Maybe you can explain these studies to me, because I just don't understand them.
Fact is that one mouse button is not enough. Even on the Mac. The Mac uses a lot of non-intuitive work-arounds like pressing modifyer keys or pressing the button longer to accomplish the same task. And those are work-arounds because the keyboard was never meant to be used as mouse-modifier nor is holding something longer a good solution.
So I'm really suspicious if anybody talks about those mysterious studies. Did they compare multi-button versus single-button-with-modifier-keys? I doubt it. I think they compared apples (single-button without modifier keys) to oranges (multi-button without modifier keys).
In essence you argue that it "takes a small, but significant amount of time" to process which finger to press, yet you completely ignore the big and very significant amount of time it is needed to process which option is needed combined with pressing some modifyer key on the keyboard.
The only thing preventing Apple from shipping real mice is pride and arrogance.
When Apple conducted experiments in the late '70s or early '80s, multibutton mice were faster for experienced users, but increased the errors and confusion of inexperenced users.
This is the big problem with Apple. When I tried MacOSX, it was great for the first hours, but after that it just slowed me down.
Imagine you were one of the few unfortunate running IIS/Windows.
Now you have 2 choices: Learning a new CLI, pay up big, accept vendor lock-in and run Windows2003 or learn a new CLI, pay much less and be able to choose from many vendors and supporters.
Slowly phase out the MS stuff and slowly introduce OSS.
And that's exactly what most organizations are doing: First, Linux is only used as the webserver and nothing else. Later the fileserver, later the printserver. In the meantime OpenOffice is introduced and when it's time to replace hardware, the switch to Linux is done.
It takes a long time, maybe 10 years to fully make the transition, but it happens. 70% of domains (actually 75% of active domains) are already running Apache
Assuming Itaniums (or their decendants) are still going to be around in 20 years
Well, assuming, assuming. Actually the Itanium is a prime example: The x86 compatibility will finally get dropped, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 10, but eventually.
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that DOS and VMS won't support the chipsets, hard disks interfaces, IO-interfaces and all the other hardware that people will use in 20 years.
Have you ever stopped to consider that you're not very good at Windows administration?
Hehe, exactly that's what I've been thinking.
Actually, I'm a pretty lazy admin, too. I don't read any security mailing lists, patch maybe twice per year and invest probably about 5 hrs/month tops to administer my servers and clients (1 remote webserver, 2 office servers in 2 different offices (file, mail, news, web), 2 desktops), I've just got better things to do.
With Windows, I would have been hacked/infected at least 5 times in the last 3 years, but with Linux I haven't had a single security problem and no crashes at all.
Face it: No matter what Microsoft tells you: Administering a Windows box is at least twice as time-consuming as administering a Linux box - no matter if server or desktop.
Well, "adapting to survive" and "being able to charge 80%+ profit margins" are 2 entirely different things.
Will Microsoft survive? Sure.
Will Microsoft lose their domination? Yes, they will, eventually.
As an investor, I see Microsoft as a company that has very much to lose and not much to gain. (On the desktop, the only place where things are going reasonable well for MS, there is no room to grow and everywhere else they are losing. But also on the desktop, especially OpenOffice is starting to eat their MS Office)
Wrong, it's not fine. One of the basic principles of free societies (certainly not the USA, but almost everywhere else) is that a vendor does not have the right to dictate how his goods have to be used.
Yes, this includes Microsoft binding OEM-Windows to certain computers, yes, in Europe and most parts of the world selling OEM-Windows and computers seperately is 100% legal.
The biggest mistake the US DOJ made was calling MS a monopoly. This just opened the gates to the meta-discussion about wether MS is a monopoly or not which overcovered the real problems. Thankfully, the EU courts call MS what they clearly are: Holding and misusing a dominating position. Maybe the MS-bootlickers and MS-is-a-monopoly wankers can finally crawl back under their respective rocks.
Well, anywhere where even the most basic consumer protection laws exist (= everywhere outside the USA), a contract that is agreed upon after the purchase was made is invalid and completely void.
Also, some courts in Germany have ruled that Microsoft has no right to legally bind an OS to a computer, the consumer must have the right to resell computer and OS-license seperately, so I guess they wouldn't have the right to bind FoxPro to Windows even if the EULA was legally binding.
But even in the USA, the pathetic remains of consumer protection should prevent Microsoft from legally binding Foxpro to Windows: Anti-Trust laws are pretty clear on that.
Let's say, for example, that a bug in FoxPro is found that represents a security risk - MS can use Windows Update and other means to get a patch out to their Windows-based customers, but what do they do for the WINE-rs? That's a loose end that I certainly wouldn't want to deal with...
This is so ridiculous, I can't believe it. Are you working for MS? This is such obvious nonsense - if that were true, MS would have to force Windows update on everyone, make sure everyone has an Internet connection and force every update down the throats of customers. (Yes, MS would certainly like it that way, sure.)
Why not just take the existing EE, produce it with a modern technology (90nm) and push the clockspeed a bit.
The EE will wipe the floor with any x86-design at a similar clockrate. Microsoft would have to wait another 2 years (again - just like with XBox1) to play catch up with XBox2. No way they can put out something similar at the same time.
Generalizations about gender, ethenticity, or race and the abilities of particular individuals are absurd. There are enough humans of every group so that the individual variation within a group far exceeds the variations between groups.
True, there are male volumptious individuals who have larger breasts than some skinny females.
However, I wouldn't say it's absurd to say that females have larger breasts in general, let's all be thankful for it.
I can't believe somebody is really taking this advice seriously.
You have so much problems - Emails with the wrong date which make you look stupid (and may cause to not be read at all), programs complaining about files made in the future, confusion about which day is today ("but my calendar said that the 8th was saturday") and lots of other problems.
Just download openoffice or get a warez MSOffice from mldonkey.
Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games.
You are ignoring the fact that this is mostly irrelevant.
Unless Linux runs ALL games a given gamer wants to play, it won't be used. Just a single unsupported game is enough to keep him from using Linux, end of story.
Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?
on
Winex 3.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem.
Well, not really. First you would have to throw away all your existing games when switching and then Loki just offered 20 or so games out of several 100 current titles.
If you play 10 games and only one game is not ported by Loki, you will not make the switch, period. Only Wine with near-100% compatibility will allow the masses to switch.
We can only expect native ports AFTER we have a significant number of gamers on Linux.
And a gamer will only switch when ALL his preferred games run on Linux. Yes, that means it's not enough if out of 10 games only 9 are ported.
Wine is the only way to overcome the chicken-egg problem (as another poster already has pointed out), it is absolutely essential for Linux as a gaming platform and also very helpful for Linux as a desktop in general.
If WindowsXP weren't backwards compatible to Windows95 and Windows95 weren't backwards compatible to DOS, all gamers would still run DOS.
We said for years that Linux will never, never, never come to servers (and were wrong), so we now say that Linux will never, never, never come to desktops.
Why is it that journalists (and some posters around here) completely lack the ability to acknowledge developments in the future? Why is it they are about 5 years behind things? (by that time it would have been correct to say that "Linux is coming", today, in 2003, it's already a major, if not dominating player in many computing fields.)
Actually, Microsoft is a prime example of what they are now critizising: They never invented something, always reimplemented or copied. (The GUI was on Apple, Amiga and Unix years before, everybody except Apple had preemptive multitasking, etc. etc.)
Microsoft currently has a stronghold on the desktop (> 90%), but is declining everywhere else (on servers and embedded systems. But also the desktop stronghold gets cracks, many entities have already proven that a MS-free office is possible.
To put it in other words: Microsoft has not much to win, but a lot to lose.
Just because it compiles for the new chip doesn't mean its "fully optimized", right?
Well, the least the gcc-compiler will do is use all (= much more than plain x86) registers, which makes the program a lot faster, even if some new commands are not used yet.
Actually, you are raising another point in favour of Linux - The distributions will get faster and better because the compiler gets better, but with commercial software you will have to buy everything another time.
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Fact is that one mouse button is not enough. Even on the Mac. The Mac uses a lot of non-intuitive work-arounds like pressing modifyer keys or pressing the button longer to accomplish the same task. And those are work-arounds because the keyboard was never meant to be used as mouse-modifier nor is holding something longer a good solution.
So I'm really suspicious if anybody talks about those mysterious studies. Did they compare multi-button versus single-button-with-modifier-keys? I doubt it. I think they compared apples (single-button without modifier keys) to oranges (multi-button without modifier keys).
In essence you argue that it "takes a small, but significant amount of time" to process which finger to press, yet you completely ignore the big and very significant amount of time it is needed to process which option is needed combined with pressing some modifyer key on the keyboard.
The only thing preventing Apple from shipping real mice is pride and arrogance.
This is the big problem with Apple. When I tried MacOSX, it was great for the first hours, but after that it just slowed me down.
Yes! Work it out!
Imagine you were one of the few unfortunate running IIS/Windows.
Now you have 2 choices: Learning a new CLI, pay up big, accept vendor lock-in and run Windows2003 or learn a new CLI, pay much less and be able to choose from many vendors and supporters.
Now what are you going to do?
Slowly phase out the MS stuff and slowly introduce OSS.
And that's exactly what most organizations are doing: First, Linux is only used as the webserver and nothing else. Later the fileserver, later the printserver. In the meantime OpenOffice is introduced and when it's time to replace hardware, the switch to Linux is done.
It takes a long time, maybe 10 years to fully make the transition, but it happens. 70% of domains (actually 75% of active domains) are already running Apache
None of those countries have adopted the DMCA, so yes, pretty much everywhere.
Well, assuming, assuming. Actually the Itanium is a prime example: The x86 compatibility will finally get dropped, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 10, but eventually.
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that DOS and VMS won't support the chipsets, hard disks interfaces, IO-interfaces and all the other hardware that people will use in 20 years.
Hehe, exactly that's what I've been thinking.
Actually, I'm a pretty lazy admin, too. I don't read any security mailing lists, patch maybe twice per year and invest probably about 5 hrs/month tops to administer my servers and clients (1 remote webserver, 2 office servers in 2 different offices (file, mail, news, web), 2 desktops), I've just got better things to do.
With Windows, I would have been hacked/infected at least 5 times in the last 3 years, but with Linux I haven't had a single security problem and no crashes at all.
Face it: No matter what Microsoft tells you: Administering a Windows box is at least twice as time-consuming as administering a Linux box - no matter if server or desktop.
Uh, I don't think so.
Proprietary software eventually dies, free software lifes forever.
I don't think they will make chips being able to run DOS or VMS in 20 years...
Will Microsoft survive? Sure.
Will Microsoft lose their domination? Yes, they will, eventually.
As an investor, I see Microsoft as a company that has very much to lose and not much to gain. (On the desktop, the only place where things are going reasonable well for MS, there is no room to grow and everywhere else they are losing. But also on the desktop, especially OpenOffice is starting to eat their MS Office)
Organizing the EULA in paragraphs would make the EULA more readable and would defeat the purpose of the EULA.
Wrong, it's not fine. One of the basic principles of free societies (certainly not the USA, but almost everywhere else) is that a vendor does not have the right to dictate how his goods have to be used.
Yes, this includes Microsoft binding OEM-Windows to certain computers, yes, in Europe and most parts of the world selling OEM-Windows and computers seperately is 100% legal.
The biggest mistake the US DOJ made was calling MS a monopoly. This just opened the gates to the meta-discussion about wether MS is a monopoly or not which overcovered the real problems. Thankfully, the EU courts call MS what they clearly are: Holding and misusing a dominating position. Maybe the MS-bootlickers and MS-is-a-monopoly wankers can finally crawl back under their respective rocks.
Well, anywhere where even the most basic consumer protection laws exist (= everywhere outside the USA), a contract that is agreed upon after the purchase was made is invalid and completely void.
Also, some courts in Germany have ruled that Microsoft has no right to legally bind an OS to a computer, the consumer must have the right to resell computer and OS-license seperately, so I guess they wouldn't have the right to bind FoxPro to Windows even if the EULA was legally binding.
But even in the USA, the pathetic remains of consumer protection should prevent Microsoft from legally binding Foxpro to Windows: Anti-Trust laws are pretty clear on that.
Let's say, for example, that a bug in FoxPro is found that represents a security risk - MS can use Windows Update and other means to get a patch out to their Windows-based customers, but what do they do for the WINE-rs? That's a loose end that I certainly wouldn't want to deal with...
This is so ridiculous, I can't believe it. Are you working for MS? This is such obvious nonsense - if that were true, MS would have to force Windows update on everyone, make sure everyone has an Internet connection and force every update down the throats of customers. (Yes, MS would certainly like it that way, sure.)
The EE will wipe the floor with any x86-design at a similar clockrate. Microsoft would have to wait another 2 years (again - just like with XBox1) to play catch up with XBox2. No way they can put out something similar at the same time.
True, there are male volumptious individuals who have larger breasts than some skinny females.
However, I wouldn't say it's absurd to say that females have larger breasts in general, let's all be thankful for it.
You have so much problems - Emails with the wrong date which make you look stupid (and may cause to not be read at all), programs complaining about files made in the future, confusion about which day is today ("but my calendar said that the 8th was saturday") and lots of other problems.
Just download openoffice or get a warez MSOffice from mldonkey.
If you propose something different, you will have to take the responsibility for it, no matter wether it's open or closed source.
Just think about it for one second.
Imagine you are selling PCs.
So you now have the choice between being dependent on an evil company or being dependent on an evil competing company.
OEMs would have been pretty stupid helping IBM monopolize the x86-hardware market.
OS/2 never had a chance, it didn't matter how good it was.
You are ignoring the fact that this is mostly irrelevant.
Unless Linux runs ALL games a given gamer wants to play, it won't be used. Just a single unsupported game is enough to keep him from using Linux, end of story.
Well, not really. First you would have to throw away all your existing games when switching and then Loki just offered 20 or so games out of several 100 current titles.
If you play 10 games and only one game is not ported by Loki, you will not make the switch, period. Only Wine with near-100% compatibility will allow the masses to switch.
We can only expect native ports AFTER we have a significant number of gamers on Linux.
And a gamer will only switch when ALL his preferred games run on Linux. Yes, that means it's not enough if out of 10 games only 9 are ported.
Wine is the only way to overcome the chicken-egg problem (as another poster already has pointed out), it is absolutely essential for Linux as a gaming platform and also very helpful for Linux as a desktop in general.
If WindowsXP weren't backwards compatible to Windows95 and Windows95 weren't backwards compatible to DOS, all gamers would still run DOS.
With hardware becoming cheaper and Windows becoming more expensive, it will be soon 30%, then 40%,...
Translation:
We said for years that Linux will never, never, never come to servers (and were wrong), so we now say that Linux will never, never, never come to desktops.
Why is it that journalists (and some posters around here) completely lack the ability to acknowledge developments in the future? Why is it they are about 5 years behind things? (by that time it would have been correct to say that "Linux is coming", today, in 2003, it's already a major, if not dominating player in many computing fields.)
Microsoft currently has a stronghold on the desktop (> 90%), but is declining everywhere else (on servers and embedded systems. But also the desktop stronghold gets cracks, many entities have already proven that a MS-free office is possible.
To put it in other words: Microsoft has not much to win, but a lot to lose.
Well, the least the gcc-compiler will do is use all (= much more than plain x86) registers, which makes the program a lot faster, even if some new commands are not used yet.
Actually, you are raising another point in favour of Linux - The distributions will get faster and better because the compiler gets better, but with commercial software you will have to buy everything another time.