PC does everything I want (including playing games, Borderlands and Bioshock2 run well at 1600x1200 everything at max except AA and AF) even thought I built it 3 years ago and apart from a RAM upgrade it still is the same.
If my 4.5 year old laptop breaks beyond repair, I will buy a new one, it will probably come with Vista or 7. I will try to install XP on it, but I may not be able to due to lack of drivers. Then I will just use 7, but not before making it look and act just like XP.
And this is great, but we are using Linux where I work. "It is fully compatible with MS Office .doc and .xls files, can browse the web, there are less viruses made for it and we won't need to pay for it and it will be legal". This is a small company with a few computers and no custom software, people are mostly using OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox and almost nothing else.
Not running as admin by default does not really help. I once thought that the Linux model, where you only log in as root to change system settings was clearly superior until I had to explain it to someone who did not understand it. I summed it up like this: "Well, a virus or some malicious program if launched by the standard user cannot change any of the system settings or delete system files. The worst it can do is erase all of the users files, but the OS will still work." Then I thought that losing all user files is just as bad as erasing every file on the computer, unless the computer is used by more than one user (not likely).
Seagate ST34520N
Seatools Enterprise, the software from Seagate allows changing the sector size and changing capacity (to lower than original). Here is a screenshot: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2497/blocksize.png
The software also allows changing of various drive settings (automatic bad block reallocation on read and write, read and write caches, number of cache segments). Some settings are grayed out (performance mode desktop/server and acoustic management) presumably because my drive is too old and does not support them. The software only works with Seagate SCSI drives (if you select a non-Seagate or a very old drive it can only perform a drive test, basically verify every single sector).
In my country fuel economy is measured in L/100km. I guess it is because this is easier to measure (measure the amount of fuel in the car, drive 100km, measure the remaining fuel, subtract if from the original) accurately than would be if, for example, we used km/L (which would mean pour 1L of fuel to your car and see how far you go), because shorter distances would cause inaccuracies (say, the fuel in the carburetor, the fuel needed to start the engine and so on). Not that it's not possible to convert the units, it's just how it is here.
I am not a baker, so I can't say it with full confidence, but wouldn't it be just the same to measure, say 7g of something as it would 0.25oz? I can give you half, it would be easy to get a half of a cup (not the unit) but 1/4 or 1/8 seems kinda difficult, unless you have a measuring cup (in which case you can measure any arbitrary volume smaller than the cup itself, for example 115ml) or you have a cup that is the same volume as the volume you are trying to measure.
Woodworking - If you have a log that is 1m in length and you want to cut in to 3 equal pieces you end up with ~33.3cm length pieces (you will lose twice the thickness of your saw) - if your tape measure has mm grades, you can put a mark just as easily as you would with other units. 1/4 and 1/8 are 0.25 and 0.125 and can be measured exactly (1m/8 = 12.5cm). Now, let's say there was a new unit of length, equal to 33.3cm (or 1/3m). Would it make cutting the 1m log in three equal pieces simpler?
Using different units for different industries would be OK as long as the end user would not have to deal with the different units. As my country only uses metric units (and has been for a long time) I fail to see what would be gained by adding more units.
He means that metric makes prefix-changing calculations easier, even though no one ever does those outside of middle school science classes. And he's assuming that you'll ignore the fact the most real-world calculations involve a coefficient that isn't a multiple of 10 because the physical world is not dictated by our measurement system, even when using SI units -- is 6.67300 × 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 somehow easier to use than 1.06891206 × 10^-9 feet^3 pounds-force^-1 s^-2?
Prefix changing calculations are used a lot even outside middle school. If you have measurements in smaller units (mL, cups) and need to convert them to larger units (m^3, ft^3) because you have some table which only lists the larger units (for example a table of volume densities of various materials), then you need to do more complex calculations in the imperial system.
1mL=1e-6 m^3
1cup = 0.00835503472 ft^3
and here is when you get the extra complexity.
that's the point. While the coefficients that were observed in the real world rarely match our units evenly, with metric system at least the units themselves are a power of 10 of larger and smaller units.
Now I wonder why a hard drive company feels the need to have it's hardware LIE to the OS?
So the hardware is compatible with more software. For example, hard drives still report some number of cylinders, heads and sectors to the BIOS and the OS, but hard drives have been using ZBR for 20 years now (IIRC) so the sector number is meaningless.
But, as it is now, if my old system needs a new hard drive, I do not need to find an old drive to be compatible with my system (as long as it is IDE or SCSI, I don't know of any adapter from the newer interfaces to ESDI or ST-506, but they probably exist).
They could have made it a jumper setting set to 512B by default though. I assume the hard drive is faster using 4KB sectors instead of true 512B sectors, they could have made an option to reformat the drive to 512B (or maybe it's not possible with modern drives, I have an old 4GB SCSI drive that can be reformatted to a different sector size (I never tried it though)).
Records sound good, but I could not tell you how they compare to SACD or DVDA becasue I do not have a player for them. However, most of the time records sound better than regular CDs. While CD as a medium is high quality and probably higher quality than the record (especially dynamic range) current CDs are so compressed that they sound horrible. Old records were made before the loudness war escalated to the level it is at today.
What I do not like about modern cars is their look and complexity. Yes, the car is very aerodynamic and such, but the difference probably is only evident only when you are going 200km/h, in which case you will still pay more to the police officer when he stops you for speeding (max speed in my country is 130km/h). Complexity is also bad, for example, a car that can only be unlocked by remote control is not much more protected than a regular car but has one more point of failure.
As for other old tech it is usually better built, using more durable materials (for example metal instead of plastic) and/or making the parts thicker.
btw, I have an old printer (HP Professional Color 2500CM) and I like it - ink can be easily refilled and it is cheap. The printer itself is better built than current inkjet printers.
Windows 2003 does not have this limitation.
Perhaps you should have googled it [tomshardware.com] before wasting your time.
Windows 2003 32bit supports up to 64GB RAM IIRC (anyway, the PC only supports 16GB anyway). With all modules enabled, Windows did not boot. Memtest (and knoppix) only saw 4GB, but if I disabled other modules and left the suspect ones enabled, memtest froze and Windows still did not boot.
This kinda points to a memory problem.
For now 3GB is enough for me, when I manage to fill it, I'll try to isolate a bad RAM stick or a bad slot so I can disable it from BIOS and hope that everything works (interesting thing - if I want to add memory, I have to add 4 matched sticks, but I can disable any slot from BIOS, it does not disable the remaining slots in the "bank").
You either have a very big UPS or your power never goes out long enough for your UPS to discharge completely.
My main UPS (APC Smart UPS 2200I) can only sustain my computers for about 30 minutes (or so it says, load is 38% at the moment) unless I am present and can start turning off the less important ones (or faster booting ones) to keep the other ones working.
No, you read it wrong.
The current uptime was 28 days.
The total up/downtime was used to calculate availability, which was ~99.92%. So, during that time(2009 03 27 - 2010 02 12), the computer was working 321 days (not continuously) and not working 5 hours (also not continuously) with a total of 11 reboots during that time which means average 29 days between reboots (even though most of those reboots were used all one after the other when fixing a hardware problem).
I think this is pretty stable. As I said, only one reboot was because the PC froze (and as such could be blamed on Windows, I do not know the actual cause), others were because of a hardware problem, hardware addition or power failure, all of which cannot be blamed on Windows.
And that is probably why linux has a different model. I, for example, like that I can record the installs of various software to a CD or DVD and then install it on another PC which may not have internet connection (or the connection is too slow).
Repositories are good when they work (internet connection works, the program is in the repository etc), because you do not need to look for the software, but I still like the ability to install software on a computer without internet connection (with the software I bought or downloaded using another PC).
As for the incompatibilities, I don't remember encountering one apart from DRM. I once tried to install some program (don't remember the name) which was not in the repository and needed some special version of some lib which was incompatible with everything else in the system (at least it warned me). Windows (>=XP IIRC) solve this by keeping both versions of the .dll file and providing the one the program needs. I don't know, maybe Linux does that too nowadays, as I said, my knowledge about Linux is a bit old.
Well only small part of software on Windows need a reboot and majority of that can actually do without. The ones that can't usually install some kernel mode drivers which (I assume) can only start during the system start.
I haven't used a recent linux distro, so my knowledge may be outdated, but I remember restarting after installing some software (also, installing software that is not in the (yum|apt|whatever) repository is worse than a reboot).For some reason Windows got the install process right or at east better than linux.
This box is on all the time and does two things: runs uTorrent and VmWare Server with two guest OSs at the moment (that's why I needed more RAM).
If I want I can also run it as a dedicated game server (my connection speed does not allow me to run a game server all the time - it's either games or uTorrent).
So you mean to say, if you want a stable running system, you can't install some software?
No, if software wants to reboot the PC, I don't think that it makes the PC crash, however, it does reset the uptime.
You also imply that you only rarely run windows update, else you would reboot monthly (or biweekly at the worst of times)
In 3 cases: A patch that affects me and how I use that computer, when I am rebooting anyway and after the PC rebooted because of one or more of the reasons I stated above.
Also, while command line may be faster than GUI, GUI is easier and here's why: if I want to do some task, I can look at the toolbars and in the menus to fins an item that looks like what I need to do (for example, if I want to find a file, I'll look for a button or menu item named "Search", "Find" or something like that. I will recognize it when I see it), but on a command line, I basically need to remember the exact command for doing what I want to do, for example, I would need to remember the whole "dir *foo*.ext /s | more" command if I want to find the file, it won't work if I type ls instead of dir or if I type search instead of find or I forget to write the /s. For less used commands this gets difficult.
Linux is great, but only when it works right after install and you do not need to install other programs. Otherwise it gets very difficult very fast.
Microsoft Windows is not a new product. If you don't know that it can't be counted on to work like a normal computer, that doesn't just mean you're not technical. It means you have been living under a rock for 20 years.
Strange, under my rock, Windows XP/2003 work well, I rarely have to restart my computers and when I do it is usually because of a hardware problem, long power outage (long enough to discharge UPS batteries) or because I am installing some software that needs a reboot. I get bluescreens very rarely.
for example:
Those 5 hours? Most of them were spent when I added more RAM, but had either a bad module or a bad slot, so I took that long to finally give up and disable 4 modules from BIOS, leaving 3GB (instead of 5GB what I wanted and 1GB of what was before). That was ~28 days ago. Then there were a few power outages and this PC was connected to a smaller UPS. IIRC only one of those 11 reboots was because the PC froze for some reason.
OS: 2003
Pirates -- when you get sick of grandma being accused of stealing windows, and she won't eat tuna for 2 months to find the money for $300 for windows 7, maybe you'll spend 30 minutes finding a crack and applying it.
Purchasers -- when you get sick of windows accusing you of stealing your copy when you upgrade too many pieces, keep in mind that your copy that you downloaded for free using BitTorrent won't complain
FTFY
Hmm...
Oh, I know! Games, certain programs that require Windows, no need to use command line to do routine tasks (like installing software), familiar UI, no need to edit huge text files to configure something, drive letters, binary compatibility with almost all other PCs, hardware driver support, ability to install software without that software being on some list.
That's probably it.
Oh, and Linux would have just as many viruses as Windows if it was used by more people. Currently, the virus authors don't see a point in making a virus that only works on a small minority of PCs (just like some hardware or software makers don't care that their product does not work in a minority of PCs).
If I write fast enough to be able to keep up, then it's almost impossible to decipher, if I write so it is legible, I end up writing every second word or so. I type a bit faster than I write (when I try to write legibly) but still not fast enough. So I found a solution: a tape recorder. A reel of tape is good for 3-6 hours (at 2.4cm/s speed) and then I need to turn it over (lectures last only 1.5 hours so I don't have to do it during a lecture, but I cannot use cassettes, since they are 1 hour per side at the most).
If I need to save what is written on the board, I can take a picture with my Nokia N93. 3Mpx resolution and 3x optical zoom makes it easy to do so.
On my paper notebook I write the topics (or sub topics) of the lecture and,.if I can, times when the sub topic started, so I can find it on the tape easier. I also write which tape and track it is (the tape recorder is 4 track) and what the tape counter showed at the beginning of the lecture.
Sure they can, they can make the browser use system codecs. Windows 7 has h264 codec installed by default and everyone else can go download the codec (and a lot of people already have it downloaded (those who watch h264 videos outside of a browser).
And they are taking the exact opposite stance - they are cool with almost everyone not being able to watch most of the videos on the 'net just so few could watch videos comfortably (and only from specific sites - are there any sites that actually use HTML5 and Theora?).
How about we turn this around - instead of nobody being able to watch the videos, how about those who cannot download the codec (for whatever reasons) continue to use flash, while those who can, watch the video without flash.
If I could program... I could make a version of FF that uses system codecs, or would just somehow splice ffmpeg into it and distribute this version from a server outside the US (I don't live in the US either). I wonder how many downloads I would get. But I can't program and this is why there is no difference to me between an open source and a closed source program, as long as they cost the same.
Oh, maybe someone has already done this, time to go to google.
That's a selfish attitude. Everyone should be able to browse the Web with a free software stack without having to jump through arcane hoops to download and install software (whose use is legally questionable).
And the current situation is even better. I cannot make firefox show h264 videos no matter how many hoops I jump.
I don't like chrome (each tab = process) and safari, so I am forced to use flash or to just download the video and watch it in a separate media player program. Well, that is surely less hoop jumping than downloading a codec, right?
Oh wait, I had to download and install flash too. So yea, let's compare:
1.Firefox uses system codecs.
Pros:
It is possible to watch h264 videos.
It is possible to do so without flash.
Cons:
Some users will have to download and install a small program (the codec).
2.Sites continue to use flash to support Firefox.
Pros:
It is possible to watch h264 videos.
Cons:
Flash players are usually buggy and slow.
All users will have to download and install a small program (the plugin).
3.No flash and no h264 support in Firefox.
Pros:
You don't need to download and install a small program.
Cons:
You cannot watch h264 videos.
If you want to watch them, you will have to download and install a small program (the same as in option 1), also you will have to download and install another program (the player), also you will have to manually download the videos and then play them, no more streaming (some players actually support playing files that the downloading is still in progress).
4.Use another browser
Pros:
You can watch h264 videos without using flash.
Cons:
Maybe the browser is inferior to Firefox in other areas, so you will have to use two browsers - one to watch videos, another for everything else.
Clearly option #2, #3 or #4 is less hoop jumping for the users than option #1.
This looks to me like the IE thing all over again.
IE6 did not support a lot of standards (for example some CSS properties), so web developers used workarounds to make the web sites work with IE. Since IE6 was the most used browser, some of them did not make a version of the site that is standards compliant. The result - some sites did not work without IE. Another result - the development of web standards was delayed a lot. But that was Microsoft, they wanted an MS only internet.
Now Firefox has a lot of market share and Mozilla has ideological issues with h264 codec. So they refuse to implement the codec, even though it is possible for them to do so (use system codecs). Of course others hate Theora and refuse to implement it, but h264 has already become a de-facto standard, a lot of mobile devices support it. So, the HTML5 standard will be delayed, video tag, will be delayed and we will use flash players for a long time. Unless everybody starts using Chrome or Safari.
Oh, and Microsoft does not like the video tag, great combination. Mozilla + MS should make a very good standards delaying team. MS has a lot of experience in that area, which will surely help Mozilla too.
So, thank you, Mozilla (and MS), for fighting the fight for our freedom to continue to use flash players for watching videos on Youtube and other sites.