Some of the most popular corporate laptops (Dell D600 I am thinking of you) have perpetually had nasty graphics drivers that have resulted in much suffering on the part of users.
For the D600, I have a rather nice choice of either good performance and much graphical corruption (weird cursors and such) with the official ATI drivers, or horribly slow performance and no corruption with the existing open source drivers.
Oddly enough this only happens with some Distros, so I am sure there is a magic setting I could change some where, but honestly, I shouldn't have to! Especially just to get basic desktop functionality.
Yes, as a matter of fact, Windows back when it used DOS as a kernel was considered an ugly kludge. WinNT has a rather nice well formed kernel, and I do indeed know people who are fans of it!
I also know people who hate the NT kernel and love Unix-ish kernels, and people who hate Unix-ish kernels.
Now the APIs that are built on top of the kernel, yah, that is very ugly at times, but you are comparing an API that was largely designed in the 80's and early 90's to what? A modern API like KDE? Instead compare it to something of the same vintage. The original X16 API is not exactly a work of art either, simpler at least, but doing anything complex with it... well, that is why KDE was made! KDE is a lot newer than the most heavily used of Microsoft's APIs, and thus is a lot nicer to use.
If you use any of Microsoft's newer APIs (Windows Forms, the.NET stuff), they are generally easy to use and have a much nicer, more modern orthogonal feel to them. Well except in places that they are forced to fall back on conventions set by older APIs, and then things get ugly.
Backwards compatibility comes at a price.
GUI experts abhor the winDOS GUI
Are there particular niggles that piss people off? Yah. But in general, MS software undergoes a ton of usability testing, and their UI is amazing in the places it is used most often. You don't even need a mouse to use Windows, everything is keyboard accessible. This includes mandating a key that is used for "right click" operations. I have used a fair variety of other systems where developers occasionally just forget to include a key sequence that allows for a feature to be accessed! Or they don't put an element in the tab ordering at all, or make one of any other million UI design mistakes.
I would argue that Windows ME (and to an extent XP, until you beat it upside the head and restore things to their proper place) are regressive in terms of usability, but Windows 2000 is wonderful. Though violating Fitt's law in terms of button and menu placement is annoying...
Security experts abhor the security practices of winDOS.
Nice blanket statement.
Some departments at MS needed to have their heads beat in (and I think by now that they have!), others have done an excellent job on security. It is not like open source doesn't have similar stories. I recall a certain widely used compression library awhile back... not to mention the 1000 and 1 BIND vulnerabilities...
When the internet sprung into popularity, MS was horribly unprepared, and did some stupid things, but on the flip side, they have ACLs, easy to setup security rules for a system, and easy to configure user auditing.
and so on and so forth through filesystems, busses, storage, search and every other atom of Computer Science.
MS has two primary file systems. FAT, which served its original purpose very well (and I might add that the majority of other Microcomputer OS vendors used a similar type of lazy file system!), and NTFS, which is a very reliable file system with decent performance that can stand up to user stupidity quite well.
As for search, yah, you got that one right.:-D MS never has been able to make a good file system based search engine, which is funny, because a dozen companies have released good search engines for Windows, you figure Microsoft would just buy one of them up and release the damn thing!:)
I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem".
Apparently Microsoft not only tried to copy the Unix security model and make an advanced Unix like shell, they also copied the Linux user mentality as well!
When I interned there last summer, Boeing still had a few Unix work stations around, and there was a request form that could be filled out if a Unix workstation was needed.
Pandora knows what I am listening to every second of the day that I am listening to music. They have , literally, a perfect listener profile of me, created by myself!
If they cannot find a way to monitize the living daylights out of that, then they need to hire some better mathematicians...
Two years from now you are going to be like "Oh crap why did I do that?" while your friend who didn't touch his calc (or didn't even own one) will be able to do crap in his head faster than you can punch it into the calculator.
The only way to encourage your brain to memorize things for the long term is to do them 50 bazillion times...
I know people who have gone that route, and their mathematical abilities are far superior to those of us who used a TI-89 as a crutch.
Mind you, I was able to get it to do some pretty impressive things, some of which where a bit outside of its intended scope of usage, but still...
You don't want to go the easy route, trust me! Do all of your symbolic manipulations by hand.
First I'd put the republican politicians up against the wall, shortly followed by the democrat politicians.
We need more parties. I'd end up belonging to a fringe party that never got elected, but at least I'd be voting for politicians that I wholly believed in.
First order of business would be to get rid of all the people who live in opposition to the basic scientific method.
"Oh, what is that? Earth? 4000 years old? *BAM*"
People who think that dropping out of school and having 14 kids is a good idea....
People who drink alchohal to the point of running other people over in a car...
etcetcetc.
I am not racist. I just hate stupidity!
Oh and I knew one person who was a vegetarian hunter! Didn't eat meat, but killed animals and voted republican.
The sheer lack of logic displayed by members of the republican party is amazing.
The fact that the republicans support militias, violence, and wars, yet you start chiding me when I openly suggest the same methods being used for a liberal agenda instead, shows a fine deal of hypocrisy.
Hey, after all, republicans want to save all the white unborn babies, but have no problems dropping bombs on Iraqi children!
Exactly. Liberal blogs and liberal talk radio (such as it is) have been, with a few exception, unsuccessful while Conservative blogs and radio have done spectacularly well. Another move along these lines is to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" requiring broadcasters to present "all sides" of any political opinion, which is aimed directly at muzzling Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. "Fair" as typified by borderline "Workers Daily" propaganda and socialist claptrap like the NBC Nightly News and NPR.
I'm sorry, you think NBC and NPR are examples of extreme liberalism?
Your extreme conservatives call for the DEATH of gays, judges, and whoever else they do not like.
I haven't heard NPR call for the death of any leading republican figures.
Too bad, the world would be a better place without so many neo-con arse holes around.
Please, as a candidate for interviews, I hate it when companies have some sort of super secret policy regarding how well I did in interviews.
This is especially true given us poor college candidates. Understanding the finer points of interview etiquette is not accomplished instantly. (I have been criticized for dressing up too much and for not dressing up enough!)
Also, think about it: Don't you want other companies doing the same thing, so that you get better candidates coming in through your doors as well?
Someone hire me! I am graduating in 6 months, I want a challenging development job, and none of this contract work crud!
Lots of jobs around here, now if someone would just reply to my resume with a cool and stable position... Getting recognized in a city with this many developers in it is hard.
In all fairness though, I do have troubles in most games playing an evil character, unless I go all out. I have trouble with planned evil, but wanton mayhem I seemingly have no ethical qualms about...
Slapping the imps around was just a regular part of gameplay for me.
Playing a game like Fallout and being evil, that was harder for me to pull off. I would keep on doing good things naturally...
For the record, I used to up the vcore on my AMD at home to warm up my back computer room in the winter. A 300mhz speed boost helps as well. (It was a 700mhz Duron, OC'd to 1ghz in the winter, 900 in the summer)
I have always had good luck overclocking AMD chips, but I am running so many laptops now that I am living in an Intel world!
Well, I'd consider Gore to be one...I'd consider Kerry to be one...and Hell, they put a FAR lefty guy, Dean, in charge of the whole party when he did make it to prez. nominee.
Then you're an asshat.
Both Gore and Kerry are moderate, and Gore is too damn conservative for my tastes, but better than bush.
Liberal is shooting all the damn f*cking republicans in the head for starters, rounding up and executing all the idiots who protest outside abortion clinics, and giving science a chance to run the country properly.
Not really, since I am not going to carry one around with me all the time just on the off chance that I am going to play a roguelike.:-D I have a full sized keyboard at home, I play on there.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the most popular corporate laptops (Dell D600 I am thinking of you) have perpetually had nasty graphics drivers that have resulted in much suffering on the part of users.
For the D600, I have a rather nice choice of either good performance and much graphical corruption (weird cursors and such) with the official ATI drivers, or horribly slow performance and no corruption with the existing open source drivers.
Oddly enough this only happens with some Distros, so I am sure there is a magic setting I could change some where, but honestly, I shouldn't have to! Especially just to get basic desktop functionality.
Yes, as a matter of fact, Windows back when it used DOS as a kernel was considered an ugly kludge. WinNT has a rather nice well formed kernel, and I do indeed know people who are fans of it!
.NET stuff), they are generally easy to use and have a much nicer, more modern orthogonal feel to them. Well except in places that they are forced to fall back on conventions set by older APIs, and then things get ugly.
I also know people who hate the NT kernel and love Unix-ish kernels, and people who hate Unix-ish kernels.
Now the APIs that are built on top of the kernel, yah, that is very ugly at times, but you are comparing an API that was largely designed in the 80's and early 90's to what? A modern API like KDE? Instead compare it to something of the same vintage. The original X16 API is not exactly a work of art either, simpler at least, but doing anything complex with it... well, that is why KDE was made! KDE is a lot newer than the most heavily used of Microsoft's APIs, and thus is a lot nicer to use.
If you use any of Microsoft's newer APIs (Windows Forms, the
Backwards compatibility comes at a price.
Are there particular niggles that piss people off? Yah. But in general, MS software undergoes a ton of usability testing, and their UI is amazing in the places it is used most often. You don't even need a mouse to use Windows, everything is keyboard accessible. This includes mandating a key that is used for "right click" operations. I have used a fair variety of other systems where developers occasionally just forget to include a key sequence that allows for a feature to be accessed! Or they don't put an element in the tab ordering at all, or make one of any other million UI design mistakes.
I would argue that Windows ME (and to an extent XP, until you beat it upside the head and restore things to their proper place) are regressive in terms of usability, but Windows 2000 is wonderful. Though violating Fitt's law in terms of button and menu placement is annoying...
Nice blanket statement.
Some departments at MS needed to have their heads beat in (and I think by now that they have!), others have done an excellent job on security. It is not like open source doesn't have similar stories. I recall a certain widely used compression library awhile back... not to mention the 1000 and 1 BIND vulnerabilities...
When the internet sprung into popularity, MS was horribly unprepared, and did some stupid things, but on the flip side, they have ACLs, easy to setup security rules for a system, and easy to configure user auditing.
MS has two primary file systems. FAT, which served its original purpose very well (and I might add that the majority of other Microcomputer OS vendors used a similar type of lazy file system!), and NTFS, which is a very reliable file system with decent performance that can stand up to user stupidity quite well.
:-D MS never has been able to make a good file system based search engine, which is funny, because a dozen companies have released good search engines for Windows, you figure Microsoft would just buy one of them up and release the damn thing! :)
As for search, yah, you got that one right.
Read your history. Unix is the original "good enough" OS.
You mean aside from making PCs usable for everyone? Aside from making
Apparently Microsoft not only tried to copy the Unix security model and make an advanced Unix like shell, they also copied the Linux user mentality as well!
As I stated above, I hit the wrong damn button thanks to the new reply system, that, and I was in a hurry.
I also don't even LOOK at digg.
*looks up at user number*
Dude, I've been here LONGER than you have.
*wanders off*
Meh, I just forgot to run off /.'s new stupid reply box thingy.
When I interned there last summer, Boeing still had a few Unix work stations around, and there was a request form that could be filled out if a Unix workstation was needed.
:)
Most people who knew Unix just used Cygwin.
Too complicated though, In the 30 or seconds I visited the site for, I never could figure out how to listen to more than 10 second clips of songs.
:)
Pandora, I typed in an artist name, and it just started playing stuff I liked.
Pandora knows what I am listening to every second of the day that I am listening to music. They have , literally, a perfect listener profile of me, created by myself!
If they cannot find a way to monitize the living daylights out of that, then they need to hire some better mathematicians...
Wikipedia has information that NO OTHER encyclopedia in the world has.
Try and go to Encyclopedia Britannica and find an article on Radix Trees
You can't.
Oh look, they mention binary trees in passing. How quaint.
Wikipedia has a breadth and a depth that is unsurpassed by any other publically and freely available repository of information.
I would call that one hell of a success.
Thank you, I've been proposing this solution as well.
Nobody listens. *sigh*
I *HAVE* played it.
It stinks.
Aside from the 5 minute text intro, the boring fighting, or the incessant 5 minute text breaks?
Feels like an interactive novel...
Another bleh Zelda clone.
I hate to do this, but...
STOP NOW!!!
Seriously.
All that symbolic stuff that seems so cool now?
Two years from now you are going to be like "Oh crap why did I do that?" while your friend who didn't touch his calc (or didn't even own one) will be able to do crap in his head faster than you can punch it into the calculator.
The only way to encourage your brain to memorize things for the long term is to do them 50 bazillion times...
I know people who have gone that route, and their mathematical abilities are far superior to those of us who used a TI-89 as a crutch.
Mind you, I was able to get it to do some pretty impressive things, some of which where a bit outside of its intended scope of usage, but still...
You don't want to go the easy route, trust me! Do all of your symbolic manipulations by hand.
This is quite correct.
First I'd put the republican politicians up against the wall, shortly followed by the democrat politicians.
We need more parties. I'd end up belonging to a fringe party that never got elected, but at least I'd be voting for politicians that I wholly believed in.
I knew better than to post any personal information.
My real name did not appear on the web until I was 18.
This is a story of Darwinism in action.
The parents should be sued for not raising their kids right...
Now that is a matter of opinion.
I would join a Science Party if one existed.
First order of business would be to get rid of all the people who live in opposition to the basic scientific method.
"Oh, what is that? Earth? 4000 years old? *BAM*"
People who think that dropping out of school and having 14 kids is a good idea....
People who drink alchohal to the point of running other people over in a car...
etcetcetc.
I am not racist. I just hate stupidity!
Oh and I knew one person who was a vegetarian hunter! Didn't eat meat, but killed animals and voted republican.
The sheer lack of logic displayed by members of the republican party is amazing.
The fact that the republicans support militias, violence, and wars, yet you start chiding me when I openly suggest the same methods being used for a liberal agenda instead, shows a fine deal of hypocrisy.
Hey, after all, republicans want to save all the white unborn babies, but have no problems dropping bombs on Iraqi children!
I'm sorry, you think NBC and NPR are examples of extreme liberalism?
Your extreme conservatives call for the DEATH of gays, judges, and whoever else they do not like.
I haven't heard NPR call for the death of any leading republican figures.
Too bad, the world would be a better place without so many neo-con arse holes around.
Please, as a candidate for interviews, I hate it when companies have some sort of super secret policy regarding how well I did in interviews.
This is especially true given us poor college candidates. Understanding the finer points of interview etiquette is not accomplished instantly. (I have been criticized for dressing up too much and for not dressing up enough!)
Also, think about it: Don't you want other companies doing the same thing, so that you get better candidates coming in through your doors as well?
Someone hire me! I am graduating in 6 months, I want a challenging development job, and none of this contract work crud!
Lots of jobs around here, now if someone would just reply to my resume with a cool and stable position... Getting recognized in a city with this many developers in it is hard.
Meh.
I beat the crap out of them.
In all fairness though, I do have troubles in most games playing an evil character, unless I go all out. I have trouble with planned evil, but wanton mayhem I seemingly have no ethical qualms about...
Slapping the imps around was just a regular part of gameplay for me.
Playing a game like Fallout and being evil, that was harder for me to pull off. I would keep on doing good things naturally...
o_O
Nice assumptions there!
For the record, I used to up the vcore on my AMD at home to warm up my back computer room in the winter. A 300mhz speed boost helps as well. (It was a 700mhz Duron, OC'd to 1ghz in the winter, 900 in the summer)
I have always had good luck overclocking AMD chips, but I am running so many laptops now that I am living in an Intel world!
My apologizes for not letting the talking heads on fox news/cnn/msnbc shape my thoughts.
Then you're an asshat.
Both Gore and Kerry are moderate, and Gore is too damn conservative for my tastes, but better than bush.
Liberal is shooting all the damn f*cking republicans in the head for starters, rounding up and executing all the idiots who protest outside abortion clinics, and giving science a chance to run the country properly.
LOL, no prob, futile attempt at kindness appreciated. :)
Not really, since I am not going to carry one around with me all the time just on the off chance that I am going to play a roguelike. :-D I have a full sized keyboard at home, I play on there.