What gives you the right to the software he wrote? And where do you get that anyone's privacy is being violated? I hope that you don't illegally download musicians' copyrighted works, because I don't think that I could handle so much irony this early in the morning.
Well, looking at my bookshelf, there's a gnu on the cover of Learning GNU Emacs (the connection being obvious) and an appaloosa on the cover of Apache: The Definitive Guide (being either the native American connection or just the similarity of the name). No exact matches, but pretty close. Now, if they really wanted to do some appropriate book titles, they'd get these bugs off the Oracle book covers and put 'em on their Red Hat Linux books.:)
They still boast about that all the time, and with good reason. And I'm sorry that Outlook is too easy to use for you, but some of us like our software that way, instead of having to jump through a million hoops just to get something simple done. Software should be a way to get things done efficiently, not an ordeal for users.
And those two sentences above explain exactly why Microsoft enjoys such a commanding lead in the OS market, so much so that they're getting sued by jealous competitors over it.
Please explain what you're talking about. Outlook says what it does and does what it says. If you get an email with a.vbs file in it, you have to first click the attachment icon, select the.vbs file, then a message pops up which reads, "WARNING: Web pages, executables, and other attachments may contain viruses or scripts that can be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source. What would you like to do with this file? Open it | Save it to disk." How many hoops do you want the user to have to jump through, anyway? If they don't get the idea by that point, it's just too bad for them -- they're going to be just as susceptible to someone sending them an attachment and telling them to save it and run it from their hard drive.
The ILOVEYOU trojan wasn't autorun by Outlook. The user had to run the script manually. It's the same as if the email had said, "Save this file on your hard drive and run it!" It didn't exploit any security hole. Now, you earlier stated that they didn't release anything for it, but they actually did release a patch for Outlook to help discourage people from running any executable content that they receive via email. I and many others aren't bothering to install it because we already know not to execute unknown programs.
Actually, IE didn't pass Netscape until after IE 5 came out, and plenty of people thought that IE 4 was better than Netscape anyway. I eagerly downloaded every Netscape beta from some point during the 2.x series up until the 4.01 version, when it became obvious how shoddy the product was, and ever since then, my Netscape downloads have been few and far between. Oracle and Access aren't comparable products -- did you mean SQL Server? -- and Oracle's still extremely strong on NT.
Actually, my Win2K experience seems to be typical of everyone but Slashdotters, who seem to have these mysterious problems with the stability that other independent publications don't seem to have. It's been absolutely rock solid since even before the release of the final code.
Win2K and SQL Server 2K beta currently hold the record, by a huge margin, in the TPC benchmarks, so it seems like they aren't doing too bad against the other vendors. I'll be interested in checking out the Win2K Datacenter Server, or whatever they end up calling it, when it's released, since I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
And yes, you can go buy from another OEM. They are most definitely not making all OEMs do this (and actually, there's a good deal of speculation that the OEMs are the ones who wanted this policy instituted rather than Microsoft). Go check out the article from InfoWorld about the recovery CD debate. I don't have the link on me, but I think it comes up if you search for "recovery cd". I think TheRegister also had an article about it, but I haven't been able to find it in their archives for some time now.
When did we start comparing uptimes? You brought up stability, so that's what I talked about. I don't consider a forced reboot to be the same as a crash, especially a Unix crash, and particularly a Linux crash where it's time to start dragging out the backup tapes if you're not lucky. As should have been clear by inference, my Solaris server has had a much better uptime than the Win2K or Linux boxes, since the crash was the only time it's been rebooted at all since I've owned it. The Win2K and Linux boxes have been about the same, between installing hotfixes and kernel patches and new hardware. If you doubt Win2K's stability, check out just about any non-Slashdot (or Slashdot-type, you know what kind of places I'm talking about here) source of information.
If you don't want to use Windows, why should you have any say whether or not their APIs are open? The decision should be influenced by Microsoft's customers, partners, and shareholders, not by the few jealous Microsoft haters, who could care less about Microsoft's customers anyway.
Which Outlook security problem wasn't fixed?
You didn't pay full price for that Windows media that you got from an OEM, either, so why should you get the entire thing? Now, if you do want the full media, just tell your OEM that you want it, and they'll give it to you. Note that your OEM might also charge you extra for it, but it's their choice. And your choice to keep buying from that OEM, when there are other PC manufacturers which don't have that policy.
If you want an example of a Microsoft app that lost to a competing product, how about you come up with a Microsoft app that beat out a better comparable and competing product? Internet Explorer is much better than Netscape, which is why Netscape lost. Word Perfect got tossed around between various companies and produced a goose egg, and that's why they lost to Word. Lotus took forever to update Ami Pro 3.1 -- I used to love Ami Pro and only switched to Word (and not until Word 95) when Ami Pro made all us faithful users sit and wait while Word surpassed it. I used to use Quattro Pro, but I don't know many people who think that Excel isn't the best spreadsheet around. Intuit started putting out shoddy Quicken products, so Microsoft Money left them in the dust. Wait a second, you say that Quicken is still the best product? Oh yeah, now that I think about it, Quicken really is pretty good. And if you notice, Quicken still holds the clear lead in the personal finance software area. Starting to see the connection? Oracle makes a great database, and lo and behold, they too rake in more dough than Microsoft does with SQL Server on the NT/2000 platform. Adobe's Photoshop trounces Microsoft's PhotoDraw, and the market share reflects it. Pretty simple pattern, no?
Actually, I think one sentence from your post sums up your attitude better than I could: "Your bias towards M$ products is making me sick." (emphasis mine) I'm also surprised to hear that Irix never needs a reboot. I'm only familiar with Irix on a user level so you'll have to enlighten me, but they never have kernel upgrades that you need to reboot to install? You should also note that all Unices aren't the same -- I can't speak for Irix, but my ES 450 running Solaris 7 and one of my RedHat 6.0 boxes have each crashed more often (once and three times, respectively) than any of my Win2K servers and workstations have since release candidate 2 (zero), and the number of Linux and Win2K reboots have been running neck-and-neck (the crash was the only time the ES 450 has rebooted since I've owned it).
Microsoft gets a great developer on board for X-box, while Bungie gets a ton of money so that they can concentrate on making great games instead of worrying about their checkbook. At least we won't have to keep hearing that "But nobody's planning to make X-Box games yet" excuse anymore.
Oh, and one other thing. Some people are sounding pretty silly screaming for the DoJ. Please explain what this has to do with that situation.
Okay, since you're being as anal retentive as they come, I guess I'll have to qualify my response, then. Not a problem. Among humans living on the planet earth who use the internet, the PNG format has been a failure. Period.
what I'm saying is that you are an anti-establishment fanboy.
But you guys have been telling me all this time that there is no Slashdot GroupThink. But now you're saying that Slashdot is nothing but another bullshit establishment?
Thanks man, that truly was the post of the year around here.:)
Cheers, ZicoKnows@hotmail.com, the anti-establishment rebel-type dude, yeehaw!
This is so LinuxOne-esque, it's not even funny. If there could be a funny part, though, it would have to be watching just about everyone around here try so dang hard not to say a bad word about it.
This actually would make a classic social experiment. Go through the article and change all the Linux references to Microsoft ones (difficult, I know -- there are some parts which will probably just have to be deleted -- but a decent job could be done), then show it to your Slashdotter friends who haven't seen this article. Figure out the percentage of them that are a) rolling in the aisles with laughter, b) up in arms, screaming about monopolies, or any other choices you can come up with. If anyone goes through with this, keep us posted!:)
So are you trying to say that the PNG format has been a success so far? Nope, I guess even you're not that foolish, so you'd rather just get your panties in a bunch and rant against anybody who states the cold, disappointing truth. Wheeeee:)
Ironic that this story was posted right after one about China cracking down and jailing people who dare try to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre.
C'mon Mozilla, please lose the red star logo already.
You can post PNG feature lists until the cows come home, but it still remains that the PNG format hasn't been a success. You're not gonna find many sites that are as anti-"The Man" and would be the type of site to promote PNGs as Slashdot, yet even they're still using GIFs. It's hard to convince everyone else when the open source crowd won't eat its own dog food. Note that I prefer PNGs myself, but the evidence is pretty clear so far as to its lack of adoption.
Sure, it'll wear down the battery, but I'm not talkin' about watching freakin' Shoah on your plane trip here.;-) We're just on a flight of a few hours, and you can just plug your laptop in and recharge the battery later on the ground.
As for the other thing, I've got a lot of stuff installed, so I'm reluctant using up even more space just to store things I don't need at the moment (I always travel with a 24-CD carrying case, and it's a little overstuffed right now, including one enormous DVD with software and docs on it), plus when I do pick and choose stuff to store from a CD, the inevitable always happens, where I end up wanting something that I didn't bring.:) Oh well, I don't think we're gonna come to agreement on this (not that that's any big deal), so I'll prolly just bid you adieu and leave it at that, 'cause I should be heading out soon anyway.
Maybe you're shopping in the wrong places if it's your experience that a DVD drive adds three kilos to the weight of a laptop. I've never seen anything close to that. Along with the advent of not-at-all-heavy DVD drives, technology has also given us the video rental outlet. It's not too hard to find a good movie that you've never seen before. Maybe I'm just too picky and not frugal enough, but I'd much rather pick up something that I actually want to see for less than three bucks, rather than be subjected to a free movie that I "can stand to watch" -- I "can stand to watch" a chick movie when I'm coerced into it, but I want to pick out the movie myself for those other times when the threat of sexual denial isn't hanging over my head.;-)
Well, some of us like to travel instead of being tied down near our LANs. How fast do you think that network connection of yours is going to be when you're thousands of miles in the air? It's also usually a lot quicker to put in a CD or DVD than it is to download it remotely, not to mention the space waste of storing everything you might need on your laptop or server just to avoid a CD/DVD drive. Add in the nicities of being able to pass the time on your flight by watching the latest video release on DVD, and I wonder how you could possibly think that the drives wouldn't be great for some people. Sure, you might not want one, but c'mon...
Actually, that's less than 2 watts, and it doesn't use Intel's SpeedStepping tech. The one that uses SpeedStepping reportedly consumes an average of less than one watt. It should also be a better performer than the Crusoe, no matter how inelegant some people think it is -- personally, I just prefer something that gets the job done better. Not trying to start a flame war or anything, but it sounds like you were sipping a bit too heavily from the Transmeta/Linus kool-aid when you made your post -- c'mon now, preserving CPU lifetime??;-)
Mail, news, Netmeeting, and Hotmail aren't parts of IE. That's why one of my servers has IE but none of those other things on it. Having a type of link registered to open up a separate program doesn't mean that they're integrated. In fact, for all of those, you can tell IE to use non-Microsoft programs to open them, just like I have IE set to open the current page in UltraEdit instead of FrontPage Express when I hit the "Edit web page" button. And you call the original poster "ignorant?"
Also, just because Outlook Express uses IE's HTML rendering component, it doesn't mean that it's a part of IE anymore than Eudora or Quicken or HTML-Kit is a part of IE just because they, too, use the same rendering component.
Just as you suggested, go look at Internet Options in IE and tell me which ones aren't related to web browsing (You don't think that you set Outlook Express or Netmeeting options from inside IE, do you?). Pretty damn few.
Cheers, ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
What do your examples have to do with anything?
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· Score: 4
where even the average e-shopper is so worried about "electronic privacy"
First off, if your "average e-shopper" is so worried about electronic privacy, then what are they doing e-shopping? Do you have any statistics to back up your statement that they are "so" worried about it? Secondly, if you've paid attention to e-commerce snafus, you'll realize that they've come from poor administration, most often from not configuring database connections properly and not applying patches, not from the presence or absence of source code. Hell, even the Apache Group itself got its website hacked -- source code didn't protect them, because they didn't follow the proper procedures for the open source software that they had installed on their server.
Microsoft Internet Explorer warns you constantly not to install untrusted plugins
Constantly? You're kidding, right? If it really bothers you, just go into your options and disable all downloading of plugins, signed or not. If not, it seems like a pretty accurate warning, giving you the option to install plugins that you might want, like from Macromedia, but telling you that installing one from somebody you know nothing about might not be such a hot idea. Personally, I find web browsing using only open source tools to be a pretty boring experience, even much more so before Mozilla started up.
where the ILOVEYOU e-mail worm did six billion dollars worth of damage
Sorry again, but the ILOVEYOU trojan was open source. I believe that someone even posted it here at Slashdot. If you get tricked into running something bad, the presence or absence of source isn't going to help you. See wu-ftpd.
I don't keep up too much with Microsoft software for Macs, but I thought that a big deal was made about Office 98 not being a port, as opposed to the previous versions. I could just be thinking of Internet Explorer, but I really thought that was the case for Office 98. That's my recollection, anyway, I just checked a couple of Mac sites (here and here, the first two results from Altavista for '+"office 98" +"not a port"') and they seem to agree with me.
Cheers, ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Welcome to the real world
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Copyrant
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· Score: 1
Sure, a lot of people can't handle a fast-moving car. But an awful lot can - why should they be forced to drive 55 mph?
Sure, a lot of people use guns to commit crimes. But an awful lot don't - why should they be forced to give up some of their guns?
Sure, a lot of kids under the age of 17 see movies that they aren't mature enough to handle. But an awful lot are mature enough - why should they not be allowed to go see rated R movies?
Sure, a lot of people pack their cars with explosives and detonate them in front of airports. But an awful lot don't - why should my friends not be allowed to wait in their car in front of the terminal to pick me up?
In other words, I'm pretty amazed that you'd have to look to a comic book for similar examples when there are scads of them out there in the real world.
Frankly, I thought that timothy's little rant was pretty embarrassing, both for the pure whininess of it all, and for the lack of logic and facts he displays. For the most part, the people who get OEM computers are getting a discounted price for the operating system. If they want the full disc, they can pay the full price for the OS and the OEM will give it to them. As for Office 2000, why is it that I had no trouble whatsoever installing it and registering it on two completely different computer systems? Perhaps it's because I'm not using pirated software and getting my registration codes from the internet? Or maybe timothy just needs to stick to things he knows about.
Oh yeah, and I thought that the Slashdot crew were Linux fanatics, so why is timothy so worked up about commercial software from Microsoft and Adobe anyway? If Linux meets all your needs, why even give those evil capitalist pigs a second thought? Is the Man screwing you over (in which case I have to wonder why you don't just go 100% Linux, since it's so wonderful), or am I actually supposed to believe that timothy's just lookin' out for all us poor suffering commercial software users? Har-har.
Oh, they definitely make a boatload of revenue on Office for Mac, but how is the net gain? If it's not tremendous (I don't know one way or the other, do you?), they might decide to shunt those coders into other projects, considering the high demand for people who can code these days (although the demand will probably drop once more of these internet startups go under). Anyway, I wasn't trying to say that Office for Mac's days are numbered -- I doubt they are -- just that it's more likely to be killed than a MS apps company bothering to make a Linux version for the relatively tiny market involved.
If the breakup ever actually happens, which I doubt it will, you can look forward to big changes. Namely, that after the breakup, they're by definition not a monopoly anymore, so anything goes for the two companies, and they don't have to worry about the government sticking its nose in their business anymore.
Of course, a lot of people here think it means that the new apps company will come out with a version of Office for Linux, but that's silly wishful thinking. It's more likely that they'll kill off Office for Macintosh if it's not making much money, as they no longer need to falsely prop up the Mac platform to make it look like they don't have a monopoly. Once that pretense is abandoned, the two companies can be as vicious as they want.
The break up'll prolly never happen, though. At least most of the Slashdotties better hope not.;)
Hey, I'd buy it if it seems good, but you're not exactly approaching the right audience if you're actually looking to be compensated for your work. He might champion the community, but why do you think Tim O'Reilly so rarely releases a book in HTML format? It's incredibly easy to transform documents which comform to the DTD they use into HTML. Who wouldn't want to be able to get a complete HTML version of all the ORA titles that they own for easy searching? It's obvious that people would want this, it's so easy to do, so it makes you wonder if Tim doesn't really trust the community not to pass his dough-winning products the way they do with MP3s. Where's the love, Tim?
Oh yeah, and when you make that eBook, an MS Reader version would be good, too, 'cause it rocks the house on PDAs.
Slashdot Mirror
What gives you the right to the software he wrote? And where do you get that anyone's privacy is being violated? I hope that you don't illegally download musicians' copyrighted works, because I don't think that I could handle so much irony this early in the morning.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Well, looking at my bookshelf, there's a gnu on the cover of Learning GNU Emacs (the connection being obvious) and an appaloosa on the cover of Apache: The Definitive Guide (being either the native American connection or just the similarity of the name). No exact matches, but pretty close. Now, if they really wanted to do some appropriate book titles, they'd get these bugs off the Oracle book covers and put 'em on their Red Hat Linux books. :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
They still boast about that all the time, and with good reason. And I'm sorry that Outlook is too easy to use for you, but some of us like our software that way, instead of having to jump through a million hoops just to get something simple done. Software should be a way to get things done efficiently, not an ordeal for users.
And those two sentences above explain exactly why Microsoft enjoys such a commanding lead in the OS market, so much so that they're getting sued by jealous competitors over it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Please explain what you're talking about. Outlook says what it does and does what it says. If you get an email with a .vbs file in it, you have to first click the attachment icon, select the .vbs file, then a message pops up which reads, "WARNING: Web pages, executables, and other attachments may contain viruses or scripts that can be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source. What would you like to do with this file? Open it | Save it to disk." How many hoops do you want the user to have to jump through, anyway? If they don't get the idea by that point, it's just too bad for them -- they're going to be just as susceptible to someone sending them an attachment and telling them to save it and run it from their hard drive.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
The ILOVEYOU trojan wasn't autorun by Outlook. The user had to run the script manually. It's the same as if the email had said, "Save this file on your hard drive and run it!" It didn't exploit any security hole. Now, you earlier stated that they didn't release anything for it, but they actually did release a patch for Outlook to help discourage people from running any executable content that they receive via email. I and many others aren't bothering to install it because we already know not to execute unknown programs.
Actually, IE didn't pass Netscape until after IE 5 came out, and plenty of people thought that IE 4 was better than Netscape anyway. I eagerly downloaded every Netscape beta from some point during the 2.x series up until the 4.01 version, when it became obvious how shoddy the product was, and ever since then, my Netscape downloads have been few and far between. Oracle and Access aren't comparable products -- did you mean SQL Server? -- and Oracle's still extremely strong on NT.
Actually, my Win2K experience seems to be typical of everyone but Slashdotters, who seem to have these mysterious problems with the stability that other independent publications don't seem to have. It's been absolutely rock solid since even before the release of the final code.
Win2K and SQL Server 2K beta currently hold the record, by a huge margin, in the TPC benchmarks, so it seems like they aren't doing too bad against the other vendors. I'll be interested in checking out the Win2K Datacenter Server, or whatever they end up calling it, when it's released, since I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
And yes, you can go buy from another OEM. They are most definitely not making all OEMs do this (and actually, there's a good deal of speculation that the OEMs are the ones who wanted this policy instituted rather than Microsoft). Go check out the article from InfoWorld about the recovery CD debate. I don't have the link on me, but I think it comes up if you search for "recovery cd". I think TheRegister also had an article about it, but I haven't been able to find it in their archives for some time now.
When did we start comparing uptimes? You brought up stability, so that's what I talked about. I don't consider a forced reboot to be the same as a crash, especially a Unix crash, and particularly a Linux crash where it's time to start dragging out the backup tapes if you're not lucky. As should have been clear by inference, my Solaris server has had a much better uptime than the Win2K or Linux boxes, since the crash was the only time it's been rebooted at all since I've owned it. The Win2K and Linux boxes have been about the same, between installing hotfixes and kernel patches and new hardware. If you doubt Win2K's stability, check out just about any non-Slashdot (or Slashdot-type, you know what kind of places I'm talking about here) source of information.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
If you don't want to use Windows, why should you have any say whether or not their APIs are open? The decision should be influenced by Microsoft's customers, partners, and shareholders, not by the few jealous Microsoft haters, who could care less about Microsoft's customers anyway.
Which Outlook security problem wasn't fixed?
You didn't pay full price for that Windows media that you got from an OEM, either, so why should you get the entire thing? Now, if you do want the full media, just tell your OEM that you want it, and they'll give it to you. Note that your OEM might also charge you extra for it, but it's their choice. And your choice to keep buying from that OEM, when there are other PC manufacturers which don't have that policy.
If you want an example of a Microsoft app that lost to a competing product, how about you come up with a Microsoft app that beat out a better comparable and competing product? Internet Explorer is much better than Netscape, which is why Netscape lost. Word Perfect got tossed around between various companies and produced a goose egg, and that's why they lost to Word. Lotus took forever to update Ami Pro 3.1 -- I used to love Ami Pro and only switched to Word (and not until Word 95) when Ami Pro made all us faithful users sit and wait while Word surpassed it. I used to use Quattro Pro, but I don't know many people who think that Excel isn't the best spreadsheet around. Intuit started putting out shoddy Quicken products, so Microsoft Money left them in the dust. Wait a second, you say that Quicken is still the best product? Oh yeah, now that I think about it, Quicken really is pretty good. And if you notice, Quicken still holds the clear lead in the personal finance software area. Starting to see the connection? Oracle makes a great database, and lo and behold, they too rake in more dough than Microsoft does with SQL Server on the NT/2000 platform. Adobe's Photoshop trounces Microsoft's PhotoDraw, and the market share reflects it. Pretty simple pattern, no?
Actually, I think one sentence from your post sums up your attitude better than I could: "Your bias towards M$ products is making me sick." (emphasis mine) I'm also surprised to hear that Irix never needs a reboot. I'm only familiar with Irix on a user level so you'll have to enlighten me, but they never have kernel upgrades that you need to reboot to install? You should also note that all Unices aren't the same -- I can't speak for Irix, but my ES 450 running Solaris 7 and one of my RedHat 6.0 boxes have each crashed more often (once and three times, respectively) than any of my Win2K servers and workstations have since release candidate 2 (zero), and the number of Linux and Win2K reboots have been running neck-and-neck (the crash was the only time the ES 450 has rebooted since I've owned it).
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Microsoft gets a great developer on board for X-box, while Bungie gets a ton of money so that they can concentrate on making great games instead of worrying about their checkbook. At least we won't have to keep hearing that "But nobody's planning to make X-Box games yet" excuse anymore.
Oh, and one other thing. Some people are sounding pretty silly screaming for the DoJ. Please explain what this has to do with that situation.
Once again, fabulous news!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Okay, since you're being as anal retentive as they come, I guess I'll have to qualify my response, then. Not a problem. Among humans living on the planet earth who use the internet, the PNG format has been a failure. Period.
Happy now?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
what I'm saying is that you are an anti-establishment fanboy.
But you guys have been telling me all this time that there is no Slashdot GroupThink. But now you're saying that Slashdot is nothing but another bullshit establishment?
Thanks man, that truly was the post of the year around here. :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com, the anti-establishment rebel-type dude, yeehaw!
This is so LinuxOne-esque, it's not even funny. If there could be a funny part, though, it would have to be watching just about everyone around here try so dang hard not to say a bad word about it.
This actually would make a classic social experiment. Go through the article and change all the Linux references to Microsoft ones (difficult, I know -- there are some parts which will probably just have to be deleted -- but a decent job could be done), then show it to your Slashdotter friends who haven't seen this article. Figure out the percentage of them that are a) rolling in the aisles with laughter, b) up in arms, screaming about monopolies, or any other choices you can come up with. If anyone goes through with this, keep us posted! :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
So are you trying to say that the PNG format has been a success so far? Nope, I guess even you're not that foolish, so you'd rather just get your panties in a bunch and rant against anybody who states the cold, disappointing truth. Wheeeee :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ironic that this story was posted right after one about China cracking down and jailing people who dare try to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre.
C'mon Mozilla, please lose the red star logo already.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You can post PNG feature lists until the cows come home, but it still remains that the PNG format hasn't been a success. You're not gonna find many sites that are as anti-"The Man" and would be the type of site to promote PNGs as Slashdot, yet even they're still using GIFs. It's hard to convince everyone else when the open source crowd won't eat its own dog food. Note that I prefer PNGs myself, but the evidence is pretty clear so far as to its lack of adoption.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Sure, it'll wear down the battery, but I'm not talkin' about watching freakin' Shoah on your plane trip here. ;-) We're just on a flight of a few hours, and you can just plug your laptop in and recharge the battery later on the ground.
As for the other thing, I've got a lot of stuff installed, so I'm reluctant using up even more space just to store things I don't need at the moment (I always travel with a 24-CD carrying case, and it's a little overstuffed right now, including one enormous DVD with software and docs on it), plus when I do pick and choose stuff to store from a CD, the inevitable always happens, where I end up wanting something that I didn't bring. :) Oh well, I don't think we're gonna come to agreement on this (not that that's any big deal), so I'll prolly just bid you adieu and leave it at that, 'cause I should be heading out soon anyway.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Maybe you're shopping in the wrong places if it's your experience that a DVD drive adds three kilos to the weight of a laptop. I've never seen anything close to that. Along with the advent of not-at-all-heavy DVD drives, technology has also given us the video rental outlet. It's not too hard to find a good movie that you've never seen before. Maybe I'm just too picky and not frugal enough, but I'd much rather pick up something that I actually want to see for less than three bucks, rather than be subjected to a free movie that I "can stand to watch" -- I "can stand to watch" a chick movie when I'm coerced into it, but I want to pick out the movie myself for those other times when the threat of sexual denial isn't hanging over my head. ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Well, some of us like to travel instead of being tied down near our LANs. How fast do you think that network connection of yours is going to be when you're thousands of miles in the air? It's also usually a lot quicker to put in a CD or DVD than it is to download it remotely, not to mention the space waste of storing everything you might need on your laptop or server just to avoid a CD/DVD drive. Add in the nicities of being able to pass the time on your flight by watching the latest video release on DVD, and I wonder how you could possibly think that the drives wouldn't be great for some people. Sure, you might not want one, but c'mon...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Actually, that's less than 2 watts, and it doesn't use Intel's SpeedStepping tech. The one that uses SpeedStepping reportedly consumes an average of less than one watt. It should also be a better performer than the Crusoe, no matter how inelegant some people think it is -- personally, I just prefer something that gets the job done better. Not trying to start a flame war or anything, but it sounds like you were sipping a bit too heavily from the Transmeta/Linus kool-aid when you made your post -- c'mon now, preserving CPU lifetime?? ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Post of the month, man, post of the month. Thanks!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Mail, news, Netmeeting, and Hotmail aren't parts of IE. That's why one of my servers has IE but none of those other things on it. Having a type of link registered to open up a separate program doesn't mean that they're integrated. In fact, for all of those, you can tell IE to use non-Microsoft programs to open them, just like I have IE set to open the current page in UltraEdit instead of FrontPage Express when I hit the "Edit web page" button. And you call the original poster "ignorant?"
Also, just because Outlook Express uses IE's HTML rendering component, it doesn't mean that it's a part of IE anymore than Eudora or Quicken or HTML-Kit is a part of IE just because they, too, use the same rendering component.
Just as you suggested, go look at Internet Options in IE and tell me which ones aren't related to web browsing (You don't think that you set Outlook Express or Netmeeting options from inside IE, do you?). Pretty damn few.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
First off, if your "average e-shopper" is so worried about electronic privacy, then what are they doing e-shopping? Do you have any statistics to back up your statement that they are "so" worried about it? Secondly, if you've paid attention to e-commerce snafus, you'll realize that they've come from poor administration, most often from not configuring database connections properly and not applying patches, not from the presence or absence of source code. Hell, even the Apache Group itself got its website hacked -- source code didn't protect them, because they didn't follow the proper procedures for the open source software that they had installed on their server.
Constantly? You're kidding, right? If it really bothers you, just go into your options and disable all downloading of plugins, signed or not. If not, it seems like a pretty accurate warning, giving you the option to install plugins that you might want, like from Macromedia, but telling you that installing one from somebody you know nothing about might not be such a hot idea. Personally, I find web browsing using only open source tools to be a pretty boring experience, even much more so before Mozilla started up.
Sorry again, but the ILOVEYOU trojan was open source. I believe that someone even posted it here at Slashdot. If you get tricked into running something bad, the presence or absence of source isn't going to help you. See wu-ftpd.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I don't keep up too much with Microsoft software for Macs, but I thought that a big deal was made about Office 98 not being a port, as opposed to the previous versions. I could just be thinking of Internet Explorer, but I really thought that was the case for Office 98. That's my recollection, anyway, I just checked a couple of Mac sites (here and here, the first two results from Altavista for '+"office 98" +"not a port"') and they seem to agree with me.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Sure, a lot of people can't handle a fast-moving car. But an awful lot can - why should they be forced to drive 55 mph?
Sure, a lot of people use guns to commit crimes. But an awful lot don't - why should they be forced to give up some of their guns?
Sure, a lot of kids under the age of 17 see movies that they aren't mature enough to handle. But an awful lot are mature enough - why should they not be allowed to go see rated R movies?
Sure, a lot of people pack their cars with explosives and detonate them in front of airports. But an awful lot don't - why should my friends not be allowed to wait in their car in front of the terminal to pick me up?
In other words, I'm pretty amazed that you'd have to look to a comic book for similar examples when there are scads of them out there in the real world.
Frankly, I thought that timothy's little rant was pretty embarrassing, both for the pure whininess of it all, and for the lack of logic and facts he displays. For the most part, the people who get OEM computers are getting a discounted price for the operating system. If they want the full disc, they can pay the full price for the OS and the OEM will give it to them. As for Office 2000, why is it that I had no trouble whatsoever installing it and registering it on two completely different computer systems? Perhaps it's because I'm not using pirated software and getting my registration codes from the internet? Or maybe timothy just needs to stick to things he knows about.
Oh yeah, and I thought that the Slashdot crew were Linux fanatics, so why is timothy so worked up about commercial software from Microsoft and Adobe anyway? If Linux meets all your needs, why even give those evil capitalist pigs a second thought? Is the Man screwing you over (in which case I have to wonder why you don't just go 100% Linux, since it's so wonderful), or am I actually supposed to believe that timothy's just lookin' out for all us poor suffering commercial software users? Har-har.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Oh, they definitely make a boatload of revenue on Office for Mac, but how is the net gain? If it's not tremendous (I don't know one way or the other, do you?), they might decide to shunt those coders into other projects, considering the high demand for people who can code these days (although the demand will probably drop once more of these internet startups go under). Anyway, I wasn't trying to say that Office for Mac's days are numbered -- I doubt they are -- just that it's more likely to be killed than a MS apps company bothering to make a Linux version for the relatively tiny market involved.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
If the breakup ever actually happens, which I doubt it will, you can look forward to big changes. Namely, that after the breakup, they're by definition not a monopoly anymore, so anything goes for the two companies, and they don't have to worry about the government sticking its nose in their business anymore.
Of course, a lot of people here think it means that the new apps company will come out with a version of Office for Linux, but that's silly wishful thinking. It's more likely that they'll kill off Office for Macintosh if it's not making much money, as they no longer need to falsely prop up the Mac platform to make it look like they don't have a monopoly. Once that pretense is abandoned, the two companies can be as vicious as they want.
The break up'll prolly never happen, though. At least most of the Slashdotties better hope not. ;)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Hey, I'd buy it if it seems good, but you're not exactly approaching the right audience if you're actually looking to be compensated for your work. He might champion the community, but why do you think Tim O'Reilly so rarely releases a book in HTML format? It's incredibly easy to transform documents which comform to the DTD they use into HTML. Who wouldn't want to be able to get a complete HTML version of all the ORA titles that they own for easy searching? It's obvious that people would want this, it's so easy to do, so it makes you wonder if Tim doesn't really trust the community not to pass his dough-winning products the way they do with MP3s. Where's the love, Tim?
Oh yeah, and when you make that eBook, an MS Reader version would be good, too, 'cause it rocks the house on PDAs.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com