Windows2000 has hopeless support for many peripherals as well, HP, for example, are not creating W2K drivers for their printers, ATI still haven't released a production W2K driver etc. etc. It's not a consumer OS and therefore suffers from the same lack of support as Linux. Linux is not competing for the average Joe yet, it's competing for workstation/server installations in corporations. There is nothing now on my NT workstation that I couldn't do in Linux. I don't need USB support, I don't need Photoshop, I just need something that allows me to do my work without random crashes. Usability is irrelevant when the only thing I need is programming tools and Word/Excel compatibility, and since the company I work for also has a Citrix server, if I need something MS-only, I can log in via my free Citrix client and use it.
At home I use Win98 when I have to (DVD and games) and Linux for everything else. I don't care about anti-aliased fonts, they are loooooong way down my Linux wishlist.
600MB is still not a trivial download even on a cable modem, especially when it costs hardly anything to rent it. Connectivity is still a bit away from being able to pirate anything quickly, unless you're at a university with Internet2 connectivity, which most people with computers are not. Where are the streaming video servers from the MPAA where I can watch what I want when I want for a small fee? I'd sign up for that in an instant.
That's because most programmer tasks are mind-numbing fire-fighting, due to the poor design of the original system. I enjoy coding when I get the chance to do it, but I only think of the money when I have to unravel some piece of spaghetti that was badly-specified and changed dozens of times. I much prefer to write my own code, but there's plenty of shit code around that companies are quite happy to pay outrageous wages to have maintained.
But Greenpeace do more than just cause trouble, but then you knew that, right? I recycle, that is a lot more helpful than cleaning up litter. But there is a limit to what one person can do, that's why demonstrations and lobbying are required, to point out to those with the power to effect large scale changes see that it is wanted. As it happens I agree with the idea of nuclear power - when done properly, it's a great deal cleaner than power from fossil fuel generators and far more sustainable. My objection is that safety and cleanliness are compromised by greed and laziness. I'm not a whiner, I do what I can, but I'm only one person and I have a very small amount of money compared to the power companies, and they are the ones that need to change, just as much as the general public does. No change is effected by just sitting there and doing nothing, the foundation of your country being an excellent example of this.
What do you suggest I do then? Recycle? I do? Join Greenpeace? I have? Take part in demonstrations? Not yet, but soon. Or should I start saving up now so that I can buy myself the national grid of every country in the world? The ways to save the environment are well-known, the 'whinging' is what is required to bring it forward as an important issue to the rest of the world.
Competing standards in mobile phones do suck just like having multiple incompatible PC hardware standards would suck. I like the fact that I can go anywhere in Europe and still have my mobile work, but I would have to pay a fortune for a mobile that would work everywhere in the US. Since the next step in the industry will be mobile wireless computing and the multiple incompatible mobile standards are hindering mobile adoption in the US, you should be concerned. Europe will have 3G (high-speed wireless) well before the US thanks to GSM, so how can it be a bad thing? Also GSM allows for multiple frequencies, so how can there not be frequencies for GSM but there are for three competing standards?
As far as I can tell, the garage scene consists of a bloke with a drawn-on beard, a fat ex-boy band member, a bunch of black guys wittering on about how they're the best rappers in the world and how much sex they have (every 'new' music style has had this since 1982 - old aren't I?) and the obligatory 'sassy' (i.e. wearing virtually nothing) females.
According to pricewatch, a KT133 + Duron 700 costs $147, whereas a Celeron 800 costs $202, so you'd save a bit of time just buying a new Celeron, or for less money and an extra half an hour, you'll get a better processor and a motherboard together.
Yes, it's always someone else's fault, never the poor design of the OS, which AFAIK doesn't produce core dumps, making it more difficult to debug errors on users' PCs and thus fix them more quickly and accurately.
As a person who has the misfortune of being a COBOL programmer, I fixed loads of Y2K bugs in the shoddiest hacked-together code ever. Peter de Jager deserves credit as the man who saved the world, as the PHBs certainly wouldn't have had the vision to fix the problem without a lot of publicity.
The thing is, though, that there's nothing to stop you fixing it yourself, as you have all the source available. You don't have to wait for the Microsoft bureaucracy to decide it's important enough for them to fix.
There is that, and of course there's also a huge range of different configurations a user could have, making it more difficult for a virus writer to create a successful hack. Also there are no mail programs on Linux that automatically execute unknown programs.
They have to develop for the Mac because they need Apple around as evidence that they're not a monopoly on the desktop. Without the anti-trust trial, Office for the Mac would never have existed. Office for Linux doesn't exist because Linux would almost immediately eat WindowsNT/2000 for breakfast, whereas the Mac is no threat in that department. There's a reason why Compaq, Sun, IBM, Dell, Intel and Oracle have investments in Linux, they can see it's potential to remove the closed monopolistic Windows and replace it with an open OS. I'm always surprised to see people defend a single closed unreliable product, when the PC they use would not exist had the standards not been freely available (thanks to the IBM anti-trust trial folks). Look at how powerful PCs are now, and yet the shipped home OS has barely changed since Windows 95. Look how long it took Microsoft to produce a reliable OS in Windows 2000 and it still crashes occasionally for no obvious reason. Microsoft are a blot on a thriving market and the sooner they are cut down to size the better.
That's what I thought, so I bought Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I was just starting to get into it when the machine automatically rebooted itself. So it's not perfect. I'll stick to Win98 for games and Linux for everything else.
You're absolutely right. IBM are giving away a billion dollars out of the goodness of their hearts. I reiterate the post above. How many corporations make huge profits in their first few years of life, especially when competing against an entrenched monopoly? You're going to look pretty stupid when RedHat and VA post their first profits next year. BTW SuSE already do, although they're a private company, not a corporation.
SuSE makes a profit apparently, although they are a private company, not a corporation. IBM have set aside a billion dollars for Linux-based projects - nice experiment. Or are you saying that companies should be instantly profitable. How much profit did Microsoft make in their first few years? Have Amazon made one yet? It's a poor comparison - Linux companies have only been around for 5 years at the most, competing against a monopoly that has been around for 25.
But they have to obtain a license to sell to scumbags, which various governments are only too delighted to supply. My country, the UK, is just as happy to give Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace the same freedom, despite being in violation of various UN resolutions and international laws that they've signed up to.
Because one of the defendants is a UK citizen. The DVD software is under Californian law and the first court ruled that even foreign nationals are bound by the laws of a single state of the US. Time for one of our inertial governments to break this cartel up.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows2000 has hopeless support for many peripherals as well, HP, for example, are not creating W2K drivers for their printers, ATI still haven't released a production W2K driver etc. etc. It's not a consumer OS and therefore suffers from the same lack of support as Linux. Linux is not competing for the average Joe yet, it's competing for workstation/server installations in corporations. There is nothing now on my NT workstation that I couldn't do in Linux. I don't need USB support, I don't need Photoshop, I just need something that allows me to do my work without random crashes. Usability is irrelevant when the only thing I need is programming tools and Word/Excel compatibility, and since the company I work for also has a Citrix server, if I need something MS-only, I can log in via my free Citrix client and use it.
At home I use Win98 when I have to (DVD and games) and Linux for everything else. I don't care about anti-aliased fonts, they are loooooong way down my Linux wishlist.
But Linus has never claimed to be innovative, unlike the evil empire.
600MB is still not a trivial download even on a cable modem, especially when it costs hardly anything to rent it. Connectivity is still a bit away from being able to pirate anything quickly, unless you're at a university with Internet2 connectivity, which most people with computers are not. Where are the streaming video servers from the MPAA where I can watch what I want when I want for a small fee? I'd sign up for that in an instant.
That's because most programmer tasks are mind-numbing fire-fighting, due to the poor design of the original system. I enjoy coding when I get the chance to do it, but I only think of the money when I have to unravel some piece of spaghetti that was badly-specified and changed dozens of times. I much prefer to write my own code, but there's plenty of shit code around that companies are quite happy to pay outrageous wages to have maintained.
And the mere 5.4GB on a DVD is trivial to trade. I'm always downloading DVDs over my cable modem.
</SARCASM>
But Greenpeace do more than just cause trouble, but then you knew that, right? I recycle, that is a lot more helpful than cleaning up litter. But there is a limit to what one person can do, that's why demonstrations and lobbying are required, to point out to those with the power to effect large scale changes see that it is wanted. As it happens I agree with the idea of nuclear power - when done properly, it's a great deal cleaner than power from fossil fuel generators and far more sustainable. My objection is that safety and cleanliness are compromised by greed and laziness. I'm not a whiner, I do what I can, but I'm only one person and I have a very small amount of money compared to the power companies, and they are the ones that need to change, just as much as the general public does. No change is effected by just sitting there and doing nothing, the foundation of your country being an excellent example of this.
What do you suggest I do then? Recycle? I do? Join Greenpeace? I have? Take part in demonstrations? Not yet, but soon. Or should I start saving up now so that I can buy myself the national grid of every country in the world? The ways to save the environment are well-known, the 'whinging' is what is required to bring it forward as an important issue to the rest of the world.
Competing standards in mobile phones do suck just like having multiple incompatible PC hardware standards would suck. I like the fact that I can go anywhere in Europe and still have my mobile work, but I would have to pay a fortune for a mobile that would work everywhere in the US. Since the next step in the industry will be mobile wireless computing and the multiple incompatible mobile standards are hindering mobile adoption in the US, you should be concerned. Europe will have 3G (high-speed wireless) well before the US thanks to GSM, so how can it be a bad thing? Also GSM allows for multiple frequencies, so how can there not be frequencies for GSM but there are for three competing standards?
So it's no different to the US then?
As far as I can tell, the garage scene consists of a bloke with a drawn-on beard, a fat ex-boy band member, a bunch of black guys wittering on about how they're the best rappers in the world and how much sex they have (every 'new' music style has had this since 1982 - old aren't I?) and the obligatory 'sassy' (i.e. wearing virtually nothing) females.
According to pricewatch, a KT133 + Duron 700 costs $147, whereas a Celeron 800 costs $202, so you'd save a bit of time just buying a new Celeron, or for less money and an extra half an hour, you'll get a better processor and a motherboard together.
I've seen WinCE crash on a workmate's HP Jornada, but no doubt it was HP's fault and nothing to do with the flawless software from Redmond.
Yes, it's always someone else's fault, never the poor design of the OS, which AFAIK doesn't produce core dumps, making it more difficult to debug errors on users' PCs and thus fix them more quickly and accurately.
Does this mean that Microsoft are going to turn into (dan dan dan) Apple?
As a person who has the misfortune of being a COBOL programmer, I fixed loads of Y2K bugs in the shoddiest hacked-together code ever. Peter de Jager deserves credit as the man who saved the world, as the PHBs certainly wouldn't have had the vision to fix the problem without a lot of publicity.
The thing is, though, that there's nothing to stop you fixing it yourself, as you have all the source available. You don't have to wait for the Microsoft bureaucracy to decide it's important enough for them to fix.
Have you got a link for that, preferrably not on microsoft.com?
There is that, and of course there's also a huge range of different configurations a user could have, making it more difficult for a virus writer to create a successful hack. Also there are no mail programs on Linux that automatically execute unknown programs.
They have to develop for the Mac because they need Apple around as evidence that they're not a monopoly on the desktop. Without the anti-trust trial, Office for the Mac would never have existed. Office for Linux doesn't exist because Linux would almost immediately eat WindowsNT/2000 for breakfast, whereas the Mac is no threat in that department. There's a reason why Compaq, Sun, IBM, Dell, Intel and Oracle have investments in Linux, they can see it's potential to remove the closed monopolistic Windows and replace it with an open OS. I'm always surprised to see people defend a single closed unreliable product, when the PC they use would not exist had the standards not been freely available (thanks to the IBM anti-trust trial folks). Look at how powerful PCs are now, and yet the shipped home OS has barely changed since Windows 95. Look how long it took Microsoft to produce a reliable OS in Windows 2000 and it still crashes occasionally for no obvious reason. Microsoft are a blot on a thriving market and the sooner they are cut down to size the better.
That's what I thought, so I bought Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I was just starting to get into it when the machine automatically rebooted itself. So it's not perfect. I'll stick to Win98 for games and Linux for everything else.
You're absolutely right. IBM are giving away a billion dollars out of the goodness of their hearts. I reiterate the post above. How many corporations make huge profits in their first few years of life, especially when competing against an entrenched monopoly? You're going to look pretty stupid when RedHat and VA post their first profits next year. BTW SuSE already do, although they're a private company, not a corporation.
SuSE makes a profit apparently, although they are a private company, not a corporation. IBM have set aside a billion dollars for Linux-based projects - nice experiment. Or are you saying that companies should be instantly profitable. How much profit did Microsoft make in their first few years? Have Amazon made one yet? It's a poor comparison - Linux companies have only been around for 5 years at the most, competing against a monopoly that has been around for 25.
That's why Compaq, Dell, IBM, HP, SGI, Intel and Oracle are all interested in Linux, because they're not corporations and would like to be someday.
But they have to obtain a license to sell to scumbags, which various governments are only too delighted to supply. My country, the UK, is just as happy to give Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace the same freedom, despite being in violation of various UN resolutions and international laws that they've signed up to.
Because one of the defendants is a UK citizen. The DVD software is under Californian law and the first court ruled that even foreign nationals are bound by the laws of a single state of the US. Time for one of our inertial governments to break this cartel up.