I found a cheaper version!? Not!
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Mini Board PC
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· Score: 1
I was wondering when someone was going to mention the 5682. That is nifty. And it's not $650. My brother's using one of those as the base of the MP3 player soon to be in his car. Now, we have to hunt down the 4 or 6 inch LCD.
Have you ever tried to make a 3d pie chart with gradient fills and a background bitmap in TeX? can you even make an interactive spreadsheet in it? And what about a modern presentation, with movies and sounds? Office Word.
Bob was way worse than this. It would open onto a number of cartoon rooms in some happy proto-yuppy home. In these rooms would be a desk with a rolodex, calendar, notebook, and other disgusting;y happy little buttons. Each of these would launch an applet that could perform some function. The helper was an office assistant style thing, but it was everywhere and couldn't be shut up.
Compared to this, AtEase was great, but much easier to disable. They had it on the Macs in high school, making us learn (god help me) HyperCard. You could get rid of AtEase by typing "Close AtEase" in the HyperCard message box. Bob disables the Ctrl-Alt-Del bit, so you have to reboot to get rid of it.
One point I make to people over and over is that installing an operating system from scratch on a PC, ANY operating system, is difficult. It requires knowledge of the hardware that very few ordinary users have.
All DOS 6.x needs is the boot floppy. It helps with the fdisk and format. But we could argue that DOS is just a slightly better interface than the BIOS itself.
I run into puzzeling stuff at least as often during windows installs as during Linux installs.
Windows can be way beyond puzzling. What the hell does "A fatal exception error occurred in module (Unknown) at memory address (Unknown)." mean? If Windows can't tell me what memory address it happened at, how on earth am I supposed to know which device did it?
Those of us with experience installing *operating systems* (which probably includes a majority of those reading this) know that Plug-n-Play is a bad joke, "auto detection" often doesn't, etc.
Plug-n-Pray is more like it. Windows has on more than one occasion lowered me to "ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease...yes!" or more often "no!!!!". I liked DOS devices: Jumper the IRQ, DMA, and memory addresses on the card and put the corresponding values on the command line. The problem with Windows is that I cannot see the command being issued to do whatever it is that's it's doing when it's trying to load the driver, so I can't see what's going wrong. And AutoDetect usually only works with things like "101/102-key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard" and "Generic IDE drive type 47".
At least back in the day computer use required some technical competency. Now that you don't have to think to do anything, people who can't think are using them.
IIRC, some are. But it doesn't really matter. All that thunking between 64-, 32-, and (gods help us) 16-bit slows down everything. Just ask anyone still hanging onto a copy of Win95 OSR1.
And I've never had any problem with WP. The incident to which you refer (I believe) is about the CorelCentral program. It was not ready for release when they shipped WP8, so they included a coupon for a free copy after it was released. This is unlike MS, who shipped Outlook 97 in its current sorry alpha/beta state.
Mike --
Who on Slashdot is Stupid enough....
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Windows ID
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· Score: 1
OK, my question is who on Slashdot is stupid enough to have a PC running a Microsoft PC set up at home (at least) so it can access the Internet? I've felt for years this would be a very bad thing to do. Microsoft has shown for Years that they can not be trusted in this respect.
Not all of us are the sole users of every computer in the house. My mom has no interest in Linux, and I wouldn't want to teach her anyway (she's so irritating!). We have dual-boot on 2 of 3 computers, and win98 only on the third. Linux is ready for primetime in the server market, but it can't run Photoshop, Word (for my mom), or any of my games. So back off.
Sure, if you don't mind giving up your privacy to email, having your email address given to spammers, and having your Internet usage and selections tracked and profiled. Reference the ZDNET article that I sent to Rob yesterday: Privacy Concerns Over TCI@Home Um...not all of us use @home. Check that e-mail address up there...rr.com is RoadRunner. And do you not realize that *all* ISPs can monitor you in this manner? You use their servers, so what you xmit and receive are fair game. And you consent to it when you sign up. Stop your bitching...if you don't want to be tracked, you can try to hunt down an ISP who explicitly states that it will *never* follow your activities. You'll find this nearly impossible. Mike
Hey! I do have a Linux box, it's just that the computer I'm on is elsewhere on the LAN here. The Linux one is connected to the cable modem and acts as the proxy server for the house. It's much more stable than that god-awful excuse for a proxy MS makes.
Slashdot Mirror
Mike
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"I see you're trying to write a letter. Would you like help with this feature?"
Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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Compared to this, AtEase was great, but much easier to disable. They had it on the Macs in high school, making us learn (god help me) HyperCard. You could get rid of AtEase by typing "Close AtEase" in the HyperCard message box. Bob disables the Ctrl-Alt-Del bit, so you have to reboot to get rid of it.
Mike
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Mike
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All DOS 6.x needs is the boot floppy. It helps with the fdisk and format. But we could argue that DOS is just a slightly better interface than the BIOS itself.
I run into puzzeling stuff at least as often during windows installs as during Linux installs.
Windows can be way beyond puzzling. What the hell does "A fatal exception error occurred in module (Unknown) at memory address (Unknown)." mean? If Windows can't tell me what memory address it happened at, how on earth am I supposed to know which device did it?
Those of us with experience installing *operating systems* (which probably includes a majority of those reading this) know that Plug-n-Play is a bad joke, "auto detection" often doesn't, etc.
Plug-n-Pray is more like it. Windows has on more than one occasion lowered me to "ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease...yes!" or more often "no!!!!". I liked DOS devices: Jumper the IRQ, DMA, and memory addresses on the card and put the corresponding values on the command line. The problem with Windows is that I cannot see the command being issued to do whatever it is that's it's doing when it's trying to load the driver, so I can't see what's going wrong. And AutoDetect usually only works with things like "101/102-key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard" and "Generic IDE drive type 47".
At least back in the day computer use required some technical competency. Now that you don't have to think to do anything, people who can't think are using them.
Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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hack
crack
Alt+A
Sorry...just spent an hour in this evil pre-req M$Office class.
Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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Mike
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They're right here.
And I've never had any problem with WP. The incident to which you refer (I believe) is about the CorelCentral program. It was not ready for release when they shipped WP8, so they included a coupon for a free copy after it was released. This is unlike MS, who shipped Outlook 97 in its current sorry alpha/beta state.
Mike
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Not all of us are the sole users of every computer in the house. My mom has no interest in Linux, and I wouldn't want to teach her anyway (she's so irritating!). We have dual-boot on 2 of 3 computers, and win98 only on the third. Linux is ready for primetime in the server market, but it can't run Photoshop, Word (for my mom), or any of my games. So back off.
Mike
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Mike
Sure, if you don't mind giving up your privacy to email, having your email address given to spammers, and having your Internet usage and selections tracked and profiled. Reference the ZDNET article that I sent to Rob yesterday: Privacy Concerns Over TCI@Home Um...not all of us use @home. Check that e-mail address up there...rr.com is RoadRunner. And do you not realize that *all* ISPs can monitor you in this manner? You use their servers, so what you xmit and receive are fair game. And you consent to it when you sign up. Stop your bitching...if you don't want to be tracked, you can try to hunt down an ISP who explicitly states that it will *never* follow your activities. You'll find this nearly impossible. Mike
Hey! I do have a Linux box, it's just that the computer I'm on is elsewhere on the LAN here. The Linux one is connected to the cable modem and acts as the proxy server for the house. It's much more stable than that god-awful excuse for a proxy MS makes.