The real problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the big deal. He gets Windows with his PC, and it comes with a web browser and an instant messager built in, and any great new killer apps to appear in the future will have a workalike clone also built into Windows so that he doesn't have to go figure out how to download and install it.
And if you look at it from Joe Sixpack's point of view, it's actually *good* for him. No one wants the days of DOS where you actually had to pony up for any thing useful. Even if ponying up isn't the problem, the incredible pain of installing an OS on a modern desktop without a GUI (say) is incredible. People who are Linux from Scratch experts don't mind this. People who don't live/breathe computers everyday do.
OS/2 Warp shipped with a whole mini-office suite, far more useful than the applets than shipped with Windows 95. Most major Linux distros bundle *lots* of apps. Tell me again with a straight face that bundling is bad and that it doesn't benefit the less experienced customer.
A lot of users argue that this leads to "lock-in". Well, dunno if you noticed or not, Mr Sixpack gives a rat's ass about lock-in. He probably sees the ubiquity of Windows systems as a blessing. (He probably doesn't think "I can operate Windows", he thinks "I can operate *any* computer"). He probably sees the Mac using world as over-creative freaks and Unix (if he's heard of it at all) the domain of gearheads.
Others argue IE can simply become payment-only and people will be forced to use it whether or not it's good or not, simply because it's so ubiquitous. Well, I'll say it again: most people are *not* attached to their computers (or computing assets) strongly enough to succumb to lockin. Many people I know gave up usa.net inspite of its ubiquity when it became paid-for. Apparently, still are leaving this year because of raised prices. Those who are staying behind do so because of the perceived value, the lack of hassle. Not because it was forced on them.
Teoma is sluggish, but that can be fixed with money
Teoma is running ASP on Windows 2000 and IIS 5. Right now, no Windows server technology that I know of is *any* match at all for Google's über-cool cluster (the fact that Google runs Linux on its servers is interesting, of course, but what's *more* interesting is it's composed of (IIRC) 10k PC-class machines).
So, yes, I'd have doubts about Teoma's ability to scale up.
This'll never work with the "techie" crowd because they remember letters/numbers much better than they remember pictures. (ever wondered how unix fans can remember all of tar's options?:-)) On the other hand, for people who "think graphically" (designers, artists, etc), this may help. But I wouldn't bet on it, passwords are too deeply entrenched in our lives already -- ATM PINs, Phonebanking PINs, the whole nine yards.
And yes, I too don't see how this is different from Passface's Realuser, which uses faces in lieu of passphrases. I've tried Realuser, and I found it was far more difficult to remember their faces than it was to remember my passwords. And I could choose only 5 faces -- not too good, it's too easy for over-the-shoulder attacks, and it's a pain to change "faces" like I change passwords. I imagine a face-changing session would go this way: "Let's see, I chose a caucasian male last time, this time, I'll pick an asian female...". Uh huh, too much work.
Someone asked in the IRC chat, "why don't you charge for a @slashdot.org email address". A variant (also suggested) might help -- Say if you have an account, cygnusx, you could get cygnusx at users dot slashdot dot org for $x per quarter/year/whatever.
I know CmdrTaco didn't like that since he "is attached to his email address", but hey -- if it brings in the dough, why look at a paying horse in the mouth?
> Shortly after the British left India, > India was split into India and Pakistan.
Re-read some history. India was partitioned before the British left India. Pakistan was born as an independent nation before India was.
What we have today now is two nuclear states that has a history of throtteling at each other's throat. This is what democracy brought India.
So India and Pakistan have strained relations and have nukes to boot. How is that democracy's fault? Pakistan has been under various tinpot dictators for much of its history, can we turn your argument around and say that the strained relationships are a result of too many testosterone-laden army types lording over Pakistan, what is essentially a fundamentalist Islamic state**?
Please understand, I am not even going to argue about whether India is ready for democracy or not. Maybe it isn't. All I'll say about that is that I would not have it any other way, thank you. But-- your logic that a non-democratic system would have removed tensions from the Indian subcontinent is deeply flawed. If anything, it would have brought the place much, much closer to war.
** Pakistan wasn't a fundamentalist Islamic state for much of its history, only in the 80s when official support for Islamic fundamentalism started pouring that it (along with the Taliban) really took off.
.. that on the last page of the Feature Tour, called fun on the run, they have a screenshot showing a modified version of Doom running? Are there other phones available today that can do that?
One of the better/. stories in a long time. My two bits: when India was freed from British rule in 1947, there were quite a few naysayers: "how could India, where thousands die for lack of food, afford the luxury of a *democracy*? Elections cost money, dammit!" But elections are held every 5 years (sooner if the government resigns and no alternative can be found), and a (usually) effective opposition ensures that the government of the day can never pass a day without some oppsotion party trying to cause them some grief.
Does it work perfectly? No. A lot of Indians, ~30% of them, mostly in villages, are illiterate: they tend to get swayed by things like caste which an enlightened voter wouldn't consider. Then there are some parties with agendas so venal I wish they wouldn't exist.
But in spite of all of this, it works, and we have a pretty good judicial system to back it up (the anglo-saxon system of jurisprudence -- probably the best thing the Brits left behind) and pull up offenders.
So: yeah, India hasn't been as successful as China in increasing the quality of life -- especially for its villages (the cities do pretty well), but I would rather have this than an authoritarian regime breathing down my neck.
So, yeah, democracy *is* good in all situations and all cases -- for people who believe in it. If India can make it work with one billion people (and some of them very poor), and with a cultural diversity that exceeds Europe, then there is no question in my mind that it can work in any place.
Windows registry trees are not commented. You need to know how to find various reg hack sites and own a ton of resource kits, just to keep a leg up on the crap. Even then everything is not revealed. "You should configure it through the GUI." Yeah, right, on 2,000 machines?
For newer software, wmic.exe helps. Plus seems like Windows.NET server is moving away from the registry model, starting with IIS6 using a XML based meabase for storing config info.
Sheesh. Ever heard of Photoshop? And no, the GIMP is *not* a adequate substitute for print graphics. What about AutoCAD? STAAD? Think all of that is free?
People who say 'gcc and emacs is all i need' bore the hell out of me.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is:
- all code is digitally signed to ensure integrity. That's one level of protection.
- The other level of protection is getting organizational certificates signed by central authorities (like Verisign, Thawte, SecureNet and others. Similar to how e-commerce sites handle SSL today. In fact, ms is apparently partnering with VeriSign for this, but nothing afaik stops other parties from offering their own services.
>Any ".NET compliant" third-party implementation
>that is not interoperable with Microsoft's
>version will be dead in the water.
If.NET does not interop with other standards based systems (Apache SOAP, ONE, Soap::Lite), then *it* will be dead in the water. Ditto for any of the others actually.
Sounds like a giant security hole to me. Go to a web site, and have files moved to the Trash Can via.NET. Perfect!
The.NET framework has a pretty fine-grained security model actually, with a options of security that can be applied at the machine, domain and enterprise levels. It certainly is better than the older all-or-nothing ActiveX model.
Probably offtopic, but had to to disagree with a couple of your points:
Really? It terms of market share yes, but technologically no. OS X is a big step forward
OS X is a big step forward compared to OS 9. If I compare Windows 2000 or even NT 4 to OS X, I find that technologically, OS X is no great shakes (Quartz is an exception, but then, you always have Direct3D on Windows).
Of course, OS X has the great advantage (for a techie) that it is a true-blue BSD system. But that is neither a technologically big leap forward, nor does it matter to Joe User.
A quarter century since PC's first appeared, beige utilitarian Windows boxes clog our mostly narrow-band information superhighway.
Bad 'un, comparing computers to automobiles. Computers have network effects -- even if there is no network other than sneakernet. People want to share files, people want to *cough* *cough* borrow software, people want help when they screw up (which, in my experience, they do with equal felicity on the Mac, Windows as well as Linux:-)).
...I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for people who are Windows boosters. Where do they go for their community? The Mac folks have MacWorld and WWDC, we have LinuxWorld, O'Reilly and Usenix, but they have what? Comdex? There is no MicrosoftWorld. Whether this is a result of their size or what, I couldn't tell you. But there is a similar feel that the "Linux Faithful" and "Apple Faithful" share and that is that we are clearly part of a user and developer community.
Might be offtopic but... One could argue that Windows is so big and so omnipresent today, it doesn't *need* floorshows to sell. Floorshows are for people/technologies who need mindshare. The network effect of 80 million Windows users is far greater than any floorshow or website community can ever manage. And don't forget that a lot of people who go to Linux/Mac floorshows are also Windows users (if only occasionally) and therefore de facto members of that community.
> notice that on Unix the method to get this
> information is to call getenv("HOME"), while
> apparently on MicroSoft it is the new
> getMyDocumentsDirectory() call.
Bull.
C:\>echo %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
E:\Users\cz
C:\>echo %USERPROFILE%\My Documents
C:\Documents and Settings\cz\My Documents
C:\>echo %USERPROFILE%\Application Data
C:\Documents and Settings\cz\Application Data
...etc. The Win32 API is probably not the best possible design on earth. On the other hand, given the way it has evolved, I would challenge you to do a significantly better job. And no, we won't even talk about glibc-hell on Linux.
MP3 format was not supported by M$ or any other OSes at the time. People just like them cuz of the conviniences and the superior compression it has over other formats (at the time).
Good point. I mean, so Java is not bundled with Windows. So Ogg is not bundled with Windows. Heck, *RealPlayer* and *QuickTime* are not bundled with Windows. So does that stop people from installing QuickTime or RealPlayer or the JRE? Hey, with WinME, XP etc, Windows Media Player has been a very prominent addition. But people still get Winamp, Sonique etc. They still install Quicktime on their PCs.
Point is, users != sheep. Given a reasonably easy install procedure, they can indeed download and install a plugin. Heck, on windows, installing binary code off the web is a piece of cake (one reason malwares love windows;-)).
PS. Even now, Winamp 2.78 "Lite" clocks in at 502 kB. Those guys at Nullsoft sure have a good thing going in terms of Winamp2x.
Slashdot Mirror
... not until the bill and its variants have been withdrawn! This is the worst time possible to develop a sense of complacency.
OS/2 Warp shipped with a whole mini-office suite, far more useful than the applets than shipped with Windows 95. Most major Linux distros bundle *lots* of apps. Tell me again with a straight face that bundling is bad and that it doesn't benefit the less experienced customer.
A lot of users argue that this leads to "lock-in". Well, dunno if you noticed or not, Mr Sixpack gives a rat's ass about lock-in. He probably sees the ubiquity of Windows systems as a blessing. (He probably doesn't think "I can operate Windows", he thinks "I can operate *any* computer"). He probably sees the Mac using world as over-creative freaks and Unix (if he's heard of it at all) the domain of gearheads.
Others argue IE can simply become payment-only and people will be forced to use it whether or not it's good or not, simply because it's so ubiquitous. Well, I'll say it again: most people are *not* attached to their computers (or computing assets) strongly enough to succumb to lockin. Many people I know gave up usa.net inspite of its ubiquity when it became paid-for. Apparently, still are leaving this year because of raised prices. Those who are staying behind do so because of the perceived value, the lack of hassle. Not because it was forced on them.
My 2 bits.
Teoma is running ASP on Windows 2000 and IIS 5. Right now, no Windows server technology that I know of is *any* match at all for Google's über-cool cluster (the fact that Google runs Linux on its servers is interesting, of course, but what's *more* interesting is it's composed of (IIRC) 10k PC-class machines).
So, yes, I'd have doubts about Teoma's ability to scale up.
Google News is now highlighting the Google's own "act of censorship". Funny, that.
No way! They support Linux and bring out those "Peace-love-linux" ads, don't they?
;-)
Darned good point. Have a look at this chart on the current Google Zeitgeist.
Apparently Rotor has WinForms like functionality derived from Tcl.
Someone asked in the IRC chat, "why don't you charge for a @slashdot.org email address". A variant (also suggested) might help -- Say if you have an account, cygnusx, you could get cygnusx at users dot slashdot dot org for $x per quarter/year/whatever.
I know CmdrTaco didn't like that since he "is attached to his email address", but hey -- if it brings in the dough, why look at a paying horse in the mouth?
Gee, some of these pics are so lovely, they must be violating an Apple patent on translucent blue thingys or something...
;-)
> India was split into India and Pakistan.
Re-read some history. India was partitioned before the British left India. Pakistan was born as an independent nation before India was.
So India and Pakistan have strained relations and have nukes to boot. How is that democracy's fault? Pakistan has been under various tinpot dictators for much of its history, can we turn your argument around and say that the strained relationships are a result of too many testosterone-laden army types lording over Pakistan, what is essentially a fundamentalist Islamic state**?
Please understand, I am not even going to argue about whether India is ready for democracy or not. Maybe it isn't. All I'll say about that is that I would not have it any other way, thank you. But-- your logic that a non-democratic system would have removed tensions from the Indian subcontinent is deeply flawed. If anything, it would have brought the place much, much closer to war.
** Pakistan wasn't a fundamentalist Islamic state for much of its history, only in the 80s when official support for Islamic fundamentalism started pouring that it (along with the Taliban) really took off.
.. that on the last page of the Feature Tour, called fun on the run, they have a screenshot showing a modified version of Doom running? Are there other phones available today that can do that?
One of the better /. stories in a long time. My two bits: when India was freed from British rule in 1947, there were quite a few naysayers: "how could India, where thousands die for lack of food, afford the luxury of a *democracy*? Elections cost money, dammit!" But elections are held every 5 years (sooner if the government resigns and no alternative can be found), and a (usually) effective opposition ensures that the government of the day can never pass a day without some oppsotion party trying to cause them some grief.
Does it work perfectly? No. A lot of Indians, ~30% of them, mostly in villages, are illiterate: they tend to get swayed by things like caste which an enlightened voter wouldn't consider. Then there are some parties with agendas so venal I wish they wouldn't exist.
But in spite of all of this, it works, and we have a pretty good judicial system to back it up (the anglo-saxon system of jurisprudence -- probably the best thing the Brits left behind) and pull up offenders.
So: yeah, India hasn't been as successful as China in increasing the quality of life -- especially for its villages (the cities do pretty well), but I would rather have this than an authoritarian regime breathing down my neck.
So, yeah, democracy *is* good in all situations and all cases -- for people who believe in it. If India can make it work with one billion people (and some of them very poor), and with a cultural diversity that exceeds Europe, then there is no question in my mind that it can work in any place.
For newer software, wmic.exe helps. Plus seems like Windows.NET server is moving away from the registry model, starting with IIS6 using a XML based meabase for storing config info.
Sheesh. Ever heard of Photoshop? And no, the GIMP is *not* a adequate substitute for print graphics. What about AutoCAD? STAAD? Think all of that is free?
People who say 'gcc and emacs is all i need' bore the hell out of me.
Um, I think the original poster meant Europa the moon, not Europa the union.
Best wishes for a lifetime together!
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is:
- all code is digitally signed to ensure integrity. That's one level of protection.
- The other level of protection is getting organizational certificates signed by central authorities (like Verisign, Thawte, SecureNet and others. Similar to how e-commerce sites handle SSL today. In fact, ms is apparently partnering with VeriSign for this, but nothing afaik stops other parties from offering their own services.
>Any ".NET compliant" third-party implementation
>that is not interoperable with Microsoft's
>version will be dead in the water.
If
The
... if it comes to a Scott vs Larry flamefest, I wouldn't know who to root for :-)
OS X is a big step forward compared to OS 9. If I compare Windows 2000 or even NT 4 to OS X, I find that technologically, OS X is no great shakes (Quartz is an exception, but then, you always have Direct3D on Windows).
Of course, OS X has the great advantage (for a techie) that it is a true-blue BSD system. But that is neither a technologically big leap forward, nor does it matter to Joe User.
Bad 'un, comparing computers to automobiles. Computers have network effects -- even if there is no network other than sneakernet. People want to share files, people want to *cough* *cough* borrow software, people want help when they screw up (which, in my experience, they do with equal felicity on the Mac, Windows as well as Linux
This is actually a *much* better solution than many of the sniveling "plain text should be enough for everybody" posts I've seen here today.
Might be offtopic but... One could argue that Windows is so big and so omnipresent today, it doesn't *need* floorshows to sell. Floorshows are for people/technologies who need mindshare. The network effect of 80 million Windows users is far greater than any floorshow or website community can ever manage. And don't forget that a lot of people who go to Linux/Mac floorshows are also Windows users (if only occasionally) and therefore de facto members of that community.
> notice that on Unix the method to get this
> information is to call getenv("HOME"), while
> apparently on MicroSoft it is the new
> getMyDocumentsDirectory() call.
Bull.
C:\>echo %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
E:\Users\cz
C:\>echo %USERPROFILE%\My Documents
C:\Documents and Settings\cz\My Documents
C:\>echo %USERPROFILE%\Application Data
C:\Documents and Settings\cz\Application Data
...etc. The Win32 API is probably not the best possible design on earth. On the other hand, given the way it has evolved, I would challenge you to do a significantly better job. And no, we won't even talk about glibc-hell on Linux.
Good point. I mean, so Java is not bundled with Windows. So Ogg is not bundled with Windows. Heck, *RealPlayer* and *QuickTime* are not bundled with Windows. So does that stop people from installing QuickTime or RealPlayer or the JRE? Hey, with WinME, XP etc, Windows Media Player has been a very prominent addition. But people still get Winamp, Sonique etc. They still install Quicktime on their PCs.
Point is, users != sheep. Given a reasonably easy install procedure, they can indeed download and install a plugin. Heck, on windows, installing binary code off the web is a piece of cake (one reason malwares love windows
PS. Even now, Winamp 2.78 "Lite" clocks in at 502 kB. Those guys at Nullsoft sure have a good thing going in terms of Winamp2x.