I don't remember when this was exactly, but Chrissy Hines of the pretenders had some comments about other "artists" who didn't like people recording songs off the radio.
Its simple greed, nothing more.
Lee
Both win2k and Linux are operating systems. They provide services and run software. Which one is better depends entirely upon which services you want to provide and what software you want to run.
In general, if you're setting up a server, go with Linux or *BSD. If you're setting up a desktop/workstation, go with Win2k. Linux and the BSD's are excellent server OS's, win2k is an excellent desktop OS.
There are of course situations where you'd want a win2k server or a linux/BSD desktop. But you're going to have to know something about all these systems and know what you're trying to accomplish before you can evaluate which one would do the better job in that situation. In short, there are no simple answers except "It depends."
Someone mentioned not running Netscape on win2k. Netscape is all I run. Has it crashed? Of course. Has it crashed the OS, no. If it did that would be an indication of a problem in win2k, not netscape. Everyone knows that netscape crashes. Why it crashes is another question.
I really don't care whether crackers can pay their rent or not. The only people who are busted for cracking are the ones who are doing malicious things to other people's systems.
Were I to crack into some computer or another and leave it as I found it, nothing would happen to me, especially if I contacted the people in charge of that system's security and let them know they were vulnerable. Why? Because it simply doesn't pay to sue or prosecute someone when no harm has been done. It isn't worth the time and money. Even if I didn't contact the sysadmins to warn them the company would have very little incentive to go after me.
On the other hand, if I were going around breaking into people's systems (like Kevin Mitnick), erasing their data (like Kevin Mitnick), and posting their personal files online (like Kevin Mitnick), then I would of course be apprehended and rightfully prosecuted for my crimes.
I wouldn't want a cracker even in the building where I work, let alone working there too. Why? Because you can't trust them. I don't say that because of their criminal record. I say that because they have shown that they derive pleaure from harming others. Sociopaths don't make good employees, no matter what their technical skills.
Switch to a mac? Why on earth would you want to do that? Do you want to be the proud owner of an overpriced, underpowered, proprietary system with a vastly inferior selection of software titles? Not to mention the fact that its operating system actually makes Microsoft's stuff look good in comparison?
I'd say you'd have to be thinking different to want that.
Apple is dead, it just isn't broke yet.
(And this is coming from someone whose first computer was an Apple II+).
Microsoft, like most software/computer companies, has a really serious case of NIH syndrome, or Not Invented Here. The people who make up Microsoft are biased towards their own products, and hold all other products in disdain. So its no big suprise that they'd want to rip out everything that didn't have a "Made in Redmond" sticker on it. What is suprising is that they can't seem to pull it off. What does it say about Microsoft's products if even they, the people who designed and created them, cannot get them to work in a real world environment? It says to me that anyone with a lick of sense avoids them as much as possible.
Lee
Yes, you're right I should have looked more closely at the specs.
I've been hearing things about the P4 for some time now, the 20 stage pipeline being one of them. I wasn't aware that they were doing significant things to compensate for the problems such a long pipleine introduces.
The other thing I heard is that its floating point performance is really bad. Now it may run some new style SSE2 floating point instructions at a decent clip, but how is that not a mere attempt at locking developers into using only those (patented I'm sure) instructions? Carrot and stick.
Not that I'm an intel hater. If intel makes the better chip then that is the chip I'm going to buy. Same goes for AMD or any other vendor. But based on their corporate culture and behaviour, I wouldn't be suprised if this chip is either a dog, or broken in some way designed to "lock in" users or developers. It wouldn't be the first time.
While this chip will run a 2Ghz, just how many instructions is it executing during each of those clock cycles?
With a 20 stage pipeline... not as many as a P3 or Athlon.
Intel designed this chip for very high clock rates with the assumption that Mhz ratings sell chips and systems because joe public is too stupid to know what IPC means. Sadly they may be right. Long gone are the days when the average computer shopper even knew how to use his or her system, let alone what went on under the hood.
Also, have you heard about how abysmal the floating point performance on it is supposed to be?
Well, its the windows version on top of wine all the way down to the binaries themselves. Quattro-pro "for linux" will run under windows if you just copy the files over.
I agree that it is slow and unstable. Most of this is due to the alpha nature of wine itself. Even so, there is a huge service pack for wp02k for windows, but not one for linux. I'll be glad when wine gets closer to prime time and I can just run the windows version of wp on top of it.
Please don't judge candidates based on what OS their employees choose to use.
Neither of them is likely to know the difference between Linux and Charlie Brown's piano playing friend with a similar name.
As successful politicians, they know how to kiss the asses of the general public while effectively covering their own. What, if anything, they know other than this can be catagorized as trivia.
Lee
I don't remember suggesting that M$ applications were better. Before you can call something better, you've got to have something to compare it with.
What I did do was accuse M$ of creating hidden features in windows to give their own applications an artificial advantage.
This accusation is not new, its been around for some time now.
So you claim to work for M$ in the OS division. Maybe you do. I also may have been wrong in my assumption that M$ was guilty of creating a double standard through manipulation of the API.
But tell me this, are your application divisions partitioned off from your other divisions? Do they enjoy access to priviliged information (or the people who created that information) that other outside developers do not?
I know if I were running a multifaceted enterprise such as microsoft, I'd want my divisions to be able to benefit from each other's knowledge as much as possible. Duplication of effort is money down the drain, as well as time wasted. When two groups don't work together they can go in mutually exclusive directions, creating even bigger problems.
I'd have a hard time believing that M$ would completely separate its divisions and not allow them to share information in a manner authorized by management. To do so would put them on a level playing field with other application developers. Gates wouldn't want that because it would be giving an advatage to the enemy.
Apple sues because that is part of its corporate culture. A lot of it has to do with Steve Jobs. The man is very intelligent and can be brilliant at times. But he also has the emotional development of a 2 year old.
When I see things like this I think of the rondroids and their crusade against freedom of information. Actually the cases aren't that similar. Apple is pissed because someone stole the show from them. $cientology is pissed because people are making things known about them that are as damaging as they are true.
Apple really shouldn't be suing anyone, except maybe the original source of the leak within their company. If they want to stop leaks like this from happening, they need to tighten up on their own security. The fact that a leak happened should tell them that something within their own organization needs to be corrected. Not that its time to wage war against some of the very companies that are helping keep them afloat.
Do you suppose this is what they mean by Think Different?
Lee
Microsoft is trying to push pure windows because it is something that they purely control. The next step will be to do away with 9x altogether and go straight to NT. This puts M$ in a strong position of influence over developers both inside and outside the company. Why? Because M$ soley controls and defines the win32 api. That means that if you develop for windows, M$ is who you have to deal with. Borland has to play nice with M$ to get the information they need to create their compilers. Imagine the runaround they must get from the redmondites. M$ could easily install hidden calls that only they could make use of. Calls that are faster or offer more functionality than publicly documented ones. Many people believe they have done this already. I for one would bet money they have.
Basically the point I'm making is that by eliminating a customer's ability to run something M$ doesn't have direct or indirect control over, they are securing their chokehold on the desktop.
I'd hardly call this a good thing.
Thank God for people like Stallman and Torvalds. Without them we'd all be stuck using OS/2. (Now don't get me wrong, I loved OS/2, but its no Linux.)
As it stands right now, no one uses real mode drivers except when necessary. If someone is using oakcdrom.sys with mscdex, it means their system is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode and they don't know how else to get the cdrom running.
Win9x doesn't even parse config.sys or autoexec.bat unless they're something in them to begin with. Want to make sure you're only using super high performance 32bit drivers? Make these files 0 length. Chances are you won't see any difference because the only drivers that would be in config.sys or autoexec.bat are ones you specifically put there yourself, or were put there by a dos based program.
Under the Aug-95 version of windows 95, it was possible to boot to your old version of DOS. You could also boot up under dos 7 (win95 dos) and then start up windows 3.1 It worked beautifully. In fact I had my system set up to do just that.
But then M$ came out with OSR2. In addition to all the positive new features, such as fat32 support, were two "features" that made me want to kill some redmondites. They disabled the ability to boot from another version of dos, and they went out of their way to break win31 compatibility.
You could still set up a menu to try and boot to a previous version, but it would break the first time you used it, forcing you to use a dos71 boot disk and sys your C drive with it.
As for the win31 compatibility, M$ messed up dos71 so that it would HALT YOUR SYSTEM whenever it detected you trying to use win31. It would come up with a message saying that this version of windows was not compatible with your system yada yada yada. Ctrl-alt-delete wouldn't reboot you either, you had to hit that reset button or cycle the power.
Turns out there was nothing "incompatible" about dos71 and win31. I quickly determined that they had modified io.sys. When I pointed this out in a newsgroup I got a few trite remarks back and one good one. Some bright person had modified io.sys so that it wouldn't halt your system. He pointed out his webpage which held the patch needed. When I used it on my io.sys, win31 worked just fine.
So don't be too suprised about anything M$ does that isn't in the best interest of their customers, or a segment of their customers. Monopolies view their customers as a resource to exploit. Companies in competitive markets see their customers as their most precious resource. One that must be preserved and positively encouraged to stick with the company because they can always take their business somewhere else.
I had just about forgotten how bad the personalities behind M$ really were, then I saw this. The only reason they have for doing this is so they can shove win32 down the throats of more people and lock out access by competing products.
You'd think with the lawsuit that they would have learned something. Guess again. Actually that is a good thing becuase it means they intend to continue doing the kinds of things that got them in trouble in the first place. One way or another they will destroy themselves in the process.
I think many window managers really miss the boat on usability. Many of them are designed to look cool with utility taking the back seat.
A window manager is a program designed to help you make better use of other programs. As such it should not interfere with the function of other programs. It should stay out of your way.
A window manager should provide a simple method for starting new programs and an easy way to switch between running programs. The fewer steps necessary to do both the better.
If you look at windows, particularly win98 with its desktop enhancements, it does a very good job of this.
Running tasks are all shown in a bar along the bottom, allowing you to quickly switch to any task. When windows are maximized they do not cover this bar. The menus under the start button allow you to start up any application which is on the system. Links to frequently used programs can be inserted in an area next to the start menu so that they are always immediately accessible.
With other window managers more effort it needed to keep the desktop in a usable state. Maximize a window and it covers up things you don't want covered. Or it might only maximize vertically instead of truly maximizing. The users has to spend time and effort managing the windows when that is what a window manager is supposed to do.
It seems that people who create window managers spend a lot of time and effort making it look fancy and themable and all that instead of concentrating on making it useful. Also they may intentionally make it different from windows out of some misplaced zealousness against anything microsoft.
KDE for the most part gets it right, at least in the 1.x version. The default config for it isn't as good as it could be, but it is easy to fix.
2.x on the other hand has been broken. I'm going to have to find another window manager because I can't stand the one in KDE2. The only thing I use KDE for is its window manager anyway, so moving to something else is no big loss.
But unfortuneately it looks as if I'm going to have to write my own window manager. All the ones I've seen are broken in some way or another.
At one time we were all stuck with FVWM or MWM, or OLWM. Those days really sucked. We made do with those because there wasn't anything better. But then things like Afterstep started showing up and life got better. But now it seems that things are going backwards again, back towards cumbersome complex desktops that fight you rather than help you.
I won't have it. I'll write my own WM rather than be forced to play games with one that doesn't work right.
As much as most of us love Linux, there are those who do not. There are those who hate linux. Their reasons are as mysterious as they are irrational, but they do exist. I know several people who think they are guru's and hate linux. The fact that their knowledge level varies from "nearly clueless" to "just enough to be dangerous," does nothing to keep them from telling even more clueless people how much they think linux sucks.
Just imagine a mac freak with an anti-linux attitude and you'll get a good mental image of what these guys are like.
Moody is trying to mislead people who simply don't know any better. Moody's lying, and anyone with half a clue knows it. Sadly most people don't have a clue at all, so BS like this gets repeated as truth, especially by suits and suit-like individuals.
But in the end you've got to see it as a good sign. If M$ biased stooges have to stoop to lying and misleading, well we've already won.
The moderation system stops working when it becomes a system to discredit or gag individuals with unpopular opinions.
If you disagree with me, have the balls to say so and the evidence to back your own opinions up with. "Moderating" me down only proves you can't stand to hear what I've said and have nothing with which to refute it.
SCO is an offshoot of Microsoft. At one time MS owned a large stake in the company. Remember MS-Xenix? Well it evolved into SCO Unix and is now known as OpenServer. Unixware is SYS-V v4 which SCO bought from Novell who themselves bought it from USL, a company spun off by AT&T when it combined the features sets of Sys-V and BSD to create Sys-V v4. From what I understand, companies which market derivatives of Sys-V, such as Sun with solaris, pay SCO licensing fees because SCO owns the code that the other versions are derived from. So that makes me wonder, does Caldera now own this code? Wouldn't that be ironic? A linux company having the IP rights to Unix. But from the press release it seems that this probably isn't the case. "SCO will retain its Tarantella Division, and the SCO OpenServer revenue stream and intellectual properties." But what about Unixware? Where does that come into play? Did it go to the tarantella division? I know that IBM is working with SCO on monterey, which I'd assume is derived from unixware. So it probably didn't change hands either. So what Caldera got was the customers which SCO didn't want anymore. SCO realizes that its lost the server market that OpenServer once competed in to linux. SCO is cutting its losses so that it can concentrate on its Tarantella middleware, which has already been partially ported to linux. So instead of continuing to try to compete with linux, SCO decided to cash in on linux the best way it could, selling a middleware package FOR linux. They could have created their own distribution, but they've been in the game too long to be that foolish. The number of linux distributions will shrink in the coming years. The industry will likely consolidate around a dominant distribution, with many smaller niche distributions filling in the gaps. SCO knows that it is too late in the game at this point to throw its chips in as well. The future money to be made in the linux game will not come from distributions, but from the commercial software which runs on top of them. Companies which sell high quality software, for which there is no viable free alternative, are the ones which will reap the greatest financial benefit from linux's popularity. If I had any money I'd invent in SCO right now because they clearly understand this. Lee
Why were they trying to run a website, ANY WEBSITE, on a DOS based system? No wonder it crashed and burned. But I think their biggest mistake was trying to use that old XT they bought at the salvation army.
The problem is that this is a pro-discrimination law. This law says that society believes that anyone under the age of 18 to be unable to distinguish between a video game and reality.
Laws like this reinforce the treatment of the young as unaccountable for their actions.
If anything we need to go in the opposite direction and not discriminate so much based on age. Hold teenagers to the same standards that 20 and 30-somethings are held to.
Give them a little more credit for having brains in their heads. Laws like this mostly say that the young are assumed to be stupid and that anything they see or hear has some kind of profound influence over them. Hogwash! Your average teenager is no more "impressionable" than someone twice their age. A 4 year old is impressionable. That is the age when their core personality can be influenced. A kid much older than that is pretty much set for life. Any changes after that are going to be self directed and difficult to achive.
People know this. They really do. But they pretend otherwise because it gives them an excuse to subjugate the young. Just like the myths of racial inferiority were excuses to persecute blacks and other minorities. Same old song and dance, just a different tune.
This is simply yet another example of unjust and unjustified age discrimination.
I doubt that anyone actually believes it would hurt someone under 18 to play these games. But it is an effective way to put them in their place and show them who is boss.
Human beings seem to have this psychological need to subjugate others. Any excuse to do so is latched onto and played for all it is worth. Things like race, sex, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and of course age, these are all used as justifications for the mistreatment of others, especially the systematic mistreatment of them as a group.
But what sets age discrimination apart in my mind and makes it doubly reprehsensible is that its victims become it perpetrators. The things that older people do to younger ones today are the same things which were done to them when they were younger.
There also seems to be a double standard for older people and younger people. When an older person flips out and shoots a bunch of people, his actions aren't blamed on what he watches on TV or what kind of music he likes. He himself is held accountable for his actions. At most he is declared insane. But should some teenager do the same thing then any number of supposed causes are fingered from the clothes he wears to the fact that he knows how to use the internet.
Make sense to you? It doesn't to me. These kinds of things didn't make sense to me when I was a teenager and they sure as hell don't make sense to me now at 27.
Kids aren't stupid and their psyche's aren't so fragile that we need to protect them from much of anything. But the myth which says they are "impressionable" and so forth gets perpetuated because its an effective excuse to step on them and punish them for being young.
I hate cellphones and consider them to be evil tools of the prince of lies!!
Why would I want to carry around a device which would allow anyone in the world to call and bug me at any time? Cell phones are diabolical because you can never escape your office, it follows you around.
Then of course there are all these young dumbass punks who have them because they think it is "cool" and who think they're impressing people when they're talking on them. Yeah, you're impressing me with your stupidity by paying a ton of money for a mobile phone when you've got a phone at home already. Get a pager if you want people to be able to get in touch with you. Save your money for more of those trendy logo'd clothes that cost twice what they are worth and which you also wear to try and impress people.
The idea that our votes don't count is promoted by those who would benefit from the public believing this. Campaign dollars don't get people elected, people voting for that person does.
Don't be fooled, your vote counts more now than ever before.
Slashdot Mirror
It is issues like this which drive home the fact that people need to vote.
Use it or lose it. Either exercise your power to shape and define our government, or slowly lose it to corporate greed and unethical politicians.
The choice is yours.
I don't remember when this was exactly, but Chrissy Hines of the pretenders had some comments about other "artists" who didn't like people recording songs off the radio. Its simple greed, nothing more. Lee
Both win2k and Linux are operating systems. They provide services and run software. Which one is better depends entirely upon which services you want to provide and what software you want to run.
In general, if you're setting up a server, go with Linux or *BSD. If you're setting up a desktop/workstation, go with Win2k. Linux and the BSD's are excellent server OS's, win2k is an excellent desktop OS.
There are of course situations where you'd want a win2k server or a linux/BSD desktop. But you're going to have to know something about all these systems and know what you're trying to accomplish before you can evaluate which one would do the better job in that situation. In short, there are no simple answers except "It depends."
Someone mentioned not running Netscape on win2k. Netscape is all I run. Has it crashed? Of course. Has it crashed the OS, no. If it did that would be an indication of a problem in win2k, not netscape. Everyone knows that netscape crashes. Why it crashes is another question.
Lee
I really don't care whether crackers can pay their rent or not. The only people who are busted for cracking are the ones who are doing malicious things to other people's systems.
Were I to crack into some computer or another and leave it as I found it, nothing would happen to me, especially if I contacted the people in charge of that system's security and let them know they were vulnerable. Why? Because it simply doesn't pay to sue or prosecute someone when no harm has been done. It isn't worth the time and money. Even if I didn't contact the sysadmins to warn them the company would have very little incentive to go after me.
On the other hand, if I were going around breaking into people's systems (like Kevin Mitnick), erasing their data (like Kevin Mitnick), and posting their personal files online (like Kevin Mitnick), then I would of course be apprehended and rightfully prosecuted for my crimes.
I wouldn't want a cracker even in the building where I work, let alone working there too. Why? Because you can't trust them. I don't say that because of their criminal record. I say that because they have shown that they derive pleaure from harming others. Sociopaths don't make good employees, no matter what their technical skills.
Lee
Switch to a mac? Why on earth would you want to do that? Do you want to be the proud owner of an overpriced, underpowered, proprietary system with a vastly inferior selection of software titles? Not to mention the fact that its operating system actually makes Microsoft's stuff look good in comparison?
I'd say you'd have to be thinking different to want that.
Apple is dead, it just isn't broke yet.
(And this is coming from someone whose first computer was an Apple II+).
Microsoft, like most software/computer companies, has a really serious case of NIH syndrome, or Not Invented Here. The people who make up Microsoft are biased towards their own products, and hold all other products in disdain. So its no big suprise that they'd want to rip out everything that didn't have a "Made in Redmond" sticker on it. What is suprising is that they can't seem to pull it off. What does it say about Microsoft's products if even they, the people who designed and created them, cannot get them to work in a real world environment? It says to me that anyone with a lick of sense avoids them as much as possible. Lee
Yes, you're right I should have looked more closely at the specs.
I've been hearing things about the P4 for some time now, the 20 stage pipeline being one of them. I wasn't aware that they were doing significant things to compensate for the problems such a long pipleine introduces.
The other thing I heard is that its floating point performance is really bad. Now it may run some new style SSE2 floating point instructions at a decent clip, but how is that not a mere attempt at locking developers into using only those (patented I'm sure) instructions? Carrot and stick.
Not that I'm an intel hater. If intel makes the better chip then that is the chip I'm going to buy. Same goes for AMD or any other vendor. But based on their corporate culture and behaviour, I wouldn't be suprised if this chip is either a dog, or broken in some way designed to "lock in" users or developers. It wouldn't be the first time.
Lee
While this chip will run a 2Ghz, just how many instructions is it executing during each of those clock cycles?
With a 20 stage pipeline... not as many as a P3 or Athlon.
Intel designed this chip for very high clock rates with the assumption that Mhz ratings sell chips and systems because joe public is too stupid to know what IPC means. Sadly they may be right. Long gone are the days when the average computer shopper even knew how to use his or her system, let alone what went on under the hood.
Also, have you heard about how abysmal the floating point performance on it is supposed to be?
Hello Cyrix!
Lee
Well, its the windows version on top of wine all the way down to the binaries themselves. Quattro-pro "for linux" will run under windows if you just copy the files over.
I agree that it is slow and unstable. Most of this is due to the alpha nature of wine itself. Even so, there is a huge service pack for wp02k for windows, but not one for linux. I'll be glad when wine gets closer to prime time and I can just run the windows version of wp on top of it.
Lee
Please don't judge candidates based on what OS their employees choose to use. Neither of them is likely to know the difference between Linux and Charlie Brown's piano playing friend with a similar name. As successful politicians, they know how to kiss the asses of the general public while effectively covering their own. What, if anything, they know other than this can be catagorized as trivia. Lee
I don't remember suggesting that M$ applications were better. Before you can call something better, you've got to have something to compare it with.
What I did do was accuse M$ of creating hidden features in windows to give their own applications an artificial advantage.
This accusation is not new, its been around for some time now.
So you claim to work for M$ in the OS division. Maybe you do. I also may have been wrong in my assumption that M$ was guilty of creating a double standard through manipulation of the API.
But tell me this, are your application divisions partitioned off from your other divisions? Do they enjoy access to priviliged information (or the people who created that information) that other outside developers do not?
I know if I were running a multifaceted enterprise such as microsoft, I'd want my divisions to be able to benefit from each other's knowledge as much as possible. Duplication of effort is money down the drain, as well as time wasted. When two groups don't work together they can go in mutually exclusive directions, creating even bigger problems.
I'd have a hard time believing that M$ would completely separate its divisions and not allow them to share information in a manner authorized by management. To do so would put them on a level playing field with other application developers. Gates wouldn't want that because it would be giving an advatage to the enemy.
Lee
Apple sues because that is part of its corporate culture. A lot of it has to do with Steve Jobs. The man is very intelligent and can be brilliant at times. But he also has the emotional development of a 2 year old. When I see things like this I think of the rondroids and their crusade against freedom of information. Actually the cases aren't that similar. Apple is pissed because someone stole the show from them. $cientology is pissed because people are making things known about them that are as damaging as they are true. Apple really shouldn't be suing anyone, except maybe the original source of the leak within their company. If they want to stop leaks like this from happening, they need to tighten up on their own security. The fact that a leak happened should tell them that something within their own organization needs to be corrected. Not that its time to wage war against some of the very companies that are helping keep them afloat. Do you suppose this is what they mean by Think Different? Lee
Microsoft is trying to push pure windows because it is something that they purely control. The next step will be to do away with 9x altogether and go straight to NT. This puts M$ in a strong position of influence over developers both inside and outside the company. Why? Because M$ soley controls and defines the win32 api. That means that if you develop for windows, M$ is who you have to deal with. Borland has to play nice with M$ to get the information they need to create their compilers. Imagine the runaround they must get from the redmondites. M$ could easily install hidden calls that only they could make use of. Calls that are faster or offer more functionality than publicly documented ones. Many people believe they have done this already. I for one would bet money they have.
Basically the point I'm making is that by eliminating a customer's ability to run something M$ doesn't have direct or indirect control over, they are securing their chokehold on the desktop.
I'd hardly call this a good thing.
Thank God for people like Stallman and Torvalds. Without them we'd all be stuck using OS/2. (Now don't get me wrong, I loved OS/2, but its no Linux.)
As it stands right now, no one uses real mode drivers except when necessary. If someone is using oakcdrom.sys with mscdex, it means their system is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode and they don't know how else to get the cdrom running.
Win9x doesn't even parse config.sys or autoexec.bat unless they're something in them to begin with. Want to make sure you're only using super high performance 32bit drivers? Make these files 0 length. Chances are you won't see any difference because the only drivers that would be in config.sys or autoexec.bat are ones you specifically put there yourself, or were put there by a dos based program.
Lee
Under the Aug-95 version of windows 95, it was possible to boot to your old version of DOS. You could also boot up under dos 7 (win95 dos) and then start up windows 3.1 It worked beautifully. In fact I had my system set up to do just that.
But then M$ came out with OSR2. In addition to all the positive new features, such as fat32 support, were two "features" that made me want to kill some redmondites. They disabled the ability to boot from another version of dos, and they went out of their way to break win31 compatibility.
You could still set up a menu to try and boot to a previous version, but it would break the first time you used it, forcing you to use a dos71 boot disk and sys your C drive with it.
As for the win31 compatibility, M$ messed up dos71 so that it would HALT YOUR SYSTEM whenever it detected you trying to use win31. It would come up with a message saying that this version of windows was not compatible with your system yada yada yada. Ctrl-alt-delete wouldn't reboot you either, you had to hit that reset button or cycle the power.
Turns out there was nothing "incompatible" about dos71 and win31. I quickly determined that they had modified io.sys. When I pointed this out in a newsgroup I got a few trite remarks back and one good one. Some bright person had modified io.sys so that it wouldn't halt your system. He pointed out his webpage which held the patch needed. When I used it on my io.sys, win31 worked just fine.
So don't be too suprised about anything M$ does that isn't in the best interest of their customers, or a segment of their customers. Monopolies view their customers as a resource to exploit. Companies in competitive markets see their customers as their most precious resource. One that must be preserved and positively encouraged to stick with the company because they can always take their business somewhere else.
I had just about forgotten how bad the personalities behind M$ really were, then I saw this. The only reason they have for doing this is so they can shove win32 down the throats of more people and lock out access by competing products.
You'd think with the lawsuit that they would have learned something. Guess again. Actually that is a good thing becuase it means they intend to continue doing the kinds of things that got them in trouble in the first place. One way or another they will destroy themselves in the process.
I think many window managers really miss the boat on usability. Many of them are designed to look cool with utility taking the back seat.
A window manager is a program designed to help you make better use of other programs. As such it should not interfere with the function of other programs. It should stay out of your way.
A window manager should provide a simple method for starting new programs and an easy way to switch between running programs. The fewer steps necessary to do both the better.
If you look at windows, particularly win98 with its desktop enhancements, it does a very good job of this.
Running tasks are all shown in a bar along the bottom, allowing you to quickly switch to any task. When windows are maximized they do not cover this bar. The menus under the start button allow you to start up any application which is on the system. Links to frequently used programs can be inserted in an area next to the start menu so that they are always immediately accessible.
With other window managers more effort it needed to keep the desktop in a usable state. Maximize a window and it covers up things you don't want covered. Or it might only maximize vertically instead of truly maximizing. The users has to spend time and effort managing the windows when that is what a window manager is supposed to do.
It seems that people who create window managers spend a lot of time and effort making it look fancy and themable and all that instead of concentrating on making it useful. Also they may intentionally make it different from windows out of some misplaced zealousness against anything microsoft.
KDE for the most part gets it right, at least in the 1.x version. The default config for it isn't as good as it could be, but it is easy to fix.
2.x on the other hand has been broken. I'm going to have to find another window manager because I can't stand the one in KDE2. The only thing I use KDE for is its window manager anyway, so moving to something else is no big loss.
But unfortuneately it looks as if I'm going to have to write my own window manager. All the ones I've seen are broken in some way or another.
At one time we were all stuck with FVWM or MWM, or OLWM. Those days really sucked. We made do with those because there wasn't anything better. But then things like Afterstep started showing up and life got better. But now it seems that things are going backwards again, back towards cumbersome complex desktops that fight you rather than help you.
I won't have it. I'll write my own WM rather than be forced to play games with one that doesn't work right.
Lee
As much as most of us love Linux, there are those who do not. There are those who hate linux. Their reasons are as mysterious as they are irrational, but they do exist. I know several people who think they are guru's and hate linux. The fact that their knowledge level varies from "nearly clueless" to "just enough to be dangerous," does nothing to keep them from telling even more clueless people how much they think linux sucks.
Just imagine a mac freak with an anti-linux attitude and you'll get a good mental image of what these guys are like.
Moody is trying to mislead people who simply don't know any better. Moody's lying, and anyone with half a clue knows it. Sadly most people don't have a clue at all, so BS like this gets repeated as truth, especially by suits and suit-like individuals.
But in the end you've got to see it as a good sign. If M$ biased stooges have to stoop to lying and misleading, well we've already won.
Lee
Oh so now I've been "moderated" to a troll.
The moderation system stops working when it becomes a system to discredit or gag individuals with unpopular opinions.
If you disagree with me, have the balls to say so and the evidence to back your own opinions up with. "Moderating" me down only proves you can't stand to hear what I've said and have nothing with which to refute it.
Lee
SCO is an offshoot of Microsoft. At one time MS owned a large stake in the company. Remember MS-Xenix? Well it evolved into SCO Unix and is now known as OpenServer. Unixware is SYS-V v4 which SCO bought from Novell who themselves bought it from USL, a company spun off by AT&T when it combined the features sets of Sys-V and BSD to create Sys-V v4. From what I understand, companies which market derivatives of Sys-V, such as Sun with solaris, pay SCO licensing fees because SCO owns the code that the other versions are derived from. So that makes me wonder, does Caldera now own this code? Wouldn't that be ironic? A linux company having the IP rights to Unix. But from the press release it seems that this probably isn't the case. "SCO will retain its Tarantella Division, and the SCO OpenServer revenue stream and intellectual properties." But what about Unixware? Where does that come into play? Did it go to the tarantella division? I know that IBM is working with SCO on monterey, which I'd assume is derived from unixware. So it probably didn't change hands either. So what Caldera got was the customers which SCO didn't want anymore. SCO realizes that its lost the server market that OpenServer once competed in to linux. SCO is cutting its losses so that it can concentrate on its Tarantella middleware, which has already been partially ported to linux. So instead of continuing to try to compete with linux, SCO decided to cash in on linux the best way it could, selling a middleware package FOR linux. They could have created their own distribution, but they've been in the game too long to be that foolish. The number of linux distributions will shrink in the coming years. The industry will likely consolidate around a dominant distribution, with many smaller niche distributions filling in the gaps. SCO knows that it is too late in the game at this point to throw its chips in as well. The future money to be made in the linux game will not come from distributions, but from the commercial software which runs on top of them. Companies which sell high quality software, for which there is no viable free alternative, are the ones which will reap the greatest financial benefit from linux's popularity. If I had any money I'd invent in SCO right now because they clearly understand this. Lee
They're CRACKERS dammit, not HACKERS.
Linus Torvalds is a hacker. Steve Wozniak is a hacker. Even Bill Gates was once a hacker.
Kevin Mitnick is NOT a hacker, he is a cracker. People who do malicious things to other people's systems are crackers.
Calling a cracker a hacker is about like calling a satan worshiper a saint.
I'm so sick of people getting it wrong.
*grrrrr*
LOL!!
At least you understood that I was halfway joking.
I'm still laughing.
Why were they trying to run a website, ANY WEBSITE, on a DOS based system? No wonder it crashed and burned. But I think their biggest mistake was trying to use that old XT they bought at the salvation army.
BAD BAD BAD
The problem is that this is a pro-discrimination law. This law says that society believes that anyone under the age of 18 to be unable to distinguish between a video game and reality.
Laws like this reinforce the treatment of the young as unaccountable for their actions.
If anything we need to go in the opposite direction and not discriminate so much based on age. Hold teenagers to the same standards that 20 and 30-somethings are held to.
Give them a little more credit for having brains in their heads. Laws like this mostly say that the young are assumed to be stupid and that anything they see or hear has some kind of profound influence over them. Hogwash! Your average teenager is no more "impressionable" than someone twice their age. A 4 year old is impressionable. That is the age when their core personality can be influenced. A kid much older than that is pretty much set for life. Any changes after that are going to be self directed and difficult to achive.
People know this. They really do. But they pretend otherwise because it gives them an excuse to subjugate the young. Just like the myths of racial inferiority were excuses to persecute blacks and other minorities. Same old song and dance, just a different tune.
Lee
This is simply yet another example of unjust and unjustified age discrimination.
I doubt that anyone actually believes it would hurt someone under 18 to play these games. But it is an effective way to put them in their place and show them who is boss.
Human beings seem to have this psychological need to subjugate others. Any excuse to do so is latched onto and played for all it is worth. Things like race, sex, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and of course age, these are all used as justifications for the mistreatment of others, especially the systematic mistreatment of them as a group.
But what sets age discrimination apart in my mind and makes it doubly reprehsensible is that its victims become it perpetrators. The things that older people do to younger ones today are the same things which were done to them when they were younger.
There also seems to be a double standard for older people and younger people. When an older person flips out and shoots a bunch of people, his actions aren't blamed on what he watches on TV or what kind of music he likes. He himself is held accountable for his actions. At most he is declared insane. But should some teenager do the same thing then any number of supposed causes are fingered from the clothes he wears to the fact that he knows how to use the internet.
Make sense to you? It doesn't to me. These kinds of things didn't make sense to me when I was a teenager and they sure as hell don't make sense to me now at 27.
Kids aren't stupid and their psyche's aren't so fragile that we need to protect them from much of anything. But the myth which says they are "impressionable" and so forth gets perpetuated because its an effective excuse to step on them and punish them for being young.
Sounds like a simple case of jealousy to me.
Lee
I hate cellphones and consider them to be evil tools of the prince of lies!!
Why would I want to carry around a device which would allow anyone in the world to call and bug me at any time? Cell phones are diabolical because you can never escape your office, it follows you around.
Then of course there are all these young dumbass punks who have them because they think it is "cool" and who think they're impressing people when they're talking on them. Yeah, you're impressing me with your stupidity by paying a ton of money for a mobile phone when you've got a phone at home already. Get a pager if you want people to be able to get in touch with you. Save your money for more of those trendy logo'd clothes that cost twice what they are worth and which you also wear to try and impress people.
Cellphones suck.
Lee
The idea that our votes don't count is promoted by those who would benefit from the public believing this. Campaign dollars don't get people elected, people voting for that person does.
Don't be fooled, your vote counts more now than ever before.
Lee