Ah, it's not RFC-dictated. MS publishes their hardware certification standards (Windows logo certification) and their minimum is 2, though having more clearly doesn't mean they'll come knocking on your door demanding the "Designed For Windows9x/2k/XP" sticker back off your PC.
Any Windows hardware developers who know the details of the certification process who'd like to explain further? (Or tell me that I'm wrong).
Actually a patch exists for Word that would fix the problem as well.
(a) The point is that Word97 would save it into a file with the exact same extension that the previous version cannot use, with no warning. Consider it in the context of a world where Word97 had only just appeared, and that you were happily using your not-so-cheap Office95, and then all of a sudden this.DOC appears from a business-associate that you would have thought your Word95 could open, but couldn't. Imagine if someone mailed you a.txt file and you couldn't open it.
(b) Microsoft only released the importer a significant amount of time after Word97's release. (I personally feel this is evidence that they intentionally made the file-formats incompatible to drive sales, but that's just me). If I recall correctly, more than a year. It's not very useful to be dying of a disease that will kill you in 6 months to know that a cure will arrive in 1 year.
Re:Do they have...
on
OS X Hacks
·
· Score: 4, Informative
How do you emulate 3 buttons with 1 button device
Indirectly answering the question:
Whether or not you consider the choice by Apple to continue using single-button mice is reasonable, for those who consider it wrong, note that "too few buttons on the mouse" is not a complaint that can only be aimed at the MacOS.
From the perspective of a traditional UNIX workstation user, Windows has too few buttons - they (e.g. Sun Microsystems Sparc-based machines) ship with 3-button mice. It is true you can get 3- (or however-many) button mice for x86 machines, but then (a) that's a "nonstandard" variation already since the "standard"/baseline for Windows is 2, and (b) you can do so for the Mac too.
This is why if you look at (and those who program GUI apps should know this already) the mouse event/action classes in Java, there are more than 2 defined mouse "button-actions", that if the physical hardware does not exist (i.e. only two-button mice are on the machine) the same effect is achieved with modifier keys (Opt/Alt-click, Ctrl-click, or whatnot).
BTW, I can read a Word'95 doc into Office 97, Office 2000, and Office XP. It's really a non-issue
Yes and no - MS has put in a lot of work (although in the grand scheme of things it may not mean all that much since they have so many resources to throw at any problem) in maintaining forward compatibility for apps etc. (e.g. when Win95 was first released I was reading about how they had specific code to modify behaviour (i.e. reimplement bugs:-) in Win3.x to suit certain commonly used apps so that customers who upgrade-installed Win95 could use their old apps).
But let's not forget how when Word97 came out the.DOC format changed and Word95 users could not read it, unless the document was saved in "compatibility" format, by which they meant RTF and therefore losing the majority of the Word functions (tables etc.).
We may be facing this with the next "XML document format" MS Word on the way....
that's not the crux of my question though - *would* it be enough for someone to sue on if it weren't? I'm getting all confused re: what is acceptable/not acceptable when it comes to things like "fair use", "acceptable parody" etc. etc.
when it comes to copyrighted material like music or movies there's quite a lot of limitations that can legally be placed on what you can or can not do with it - I mean, home videos/DVDs always have these warnings before the movie starts about how it's for "home use" only etc.; presumably this means that, say, if I want to make a short film satirising... randomly grab name out of the air Spiderman, as some crazy Republican/Democrat/Independent/whatever-pick-your -poison character, I would get sued?
(b) If not - I'm assuming Scott Adams is not an asshole, but just for my info - can anyone with legal training on this list tell me if the above is enough to sue for infringement?
The thing is I don't make the big decisions nor do I care to at this point
I'm not so sure we live in a world where it's the people who actually make the decisions who end up suffering because of it. Sometimes you don't get to choose who ends up holding the bag.
Personally, I like the way Pixar handles the problem with their movies - they movie the charaters and objects around so that everything fits and basically re-"film" the movie.
Can anybody give a source/cite for this? Is this true?
The big problem with that theory is that hard drives aren't really meant to be used as a back-up media. Everything I've heard is that they have reliability problems if stored for long periods of time.
Another problem that I think is being overlooked if you take the "keep the machine that is IDE compatible for 20 years" is that I can't think of any machine that is being manufactured now, in the IDE-compatible "PC world", that would last 20 years.
I think the idea is a fundamentally a "correct" one - what's wrong with hanging on to a device/tool that does what you want done for any length of time? Antique rifles are kept for many many decades (and still effectively useable no matter how much modern ones are superior etc.) with some maintenance/care, Abe Lincoln's axe (? I'm not American so not too sure, who was chopping up the cherry tree?). The problem with current manufacturing is that things are NOT built to "last" - not beyond the warranty period, and sometimes not even that, since it's cheaper for the manufacturers to replace bad components than to make sure everything's of the highest quality. I think it's safe to say not even server-class hardware for which you pay significant premiums over "standard" desktop PCs are going to last 20 years. This is a world with shifty capacitors leaking, bad RAM failing left and right, etc. etc.
Even worse, there'll basically be nothing that is truly end-user-repairable/serviceable when it comes to hardware. For an axe, well, you can re-sharpen the blade, change the head (?), for the rifle you can maybe machine new parts if the old parts wear out, etc. Unless you run a fab, are you going to be sure you can get any replacement chips/parts? Stocking up on "spares" may not be helpful either since things can degrade even just in storage.
BTW - Cisco's getting out of the client card business?? Hrm... in that case won't their purchase of Linksys mean it's another right-hand-doesn't-know-what-left-hand-is-doing kind of situation?
As far as I can tell the Cisco solution, though it works, is mucho expensive. You require Cisco-only hardware, not just access points, but also Cisco client radios, so you have to kit out all the users with new PCMCIA cards etc. if you want everyone to use LEAP (well, unless they're using Macs, since Apple seems to have come to some arrangement with Cisco that allows their Lucent/Agere/whateverthey'recallednow-originating Airport cards to connect to LEAP networks. Does anyone have any information about people getting their WaveLAN/Orinoco/Avaya cards connecting to LEAP networks? I've tried using one of these cards with a PowerBook, *although* they're identified as Airport cards and have no problems when used to connect with non-LEAP networks, they just don't seem to work with LEAP however).
Notwithstanding the hardware expenditure alone, there's also software - the only LEAP implementations I know about all use the Cisco wireless server software which is both fairly pricey (I am not making a judgement as to "value for money" here, I'm just saying the sticker price is not insignificant), *on top of which* it also requires Win2k Server running underneath it providing domain controller services etc. (unless there's some UNIX-based version of the Cisco server I don't know about. Anyone enlighten me?). So, as far as I know, you have to pay for the hardware, you have to pay for the software, and you have to pay for the OS. Is there any option for taking the last two out of the equation? Can you get LEAP (or LEAP-equivalents, are there any?) to work on, say, BSD with some kind of RADIUS server?
PS: I'm no legal expert, but if they wanted to use the names as codenames, why did they have to involve the legal team before
In one word: Apple.
Apple had a nasty experience where - as a mark of *respect*/homage for the fellow - the internal development team for one of their PowerMacs decided to use "Sagan" as the code name for the machine that was in development. This is a name that would *never* be used externally in marketing or branding or promotion, but when Sagan heard of it he got pissed off and went at Apple with his lawyers etc. - he basically felt that use of his name would suggest that he endorsed it, or that Apple would gain free-publicity etc. -- which certainly came as a surprise to the devteam. After that they decided they didn't like Sagan that much anymore, so they changed the code name to BHA. Sagan sued again when word spread (true or not:-) that "BHA" stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer".
You can read more if you google, but here's one link:
it's like a really annoying and loud child, you want it silent right now or you'll go INSANE!, but soon after you've killed the kid, you'll realize just how much you missed their skreetching at the top of their little lungs....
I really hope you're not speaking out of personal experience, here
Could it be another use (resurgence?) of file metadata on the Mac? I mean, the filesystem still supports resource forks etc. even if OS X doesn't do very much with it.
No, it was "rip, mix, burn" - rip from CDs you own, mix it up, burn it to disc.
I wonder if the VCs at Hummer Winblad are starting to worry. Instead of an investment opportunity they seem to have opened the doorway into their own wallets....
Anyways, there's also the question of emulation - does it really matter if the chip isn't running an OS "natively" if I can trigger an emulated environment and run an x-year-old OS at acceptable speeds (thanks to the sheer oomph of modern hardware)? MS' purchase of Connectix was in part?wholly? predicated on them wanting to be able to sell people a Win2k3 server that would allow them to run NT4 "inside", if I've understood the reports correctly... . emulation tools exist to run pre-PPC MacOS on even x86 machines (http://www.emulation.net) and let's not forget all the game-console emulators, MAMe etc.
There are also plenty of differences between FreeBSD and OS X. for example, OS X will default use an LDAP-like (netinfo) system for maintaining user accounts/passwords etc., that originated from it's shared NeXT roots (I guess you can call OS X the unholy offspring of... well never mind). No amount of editing/etc files would work, for example, if what you wanted to change if you didn't know about netinfo (well unless you're in single user mode when the system would look there). Quite a lot of system "arrangements" are different, as well, you'll be tripped up by the filesystem if you weren't aware that default Mac filesystem (HFS+) is case *aware* but not case-sensitive, or that several of the directories you're familiar with/expect are actually symlinks (/etc is actually -->/private/etc) and if you're not careful with your scripting (assuming you're not doing anything trivial/simple) you can screw up something bigtime (I'm talking personal experience here:-).
advise strongly against using it for travel. Epsecially for his girlfriend since women, on average, have less upper body muscle mass then men.
What this really means is that if he gets his girlfriend a Dell, it'll give large numbers of random strangers the opportunity to walk up, smile their charming smile, and say, "hey, can I help you with that?"
Do you REALLY want that to happen?:-)
"hey, can I help you with that?"
"oh, would you? it's so heavy, my arms are so tired now, thank you!"
"*ooph* man, why'd you get such a heavy machine?"
"uh, no, it's a present from my boyfriend"
"oh? he must not love you very much, getting you this chunky thing. I, on the other hand, despite my rippling muscles and great upper body strength and complete willingness to help you carry anything heavy anywhere you want to go, will love you much MUCH more, I'll buy you the good-looking, sexy powerbook that a good-looking, sexy woman like you deserves!"
almost all computing equipment nowadays are built to lower standards than in the past - i guess you could say the older stuff was in a sense overengineered. Maybe it doesn't make sense to build a PC that will last ten years when the components in it will be obsolete in 2. But personally I like the older, better built stuff. I have circa-1989 Mac IIcis that still work. I have IBM original-pentium-era PCs that still serve me well, running less intensive tasks, but working nonetheless. Quite frankly a lot of the "horsepower" of current machines is unnecessary.
But from the point of view of the vendor, they've just screwed themselves if theyve given you a machine that will last much longer than the warranty period - they've just almost certainly guaranteed they won't be seeing any more money from you for "X" years, *unless* they "luck out" and you're the kind of person to go around making sure everybody you know also gets one. But then they also dont have control over their whole user experience either - if the OS dies, will the general consumer think to blame the OS maker, or will they go look for another brand (possibly only to find out it wasnt the hardware, but then hey its too late for vendor A, no?)
look at the whole industry - hard disk warranties are shortening, motherboards are dying because of cheap capacitors - its a downward spiral into the toilet bowl, for product quality and longetivity. Its much cheaper for the vendors to replace parts (or refuse to replace parts) than to Build Things Right the first time round.
Here's a question - how do you set up this kind of "recovery" kit without running into licensing issues? If your kit consists entirely of open-source tools then fine, but from the submission as above don't you get the feeling most of the requests for help he gets are going to be e.g. Windows-based? In which case, won't carrying what is probably most useful for fixing these kinds of problems (particularly considering how so many Windows problems usually have one solution possible, which is "reinstall"), in other words copies of "a complete set" of Windows - Win95, 98, 98SE, ME, etc., involve possible violation of the EULA? Or does it mean that, if one wants to be a helpful-handyman-for-others, you'll want to give MS yet another big bundle of cash?
Logically speaking the people you're helping ought to have the necessary tools, discs, etc., but quite often you find they either don't have them anywhere ("uh, I need to keep those?") or they don't have them easily accessible. I've had a lot of experiences of being called in to help fix truly f@#$ed up Windows machines before and that's been generally the situation. This is additionally a bigger problem when you consider that some vendors nowadays no longer ship recovery CDs with their machines and instead keep the OS image on some hidden partition on their hard disk, which if it gets hosed then essentially there's nothing you can do.
Anyways, for NT problems what you've got to have is a copy of ERD Commander. Licensing for this is on a per-administrator-per-organisation basis (unless I misread the licence), i.e. for your company, if your'e the only one guy using it, no matter on how many machines it may become necessary, then you need one licence. If you've got a colleague with the same duties, then you need two. Hrm, if I consider All Men My Brothers and the Whole World as my organisation, does it mean I only need one copy to use with everybody's machines?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Any ideas who might be the happy hacker that led the Wachowski brothers in the right path?
Do we know that they themselves don't muck about with computers and would therefore personally be familiar with *nix etc.?
Ah, it's not RFC-dictated. MS publishes their hardware certification standards (Windows logo certification) and their minimum is 2, though having more clearly doesn't mean they'll come knocking on your door demanding the "Designed For Windows9x/2k/XP" sticker back off your PC.
Any Windows hardware developers who know the details of the certification process who'd like to explain further? (Or tell me that I'm wrong).
Actually a patch exists for Word that would fix the problem as well.
.DOC appears from a business-associate that you would have thought your Word95 could open, but couldn't. Imagine if someone mailed you a .txt file and you couldn't open it.
(a) The point is that Word97 would save it into a file with the exact same extension that the previous version cannot use, with no warning. Consider it in the context of a world where Word97 had only just appeared, and that you were happily using your not-so-cheap Office95, and then all of a sudden this
(b) Microsoft only released the importer a significant amount of time after Word97's release. (I personally feel this is evidence that they intentionally made the file-formats incompatible to drive sales, but that's just me). If I recall correctly, more than a year. It's not very useful to be dying of a disease that will kill you in 6 months to know that a cure will arrive in 1 year.
How do you emulate 3 buttons with 1 button device
Indirectly answering the question:
Whether or not you consider the choice by Apple to continue using single-button mice is reasonable, for those who consider it wrong, note that "too few buttons on the mouse" is not a complaint that can only be aimed at the MacOS.
From the perspective of a traditional UNIX workstation user, Windows has too few buttons - they (e.g. Sun Microsystems Sparc-based machines) ship with 3-button mice. It is true you can get 3- (or however-many) button mice for x86 machines, but then (a) that's a "nonstandard" variation already since the "standard"/baseline for Windows is 2, and (b) you can do so for the Mac too.
This is why if you look at (and those who program GUI apps should know this already) the mouse event/action classes in Java, there are more than 2 defined mouse "button-actions", that if the physical hardware does not exist (i.e. only two-button mice are on the machine) the same effect is achieved with modifier keys (Opt/Alt-click, Ctrl-click, or whatnot).
BTW, I can read a Word'95 doc into Office 97, Office 2000, and Office XP. It's really a non-issue
Yes and no - MS has put in a lot of work (although in the grand scheme of things it may not mean all that much since they have so many resources to throw at any problem) in maintaining forward compatibility for apps etc. (e.g. when Win95 was first released I was reading about how they had specific code to modify behaviour (i.e. reimplement bugs
But let's not forget how when Word97 came out the
We may be facing this with the next "XML document format" MS Word on the way...
that's good to hear :-)
... randomly grab name out of the air Spiderman, as some crazy Republican/Democrat/Independent/whatever-pick-your -poison
that's not the crux of my question though - *would* it be enough for someone to sue on if it weren't? I'm getting all confused re: what is acceptable/not acceptable when it comes to things like "fair use", "acceptable parody" etc. etc.
when it comes to copyrighted material like music or movies there's quite a lot of limitations that can legally be placed on what you can or can not do with it - I mean, home videos/DVDs always have these warnings before the movie starts about how it's for "home use" only etc.; presumably this means that, say, if I want to make a short film satirising
character, I would get sued?
(a) Was this an actual Dilbert strip?
(b) If not - I'm assuming Scott Adams is not an asshole, but just for my info - can anyone with legal training on this list tell me if the above is enough to sue for infringement?
The thing is I don't make the big decisions nor do I care to at this point
I'm not so sure we live in a world where it's the people who actually make the decisions who end up suffering because of it. Sometimes you don't get to choose who ends up holding the bag.
Personally, I like the way Pixar handles the problem with their movies - they movie the charaters and objects around so that everything fits and basically re-"film" the movie.
Can anybody give a source/cite for this? Is this true?
I hope you realize that RH is now up to 9.0.
Erm. I can't figure out if this was meant to be funny. Was it?
You know, I found this "funny" and not "redundant". I must respectfully disagree with the moderator who marked this redundant.
The big problem with that theory is that hard drives aren't really meant to be used as a back-up media. Everything I've heard is that they have reliability problems if stored for long periods of time.
Another problem that I think is being overlooked if you take the "keep the machine that is IDE compatible for 20 years" is that I can't think of any machine that is being manufactured now, in the IDE-compatible "PC world", that would last 20 years.
I think the idea is a fundamentally a "correct" one - what's wrong with hanging on to a device/tool that does what you want done for any length of time? Antique rifles are kept for many many decades (and still effectively useable no matter how much modern ones are superior etc.) with some maintenance/care, Abe Lincoln's axe (? I'm not American so not too sure, who was chopping up the cherry tree?). The problem with current manufacturing is that things are NOT built to "last" - not beyond the warranty period, and sometimes not even that, since it's cheaper for the manufacturers to replace bad components than to make sure everything's of the highest quality. I think it's safe to say not even server-class hardware for which you pay significant premiums over "standard" desktop PCs are going to last 20 years. This is a world with shifty capacitors leaking, bad RAM failing left and right, etc. etc.
Even worse, there'll basically be nothing that is truly end-user-repairable/serviceable when it comes to hardware. For an axe, well, you can re-sharpen the blade, change the head (?), for the rifle you can maybe machine new parts if the old parts wear out, etc. Unless you run a fab, are you going to be sure you can get any replacement chips/parts? Stocking up on "spares" may not be helpful either since things can degrade even just in storage.
Ah, great, thanks.
BTW - Cisco's getting out of the client card business?? Hrm... in that case won't their purchase of Linksys mean it's another right-hand-doesn't-know-what-left-hand-is-doing kind of situation?
I've got a question.
As far as I can tell the Cisco solution, though it works, is mucho expensive. You require Cisco-only hardware, not just access points, but also Cisco client radios, so you have to kit out all the users with new PCMCIA cards etc. if you want everyone to use LEAP (well, unless they're using Macs, since Apple seems to have come to some arrangement with Cisco that allows their Lucent/Agere/whateverthey'recallednow-originating Airport cards to connect to LEAP networks. Does anyone have any information about people getting their WaveLAN/Orinoco/Avaya cards connecting to LEAP networks? I've tried using one of these cards with a PowerBook, *although* they're identified as Airport cards and have no problems when used to connect with non-LEAP networks, they just don't seem to work with LEAP however).
Notwithstanding the hardware expenditure alone, there's also software - the only LEAP implementations I know about all use the Cisco wireless server software which is both fairly pricey (I am not making a judgement as to "value for money" here, I'm just saying the sticker price is not insignificant), *on top of which* it also requires Win2k Server running underneath it providing domain controller services etc. (unless there's some UNIX-based version of the Cisco server I don't know about. Anyone enlighten me?). So, as far as I know, you have to pay for the hardware, you have to pay for the software, and you have to pay for the OS. Is there any option for taking the last two out of the equation? Can you get LEAP (or LEAP-equivalents, are there any?) to work on, say, BSD with some kind of RADIUS server?
You know, just curious - was the parent post meant to be "interesting", or "funny"/"verbally ironic"?
PS: I'm no legal expert, but if they wanted to use the names as codenames, why did they have to involve the legal team before
:-) that "BHA" stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer".
2 .h tml
In one word: Apple.
Apple had a nasty experience where - as a mark of *respect*/homage for the fellow - the internal development team for one of their PowerMacs decided to use "Sagan" as the code name for the machine that was in development. This is a name that would *never* be used externally in marketing or branding or promotion, but when Sagan heard of it he got pissed off and went at Apple with his lawyers etc. - he basically felt that use of his name would suggest that he endorsed it, or that Apple would gain free-publicity etc. -- which certainly came as a surprise to the devteam. After that they decided they didn't like Sagan that much anymore, so they changed the code name to BHA. Sagan sued again when word spread (true or not
You can read more if you google, but here's one link:
http://www.petting-zoo.net/~deadbeef/archive/58
it's like a really annoying and loud child, you want it silent right now or you'll go INSANE!, but soon after you've killed the kid, you'll realize just how much you missed their skreetching at the top of their little lungs. ...
I really hope you're not speaking out of personal experience, here
Could it be another use (resurgence?) of file metadata on the Mac? I mean, the filesystem still supports resource forks etc. even if OS X doesn't do very much with it.
No, it was "rip, mix, burn" - rip from CDs you own, mix it up, burn it to disc.
.
I wonder if the VCs at Hummer Winblad are starting to worry. Instead of an investment opportunity they seem to have opened the doorway into their own wallets...
buyer beware indeed... .
Assuming the Itanic itself actually survives :-)
Anyways, there's also the question of emulation - does it really matter if the chip isn't running an OS "natively" if I can trigger an emulated environment and run an x-year-old OS at acceptable speeds (thanks to the sheer oomph of modern hardware)? MS' purchase of Connectix was in part?wholly? predicated on them wanting to be able to sell people a Win2k3 server that would allow them to run NT4 "inside", if I've understood the reports correctly... . emulation tools exist to run pre-PPC MacOS on even x86 machines (http://www.emulation.net) and let's not forget all the game-console emulators, MAMe etc.
There are also plenty of differences between FreeBSD and OS X. for example, OS X will default use an LDAP-like (netinfo) system for maintaining user accounts/passwords etc., that originated from it's shared NeXT roots (I guess you can call OS X the unholy offspring of... well never mind). No amount of editing /etc files would work, for example, if what you wanted to change if you didn't know about netinfo (well unless you're in single user mode when the system would look there). Quite a lot of system "arrangements" are different, as well, you'll be tripped up by the filesystem if you weren't aware that default Mac filesystem (HFS+) is case *aware* but not case-sensitive, or that several of the directories you're familiar with/expect are actually symlinks (/etc is actually --> /private/etc) and if you're not careful with your scripting (assuming you're not doing anything trivial/simple) you can screw up something bigtime (I'm talking personal experience here :-).
advise strongly against using it for travel. Epsecially for his girlfriend since women, on average, have less upper body muscle mass then men.
:-)
:-)
What this really means is that if he gets his girlfriend a Dell, it'll give large numbers of random strangers the opportunity to walk up, smile their charming smile, and say, "hey, can I help you with that?"
Do you REALLY want that to happen?
"hey, can I help you with that?"
"oh, would you? it's so heavy, my arms are so tired now, thank you!"
"*ooph* man, why'd you get such a heavy machine?"
"uh, no, it's a present from my boyfriend"
"oh? he must not love you very much, getting you this chunky thing. I, on the other hand, despite my rippling muscles and great upper body strength and complete willingness to help you carry anything heavy anywhere you want to go, will love you much MUCH more, I'll buy you the good-looking, sexy powerbook that a good-looking, sexy woman like you deserves!"
"drop the Dell, let's get married!"
almost all computing equipment nowadays are built to lower standards than in the past - i guess you could say the older stuff was in a sense overengineered. Maybe it doesn't make sense to build a PC that will last ten years when the components in it will be obsolete in 2. But personally I like the older, better built stuff. I have circa-1989 Mac IIcis that still work. I have IBM original-pentium-era PCs that still serve me well, running less intensive tasks, but working nonetheless. Quite frankly a lot of the "horsepower" of current machines is unnecessary.
But from the point of view of the vendor, they've just screwed themselves if theyve given you a machine that will last much longer than the warranty period - they've just almost certainly guaranteed they won't be seeing any more money from you for "X" years, *unless* they "luck out" and you're the kind of person to go around making sure everybody you know also gets one. But then they also dont have control over their whole user experience either - if the OS dies, will the general consumer think to blame the OS maker, or will they go look for another brand (possibly only to find out it wasnt the hardware, but then hey its too late for vendor A, no?)
look at the whole industry - hard disk warranties are shortening, motherboards are dying because of cheap capacitors - its a downward spiral into the toilet bowl, for product quality and longetivity. Its much cheaper for the vendors to replace parts (or refuse to replace parts) than to Build Things Right the first time round.
Ah, they have a "Professional Service Provider" licensing arrangement as well for those who fix machines outside of their organisation:
http://www.winternals.com/psp/index.asp
Here's a question - how do you set up this kind of "recovery" kit without running into licensing issues? If your kit consists entirely of open-source tools then fine, but from the submission as above don't you get the feeling most of the requests for help he gets are going to be e.g. Windows-based? In which case, won't carrying what is probably most useful for fixing these kinds of problems (particularly considering how so many Windows problems usually have one solution possible, which is "reinstall"), in other words copies of "a complete set" of Windows - Win95, 98, 98SE, ME, etc., involve possible violation of the EULA? Or does it mean that, if one wants to be a helpful-handyman-for-others, you'll want to give MS yet another big bundle of cash?
:-)
Logically speaking the people you're helping ought to have the necessary tools, discs, etc., but quite often you find they either don't have them anywhere ("uh, I need to keep those?") or they don't have them easily accessible. I've had a lot of experiences of being called in to help fix truly f@#$ed up Windows machines before and that's been generally the situation. This is additionally a bigger problem when you consider that some vendors nowadays no longer ship recovery CDs with their machines and instead keep the OS image on some hidden partition on their hard disk, which if it gets hosed then essentially there's nothing you can do.
Anyways, for NT problems what you've got to have is a copy of ERD Commander. Licensing for this is on a per-administrator-per-organisation basis (unless I misread the licence), i.e. for your company, if your'e the only one guy using it, no matter on how many machines it may become necessary, then you need one licence. If you've got a colleague with the same duties, then you need two. Hrm, if I consider All Men My Brothers and the Whole World as my organisation, does it mean I only need one copy to use with everybody's machines?