Since I've had it my gmail has been available whenever and wherever I wanted it. All the time. Everywhere. If it has failed in the last five years, it failed somebody else.
That would be me. But it has failed less often than the ancient Linux box serving xemacs.org has failed over the same time period.
As you point out, gmail has been pretty much available whereever (I've accessed it from all over the world) and whenever I want it. It works for me and with a few tweaks to the system, it would be worth paying for.
I wasn't even aware that people actually USED their Yahoo profiles.
I just logged in for the first time in a couple of months and did not see much change, other than increased clutter on the screens getting me to yahoo mail.
What changed? Am I supposed to be outraged too? Inquiring minds want to know!
Running stable wouldn't help with my leaking memory, since it's been leaking since Etch was testing and that has become stable.
Have you reported the problem? Memory leakage tends to be one of the easiest bugs to fix.
My personal experience with the Debian guys tends to be that they take kind of a proactive stance on changing things they want to "fix" without consulting upstream. So, if they had a proper bug report, they would have fixed it with or without the hands of the actual maintainer involved.
If you moved half the Windows installation base to Linux overnight you'd probably see Linux facing the same complaints Windows does. You'd see a lot more viruses and malware happening, as well as the same crappy hardware causing crashes.
My mother was able to browse the web and do email with Linux in 1999 (I left her one of my Linux boxes when I went to Japan that year). The autoexecute stuff coming across the wire is of uniquely Microsoft origins. The computing community had already decided that was a Very Bad Idea.
Or do you believe Linux is immune to bad memory?
I know it isn't. I recall vividly the "signal 11" FAQ. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1996/04/msg00210.html Earlier in the same year, Linus personally helped me debug a system with a Cyrix CPU that ultimately proved to have a bad L1 cache chip.
The BSDs of the time (mid 1990s) were even more sensitive to bad RAM. On the basis of the machine that had a bad L1 cache chip (it always crashed quickly in BSD, but did not crash in Linux 1.2), the company I was working for decided to use Linux instead of BSD (my original recommendation) in its migration away from SCO Unix.
Linux right now is used almost exclusively used by nerds. If XP had the same user base, instead of every high school student, grandma, and hockey mom it would likely not have a reputation for crashing.
It does have a reputation of crashing with the people I work with, all of whom could be described by the pejorative "nerd". I dispute that assertion. And just to be clear, I am referring to Microsoft Windows XP/SP2, enterprise license.
If you're an idealist, Marxism is still the best government out there, in theory.
It is not and you're probably new here. There are plenty of us who would prefer a Randian Galt's Gulch to a Marxist "paradise".
Marxism only works if you believe that everyone is basically good in nature. That's not how the world really works. Anyone advocating such things is dangerously insane.
Go ahead, tell me how well universal free health care worked in Hawaii...
You didn't clarify in your statement whether you like communism or dismiss it.
Non sequitor. Just because I've devoted a large percentage of my life to GPL'ed software, it does not imply that I am a communist.
I have devoted personal time to GPL'ed software in particular and Open Source software in general because it benefits me and a lot of other people in general.
Maybe you need to live in Asia awhile to know the difference between quid pro quo and from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
People who produce traditional income (through wages or sold assets such as products and goods) are going to get a tax increase. Asshats like buffet and the other schmucks that caused this current mess wont be taxed because they deal in "securities" (such as stocks) which will NOT be taxed.
Decent summary.
Punishment of "traditional" sources of income and leniency in the rules of traditional rules of making loans (and banking rules) are basically what got us into this mess.
Why should I, as an engineer, pay high tax rates when I am earning money on the basis of my life skills, hard work and education and someone who is existing by trading in the stock market pay less?
The system is broken, but I believe that is by design...:-(
I know of very few small businesses or entrepreneurs that are looking at over $250,000 profit at or near startup; most of their revenue is tied up in either expansion (hiring new staff, new facilities, etc.) or paying existing expenses (payroll is a massive expense for a small business).
Oh. Maybe you should check SBA regulations for what is considered a small business (in most cases, it's a lot more than $250,000 in net revenue).
Maybe you should also ask the Messiah to clarify just how he is going to apply his US$250k rule. Maybe it's gross revenues, maybe it's something else. No one knows.
Not if one supports the equally corrupt Democrats.
Something like that. Democrats *and* Republicans (with an exception here and there like Dr. Ron Paul) are the problem with government.
The two party system that has evolved in the US is a sham in the sense that it is really just one party with two different names and they both do the same kinds of things when they are granted power.
I'm a salesman by trade, and my Windows XP Pro machine has a 3 month uptime.
I'm very happy for you. My Unix System V/R[12] hybrid box at home had that kind of uptime in 1985.
I would go outside into the parking lot and shoot off fireworks and burn all my Fedora CDs in a big bonfire, except that it's fire season in California and I'd probably get arrested, so I won't. But hey, good job, man!
Let me put it another way. When I wrote the "only crashes 1 to 2 times per week" comment to the internal corporate group, it was deliberate flame bait, as my own experiences (I played the Microsoft Windows XP appreciation game for about 8 months) indicated that it needed rebooting maybe once every week or two. Of course, I was never doing any real work on it, nor was I using the "enterprise" crapware everyone else in the group is being forced to use. I was rather surprised that folks thought I was being generous.
Microsoft Windows, even XP, has a very bad reputation (for stability) in general and XP (at SP2 or SP3) only has a "good" reputation when you compare it to previous versions of Microsoft Windows. Recall also, that Microsoft Windows XP and XP/SP1 are still being used and comprise the overwhelming majority of zombies in botnets (that article was posted here some time ago).
Microsoft Vista is about the same. We had 'turfers here proclaiming it to be the best O/S Microsoft had ever put out. The same 'turfers (or people who sounded exactly the same) were saying after Vista/SP1, "of course Vista was crap and crashed a lot, but SP1 fixed all the issues". I expect to hear the same sort of thing when Microsoft Vista/SP2 is released.
At any rate, you are arguing with the wrong person. I am a Unix guy. I have been with Unix and Unix-derived systems at school, home and work for almost 3 decades now. I am most pleased with how my platform has progressed over the years. I am also pleased with KDE 3 as a GUI, when KDE 4 (which was released a bit early in distros like Fedora 9) grows up, I'll learn to like that as well.
(Oh and judging from the comments from the hardest core 'turfers, Microsoft Windows XP/SP2 has approximately the same stability as Unix System V/R2 had in the mid 1980's. Some day, you'll catch up...)
Not really. He was talking about editors losing data in a crash and that is absolutely unacceptable, no matter what.
The most vitriolic email I ever received while being the top XEmacs guy was in the period when we were still debugging and fixing the Mule stuffs and once in awhile we would write out corrupted autosave files.
Really, bleeding edge or no, there is absolutely no excuse for losing the user's data in an editor. This is part of the reason why I despise this Ajax crap. Why am I not editing this message in something reliable like XEmacs as versus a text box in Opera? (Google gets it, kinda sorta. At least in gmail your message gets autosaved periodically).
I am a big fan of (the basic GNU) Emacs, because it's so easy to edit with a nice blank screen rather than all having those superfluous menubars and whatnot cluttering up the workspace.
There is no doubt about it, the Emacs architecture has won the day. Microsoft uses a poorly reimplemented model for everything nowadays. The ability to modify behavior of an application with a full-fledged computer language was truly innovative. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html
(My perspective is of one who remembers when Emacs was a bunch of macros for TECO, so I never got into the habit of using a menubar.) And now that GNU Emacs can render fonts nicely in X11, XEmacs has become even more otiose.
I happen to like menubars, scrollbars and GUI and that's why I was attracted to XEmacs in order to fix the deficiencies in 19.14.
You can always turn off that sort of stuff in XEmacs. My first commercial use of XEmacs was as an embedded editor in a Process Control System that only had access to PC console tty.
But... if it bothers you, no problem. At least you're not using something loathesome like VIM. (nvi is nice though).
And XEmacs has as much right to be called "GNU Emacs" as the one sitting on gnu.org, but that is an argument for a different day.
but i must add that applications crash more frequently on linux than on windows. quanta, gedit etc just crash suddenly and *boom* all my unsaved work is gone
I have no idea what quanta is, but... use something reliable like XEmacs for editing. I haven't ever lost anything more than a keystroke or two, even working on bleeding edge XEmacsen *while* debugging problems where our autosave feature wasn't working exactly right with certain charsets.
Sheesh. Oh and please learn the use of English grammar and punctuation while you're throwing mindless flames around.
Like what? And why should customers care about it? Your responses will show if you're a troll, or if you have anything technical reasoning behind it.
Linux, like Mac OS X and really all modern Unix-derived systems do not crash. I've only run production quality Linux systems since the late 1990s and I cannot remember the last time I've had the system crash. That equates X Server crashes with system crashes by the way. The last reliable X server crash I had was in the late 1990s when XEmacs was trying to display the Mule hello page. I got patches into XEmacs to fix that side and patches into the X server to fix that side and Life Moved On.
* Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem. I could create a.sh file that deleted.config files or something equally evil and tell your grandma to run it and she will.
True, but deceptive. Before Microsoft Windows 95 vulgarized the internet, it was long known that running arbitrary executable code coming across the wire was A Very Bad Idea. The decision by Microsoft to jump into internet support *and* provide default unprompted execute support for that poisoned enough minds to make it an industry standard.
* Malware - Again not specific to Windows.
No, but it was Microsoft Windows that popularized the idea of execute any old thing including malware by default.
* Crashes - Yeah, comeback with real proof.
It's your reputation, not ours. My best anecdotal evidence was something that crossed an internal corporate email group where I wrote something like "Microsoft Windows XP is the most stable O/S they've ever released because it only crashes 1 or 2 times a week." and among the responses I got back were "I wish it were that few...".
In my opinion, it doesn't really matter where the blame actually lies (perhaps it does lie on enterprise crapware that the Microsoft Windows users are forced to use, but whatever). It's the fact that the platform does crash and people are conditioned to it. The last supposedly all intranet web meeting I had to attend at work, was delayed due to software issues on Microsoft Windows XP. Money was lost while a bunch of highly paid engineers were looking at a blank screen. Says a lot about True Cost of Ownership too...
In the meantime, my desktop machine (running RHEL) has only ever been rebooted on power failure or moving the equipment since it was deployed.
* Drivers - Add all the drivers to the kernel? So the manufacturers of devices have to wait till the kernel maintainer decides on his own sweet time when to integrate patches. AND THEN wait till picks them up downstream. Nice solution. Doesnt scale, buddy.
Greg KH has gotten into the latest Linux kernel a staging area where half-worked drivers can get wider code distribution and more eyes and hands to fix them up. It remains to be seen how well this work, but they are trying.
I used to think the amount of code changes that is currently going on in the Linux was unsustainable with control of the final tree in a single person's hands. Linus proved me wrong.
The amount of code that goes into the Linux kernel every day (on average) is astonishing.
* Applications - All the software in the world at a single spot. i.e. Google for applications. Who addresses commercial software? Who handles payments for this? Who will handle updates?
While I have no problem with proprietary software, like games, on something like Linux or OpenBSD/Mac OS X, I do have a problem with the Software As A Service model. It sucks and I agree with you on this point.
The one and only thing I thank Microsoft for is that at the time it was strangling the PC market, it also killed X terminals, which were cheap, but an abomination to use, in my opinion. I thank them for that.
Unless you're referring to the uniformity of a nice 80x24 text console, you're way off. Unix/Linux have oodles of different window managers.
Yeah, so what? When Microsoft Windows was capturing its critical market share, there was a similar amount of variety there too.
Choice is Good. Specialization is for insects.
If it is strict interface uniformity you want, there is only one choice - Mac OS X. Amazing that it still looks similar to Macs in the 80s and also amazing that they've transitioned to a real O/S over that time.[1]
(Macs are very cool for playing World of Warcraft, but for getting real work done, give me any decent Linux distro with KDE and XEmacs).
[1] And for me, I can change the mislabeled big key to the left of the `A' key to what God Intended It To Be, a control key, in less time on Mac OS X than I can on a brand new Linux install with KDE.
The problem is you can't walk into a store and get a computer with Linux on it, unless you want to go for a netbook.
You can in a free country. My next computer purchase will be a Linux preinstall from Octagon. Or a competitor a few stores down. You can buy Linux preinstalls from anywhere in Manila.
If I call the RIAA and say that I want to purchase the right to put hit song X on my website for every visitor to my website to download for free and ask what it would cost to purchase this right, that is what the damages should be compared to.
That's an interesting question. A related question is how much do they charge for licensing if you wish to allow downloading for a fee?
Vince: "Well one day I was at home threatening the kids when I looks out through the hole in the wall and sees this tank pull up and out gets one of RIAA's boys, so he comes in nice and friendly and says RIAA wants to have a word with me, so he chains me to the back of the tank and takes me for a scrape round to RIAA's place and the RIAA's lawyer is there in the conversation pit with Doug and Charles Paisley, the baby crusher, and two film producers and a man they called 'Kierkegaard', who just sat there biting the heads of whippets and RIAA says 'I hear you've been a naughty boy Clement' and he splits me nostrils open and saws me leg off and pulls me liver out and I tell him my name's not Clement and then... he loses his temper and nails me head to the floor."
Interviewer: He nailed your head to the floor?
Vince: At first yeah
Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O' Tracy.
Interviewer: I've been told RIAA nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer: But the police have film of RIAA actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Interviewer: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Interviewer: What had you done?
Stig: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old RIAA. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, RIAA would.
Interviewer: And you don't bear him a grudge?
Stig: A grudge! Old RIAA. He was a real darling.
Interviewer: I understand he also nailed your wife's head to a coffee table. Isn't that true Mrs O' Tracy?
Mrs O' Tracy: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Stig: Well he did do that, yeah. He was a hard man. Vicious but fair
Slashdot Mirror
Since I've had it my gmail has been available whenever and wherever I wanted it. All the time. Everywhere. If it has failed in the last five years, it failed somebody else.
That would be me. But it has failed less often than the ancient Linux box serving xemacs.org has failed over the same time period.
As you point out, gmail has been pretty much available whereever (I've accessed it from all over the world) and whenever I want it. It works for me and with a few tweaks to the system, it would be worth paying for.
I wasn't even aware that people actually USED their Yahoo profiles.
I just logged in for the first time in a couple of months and did not see much change, other than increased clutter on the screens getting me to yahoo mail.
What changed? Am I supposed to be outraged too? Inquiring minds want to know!
Running stable wouldn't help with my leaking memory, since it's been leaking since Etch was testing and that has become stable.
Have you reported the problem? Memory leakage tends to be one of the easiest bugs to fix.
My personal experience with the Debian guys tends to be that they take kind of a proactive stance on changing things they want to "fix" without consulting upstream. So, if they had a proper bug report, they would have fixed it with or without the hands of the actual maintainer involved.
If you moved half the Windows installation base to Linux overnight you'd probably see Linux facing the same complaints Windows does. You'd see a lot more viruses and malware happening, as well as the same crappy hardware causing crashes.
My mother was able to browse the web and do email with Linux in 1999 (I left her one of my Linux boxes when I went to Japan that year). The autoexecute stuff coming across the wire is of uniquely Microsoft origins. The computing community had already decided that was a Very Bad Idea.
Or do you believe Linux is immune to bad memory?
I know it isn't. I recall vividly the "signal 11" FAQ. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1996/04/msg00210.html Earlier in the same year, Linus personally helped me debug a system with a Cyrix CPU that ultimately proved to have a bad L1 cache chip.
The BSDs of the time (mid 1990s) were even more sensitive to bad RAM. On the basis of the machine that had a bad L1 cache chip (it always crashed quickly in BSD, but did not crash in Linux 1.2), the company I was working for decided to use Linux instead of BSD (my original recommendation) in its migration away from SCO Unix.
Linux right now is used almost exclusively used by nerds. If XP had the same user base, instead of every high school student, grandma, and hockey mom it would likely not have a reputation for crashing.
It does have a reputation of crashing with the people I work with, all of whom could be described by the pejorative "nerd". I dispute that assertion. And just to be clear, I am referring to Microsoft Windows XP/SP2, enterprise license.
These days I use Linux, and no problems crashing, but it leaks memory. ... I'm running Debian "testing".
Suggest you run Debian stable. It's the kind of distro I was referring to when I used the qualification "production".
Huh? Is that some kind of joke whose punchline went over my head?
Joe Biden is perhaps the dumbest candidate we've ever had for VP.
"Stand up, Chuck so every one can see you ... oh wait"
We're talking about the same Dan Quayle right? The one who is the sole reason that George W. Bush isn't the dumbest politician America has ever seen?
Biden is dumber.
My first suggestion would be to interview and find a top-notch CPA
Would you be so kind as to post any leads in the SJ, CA area or email me offline?
If you're an idealist, Marxism is still the best government out there, in theory.
It is not and you're probably new here. There are plenty of us who would prefer a Randian Galt's Gulch to a Marxist "paradise".
Marxism only works if you believe that everyone is basically good in nature. That's not how the world really works. Anyone advocating such things is dangerously insane.
Go ahead, tell me how well universal free health care worked in Hawaii ...
You didn't clarify in your statement whether you like communism or dismiss it.
Non sequitor. Just because I've devoted a large percentage of my life to GPL'ed software, it does not imply that I am a communist.
I have devoted personal time to GPL'ed software in particular and Open Source software in general because it benefits me and a lot of other people in general.
Maybe you need to live in Asia awhile to know the difference between quid pro quo and from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
I vote capitalism!
People who produce traditional income (through wages or sold assets such as products and goods) are going to get a tax increase. Asshats like buffet and the other schmucks that caused this current mess wont be taxed because they deal in "securities" (such as stocks) which will NOT be taxed.
Decent summary.
Punishment of "traditional" sources of income and leniency in the rules of traditional rules of making loans (and banking rules) are basically what got us into this mess.
Why should I, as an engineer, pay high tax rates when I am earning money on the basis of my life skills, hard work and education and someone who is existing by trading in the stock market pay less?
The system is broken, but I believe that is by design ... :-(
I know of very few small businesses or entrepreneurs that are looking at over $250,000 profit at or near startup; most of their revenue is tied up in either expansion (hiring new staff, new facilities, etc.) or paying existing expenses (payroll is a massive expense for a small business).
Oh. Maybe you should check SBA regulations for what is considered a small business (in most cases, it's a lot more than $250,000 in net revenue).
Maybe you should also ask the Messiah to clarify just how he is going to apply his US$250k rule. Maybe it's gross revenues, maybe it's something else. No one knows.
Not if one supports the equally corrupt Democrats.
Something like that. Democrats *and* Republicans (with an exception here and there like Dr. Ron Paul) are the problem with government.
The two party system that has evolved in the US is a sham in the sense that it is really just one party with two different names and they both do the same kinds of things when they are granted power.
You're doing it wrong.
Eh?
I'm a salesman by trade, and my Windows XP Pro machine has a 3 month uptime.
I'm very happy for you. My Unix System V/R[12] hybrid box at home had that kind of uptime in 1985.
I would go outside into the parking lot and shoot off fireworks and burn all my Fedora CDs in a big bonfire, except that it's fire season in California and I'd probably get arrested, so I won't. But hey, good job, man!
What's your point?
Your experiences are the exception, not the rule.
Let me put it another way. When I wrote the "only crashes 1 to 2 times per week" comment to the internal corporate group, it was deliberate flame bait, as my own experiences (I played the Microsoft Windows XP appreciation game for about 8 months) indicated that it needed rebooting maybe once every week or two. Of course, I was never doing any real work on it, nor was I using the "enterprise" crapware everyone else in the group is being forced to use. I was rather surprised that folks thought I was being generous.
Microsoft Windows, even XP, has a very bad reputation (for stability) in general and XP (at SP2 or SP3) only has a "good" reputation when you compare it to previous versions of Microsoft Windows. Recall also, that Microsoft Windows XP and XP/SP1 are still being used and comprise the overwhelming majority of zombies in botnets (that article was posted here some time ago).
Microsoft Vista is about the same. We had 'turfers here proclaiming it to be the best O/S Microsoft had ever put out. The same 'turfers (or people who sounded exactly the same) were saying after Vista/SP1, "of course Vista was crap and crashed a lot, but SP1 fixed all the issues". I expect to hear the same sort of thing when Microsoft Vista/SP2 is released.
At any rate, you are arguing with the wrong person. I am a Unix guy. I have been with Unix and Unix-derived systems at school, home and work for almost 3 decades now. I am most pleased with how my platform has progressed over the years. I am also pleased with KDE 3 as a GUI, when KDE 4 (which was released a bit early in distros like Fedora 9) grows up, I'll learn to like that as well.
(Oh and judging from the comments from the hardest core 'turfers, Microsoft Windows XP/SP2 has approximately the same stability as Unix System V/R2 had in the mid 1980's. Some day, you'll catch up ...)
Not really. He was talking about editors losing data in a crash and that is absolutely unacceptable, no matter what.
The most vitriolic email I ever received while being the top XEmacs guy was in the period when we were still debugging and fixing the Mule stuffs and once in awhile we would write out corrupted autosave files.
Really, bleeding edge or no, there is absolutely no excuse for losing the user's data in an editor. This is part of the reason why I despise this Ajax crap. Why am I not editing this message in something reliable like XEmacs as versus a text box in Opera? (Google gets it, kinda sorta. At least in gmail your message gets autosaved periodically).
I am a big fan of (the basic GNU) Emacs, because it's so easy to edit with a nice blank screen rather than all having those superfluous menubars and whatnot cluttering up the workspace.
There is no doubt about it, the Emacs architecture has won the day. Microsoft uses a poorly reimplemented model for everything nowadays. The ability to modify behavior of an application with a full-fledged computer language was truly innovative. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html
(My perspective is of one who remembers when Emacs was a bunch of macros for TECO, so I never got into the habit of using a menubar.) And now that GNU Emacs can render fonts nicely in X11, XEmacs has become even more otiose.
I happen to like menubars, scrollbars and GUI and that's why I was attracted to XEmacs in order to fix the deficiencies in 19.14.
You can always turn off that sort of stuff in XEmacs. My first commercial use of XEmacs was as an embedded editor in a Process Control System that only had access to PC console tty.
But ... if it bothers you, no problem. At least you're not using something loathesome like VIM. (nvi is nice though).
And XEmacs has as much right to be called "GNU Emacs" as the one sitting on gnu.org, but that is an argument for a different day.
Almost missed this:
but i must add that applications crash more frequently on linux than on windows. quanta, gedit etc just crash suddenly and *boom* all my unsaved work is gone
I have no idea what quanta is, but ... use something reliable like XEmacs for editing. I haven't ever lost anything more than a keystroke or two, even working on bleeding edge XEmacsen *while* debugging problems where our autosave feature wasn't working exactly right with certain charsets.
Sheesh. Oh and please learn the use of English grammar and punctuation while you're throwing mindless flames around.
I havent seen a single bsod in xp or vista since last 4 years ...
I'm very happy for you. Perhaps you should be reassuring my coworkers whose Microsoft Windows XP machines are crashing every day or so instead of me.
Whatever.
They're FPOS because their methods are unsound. See: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/deposition-of-riaas-expert-available.html
Your solution is the most complicated to implement, even if it's the least expensive.
Perhaps, but how much are your company's documents worth to you?
I also would argue that Darkness404's idea would be the safest, regardless of cost.
I hate to give a long response to an AC ...
Like what? And why should customers care about it? Your responses will show if you're a troll, or if you have anything technical reasoning behind it.
Linux, like Mac OS X and really all modern Unix-derived systems do not crash. I've only run production quality Linux systems since the late 1990s and I cannot remember the last time I've had the system crash. That equates X Server crashes with system crashes by the way. The last reliable X server crash I had was in the late 1990s when XEmacs was trying to display the Mule hello page. I got patches into XEmacs to fix that side and patches into the X server to fix that side and Life Moved On.
* Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem. I could create a .sh file that deleted .config files or something equally evil and tell your grandma to run it and she will.
True, but deceptive. Before Microsoft Windows 95 vulgarized the internet, it was long known that running arbitrary executable code coming across the wire was A Very Bad Idea. The decision by Microsoft to jump into internet support *and* provide default unprompted execute support for that poisoned enough minds to make it an industry standard.
* Malware - Again not specific to Windows.
No, but it was Microsoft Windows that popularized the idea of execute any old thing including malware by default.
* Crashes - Yeah, comeback with real proof.
It's your reputation, not ours. My best anecdotal evidence was something that crossed an internal corporate email group where I wrote something like "Microsoft Windows XP is the most stable O/S they've ever released because it only crashes 1 or 2 times a week." and among the responses I got back were "I wish it were that few ...".
In my opinion, it doesn't really matter where the blame actually lies (perhaps it does lie on enterprise crapware that the Microsoft Windows users are forced to use, but whatever). It's the fact that the platform does crash and people are conditioned to it. The last supposedly all intranet web meeting I had to attend at work, was delayed due to software issues on Microsoft Windows XP. Money was lost while a bunch of highly paid engineers were looking at a blank screen. Says a lot about True Cost of Ownership too...
In the meantime, my desktop machine (running RHEL) has only ever been rebooted on power failure or moving the equipment since it was deployed.
* Drivers - Add all the drivers to the kernel? So the manufacturers of devices have to wait till the kernel maintainer decides on his own sweet time when to integrate patches. AND THEN wait till picks them up downstream. Nice solution. Doesnt scale, buddy.
Greg KH has gotten into the latest Linux kernel a staging area where half-worked drivers can get wider code distribution and more eyes and hands to fix them up. It remains to be seen how well this work, but they are trying.
I used to think the amount of code changes that is currently going on in the Linux was unsustainable with control of the final tree in a single person's hands. Linus proved me wrong.
The amount of code that goes into the Linux kernel every day (on average) is astonishing.
* Applications - All the software in the world at a single spot. i.e. Google for applications. Who addresses commercial software? Who handles payments for this? Who will handle updates?
While I have no problem with proprietary software, like games, on something like Linux or OpenBSD/Mac OS X, I do have a problem with the Software As A Service model. It sucks and I agree with you on this point.
The one and only thing I thank Microsoft for is that at the time it was strangling the PC market, it also killed X terminals, which were cheap, but an abomination to use, in my opinion. I thank them for that.
Unless you're referring to the uniformity of a nice 80x24 text console, you're way off. Unix/Linux have oodles of different window managers.
Yeah, so what? When Microsoft Windows was capturing its critical market share, there was a similar amount of variety there too.
Choice is Good. Specialization is for insects.
If it is strict interface uniformity you want, there is only one choice - Mac OS X. Amazing that it still looks similar to Macs in the 80s and also amazing that they've transitioned to a real O/S over that time.[1]
(Macs are very cool for playing World of Warcraft, but for getting real work done, give me any decent Linux distro with KDE and XEmacs).
[1] And for me, I can change the mislabeled big key to the left of the `A' key to what God Intended It To Be, a control key, in less time on Mac OS X than I can on a brand new Linux install with KDE.
The problem is you can't walk into a store and get a computer with Linux on it, unless you want to go for a netbook.
You can in a free country. My next computer purchase will be a Linux preinstall from Octagon. Or a competitor a few stores down. You can buy Linux preinstalls from anywhere in Manila.
If I call the RIAA and say that I want to purchase the right to put hit song X on my website for every visitor to my website to download for free and ask what it would cost to purchase this right, that is what the damages should be compared to.
That's an interesting question. A related question is how much do they charge for licensing if you wish to allow downloading for a fee?
I don't know, but I'm curious.
Vince: "Well one day I was at home threatening the kids when I looks out through the hole in the wall and sees this tank pull up and out gets one of RIAA's boys, so he comes in nice and friendly and says RIAA wants to have a word with me, so he chains me to the back of the tank and takes me for a scrape round to RIAA's place and the RIAA's lawyer is there in the conversation pit with Doug and Charles Paisley, the baby crusher, and two film producers and a man they called 'Kierkegaard', who just sat there biting the heads of whippets and RIAA says 'I hear you've been a naughty boy Clement' and he splits me nostrils open and saws me leg off and pulls me liver out and I tell him my name's not Clement and then... he loses his temper and nails me head to the floor."
Interviewer: He nailed your head to the floor?
Vince: At first yeah
Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O' Tracy.
Interviewer: I've been told RIAA nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer: But the police have film of RIAA actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Interviewer: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Interviewer: What had you done?
Stig: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old RIAA. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, RIAA would.
Interviewer: And you don't bear him a grudge?
Stig: A grudge! Old RIAA. He was a real darling.
Interviewer: I understand he also nailed your wife's head to a coffee table. Isn't that true Mrs O' Tracy?
Mrs O' Tracy: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Stig: Well he did do that, yeah. He was a hard man. Vicious but fair