"Anybody remember the "turbo" button - ie the "underclock my PC when this is off" button? That was necessary for older games written for the 80386 that assumed a small range of clock frequencies and did delays that way."
80386? Dude! In my dreams! The "Turbo XT" generation of PCs introduced the "Turbo" switch, because the new generation of 8086's ran at a blindingly fast 8 MHz, when the original PC/XT ran at 4 MHz. You had to down-clock to 4 for games that assumed 4 MHz. The Turbo switch on later PCs (which typically did something like 16 vs 33 MHz, or 20 vs 40, etc.) was more of a vestige than anything else. 16 MHz was still way too fast to run the Pac Man clone I had.:-)
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I'm bored.:)
"Extension and content-type/MIME should matter for filtering."
FYI and FWIW, the thing that HTTP User Agents are *supposed* to look at is the Content-Type header. URLs say nothing about "files" or "extensions"; the fact that a URL ends in a period followed by three characters should not be considered significant. Sure, Apache and IIS use files and directories, but there isn't anything in the specs about that.
The link you posted comes up with "text/plain" in the header, so it should be treated as text. (If the link came up with a "text/html" header, it should be treated as HTML, regardless of the ".txt" extension on the end. (Of course, most web servers just use the extension to pick which Content-type to send, but again, that's an implementation detail, and not something the client should care about.))
Now, of course, Microsoft Internet Explorer *does* ignore both Content-type and apparent file extension (depending on version and configuration). MSIE attempts to detect the content type based on looking at the file contents. Which can be very bad, as you note. Another very poorly thought out "feature" from Microsoft.
FYI, you can fix this behavior on some versions of Internet Explorer. Tools -> Internet Options -> Security -> pick a zone -> Custom Level -> Miscellaneous -> Open files based on content, not file extension. Set to "Disabled". Repeat for other zones, as needed.
The "file extension" and "content" phrasing in that option is misleading. When Microsoft says "file extension", they really mean "Content-Type header"; when they say "content", they really mean "MSIE analysis of content".
"I've been in the telecoms/computer industry now for about 20 years now and I've seen the whole perception of what is and isn't good customer service change over that time... "
Of course, we've also seen the price schedule change drastically over that time, too. It used to be that a dedicated data pipe to the 'net cost you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month. Now it costs less than cable TV in many places.
This is not a fair, apples to apples comparison, of course. The technology has changed drastically, and with the explosion of consumer high-speed Internet, we're getting economies of scale like never before. And most of all, all big telcos appear to be both evil and technically incompetent (but not incompetent at being evil, alas).
But even with all those caveats, I can't help but wonder if there isn't some of the "You get what you pay for" principle at work here. With radically reduced rates, perhaps a corresponding reduction in service shouldn't be totally surprising.
"I'm sorry, you're saying that people (not the gov't) have the right to take my possesions any time they want? "
No, the parent is saying the Fourth Amendment is not about that. There are other laws aside those in the Constitution.
OTOH, the grandparent's may be right. The government cannot create a law that empowers someone to search you or your property without probable cause. That's what the Bill of Rights is there for.
While I sympathize with the parent poster's problem, this situation (and the many others like it) is something to keep in mind the name time you face someone who wants to choose Microsoft because:
Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft
We need commercial support
We need a company standing behind the product
Microsoft routinely and regularly pulls the rug out from under developers and end-users alike. What amazes me is that people continue to choose Microsoft, no matter how many times they get burned.
Say the parent undertakes a massive switch to the.Net version, as he describes. Then, in five years, when Microsoft decides.Net is dead and $the_next_big_thing has to replace it, he or his successor will be faced with the same problem all over again.
"At least that is how it works in civilised countries."
Where I can I find one of those?
Seriously, while I agree strongly with everything you say, I've also found that the world is full of managers who don't want to face reality, and blame their employees instead. "Find a better job" sounds nice, but I find PHBs everywhere I go. Much like gravity, one cannot escape it, only increase one's distance from it.
Here is *all* of the relevant text: "The 'From:' field specifies the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message. The 'Sender:' field specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message. For example, if a secretary were to send a message for another person, the mailbox of the secretary would appear in the 'Sender:' field and the mailbox of the actual author would appear in the 'From:' field. If the originator of the message can be indicated by a single mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical, the 'Sender:' field SHOULD NOT be used. Otherwise, both fields SHOULD appear."
Both others and I interpret that as I described previously. In particular, "agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message" would seem to imply that. I disagree with your interpretation of "author and transmitter are identical", given that the context is entirely about addresses and mailboxes. That said, I see your interpretation as *not* being indisputably wrong. Lacking more information, I'd have to call it ambiguous.
"Every other mail program I use lets me change the From address without this silliness."
Why is it silly? GMail is certainly not violating the standard; GMail is arguably interpreting it correctly; GMail is providing useful information. I don't even think Outlook is being "silly"; it's displaying information that was provided. I think Outlook's method of presenting said information is aesthetically displeasing, but I think that about a lot of Outlook. Ultimately, I see GMail as doing nothing wrong, and the original poster complaining about something Outlook is doing, but incorrectly blaming GMail for it. Why should GMail be blamed for how Outlook works?
"But I'd still prefer to inhibit the sending of the header."
And I'd prefer they didn't. It's useful to know who actually sent a message. (Sure, it can be forged anyway, but I'm talking about for administrative purposes, not security.) All my mail programs don't puke all over the screen when they get the header. If yours does, I suggest you contact the vendor of said program for support.
I usually browse with comments with a medium-high threshold. When I find a thread that looks interesting, I middle-click the comment ID (the "#12345" link after the time in the header) of the top post of said thread to open it in a new tab. Then I change that thread to a -1 threshhold, Nested, and redisplay, to see the whole thing.
It would be really nice (for me) to have that available in an automated way. Maybe on the menu when right-clicking the comment ID or something.
I would understand if this is considered too esoteric a feature. Maybe it could be generalized somehow.
"One of the main problems with GMail is the "on behalf of" thing when trying to masquerade under a valid alternative email address."
That's really more of an Outlook issue. GMail is adhering to the standards. "From" identifies the nominal author(s) of a message. "Sender" identifies the specific, single agent which originated a message. See RFC-2822, Section 3.6.2.
It's hardly GMail's fault that Outlook presents that information in such a funny looking way.
I can just imagine the legions of Slashdotters (the people) installing Slashdotter (the program) as we speak (type). I know I plan to.
So, imagine if the author of this program slipped in a Trojan Horse back door or some such. Or, waited a bit, and added it to a future release. Suddenly, he'd have some level of access to the browser of hundreds or more Slashdotters!
How many people here reviewed the source code to this thing before they installed it? I know I didn't.
"The science fiction and fantasy section even of large bookstores such as Borders overwhelmingly consists of cheap pulp-rate material, with literary science fiction in the clear minority."
"Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud." -- Theodore Sturgeon
"As far as I know this is incorrect. Windows 95 and up do not jump to DOS, do not utilize the DOS interrupt, et cetera. DOS is there only as a boot loader."
Well, I'm hardly an expert on the internals of Windows, but I've seen fairly good evidence that there are still real mode parts hanging around being used in classic Windows. Corrupting parts of what used to be DOS using an old DOS program could destablize Windows 95. Maybe that wasn't DOS but some other replacement real mode code that happened to be equally critical -- I'm not sure there's a practical difference. Windows 95/98 are quite happy to fall back to real-mode DOS support for filesystem support, so DOS was still alive and well, even when if it wasn't used as much.
They were not sitting on top of DOS the way, say, Norton Commander or XTree Gold did, of course. Protected mode ("32 bit") drivers were used whenever possible, and the Win32 API was implemented using protected mode exlusively, as far as I know. But DOS was far from dead. It doesn't matter how small the code is if it's still a critical part of the OS.
"Once win.com executes, command.com is no longer doing anything."
If I remember correctly, COMMAND.COM wouldn't load at all if you didn't have an AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file -- the DOS kernel loaded WIN.COM directly. But COMMAND.COM provided few services to other programs in any event -- it was a shell, same as/bin/sh or EXPLORER.EXE or whatever. I'm talking about the DOS kernel -- the stuff contained in IO.SYS in Windows 95/98.
Read the great-grandparent post again. The GGP just asked for a non-Apple box with a footprint like the Mac Mini, not one that's functionally identical.
But to address your points:
"only a Pentium M rather than the Core Duo available in the Mini"
CPU's evolve constantly. I'm sure the PC clones of the Mac Mini will evolve, too.
"it's missing 2 USB ports"
Is is? Where? Does the Mac Mini have USB ports on the side? Seriously, I see two USB ports on the rear of both.
"bluetooth"
I'll have to take your word for it. I can see where that would be a nice thing to have, especially as the small form factor will always mean fewer ports to plug wires into.
The Mac Mini also has a POTS modem, which the AOpen box does not.
On the other hand, the AOpen box has S-video out, audio line in, and some mystery port I can't identify. Plus a power button.;-)
therevolution: "Whereas Windows is pretty much the same now as it was 13 years ago?"
drsmithy: "There's a hell of lot less *new* code in Windows."
I'm just curious what your basis for that statement is. That is, what your source is, and how the term "new" is being used. I'm honestly curious. (I've got little to no interest in these platform-wars. I'm a Free Software nut, so it's all payware to me.) Sure, Mac OS X was a radical departure from System 9, a totally different product, but 13 years ago, Microsoft was still saying classic Win 3.x was a good idea. Windows XP has a massive amount of "new" code. (This says nothing about the *quality* of that code, of course, but that's not what you were talking about.)
"It would have been the ultimate OS to dual-boot into to play games, especially missing all that legacy 16 bit crap that by most accounts is what was wrong with Windows 9x."
Microsoft has two major Windows product lines:... -> Win 3.x -> Win 95 -> Win 98 -> Win ME (EOL)
Win NT -> Win 2000 -> Win XP -> Win 2003 -> Win Vista ->...
I call the first "classic Windows", and the second "NT".
Classic Windows runs on top of MS-DOS, always has, always did. No exceptions. Up to and including Windows 3.x, MS-DOS was a separate product. With "Windows 95", what would have been "Windows 4.0" was bundled with what would have been "MS-DOS 7.0" and sold as one product. DOS was still there, and vital to the operation of Windows, even once it switched to protected mode.
Even Windows ME boots the old MS-DOS code and depends on it for operation. It was just that the ability to boot to the DOS prompt (so-called "MS-DOS Mode" or "Command Prompt Only" in 95/98) was disabled. I believe you could still make DOS boot floppies with Win ME (I don't recall for sure, and I sure as hell don't have Win ME around to check).
Windows NT was a "new" OS. It never ran on top of DOS. It does include a lot of crappy Win16 code for legacy support, but that's mainly in a well-isolated subsystem that doesn't run unless you run a Win16 program. (Note that this says nothing about the quality (or lack thereof) of the Win32 code.)
I cannot agree more. We buy a lot of stuff from Dell. Dell is known to have some issues with service. It's basically a purchase option with Dell -- "Do you want service to suck or not?" We always buy the Gold Tech Support, and 4HR 24x7 onsite contracts for mission critical stuff. Yah, it costs a little more, but when shit happens, we can be on the phone talking to someone who speaks English well, is eager to solve the problem, and has at least some knowledge. If we need a part, Dell will have it on our doorstop within 4 hours. If it's a city office, it's more like 30 minutes.
Service contracts for computers pay for themselves.
"If you read the bottom of the article, you'll notice that it's a spoof and a simple rewrite about why frame suck most of the time."
It's interesting to note that while the article is apparently a spoof, many of the objections still apply. (Sure, this is way over-generallzing, but work with me here for a minute.) Also, note how frames went through a period where everybody used them, then use gradually taper off. I think people realized that much of the time, frames just got in the way and the "old ways" worked just as well, if not better.
It does seem like the computer world loves to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. We keep doing it. (ObRef to The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.) What's that about not learning history?
"This writeup from USA Today... says that USPTO 'has now issued preliminary rejections of the five NTP patents that RIM was found to have violated in the jury trial. The most recent of those patent office decisions came last week'."
So, if I understand that correctly: The USPTO will allow evil, money-grubing corporations to patent anything they want, unless, of course, the patent would adversely affect a large percentage of powerful people who might be able to do something about how messed up the US patent system is. Then the patents are rejected.
"If you want to be bitten by a bizarre CLI arg limitation every few years (which makes it just that much harder to track down) be my guest."
You make a good point there.
Still, for myself, I've had to worry about the limitations of find... -exec more often then I've had to worry about the limitations on the shell's command line length. The overhead for fork'ing for each found file can be a killer -- for me, it has made the difference between minutes and hours. If I hit the CL length limit often enough, I'd probabbly add "alias xargs='xargs -n limit'" to my ~/.bashrc or something.
Other people (such as yourself) will have different needs, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
"Anybody remember the "turbo" button - ie the "underclock my PC when this is off" button? That was necessary for older games written for the 80386 that assumed a small range of clock frequencies and did delays that way."
:-)
:)
80386? Dude! In my dreams! The "Turbo XT" generation of PCs introduced the "Turbo" switch, because the new generation of 8086's ran at a blindingly fast 8 MHz, when the original PC/XT ran at 4 MHz. You had to down-clock to 4 for games that assumed 4 MHz. The Turbo switch on later PCs (which typically did something like 16 vs 33 MHz, or 20 vs 40, etc.) was more of a vestige than anything else. 16 MHz was still way too fast to run the Pac Man clone I had.
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I'm bored.
"Extension and content-type/MIME should matter for filtering."
:-)
FYI and FWIW, the thing that HTTP User Agents are *supposed* to look at is the Content-Type header. URLs say nothing about "files" or "extensions"; the fact that a URL ends in a period followed by three characters should not be considered significant. Sure, Apache and IIS use files and directories, but there isn't anything in the specs about that.
The link you posted comes up with "text/plain" in the header, so it should be treated as text. (If the link came up with a "text/html" header, it should be treated as HTML, regardless of the ".txt" extension on the end. (Of course, most web servers just use the extension to pick which Content-type to send, but again, that's an implementation detail, and not something the client should care about.))
Now, of course, Microsoft Internet Explorer *does* ignore both Content-type and apparent file extension (depending on version and configuration). MSIE attempts to detect the content type based on looking at the file contents. Which can be very bad, as you note. Another very poorly thought out "feature" from Microsoft.
FYI, you can fix this behavior on some versions of Internet Explorer. Tools -> Internet Options -> Security -> pick a zone -> Custom Level -> Miscellaneous -> Open files based on content, not file extension. Set to "Disabled". Repeat for other zones, as needed.
The "file extension" and "content" phrasing in that option is misleading. When Microsoft says "file extension", they really mean "Content-Type header"; when they say "content", they really mean "MSIE analysis of content".
I prefer to use Firefox.
(Kind of playing devil's advocate here.)
... "
"I've been in the telecoms/computer industry now for about 20 years now and I've seen the whole perception of what is and isn't good customer service change over that time
Of course, we've also seen the price schedule change drastically over that time, too. It used to be that a dedicated data pipe to the 'net cost you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month. Now it costs less than cable TV in many places.
This is not a fair, apples to apples comparison, of course. The technology has changed drastically, and with the explosion of consumer high-speed Internet, we're getting economies of scale like never before. And most of all, all big telcos appear to be both evil and technically incompetent (but not incompetent at being evil, alas).
But even with all those caveats, I can't help but wonder if there isn't some of the "You get what you pay for" principle at work here. With radically reduced rates, perhaps a corresponding reduction in service shouldn't be totally surprising.
"I'm sorry, you're saying that people (not the gov't) have the right to take my possesions any time they want? "
No, the parent is saying the Fourth Amendment is not about that. There are other laws aside those in the Constitution.
OTOH, the grandparent's may be right. The government cannot create a law that empowers someone to search you or your property without probable cause. That's what the Bill of Rights is there for.
Microsoft routinely and regularly pulls the rug out from under developers and end-users alike. What amazes me is that people continue to choose Microsoft, no matter how many times they get burned.
Say the parent undertakes a massive switch to the
"At least that is how it works in civilised countries."
Where I can I find one of those?
Seriously, while I agree strongly with everything you say, I've also found that the world is full of managers who don't want to face reality, and blame their employees instead. "Find a better job" sounds nice, but I find PHBs everywhere I go. Much like gravity, one cannot escape it, only increase one's distance from it.
Here is *all* of the relevant text: "The 'From:' field specifies the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message. The 'Sender:' field specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message. For example, if a secretary were to send a message for another person, the mailbox of the secretary would appear in the 'Sender:' field and the mailbox of the actual author would appear in the 'From:' field. If the originator of the message can be indicated by a single mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical, the 'Sender:' field SHOULD NOT be used. Otherwise, both fields SHOULD appear."
Both others and I interpret that as I described previously. In particular, "agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message" would seem to imply that. I disagree with your interpretation of "author and transmitter are identical", given that the context is entirely about addresses and mailboxes. That said, I see your interpretation as *not* being indisputably wrong. Lacking more information, I'd have to call it ambiguous.
"Every other mail program I use lets me change the From address without this silliness."
Why is it silly? GMail is certainly not violating the standard; GMail is arguably interpreting it correctly; GMail is providing useful information. I don't even think Outlook is being "silly"; it's displaying information that was provided. I think Outlook's method of presenting said information is aesthetically displeasing, but I think that about a lot of Outlook. Ultimately, I see GMail as doing nothing wrong, and the original poster complaining about something Outlook is doing, but incorrectly blaming GMail for it. Why should GMail be blamed for how Outlook works?
"But I'd still prefer to inhibit the sending of the header."
And I'd prefer they didn't. It's useful to know who actually sent a message. (Sure, it can be forged anyway, but I'm talking about for administrative purposes, not security.) All my mail programs don't puke all over the screen when they get the header. If yours does, I suggest you contact the vendor of said program for support.
Wow. Cool. Now *that's* service.
;-)
As long as you're taking requests....
I usually browse with comments with a medium-high threshold. When I find a thread that looks interesting, I middle-click the comment ID (the "#12345" link after the time in the header) of the top post of said thread to open it in a new tab. Then I change that thread to a -1 threshhold, Nested, and redisplay, to see the whole thing.
It would be really nice (for me) to have that available in an automated way. Maybe on the menu when right-clicking the comment ID or something.
I would understand if this is considered too esoteric a feature. Maybe it could be generalized somehow.
Either way, thanks for the cool tool!
"And remember: Jesus Saves! :D"
Jesus saves... fakes to Moses... shoots... SCORES!
(Yah, it's old, but it's still good.)
"One of the main problems with GMail is the "on behalf of" thing when trying to masquerade under a valid alternative email address."
That's really more of an Outlook issue. GMail is adhering to the standards. "From" identifies the nominal author(s) of a message. "Sender" identifies the specific, single agent which originated a message. See RFC-2822, Section 3.6.2.
It's hardly GMail's fault that Outlook presents that information in such a funny looking way.
Since we're trolling...
I can just imagine the legions of Slashdotters (the people) installing Slashdotter (the program) as we speak (type). I know I plan to.
So, imagine if the author of this program slipped in a Trojan Horse back door or some such. Or, waited a bit, and added it to a future release. Suddenly, he'd have some level of access to the browser of hundreds or more Slashdotters!
How many people here reviewed the source code to this thing before they installed it? I know I didn't.
Food for thought.
Right now, it seems like they're a company, but they don't have a product yet. I guess that means...
There is no Vega only Azul.
(Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.)
"The science fiction and fantasy section even of large bookstores such as Borders overwhelmingly consists of cheap pulp-rate material, with literary science fiction in the clear minority."
"Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud." -- Theodore Sturgeon
"As far as I know this is incorrect. Windows 95 and up do not jump to DOS, do not utilize the DOS interrupt, et cetera. DOS is there only as a boot loader."
/bin/sh or EXPLORER.EXE or whatever. I'm talking about the DOS kernel -- the stuff contained in IO.SYS in Windows 95/98.
Well, I'm hardly an expert on the internals of Windows, but I've seen fairly good evidence that there are still real mode parts hanging around being used in classic Windows. Corrupting parts of what used to be DOS using an old DOS program could destablize Windows 95. Maybe that wasn't DOS but some other replacement real mode code that happened to be equally critical -- I'm not sure there's a practical difference. Windows 95/98 are quite happy to fall back to real-mode DOS support for filesystem support, so DOS was still alive and well, even when if it wasn't used as much.
They were not sitting on top of DOS the way, say, Norton Commander or XTree Gold did, of course. Protected mode ("32 bit") drivers were used whenever possible, and the Win32 API was implemented using protected mode exlusively, as far as I know. But DOS was far from dead. It doesn't matter how small the code is if it's still a critical part of the OS.
"Once win.com executes, command.com is no longer doing anything."
If I remember correctly, COMMAND.COM wouldn't load at all if you didn't have an AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file -- the DOS kernel loaded WIN.COM directly. But COMMAND.COM provided few services to other programs in any event -- it was a shell, same as
Read the great-grandparent post again. The GGP just asked for a non-Apple box with a footprint like the Mac Mini, not one that's functionally identical.
;-)
But to address your points:
"only a Pentium M rather than the Core Duo available in the Mini"
CPU's evolve constantly. I'm sure the PC clones of the Mac Mini will evolve, too.
"it's missing 2 USB ports"
Is is? Where? Does the Mac Mini have USB ports on the side? Seriously, I see two USB ports on the rear of both.
"bluetooth"
I'll have to take your word for it. I can see where that would be a nice thing to have, especially as the small form factor will always mean fewer ports to plug wires into.
The Mac Mini also has a POTS modem, which the AOpen box does not.
On the other hand, the AOpen box has S-video out, audio line in, and some mystery port I can't identify. Plus a power button.
therevolution: "Whereas Windows is pretty much the same now as it was 13 years ago?"
drsmithy: "There's a hell of lot less *new* code in Windows."
I'm just curious what your basis for that statement is. That is, what your source is, and how the term "new" is being used. I'm honestly curious. (I've got little to no interest in these platform-wars. I'm a Free Software nut, so it's all payware to me.) Sure, Mac OS X was a radical departure from System 9, a totally different product, but 13 years ago, Microsoft was still saying classic Win 3.x was a good idea. Windows XP has a massive amount of "new" code. (This says nothing about the *quality* of that code, of course, but that's not what you were talking about.)
"By any rational measure, OS X is every bit as 'mature' as Windows..."
;-)
Wait. I thought you liked Max OS X?
"It would have been the ultimate OS to dual-boot into to play games, especially missing all that legacy 16 bit crap that by most accounts is what was wrong with Windows 9x."
... -> Win 3.x -> Win 95 -> Win 98 -> Win ME (EOL)
...
Microsoft has two major Windows product lines:
Win NT -> Win 2000 -> Win XP -> Win 2003 -> Win Vista ->
I call the first "classic Windows", and the second "NT".
Classic Windows runs on top of MS-DOS, always has, always did. No exceptions. Up to and including Windows 3.x, MS-DOS was a separate product. With "Windows 95", what would have been "Windows 4.0" was bundled with what would have been "MS-DOS 7.0" and sold as one product. DOS was still there, and vital to the operation of Windows, even once it switched to protected mode.
Even Windows ME boots the old MS-DOS code and depends on it for operation. It was just that the ability to boot to the DOS prompt (so-called "MS-DOS Mode" or "Command Prompt Only" in 95/98) was disabled. I believe you could still make DOS boot floppies with Win ME (I don't recall for sure, and I sure as hell don't have Win ME around to check).
Windows NT was a "new" OS. It never ran on top of DOS. It does include a lot of crappy Win16 code for legacy support, but that's mainly in a well-isolated subsystem that doesn't run unless you run a Win16 program. (Note that this says nothing about the quality (or lack thereof) of the Win32 code.)
"Try finding a non-apple box with as small a desk footprint as a mac mini."
l
:)
:)
Okay: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8464432110.htm
Sure, it's a blatant rip-off of the Mac Mini design, but you did ask.
Sure, it's got IBM-PC insides, not Mac insides, but that's what you asked for.
I cannot agree more. We buy a lot of stuff from Dell. Dell is known to have some issues with service. It's basically a purchase option with Dell -- "Do you want service to suck or not?" We always buy the Gold Tech Support, and 4HR 24x7 onsite contracts for mission critical stuff. Yah, it costs a little more, but when shit happens, we can be on the phone talking to someone who speaks English well, is eager to solve the problem, and has at least some knowledge. If we need a part, Dell will have it on our doorstop within 4 hours. If it's a city office, it's more like 30 minutes.
Service contracts for computers pay for themselves.
"If you read the bottom of the article, you'll notice that it's a spoof and a simple rewrite about why frame suck most of the time."
It's interesting to note that while the article is apparently a spoof, many of the objections still apply. (Sure, this is way over-generallzing, but work with me here for a minute.) Also, note how frames went through a period where everybody used them, then use gradually taper off. I think people realized that much of the time, frames just got in the way and the "old ways" worked just as well, if not better.
It does seem like the computer world loves to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. We keep doing it. (ObRef to The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.) What's that about not learning history?
"This writeup from USA Today ... says that USPTO 'has now issued preliminary rejections of the five NTP patents that RIM was found to have violated in the jury trial. The most recent of those patent office decisions came last week'."
So, if I understand that correctly: The USPTO will allow evil, money-grubing corporations to patent anything they want, unless, of course, the patent would adversely affect a large percentage of powerful people who might be able to do something about how messed up the US patent system is. Then the patents are rejected.
I'm gonna go cry now.
"If you want to be bitten by a bizarre CLI arg limitation every few years (which makes it just that much harder to track down) be my guest."
... -exec more often then I've had to worry about the limitations on the shell's command line length. The overhead for fork'ing for each found file can be a killer -- for me, it has made the difference between minutes and hours. If I hit the CL length limit often enough, I'd probabbly add "alias xargs='xargs -n limit'" to my ~/.bashrc or something.
You make a good point there.
Still, for myself, I've had to worry about the limitations of find
Other people (such as yourself) will have different needs, of course.
Regards,
POKE 33,33
What's that do? I remember the first one (PRint to card in slot 6), but don't remember that POKE.
Ahhh, PEEK and POKE. CALL. BLOAD. What fun.