0] I've always ranted about how bad MS Windows is.
I started out with Quarterdeck as my GUI of choice, then hated windows with a passion, and when the 95 GUI came out, I hated it even worse, and bought a Mac - not knowing ANYTHING about Macs. I personally find the Mac to be much less annoying, cleaner, and more aesthetically pleasing than MS's GUI. Why do I hate MS's GUI? All the aweful redundancy, the close box adjacent to the (unnecessary) maximize box. The fact that Netscape and IE and the Outlook mail editor all have proportional live scrollbars, and their flagship Word-Processor/awesome document viewer does NOT. The concept of only having a menubar take up real estate if that app's window is on top is great (I wish button-bars of non-active apps would also disappear, what would be great would be a standard shared button bar). The fact that this gives all Mac applications a very uniform feel, is a little totalitarian, but functionally great. The Mac isn't DA BOMB as far as minimalist widgets go - IMHO, the re-size button can be done away with, I find myself using the WindowShade feature a lot, but I almost wish it was more of an iconization than a simple "make everything but the title-bar dissapear". But then, you wouldn't be able to distinguis between several closed windows. Screen tabs are great, spring-loaded folders is the best concept to hit the GUI since the icon. Lack of Contextual Menus never bothered me, but with it's implementation in OS 8, it was done RIGHT. It's fast, and totally customizable by dinking with the folder structure (if you use FinderPop). Tear-off menus are a GREAT thing, but there doesn't seem to be an implementation on the Mac that works with OS 8.6. I hope it's a feature of OS X. PLUS - Themes that actually are THEMES. Unlike MS Windows, - you can change shapes, textures, colors of every windowing component (Kaleidoscope). If only they hadn't Steved themes in 8.6, but the fact that it's doable is very, very cool, and only equalled by the nifty stuff I see going on in the Unix world with stuff like Enlightenment, etc. Then there's Drag n Drop - unified across all apps. Not just in Finder (File System editor), but you can drag text clippings, graphics selections, and with QuickDraw3d, even 3d objects. (too bad they Steved QD3D). What does Mac need? A docking bar! But of course, OS X would have inherited that had that not also been Steved.
Ah yes, there's the rub. Apple has some great stuff, but still gets hosed from time to time by inexplicable, pig-headed business decisions.
I tried to learn programming on the Mac, and all I can say is after the chapter on memory managment, and all the hoops one has to go through to make sure memory is allocated, locked in the right spot, unlocked and freed, it's a major wonder that any apps run on Macintosh at all. This of course is solved with OS X and Cocoa. (I don't know what the Carbon situation is, but if you still have to designate allocations as moveable and nonmoveable, and all that crap - forget it!)
1] forget alternate widget sets in MS Windows. Do you really want to install something that breaks everything else? What good is that?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Uuuhh... I wasn't talking about developers, my message was in response to one about Unix Sys Admins making a LOT more than the average MCSE.
I know LOTS of MS developers, and yes, it's true, you don't need an MCSE to do MS development. In fact, I don't think I know of one MS developer who IS an MCSE (mainly Tech Support people get MCSEs anyway). But what you DO need to be an MS developer is an extraordinarily expensive copy of MSVC, and a subscription to MS Developer Net, which is outrageously expensive. Unless you Pir8 your SDKs. ..
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Because when push comes to shove, if Compaq wanted to crank out 200,000 desktop machines next quarter, they'd have no problem obtaining 200,000 intel CPUs and motherboards, but no hope of finding that many Alpha CPUs and motherboards.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
If MS wants their OS to run on a specific hardware platform, then THEY ought to do the f-ing port job. Just like any other OS vendor. NOT the hardware manufacturer. Did intel write the x86 port of BeOS? Did intel write the x86 version of Solaris?
f-ing Microsoft needs to get off their high-horse, because that model was bullshit anyway.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Oh, I messed with a beta too, and no, it didn't crash, and yes, it was very, very slow on a PII 300 with 128mb RAM.
However, I couldn't get any of the advance features to work, because everything relied on DNS (microsoft DNS), and I couldn't get the DNS server to install. I got a lame message that "RPC Service was not available". Just a popup dialog. No event log messages, nothing else. Of course the RPC Service showed it was running just fine. It was an isolated network, so there was no TCP/IP addressing issue.
However, it did run that nifty pinball game GREAT!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
My biggest lab machine right now is a dual Pentium 166 with 64 megs RAM, and I don't plan on upgrading that to W2K. Too slow. In fact, now that I think of it, I don't even have a PII. . . I probably won't be able to run W2K at all. I think I need some new equipment.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
That shell was not supported, and IIRC had a lot of bugs, and probably would be incompatible with a lot of modern software. You're talking about something that's 4 years old. There's so much tied in with Explorer, if you're talking about IE, and Office and desktop type applications. . .
I wouldn't recommend it. I would instead recommend fdisk, and install Linux, but, you gotta run what you gotta run at work.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
fwiw, most of my crashes (okay, lets be specific here, BSOD-en) seem to be networking and file-system related.
Right now, I have a folder in my Recycle Bin, that when I try to empty, I get an error saying the file or directory is corrupt. I can empty all the other stuff in there, but this one folder won't go away. I know that if I format the disk, the problem will go away, but I also know that if I format the disk, I'll have to reinstall the OS (it's not my startup disk, but I have all my apps installed there, including MS Office, which has a bunch of links and crap with the startup of the OS, so if I delete that, I won't be able to boot properly)
in other words NT sucks, and I'll be very happy when it becomes irrelevant to the business model of the company I work for, so we can get some REAL computers. It's already starting, I have a SPARC Ultra 10 PO awaiting approval. ..
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
I was telling people this about MS three years ago when Merced was just a twinkle in intel's eye, then again, last year when every OS vendor in the world except IBM, Apple, and MS made HUGE noise about porting their shit to ia64. I could understand then why Apple wouldn't, and IBM, because they only had one intel OS anyway, OS/2. But I couldn't understand why MS wasn't making any noise. Oh sure, they did have whitepapers saying that they planned a 64-bit port, but it was unnatural for them to not jump on the hype bandwagon, especially with their history of FUD and Vapor - I began to see this as a symptom - that they must be seriously in trouble on the 64-bit front if they were afraid to at least issue vapor. Now we know.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
I can say that when I worked for Palindrome (now defunct tape backup software company), we had NT Alpha, and NT PPC ports in the works for Palindrome Storage Manager. Microsoft's wishy-washiness for the other platforms strongly aided in the destruction of those projects. Sigh. In those years, it really looked like MS WAS going to take over the world, and even our Unix port was crushed in an act of PHB-ness, and our ROOTS in Novell were rapidly disintegrating (although that was more Novell's fault - crappy developer support).
Remembering those years - 96, 97. . . things really are better these days. Though I don't really care if Novell makes a comeback or not, it certainly is refreshing to see this Linux movement grow and take hold, and even see Macintosh recover somewhat.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
NT PPC died - because MS had enough clout and audacity to demand that the HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS do the porting of the OS to their own chip: Moto had to port to PPC, DEC (now Compaq) had to port to Alpha, etc. Moto couldn't/wouldn't do it for some insane reason, so MS asked Moto to pay some obscene fee to port THEIR OS to PPC. Needless to say, after NT 4, MS raised the fee, and Moto told them to stuff it.
Now, Moto has done a number of moronic things prior and since regarding the advancement and advocacy of the PPC chip - we won't go into this sordid history here.
But yes, back in 1993/94, the future looked very bright indeed for the PPC, and I got into Macs BECAUSE of this potential future (like them still, but rail agains the price). Although I would have thought, several years back, that if PPC went nowhere, and then would have been ressurected 5 years later, there would be no chance, because by then, Intel would have caught up. Boy was I wrong. Intel hasn't done shit other than raise prices, and maneuver to shut out x86 competition, and let MS take care of competition on the Sun and IBM side of things. And now PPC is poised for a resurgence.
Only that one dickhead at Motorola (the guy who wants Intel and NT everywhere) and Steve Jobs stand in the way. They can probably kill this new PPC movement, it remains to be seen, the fortitude of these neo-CHRP cloners. Can they withstand being bought out or otherwise sleazed to death by Apple and Motorola? (the purchase - and likely subsequent destruction of Metrowerks may have been Motorola's move in that direction, with a nice side effect of hosing Apple in the process).
The only thing I know, is now, though NT PPC would mean more PPC chips sold, I think that the ABSENCE of NT PPC does more good in the net, and furthers "the cause".
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
Hell, with Photocop, they don't even have to stop you anymore. You're ticket's in the mail.
I think that the next step will be, a digital photo system, that's connected to the internet. It automatically email's your ticket to you, and remotely key-escrow decrypts your Quicken account, and has it paid.
You've got mail!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
why not just make driving illegal, and then hook little meters up to our cars, which radio the state dept of transportation to garnishee our paychecks to pay the fines automatically.
This whole unreasonably low speed limit/fine/selective enforcement/illegal search and seizure/ thing is complete bullshit, and now they want to streamline the process of sucking our money?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
From all the comments I see here - I see that it's almost unanimous that Harley Joel Osment would be a better choice than Jake Lloyd.
Is there a single person out there who can say that they did not like 6th Sense, or Osment's performance? I'd like to hear from them.
I originally read a bad review about this movie, but the trailers were too compelling, especially the cuts with Osment. I went and saw the movie and loved it. I was told there would be a suprise ending, but not what the suprise would be. This was awesome storytelling. I grew quite bored in the middle of the film, and had lots of questions about things that didn't make sense, and then the very end explained it all, and put everything into place. The reviewer complained that it was boring, and was not phased by the suprise ending.
If we all agree, then maybe a few of us (not all of us) ought to drop this obvious suggestion into Mr. Card's mailbox. I suspect this is the proper place to submit requests of this kind: oscinfo@hatrack.com (or maybe not) Perhaps fish around on the www.hatrack.com site too.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
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0] I've always ranted about how bad MS Windows is.
I started out with Quarterdeck as my GUI of choice, then hated windows with a passion, and when the 95 GUI came out, I hated it even worse, and bought a Mac - not knowing ANYTHING about Macs. I personally find the Mac to be much less annoying, cleaner, and more aesthetically pleasing than MS's GUI. Why do I hate MS's GUI? All the aweful redundancy, the close box adjacent to the (unnecessary) maximize box. The fact that Netscape and IE and the Outlook mail editor all have proportional live scrollbars, and their flagship Word-Processor/awesome document viewer does NOT. The concept of only having a menubar take up real estate if that app's window is on top is great (I wish button-bars of non-active apps would also disappear, what would be great would be a standard shared button bar). The fact that this gives all Mac applications a very uniform feel, is a little totalitarian, but functionally great. The Mac isn't DA BOMB as far as minimalist widgets go - IMHO, the re-size button can be done away with, I find myself using the WindowShade feature a lot, but I almost wish it was more of an iconization than a simple "make everything but the title-bar dissapear". But then, you wouldn't be able to distinguis between several closed windows. Screen tabs are great, spring-loaded folders is the best concept to hit the GUI since the icon. Lack of Contextual Menus never bothered me, but with it's implementation in OS 8, it was done RIGHT. It's fast, and totally customizable by dinking with the folder structure (if you use FinderPop). Tear-off menus are a GREAT thing, but there doesn't seem to be an implementation on the Mac that works with OS 8.6. I hope it's a feature of OS X. PLUS - Themes that actually are THEMES. Unlike MS Windows, - you can change shapes, textures, colors of every windowing component (Kaleidoscope). If only they hadn't Steved themes in 8.6, but the fact that it's doable is very, very cool, and only equalled by the nifty stuff I see going on in the Unix world with stuff like Enlightenment, etc.
Then there's Drag n Drop - unified across all apps. Not just in Finder (File System editor), but you can drag text clippings, graphics selections, and with QuickDraw3d, even 3d objects. (too bad they Steved QD3D).
What does Mac need? A docking bar! But of course, OS X would have inherited that had that not also been Steved.
Ah yes, there's the rub.
Apple has some great stuff, but still gets hosed from time to time by inexplicable, pig-headed business decisions.
I tried to learn programming on the Mac, and all I can say is after the chapter on memory managment, and all the hoops one has to go through to make sure memory is allocated, locked in the right spot, unlocked and freed, it's a major wonder that any apps run on Macintosh at all. This of course is solved with OS X and Cocoa. (I don't know what the Carbon situation is, but if you still have to designate allocations as moveable and nonmoveable, and all that crap - forget it!)
1] forget alternate widget sets in MS Windows. Do you really want to install something that breaks everything else? What good is that?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Uuuhh... I wasn't talking about developers, my message was in response to one about Unix Sys Admins making a LOT more than the average MCSE.
.
I know LOTS of MS developers, and yes, it's true, you don't need an MCSE to do MS development. In fact, I don't think I know of one MS developer who IS an MCSE (mainly Tech Support people get MCSEs anyway). But what you DO need to be an MS developer is an extraordinarily expensive copy of MSVC, and a subscription to MS Developer Net, which is outrageously expensive. Unless you Pir8 your SDKs. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Well, to be fair to IBM, someone there decided to hand that project off to Taligent. We all know what a mistake THAT turned out to be. . .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
NT supposedly has a POSIX compliance subsystem too.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
That's now.
Where's the future?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
um. sorry to break the news to you, but JavaOS is dead.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Well, shit yeah it's cheaper to develop Linux.
GCC=FREE
MSVC + 1yr membership in MSDeveloperNet = $2000
You do the math, but don't use a Pentium, because of the FP bug.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Because when push comes to shove, if Compaq wanted to crank out 200,000 desktop machines next quarter, they'd have no problem obtaining 200,000 intel CPUs and motherboards, but no hope of finding that many Alpha CPUs and motherboards.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
If MS wants their OS to run on a specific hardware platform, then THEY ought to do the f-ing port job. Just like any other OS vendor. NOT the hardware manufacturer.
Did intel write the x86 port of BeOS?
Did intel write the x86 version of Solaris?
f-ing Microsoft needs to get off their high-horse, because that model was bullshit anyway.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Oh, I messed with a beta too, and no, it didn't crash, and yes, it was very, very slow on a PII 300 with 128mb RAM.
However, I couldn't get any of the advance features to work, because everything relied on DNS (microsoft DNS), and I couldn't get the DNS server to install. I got a lame message that "RPC Service was not available". Just a popup dialog. No event log messages, nothing else. Of course the RPC Service showed it was running just fine.
It was an isolated network, so there was no TCP/IP addressing issue.
However, it did run that nifty pinball game GREAT!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
I have it running on a 64 meg 486-66 (in my lab).
Believe me. It's SLOOOOOW.
My biggest lab machine right now is a dual Pentium 166 with 64 megs RAM, and I don't plan on upgrading that to W2K. Too slow. In fact, now that I think of it, I don't even have a PII. . . I probably won't be able to run W2K at all. I think I need some new equipment.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Funny tho, the GUI's still SLOW.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
That shell was not supported, and IIRC had a lot of bugs, and probably would be incompatible with a lot of modern software. You're talking about something that's 4 years old. There's so much tied in with Explorer, if you're talking about IE, and Office and desktop type applications. . .
I wouldn't recommend it. I would instead recommend fdisk, and install Linux, but, you gotta run what you gotta run at work.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
fwiw, most of my crashes (okay, lets be specific here, BSOD-en) seem to be networking and file-system related.
.
Right now, I have a folder in my Recycle Bin, that when I try to empty, I get an error saying the file or directory is corrupt. I can empty all the other stuff in there, but this one folder won't go away. I know that if I format the disk, the problem will go away, but I also know that if I format the disk, I'll have to reinstall the OS (it's not my startup disk, but I have all my apps installed there, including MS Office, which has a bunch of links and crap with the startup of the OS, so if I delete that, I won't be able to boot properly)
in other words NT sucks, and I'll be very happy when it becomes irrelevant to the business model of the company I work for, so we can get some REAL computers. It's already starting, I have a SPARC Ultra 10 PO awaiting approval. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
I was telling people this about MS three years ago when Merced was just a twinkle in intel's eye, then again, last year when every OS vendor in the world except IBM, Apple, and MS made HUGE noise about porting their shit to ia64. I could understand then why Apple wouldn't, and IBM, because they only had one intel OS anyway, OS/2. But I couldn't understand why MS wasn't making any noise. Oh sure, they did have whitepapers saying that they planned a 64-bit port, but it was unnatural for them to not jump on the hype bandwagon, especially with their history of FUD and Vapor - I began to see this as a symptom - that they must be seriously in trouble on the 64-bit front if they were afraid to at least issue vapor.
Now we know.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
My idea was Comix
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Last year, TechNet CD reported MCSE's average salary actually DECREASED.
(I suppose when supply goes up, demand goes down, eh?)
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
"Who cares if MS sucks? Life sucks. Everything sucks. So? Yippee!!!!"
Whole lotta sucking going on
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
I can say that when I worked for Palindrome (now defunct tape backup software company), we had NT Alpha, and NT PPC ports in the works for Palindrome Storage Manager. Microsoft's wishy-washiness for the other platforms strongly aided in the destruction of those projects. Sigh. In those years, it really looked like MS WAS going to take over the world, and even our Unix port was crushed in an act of PHB-ness, and our ROOTS in Novell were rapidly disintegrating (although that was more Novell's fault - crappy developer support).
Remembering those years - 96, 97. . . things really are better these days. Though I don't really care if Novell makes a comeback or not, it certainly is refreshing to see this Linux movement grow and take hold, and even see Macintosh recover somewhat.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
NT PPC died - because MS had enough clout and audacity to demand that the HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS do the porting of the OS to their own chip: Moto had to port to PPC, DEC (now Compaq) had to port to Alpha, etc.
Moto couldn't/wouldn't do it for some insane reason, so MS asked Moto to pay some obscene fee to port THEIR OS to PPC. Needless to say, after NT 4, MS raised the fee, and Moto told them to stuff it.
Now, Moto has done a number of moronic things prior and since regarding the advancement and advocacy of the PPC chip - we won't go into this sordid history here.
But yes, back in 1993/94, the future looked very bright indeed for the PPC, and I got into Macs BECAUSE of this potential future (like them still, but rail agains the price). Although I would have thought, several years back, that if PPC went nowhere, and then would have been ressurected 5 years later, there would be no chance, because by then, Intel would have caught up.
Boy was I wrong. Intel hasn't done shit other than raise prices, and maneuver to shut out x86 competition, and let MS take care of competition on the Sun and IBM side of things. And now PPC is poised for a resurgence.
Only that one dickhead at Motorola (the guy who wants Intel and NT everywhere) and Steve Jobs stand in the way. They can probably kill this new PPC movement, it remains to be seen, the fortitude of these neo-CHRP cloners. Can they withstand being bought out or otherwise sleazed to death by Apple and Motorola? (the purchase - and likely subsequent destruction of Metrowerks may have been Motorola's move in that direction, with a nice side effect of hosing Apple in the process).
The only thing I know, is now, though NT PPC would mean more PPC chips sold, I think that the ABSENCE of NT PPC does more good in the net, and furthers "the cause".
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
When you shove two of them into a dresser drawer, and close it, they shout alarmed phrases of gibberish.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
You assume a lot when you say that Apple will reduce the price of their boxes based on a lower PPC cost.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm a die-hard Mac fan, I bleed in 6 colors, etc., and I have a G3 at home that I absolutely love, but Apple still WAY overprices their stuff.
I just hope that someday, the G4/AltiVec boxes running OS X ship, while the concept is still relevant.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
Hell, with Photocop, they don't even have to stop you anymore. You're ticket's in the mail.
I think that the next step will be, a digital photo system, that's connected to the internet. It automatically email's your ticket to you, and remotely key-escrow decrypts your Quicken account, and has it paid.
You've got mail!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
why not just make driving illegal, and then hook little meters up to our cars, which radio the state dept of transportation to garnishee our paychecks to pay the fines automatically.
This whole unreasonably low speed limit/fine/selective enforcement/illegal search and seizure/ thing is complete bullshit, and now they want to streamline the process of sucking our money?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
From all the comments I see here - I see that it's almost unanimous that Harley Joel Osment would be a better choice than Jake Lloyd.
Is there a single person out there who can say that they did not like 6th Sense, or Osment's performance? I'd like to hear from them.
I originally read a bad review about this movie, but the trailers were too compelling, especially the cuts with Osment. I went and saw the movie and loved it. I was told there would be a suprise ending, but not what the suprise would be. This was awesome storytelling. I grew quite bored in the middle of the film, and had lots of questions about things that didn't make sense, and then the very end explained it all, and put everything into place. The reviewer complained that it was boring, and was not phased by the suprise ending.
If we all agree, then maybe a few of us (not all of us) ought to drop this obvious suggestion into Mr. Card's mailbox. I suspect this is the proper place to submit requests of this kind: oscinfo@hatrack.com (or maybe not)
Perhaps fish around on the www.hatrack.com site too.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law