The expression "won't work with Linux" can usually be translated as "don't know if it works with Linux and we would not support it if we did".
I first met it with OS/2 rather than Linux when I was using internet banking in its early days. I rang the bank Help Desk (about a technical matter not a financial one) and it came out that I was on OS/2. "But Sir" they said "it doesn't run on OS/2, you have to use Windows!".... "But it is running in front of me now" I said.
They were so shocked, as if I were being really irresponsible, that I feared they would cut off my account; but they didn't
This is the same kind of comment I got when I asked Slashdot about... my mission to the moon. All I got was a flamewar over "spacecraft" versus "rocket."
As a onetime Officer of the Watch on the bridge of a large warship, I say it matters.
When I saw this headline I was expecting an article on reviving the idea of sailing mechant ships - you know, tankers with computer controlled wingsails, that sort of thing (a bit like the flying cars stories). But what I found was a guy preparing a medium size traditional sailing yacht [OK, sailboat in America] for sea.
If this guy is calling a sailing yacht [sailboat] a "ship", the first thing he needs before technology is to swot up on some basic seafaring terminology. VERY basic - I would have thought even a layman would know the difference. OTOH, if he is calling his yacht a ship out of some kind of inflated pride, then that is also out of place at sea. It is just idiotic.
For example, if he needs to radio and says his "ship" is in trouble, the rescue people are not going to be looking for a yacht.
Who said anything about a schooner. He called it a "ship", but it is not a ship (or schooner) in either the strict or the popular sense of the word.
In the strict sense, a ship is a sailing vessel of three or more masts, all square rigged. In the popular sense, a ship is any vessel over about 1000 tonnes.
The Wikipedia entry for a Skerry Cruiser shows a Bermuda rigged Sloop.
You have to learn to weigh up and read between the lines of both amateur and professional reviews.
For example, just an example, Ryobi garden machinery is crap, as I know from experience. Look up reviews eg here:-
www.reviewcentre.com
... (where I have written both good and bad reviews myself without censorship) and you will find lots of people saying Ryobi stuff is crap, but there is also a minority who say it is great. I have no doubt there is variation in people's experience (sometimes I have been the only person defending something myself) but clearly the balance is bad in such a case. But the ones saying crap often go into some detail as to why it is crap (or why it is good), and when they do that it starts to sound genuine.
One issue raised about Ryobi is that you cannot easily get spares (in UK anyway - and Ryobi stuff sure needs spares). This is something that you might not think about when you buy (I thought it was a legal requirement for certain classes of goods), but having been warned by the reviews you can check out the point for yourself - try ordering a spare part from the place that is selling the whole items. And by "spares" I don't mean gloves and goggles (as the salesman will), I mean things like ignition coils and drive shafts. My point is that reviews can make you aware of aspects you may overlook, that you can then check for yourself if you don't believe it.
OTOH I read a customer review raving about something along the lines : "It's great! just as I expected! I am delighted with my new gizmo. It does everything I wanted it to. I can't wait to try it out for the first time !" Idiot.
In fact the barrels of firearms intended for the Southern hemisphere are rifled the opposite way. It is to do with compensating the Coriolis acceleration due to moving over a spinning globe.
The reason in the Boer War that the Boers seems so much better shots than the British, initially put down to the Boers being country folk brought up with hunting rifles while the Tommies were townies, was because the Boers had their rifles and artillery made for the Southern hemisphere, while the British guns were designed for a Northern hemisphere war, it being more likely for them.
Agreed. Although you sound a bit up-tight, it is a fact that he is giving away money which is in part dishonestly obtained by shady and downright illegal practices, MS being a convicted monopolist. So it is partly other people's money he is being free with.
Refund a chunk of that money to MS customers and let them decide for themselves if they want to give it to Gate's charities or power stations.
Having been closely involved in building a nuclear power station myself, I can tell you that US$35 million will go almost no-where. Yet Gates will get his name on it for that as if he built it single handed?
When in primary school, all us kids sponsored some community building by paying 25 pence each to write our name on a brick. I bet my brick was cemented up behind the urinals.
In the days of land lines I was reading the fine print in the phone book (remember "the phone book"?) and noticed I could list my name any way I wanted for free....so I put the listing under the name of my imaginary roommate. Whenever I got a call asking for Mr. Skoog I knew it was a cold sales call.
Do you find it so hard to recognise a cold sales call otherwise?
Your comment was not censored, it's on the article.
Yes, it has now re-appeared.
He isn't pushing for a better design of toilet for the UK. He's pushing for a better design of toilet in the developing world.
...but....
Gates said. "Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do.... It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing."
I see "wealthier countries" there, not just developing world.
And a lot of people in the developing world don't live near water, so your randomly-generated 60% figure is irrelevant.
It was not randomly generated. It was Gates (in TFA that you urge me to read) who said that 40% do not have access to water. I was wagering that far more than 60% do, (100-40 being 60). Just take a look at an atlas to see where the concentrations are.
Here in the UK there is no shortage of water for flushing, but there is a hippy/green element who want us to give up flushing for political reasons - to bring it home that some parts of the world are short of water. Like Mussolini getting the air-raid sirens to sound in Rome every time there was a raid on Germany, just to remind the Italian people there was a war on. {Hope that does not infringe Godwin]
Just to be clear, I am not against developing waterless toilets for arid regions, as I have stated in a further post on the IBT site.
A few minutes ago I placed a comment (apparently the first) on the linked website (International Business Times) which was not 100% worship of the God Gates. It appeared, but when I checked a few minutes later it had gone. They seem very touchy.
I thought my comment was perfectly reasonable. Here it is:-
Gates said:- "The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don't have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems."
Why does a flush toilet need electricity? Mine doesn't; moreover, although I live in a wealthy rural part of the UK I have no main sewer connection. The toilet flushes to my own septic tank where the stuff decomposes - it is little more than a masonery tank set below the ground and looks after itself apart from my getting the solids pumped out once a year. It isn't rocket science.
It uses water, but doesn't most of the World's population live near water? Far more than 60% I'd wager. It does not need to be drinkable. Yes, there are regions that do not, but we have plenty of it in the UK, so no thanks Gates, this "wealthier country" does not need to your stinking toilets to conserve water. Take your concerns elsewhere.
He, or someone at Microsoft, put some kind of pressure on the project to use Windows rather than a free OS. He did not want the kiddies growing up being accustomed to Linux.
insurance for two vehicles for one driver can actually be cheaper then having one insured, have you shopped around?Insurance for two vehicles with one driver is definitely less than double of one vehicle, but it is far more than just a single vehicle. Insurance is a scam.
I agree with the last bit. However, in the UK insuring two cars is just like you are two separate people, to the extent that having built up a "safe driver" discount (called a "no-claims bonus" in the UK, typically 40-60% off) for a vehicle, if you then insure a second vehicle you do not get that discount on first insuring it. You have to build over the years to that discount again on the second vehicle. I am talking about insurance for one named driver who clearly cannot be driving both vehicles at once.
Absolutely barmy. In my case, wanting to add a camper van (a small thing in the UK, not one of those those giant motorhomes) would have put my car insurance bill up from about £200 (I can't remember exact figures) up to about £900. It is hardly as if my second vehicle was a sports car and I was revealing a Walter Mitty tendency.
I drive a pickup truck that seats six passengers. I can haul things, tow things, carry passengers, or load the rear of the cab with tools and boxes of cable.
Most of the people in your situation does those things so seldom that it would be cheaper for them to own a smaller vehicle and rent a larger vehicle when they need to do work that requires a truck or if they need to carry more than 3 passengers.
Speak for yourself chum. Don't assume everyone leads the same lifestyle as yourself.
I have always owned one of the largest estate/SUV cars commonly available because I am always carrying stuff. Originally it was to carry a racing bike inside (no I don't want to leave a very expensive bike open to theft/vandalism). Lets think -- in the last two weeks I have carried an old fridge, some redundant building blocks and two separate deliveries of garden cuttings (about 1 cu m each) to the council depot. I have bought and carried home a large professional strimmer, two garden gates (one of 2m), and fence posts. I have taken to or from my daughter's place several chairs and cupboards. That is fairly typical for me. If I had only a small car I would need to hire a van so often that it would be cheaper to own the car and a van.
An alternative would be to get deliveries done. Apart from costing a fortune (this is how some places make their real money) you would need to take time off work to receive the stuff - and the date of arrival is unpredictable. And then if you miss the delivery they say "hard luck" and expect you to collect it from a depot yourself anyway. Read a some of these reports about IKEA's delivery service for example www.reviewcentre.com/reviews13247.html#Reviews.
The best figure I could find for an SUV fully loaded is 5 people 65 passenger-miles per gallon and 4.5 tons of cargo. Rework the seating configuration to the maximum and the 787 wins handily.
You've lost me there. What sort of SUV is this that carries 4.5t of cargo? My Jeep Cherokee does 22 miles per UK gallon (17.6 per US gallon) so with 5 passengers it does 110 passenger miles per UK gallon (88 per US g). That is not in town (I live rural) but you don't get around town in a 787 either.
Even with your own figures, the SUV wins (ie more economical) with 65 vs 63.4 (even with far more luggage per person!)
A news item comes along (concerning Germany) which you would think would be of great interest to Slashdotters, but after a couple of posts the discussion goes off at a tangent to become a flame war about the USA 5th amendment. This flame war I estimate accounts for about a third of all posts, but what is worse is that these float to the TOP of the discussion in threaded view because the thread takes root so early. To see comments about the news item itself you must scroll a long way down.
I think we need a variant of Godwin's Law to the effect that any mention of the 5th Amendment is the effective end of sensible discussion.
So, how do they know how many people live at the residence serviced by the named account? And by extension which one was using the computer at the time the alleged offence is supposed to have occurred?
By asking I suppose. Like if the police find a body in a house, they don't give up their enquiries just because two or more people live there. In this case:-
www.murderuk.com/serial_john_christie.html
... they hanged the lot! But not everyone lives in some sort of squatter commune where they all share computers and a gateway to the web. They could soon narrow it to me for example, I've no doubt.
It is because councils, who (in the UK) are/were responsible for dealing with waste, don't want to be bothered. Now the retailers will have it on their hands.
Such goods are already treated separately. Ever tried to get a TV or washing machine into a wheelie bin with the rest of the rubbish?
Hardly "genius" to give a customer what they ask for. Even I could do that (in my own field). Gary Kildall failed to do so, but that does not make Gates a genius. In fact it is generally belived that Gate's family pulled strings with IBM to clinch the deal.
What MS are "geniuses" at doing is thinking up shady practices that are somehow legal (not always legal, but mostly legal), things I could not have thought of in my wildest dreams. Like not allowing their software to be transferred between machines - car salesmen are pretty shady, but imagine if they stopped you from using a car you bought from them if you move house.
As for stooping, MS have done such a lot of it that I do not think there is much they would not stoop to.
The GP did not say purchase = steal. He said "there certainly is plenty of qdos in msdos", and he is stating a fact, at least for the early MSDOS versions.
Gates bought QDOS, ported it to the IBM PC, renaming it MS DOS.
Slashdot Mirror
The expression "won't work with Linux" can usually be translated as "don't know if it works with Linux and we would not support it if we did".
.... "But it is running in front of me now" I said.
I first met it with OS/2 rather than Linux when I was using internet banking in its early days. I rang the bank Help Desk (about a technical matter not a financial one) and it came out that I was on OS/2. "But Sir" they said "it doesn't run on OS/2, you have to use Windows!"
They were so shocked, as if I were being really irresponsible, that I feared they would cut off my account; but they didn't
This is the same kind of comment I got when I asked Slashdot about ... my mission to the moon. All I got was a flamewar over "spacecraft" versus "rocket."
As a onetime Officer of the Watch on the bridge of a large warship, I say it matters.
When I saw this headline I was expecting an article on reviving the idea of sailing mechant ships - you know, tankers with computer controlled wingsails, that sort of thing (a bit like the flying cars stories). But what I found was a guy preparing a medium size traditional sailing yacht [OK, sailboat in America] for sea.
If this guy is calling a sailing yacht [sailboat] a "ship", the first thing he needs before technology is to swot up on some basic seafaring terminology. VERY basic - I would have thought even a layman would know the difference. OTOH, if he is calling his yacht a ship out of some kind of inflated pride, then that is also out of place at sea. It is just idiotic.
For example, if he needs to radio and says his "ship" is in trouble, the rescue people are not going to be looking for a yacht.
Who said anything about a schooner. He called it a "ship", but it is not a ship (or schooner) in either the strict or the popular sense of the word.
In the strict sense, a ship is a sailing vessel of three or more masts, all square rigged. In the popular sense, a ship is any vessel over about 1000 tonnes.
The Wikipedia entry for a Skerry Cruiser shows a Bermuda rigged Sloop.
"Almost" ?? As in "I almost saw one camel today"?
You have to learn to weigh up and read between the lines of both amateur and professional reviews.
:-
... (where I have written both good and bad reviews myself without censorship) and you will find lots of people saying Ryobi stuff is crap, but there is also a minority who say it is great. I have no doubt there is variation in people's experience (sometimes I have been the only person defending something myself) but clearly the balance is bad in such a case. But the ones saying crap often go into some detail as to why it is crap (or why it is good), and when they do that it starts to sound genuine.
For example, just an example, Ryobi garden machinery is crap, as I know from experience. Look up reviews eg here
www.reviewcentre.com
One issue raised about Ryobi is that you cannot easily get spares (in UK anyway - and Ryobi stuff sure needs spares). This is something that you might not think about when you buy (I thought it was a legal requirement for certain classes of goods), but having been warned by the reviews you can check out the point for yourself - try ordering a spare part from the place that is selling the whole items. And by "spares" I don't mean gloves and goggles (as the salesman will), I mean things like ignition coils and drive shafts. My point is that reviews can make you aware of aspects you may overlook, that you can then check for yourself if you don't believe it.
OTOH I read a customer review raving about something along the lines : "It's great! just as I expected! I am delighted with my new gizmo. It does everything I wanted it to. I can't wait to try it out for the first time !" Idiot.
In fact the barrels of firearms intended for the Southern hemisphere are rifled the opposite way. It is to do with compensating the Coriolis acceleration due to moving over a spinning globe.
The reason in the Boer War that the Boers seems so much better shots than the British, initially put down to the Boers being country folk brought up with hunting rifles while the Tommies were townies, was because the Boers had their rifles and artillery made for the Southern hemisphere, while the British guns were designed for a Northern hemisphere war, it being more likely for them.
Agreed. Although you sound a bit up-tight, it is a fact that he is giving away money which is in part dishonestly obtained by shady and downright illegal practices, MS being a convicted monopolist. So it is partly other people's money he is being free with.
Refund a chunk of that money to MS customers and let them decide for themselves if they want to give it to Gate's charities or power stations.
Having been closely involved in building a nuclear power station myself, I can tell you that US$35 million will go almost no-where. Yet Gates will get his name on it for that as if he built it single handed?
When in primary school, all us kids sponsored some community building by paying 25 pence each to write our name on a brick. I bet my brick was cemented up behind the urinals.
If he can build a set of working hands without hands, more than most people could do, why does he need the hands?
Better still, say in a heavy foreign accent "My eeeenleeeeesh is verrry bad. Pleeez you speeeek veeeeeeerry slow to me". Then set the phone down.
Pick it up after a while and if they are still there say "Pleeeez beegeeen once more. I not understaaaand you well. At the beeegeeening pliz"
Then "I theeenk you need to speeek to nother deeeferent person. I fetch that person. Pleeeez wait now"
In the days of land lines I was reading the fine print in the phone book (remember "the phone book"?) and noticed I could list my name any way I wanted for free. ...so I put the listing under the name of my imaginary roommate. Whenever I got a call asking for Mr. Skoog I knew it was a cold sales call.
Do you find it so hard to recognise a cold sales call otherwise?
Your comment was not censored, it's on the article.
Yes, it has now re-appeared.
He isn't pushing for a better design of toilet for the UK. He's pushing for a better design of toilet in the developing world.
...but ....
Gates said. "Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do .... It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing."
I see "wealthier countries" there, not just developing world.
And a lot of people in the developing world don't live near water, so your randomly-generated 60% figure is irrelevant.
It was not randomly generated. It was Gates (in TFA that you urge me to read) who said that 40% do not have access to water. I was wagering that far more than 60% do, (100-40 being 60). Just take a look at an atlas to see where the concentrations are.
Here in the UK there is no shortage of water for flushing, but there is a hippy/green element who want us to give up flushing for political reasons - to bring it home that some parts of the world are short of water. Like Mussolini getting the air-raid sirens to sound in Rome every time there was a raid on Germany, just to remind the Italian people there was a war on. {Hope that does not infringe Godwin]
Just to be clear, I am not against developing waterless toilets for arid regions, as I have stated in a further post on the IBT site.
I thought my comment was perfectly reasonable. Here it is
Gates said :- "The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don't have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems."
Why does a flush toilet need electricity? Mine doesn't; moreover, although I live in a wealthy rural part of the UK I have no main sewer connection. The toilet flushes to my own septic tank where the stuff decomposes - it is little more than a masonery tank set below the ground and looks after itself apart from my getting the solids pumped out once a year. It isn't rocket science.
It uses water, but doesn't most of the World's population live near water? Far more than 60% I'd wager. It does not need to be drinkable. Yes, there are regions that do not, but we have plenty of it in the UK, so no thanks Gates, this "wealthier country" does not need to your stinking toilets to conserve water. Take your concerns elsewhere.
He, or someone at Microsoft, put some kind of pressure on the project to use Windows rather than a free OS. He did not want the kiddies growing up being accustomed to Linux.
Yes, that good old international dimensional unit.
insurance for two vehicles for one driver can actually be cheaper then having one insured, have you shopped around?Insurance for two vehicles with one driver is definitely less than double of one vehicle, but it is far more than just a single vehicle. Insurance is a scam.
I agree with the last bit. However, in the UK insuring two cars is just like you are two separate people, to the extent that having built up a "safe driver" discount (called a "no-claims bonus" in the UK, typically 40-60% off) for a vehicle, if you then insure a second vehicle you do not get that discount on first insuring it. You have to build over the years to that discount again on the second vehicle. I am talking about insurance for one named driver who clearly cannot be driving both vehicles at once.
Absolutely barmy. In my case, wanting to add a camper van (a small thing in the UK, not one of those those giant motorhomes) would have put my car insurance bill up from about £200 (I can't remember exact figures) up to about £900. It is hardly as if my second vehicle was a sports car and I was revealing a Walter Mitty tendency.
I drive a pickup truck that seats six passengers. I can haul things, tow things, carry passengers, or load the rear of the cab with tools and boxes of cable.
Most of the people in your situation does those things so seldom that it would be cheaper for them to own a smaller vehicle and rent a larger vehicle when they need to do work that requires a truck or if they need to carry more than 3 passengers.
Speak for yourself chum. Don't assume everyone leads the same lifestyle as yourself.
I have always owned one of the largest estate/SUV cars commonly available because I am always carrying stuff. Originally it was to carry a racing bike inside (no I don't want to leave a very expensive bike open to theft/vandalism). Lets think -- in the last two weeks I have carried an old fridge, some redundant building blocks and two separate deliveries of garden cuttings (about 1 cu m each) to the council depot. I have bought and carried home a large professional strimmer, two garden gates (one of 2m), and fence posts. I have taken to or from my daughter's place several chairs and cupboards. That is fairly typical for me. If I had only a small car I would need to hire a van so often that it would be cheaper to own the car and a van.
An alternative would be to get deliveries done. Apart from costing a fortune (this is how some places make their real money) you would need to take time off work to receive the stuff - and the date of arrival is unpredictable. And then if you miss the delivery they say "hard luck" and expect you to collect it from a depot yourself anyway. Read a some of these reports about IKEA's delivery service for example www.reviewcentre.com/reviews13247.html#Reviews.
The best figure I could find for an SUV fully loaded is 5 people 65 passenger-miles per gallon and 4.5 tons of cargo. Rework the seating configuration to the maximum and the 787 wins handily.
You've lost me there. What sort of SUV is this that carries 4.5t of cargo? My Jeep Cherokee does 22 miles per UK gallon (17.6 per US gallon) so with 5 passengers it does 110 passenger miles per UK gallon (88 per US g). That is not in town (I live rural) but you don't get around town in a 787 either.
Even with your own figures, the SUV wins (ie more economical) with 65 vs 63.4 (even with far more luggage per person!)
You know what is wrong with Slashdot?
A news item comes along (concerning Germany) which you would think would be of great interest to Slashdotters, but after a couple of posts the discussion goes off at a tangent to become a flame war about the USA 5th amendment. This flame war I estimate accounts for about a third of all posts, but what is worse is that these float to the TOP of the discussion in threaded view because the thread takes root so early. To see comments about the news item itself you must scroll a long way down.
I think we need a variant of Godwin's Law to the effect that any mention of the 5th Amendment is the effective end of sensible discussion.
So, how do they know how many people live at the residence serviced by the named account? And by extension which one was using the computer at the time the alleged offence is supposed to have occurred?
By asking I suppose. Like if the police find a body in a house, they don't give up their enquiries just because two or more people live there. In this case :-
... they hanged the lot! But not everyone lives in some sort of squatter commune where they all share computers and a gateway to the web. They could soon narrow it to me for example, I've no doubt.
www.murderuk.com/serial_john_christie.html
It is because councils, who (in the UK) are/were responsible for dealing with waste, don't want to be bothered. Now the retailers will have it on their hands.
Such goods are already treated separately. Ever tried to get a TV or washing machine into a wheelie bin with the rest of the rubbish?
Hardly "genius" to give a customer what they ask for. Even I could do that (in my own field). Gary Kildall failed to do so, but that does not make Gates a genius. In fact it is generally belived that Gate's family pulled strings with IBM to clinch the deal.
What MS are "geniuses" at doing is thinking up shady practices that are somehow legal (not always legal, but mostly legal), things I could not have thought of in my wildest dreams. Like not allowing their software to be transferred between machines - car salesmen are pretty shady, but imagine if they stopped you from using a car you bought from them if you move house.
As for stooping, MS have done such a lot of it that I do not think there is much they would not stoop to.
You post makes makes my eyeballs spin. I would not have read it if I had not caught the words that you knew Gary Kildall.
Microsoft did purchase Qdos...
purchase != steal
The GP did not say purchase = steal. He said "there certainly is plenty of qdos in msdos", and he is stating a fact, at least for the early MSDOS versions.
Gates bought QDOS, ported it to the IBM PC, renaming it MS DOS.
What was the question again?
Believe it or not, I can still dual boot into MS DOS. Tell me the command and I'll get back to you with the result.