My dear old mother starts to install programs that use IE and MS Media Player and suddenly they do not work.
Most programs that require IE will install it for you, but it may be a slightly older version than 5.5 SP2. Getting IE 5.5 SP2 through Windows Update is easy -- I do tech support and have managed to get several non-conputer-expert faculty and students to update IE to version 5.5 SP2 by telling them how to do so over the phone.
Any why aren't you installing the software for your "dear old mother"? Don't tell me you charge her for tech support!?!:->
The real trollish quote was of course: If so, that would be great...you could then get Microsoft's patented "blue screen of death" in half the time!!!:-)
<Foghorn Leghorn> It's a joke son, a JOKE!!!! </Foghorn Leghorn>
HINT: the:-) is a dead giveaway...
I guess having to use Windows all the time will suck the sense of humor out of anyone!
Unless there is a natural monopoly (one one company exists in the market) a monopolist has competitors. The whole anti-trust thing is about illegal actions Microsoft took to maintain market share at the expense of its rivals...
Listen, if Hollings is sponsering this bill because he wants to "make-up" with the tech-community, then the worst thing the tech-community can do is continue to boycott him.
Don't make it personal, it's simply politics. We just have to play the game.
This is the best comment I have seen so far. After all, it's only politics...
The government should keep its hands out of technology, period.
So tech companies should not be regulated by the EPA and should be able to pollute left and right? Or their employees should not be covered by labor regulations and forced to work long hours with no overtime or comp time? Or tech companies should not be covered by antitrust regulations, allowing them to monopolize what should be an open and free market?
NO government intervention can be just as bad as TOO MUCH government intervention.
Also, don't forget that in the 1960's and 1970's the government's funding of NASA and the Internet served to spur growth in technology faster than if it would have been left solely to the free market...
I never OPTED IN, I explicitly OPTED OUT from receiving spam from Yahoo but that did not help.
What we need is a mandatory OPT IN procedure where marketers have to prove you opted in or the government fines them. There should also be a mandatory OPT OUT procedure where you can get off the spam lists if you get put on by some unscruplous marketer or the marketer gets fined by the government.
In addition to government fines, consumers should be able to complain (or sue if necessary) and receive damages if it is proven that they never OPTED IN to their spam lists in the first place.
If the industry groups don't begin to put their house in order via self regulation, then I feel that the government should step in...
I agree that you need to show them Postgres (or Oracle 8i/9i running on Linux), but I think that MySQL has its place. The reality is that many web applications don't need a full database system.
You can use a text editor to knock out a couple of PHP pages running MySQL queries in less than fifteen minutes. It can serve as kind of a proof of concept prototype of an application. That stops the "its too hard" type of objection in its tracks.
Also, there are also many cool apps out there that use MySQL. A notable one is phpMyAdmin, which is an amazing tool for managing MySQL. I think it is pretty cool that you can untar the phpMyAdmin distribution file in your web document root, edit the database connection info in the config file and then be up and running in a couple of minutes.
I would also show them Freshmeat, and have them look at the diverse range of programs using MySQL and PHP (and Perl and Python and [insert favorite programming language here]) available there. By seeing what other programmers are doing, they will get ideas for programs of their own.
Showing them how to obtain the source so that they can modify/customize the program also promotes code reuse. Who knows, maybe one of your students will contribute some source code back to the community someday...
2. Unused parts of the operating system go to swap file in well-designed operating systems.
Why load stuff into memory if you aren't going to use it?:->
Seriously, the more modular your OS is, the better you can customize it for your needs. The monolithic OS is definitely not the way to go.
Want to do web development? Load Apache and PHP, otherwise save memory and resources by not loading it. You can even save disk space by not installing packages you never use to your hard drive.
That is why I don't understand why Windows makes you have a GUI full-time on your servers. If you have a KVM on multiple servers and you only can see one server at a time, why do the other servers have to consume resources running a GUI 24/7?
3. Terminal services are working fine
Never having used Terminal Services before, I am wondering how expensive it is. I am guessing it isn't cheap.
Also, if you are mainly administering your servers across the network, why waste server resources on an unneeded GUI?
If something happened to Linus Torvalds that prevented him from continuing to develop the Linux kernel, you'd all be either running around like decapitated chicken or nervous school-boys at their first school dance, wondering what to do when the music started...
The phrase coming to mind is "red herring", or better yet....TROLL!!!
for any of you Unix/Linux guys just getting started in Windows...
For some weird reason I laugh everytime I read this...
Re:Poorly written summary of a poorly titled artic
on
No More Rebooting?
·
· Score: 1
It might be helpful in the future if you are talking about problems in Win98 to use phrases like "I remember when...", or "Years ago..." to point out the fact that you were talking about the way things used to be, not the way things are.
At work, in addition to a P-III 800 mhz PC running Mandrake 8.1 I have a P-II 200 mhz running Win98 because it can't handle Win2K. Even with Win98 loaded it still does a servicable job when it comes to the internet (I support distance education faculty and students when they have problems with WebCT).
Last MONTH I had to wipe and reinstall Win98 because the system was acting flaky, so no way can I say "Years ago..." or "I remember when..." because the problem is still with me here and now!
Before you tell me to replace that box, I work for a community college so if you are willing to forward a check to me I can replace that box, otherwise I need to keep using Win98. Also, the fact that many of the faculty and students I have to support are using Win98 means I need to deal with Win98 today, not yesterday.
Thinking about it, I only know of two people who even have XP and that is because they just bought brand new computers. I have also noticed that most of my non-techie friends are still running Win98. Again, if you are willing to pony up a check for buying them copies of XP I can get them to upgrade.
That, my friend, is how things are in the "Real World". Maybe you need to get out a little more and see what OS regular people are using these days (it ain't XP or even 2K)...
I've been an avid MSFT user since DOS 5.0 came out [I was 10 or so then].
I can understand using Micro$oft products when you are 10, but what is your excuse for using them NOW?:->
a) don't run programs from everyone
I guess you only use store-bought, shrinkwrapped software then, huh? I've run software written by "everyone" (and probably his dog and mother too) that I've obtained from Freshmeat and have not had any problems that could not be fixed by hacking the source.
b) Use tools known to be written well
*cough* Outlook *cough*
c) Keep an eye on resource usage
The only time I need to do this is when I run Windows under VMWare on Linux. Who would have thought that 256 Megs would not be enough RAM!
d) Do regular software updates when possible.
On the Linux server I administer I have had to update a few packages as potentially exploitable vunerabilities become known (SSH, PHP, etc.) but certainly not on a "regular" basis.
On my home computer I have gone from Mandrake 8.1 to 8.2, and I will do so on my workstation at work as soon as I get a little downtime. Why "update" when you can upgrade, especially if it essentially costs you next to nothing (given that the needed bandwidth was provided by work and the cost of three CD-Rs is $1.50 max)?
For example, she does some bulleted comments, then a paragraph and then some more bulleted comments. By hovering over the bullet list, a box appears after a few seconds (that doesn't seem intrusive to me) which you can click on to get options such as "continue numbering scheme from last list", "change format style" and so on.
Hmmm... so your mom couldn't figure out how to right click to bring up a context-sensitive menu? Having a menu pop up when you did not request it is the height of intrusiveness...
It didn't compete with MS on the home or small business desktop, because each iteration demanded the newest hardware available, thus the average user never heard of it, thus "everybody" knew how to use some version of Windows,
OS/2 Version 3 (Warp) ran just fine on a 386-DX40, so it was not a hardware issue. It ran Windows 3.1 better than MS Windows did (the Windows virtual machine would crash but the OS stayed up, unlike "real" Windows).
Nope, the real reason OS/2 died was because Bill Gates refused to license Win32 to IBM. It was not a technical problem but one of abuse of monopoly power.
I cried when I had to go from OS/2 Warp to Windows 98. OS/2 was light years ahead of Win98, but once Windows 3.1 was phased out there were not many applications available for OS/2 so the switch to Windows was inevitable.
It wasn't until Linux came out that computers became fun again. Users should never have to reboot a computer when an application crashes, or be told by technical support to reload the OS when they can't figure out what is going on...
Must have been around 1985 or so - a TeleVideo luggable PC XT clone - 8" green screen VDU, the 640KB RAM, 2x 5.25" FDD. No Hard Disk needed of course.
The luggable model built by IBM was called a "Portable" PC. At over 20 pounds that name always brought a smile to my face:->
I have an actual IBM Portable Compter I picked up for $25. I has a yellow 9" CRT with monochrome CGA graphics, an XT-class processor and a 5-meg MFM hard drive. It ran DOS 3 and MS Works 2.0.
I eventually swapped out the motherboard and hard drive in it. I put a 486 motherboard, a 200 meg hard drive and a 3.5" floppy drive in it and was able get Linux running on it...
Re:Low end laptops are tough...
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure where the myth that Linux runs well on low-end hardware came from. Even if this may have been the case in the past, it is not true anymore. Really. Try it.
It is no myth. Nobody says that you have to run the latest and greatest Linux distribution on your low-end laptop.
My laptop is a P-100 with 40 megs of RAM and it runs the X and KDE that comes with Mandrake 7.2 like a champ. I know it would probably have problems with a newer version of Linux, X and KDE (primarily processor, memory and disk space limitations).
By the same token, Win95 works well but Win98 bogs the system down and it would probably not even run Win2K, but you don't hear anyone talking about the "myth of Windows on low-end hardware"...
check the appropriate page out at http://simcity.ea.com/us/guide/classic/index.phtml
After registering, I got a plain page that said:
"SimCity Classic Live requires Windows 95/98 or Windows NT with either Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher or Netscape Communcator/Navigator 4.0 or higher."
They should of told me upfront that Mozilla on Mandrake users need not apply...:-<
Hate Microsoft if you must, but please judge their software on its own merits.
O.K. Let's talk Word and conversion to HTML.
I have a PHP/MySQL app that embeds uploaded HTML (instructors' syllabi) into dynamically generated pages. It works great with HTML 3.2/4.0 but Word does not generate standard HTML 3.2/4.0 anymore.
It generates a god-awful mess with all kinds of formatting information that ends up looking awful on the screen. In effect it takes a document that looks good on paper and turns it into crap on the screen unless you are using Internet Exploiter.
In the process the file grows 30K to 300K. Believe me, the difference is noticable at 56K, and since the intended audience are community college students it is unreasonable to expect our users to have broadband.
It is also unreasonable to expect all of our faculty to know how to write HTML (especially English teachers!). Since Word is the de-facto word processor is it unreasonable to expect Microsoft respect established standards (like HTML 3.2/4.0) or to give the user more choices (like save as HTML 3.2/4.0)?
It is O.K. to hate Micro$oft because sometimes their software sucks. And many times the good software is unattainable because licenses cost lots of $$$ and many organizations don't have that kind of money lying around.
I am glad I can run Linux. A stable Apache/MySQL/PHP rules! Programming languages galore - C/C++/Perl/Python/TCL/etc! Databases left and right - Oracle/Postgres/MySQL/etc! A choice of Desktops/Window Managers: from the full-blown KDE to the miminalistic Sawfish! Multiple desktops kick ass! And all this out of the (virtual) box:->
And yes, I know you can customize Windows to a large extent, but why? Why pay lots of cash for the add-ons that should be part of the OS? Especially when the OS already sets you back a couple of hundred dollars (I build my own machines and I don't bootleg software).
Why should I pirate Windows software when I can download Mandrake ISOs? Why run Windows at all?
I am not totally against Microsoft - Office 97 is nice and I like Money 2000 - but why can't I buy those products for Linux? Supposedly they are crack programmers but they can't write software for Linux? It is not like Microsoft can't download and install Mandrake...
But the biggest thing that bothers me is that Microsoft is certainly not a corporate angel. I still resent the fact that they effectively killed OS/2, forcing me to switch from Warp to Windows 98. OS/2 Warp was not perfect, but IBM released 36 fixpacks before I finally had to switch to Windows.
Windows Explorer was a pale imitation of the OS/2 Workplace Shell, a major step back in productivity. To tell you the truth it wasn't until Linux appeared that I fell in love with computers again.
So while you see "impressive merits", I see an attempt at "embrace and extend", co-opting standards to their benefit all in the name at trying to keep their desktop monopoly. To bad the Department of Justice has no balls when it comes to corporate criminals like Microsoft...
I sure as hell wouldn't be so arrogant to think my new job should make my house payment.
So people who have minimum wage jobs do not deserve to own their own homes and should be stuck paying rent the rest of their lives?
Many of the people flipping burger are minorities, who already are having problems with economic racism (lack of quality affordable housing in minority neighborhoods, redlining in non-minority neighborhoods, etc). Saying that they should not own their own homes is tantamount to condoning economic racism.
It trips me out when White Ditto-heads spew crap like this. They seem to think that just because they know how to operate a computer better than the average person it means that they know what they are talking about. As soon as they open their mouths it is immediately obvious that they do not have a clue...
Slashdot Mirror
Any why aren't you installing the software for your "dear old mother"? Don't tell me you charge her for tech support!?!
Great post! Too bad I ran out of mod points yesterday...
It's a joke son, a JOKE!!!!
</Foghorn Leghorn>
HINT: the
I guess having to use Windows all the time will suck the sense of humor out of anyone!
NO government intervention can be just as bad as TOO MUCH government intervention.
Also, don't forget that in the 1960's and 1970's the government's funding of NASA and the Internet served to spur growth in technology faster than if it would have been left solely to the free market...
I was bitten by Yahoo the other day. I signed up for a Yahoo account to use their map service and OPTED OUT of EVERYTHING.
All sudden I started receiving a torrent of spam in my e-mail. I go to slashdot and lo and behold and find out that Yahoo reset all the users' preferences to receive all kinds of spam from both Yahoo and their partners in crime.
I never OPTED IN, I explicitly OPTED OUT from receiving spam from Yahoo but that did not help.
What we need is a mandatory OPT IN procedure where marketers have to prove you opted in or the government fines them. There should also be a mandatory OPT OUT procedure where you can get off the spam lists if you get put on by some unscruplous marketer or the marketer gets fined by the government.
In addition to government fines, consumers should be able to complain (or sue if necessary) and receive damages if it is proven that they never OPTED IN to their spam lists in the first place.
If the industry groups don't begin to put their house in order via self regulation, then I feel that the government should step in...
You can use a text editor to knock out a couple of PHP pages running MySQL queries in less than fifteen minutes. It can serve as kind of a proof of concept prototype of an application. That stops the "its too hard" type of objection in its tracks.
Also, there are also many cool apps out there that use MySQL. A notable one is phpMyAdmin, which is an amazing tool for managing MySQL. I think it is pretty cool that you can untar the phpMyAdmin distribution file in your web document root, edit the database connection info in the config file and then be up and running in a couple of minutes.
I would also show them Freshmeat, and have them look at the diverse range of programs using MySQL and PHP (and Perl and Python and [insert favorite programming language here]) available there. By seeing what other programmers are doing, they will get ideas for programs of their own.
Showing them how to obtain the source so that they can modify/customize the program also promotes code reuse. Who knows, maybe one of your students will contribute some source code back to the community someday...
Seriously, the more modular your OS is, the better you can customize it for your needs. The monolithic OS is definitely not the way to go.
Want to do web development? Load Apache and PHP, otherwise save memory and resources by not loading it. You can even save disk space by not installing packages you never use to your hard drive.
That is why I don't understand why Windows makes you have a GUI full-time on your servers. If you have a KVM on multiple servers and you only can see one server at a time, why do the other servers have to consume resources running a GUI 24/7?Never having used Terminal Services before, I am wondering how expensive it is. I am guessing it isn't cheap.
Also, if you are mainly administering your servers across the network, why waste server resources on an unneeded GUI?
Last MONTH I had to wipe and reinstall Win98 because the system was acting flaky, so no way can I say "Years ago..." or "I remember when..." because the problem is still with me here and now!
Before you tell me to replace that box, I work for a community college so if you are willing to forward a check to me I can replace that box, otherwise I need to keep using Win98. Also, the fact that many of the faculty and students I have to support are using Win98 means I need to deal with Win98 today, not yesterday.
Thinking about it, I only know of two people who even have XP and that is because they just bought brand new computers. I have also noticed that most of my non-techie friends are still running Win98. Again, if you are willing to pony up a check for buying them copies of XP I can get them to upgrade.
That, my friend, is how things are in the "Real World". Maybe you need to get out a little more and see what OS regular people are using these days (it ain't XP or even 2K)...
*cough* Outlook *cough*The only time I need to do this is when I run Windows under VMWare on Linux. Who would have thought that 256 Megs would not be enough RAM!On the Linux server I administer I have had to update a few packages as potentially exploitable vunerabilities become known (SSH, PHP, etc.) but certainly not on a "regular" basis.
On my home computer I have gone from Mandrake 8.1 to 8.2, and I will do so on my workstation at work as soon as I get a little downtime. Why "update" when you can upgrade, especially if it essentially costs you next to nothing (given that the needed bandwidth was provided by work and the cost of three CD-Rs is $1.50 max)?
I think you meant Son of a Beach...
As an aside, I thought Carnegie Mellon University was supposed to be a high-speed CS/IT school.
Did they make you take Micro$oft Advocacy 101 at the Bill Gates School of Computer Science as a Freshman or something?
Nope, the real reason OS/2 died was because Bill Gates refused to license Win32 to IBM. It was not a technical problem but one of abuse of monopoly power.
I cried when I had to go from OS/2 Warp to Windows 98. OS/2 was light years ahead of Win98, but once Windows 3.1 was phased out there were not many applications available for OS/2 so the switch to Windows was inevitable.
It wasn't until Linux came out that computers became fun again. Users should never have to reboot a computer when an application crashes, or be told by technical support to reload the OS when they can't figure out what is going on...
I have an actual IBM Portable Compter I picked up for $25. I has a yellow 9" CRT with monochrome CGA graphics, an XT-class processor and a 5-meg MFM hard drive. It ran DOS 3 and MS Works 2.0.
I eventually swapped out the motherboard and hard drive in it. I put a 486 motherboard, a 200 meg hard drive and a 3.5" floppy drive in it and was able get Linux running on it...
My laptop is a P-100 with 40 megs of RAM and it runs the X and KDE that comes with Mandrake 7.2 like a champ. I know it would probably have problems with a newer version of Linux, X and KDE (primarily processor, memory and disk space limitations).
By the same token, Win95 works well but Win98 bogs the system down and it would probably not even run Win2K, but you don't hear anyone talking about the "myth of Windows on low-end hardware"...
I have a PHP/MySQL app that embeds uploaded HTML (instructors' syllabi) into dynamically generated pages. It works great with HTML 3.2/4.0 but Word does not generate standard HTML 3.2/4.0 anymore.
It generates a god-awful mess with all kinds of formatting information that ends up looking awful on the screen. In effect it takes a document that looks good on paper and turns it into crap on the screen unless you are using Internet Exploiter.
In the process the file grows 30K to 300K. Believe me, the difference is noticable at 56K, and since the intended audience are community college students it is unreasonable to expect our users to have broadband.
It is also unreasonable to expect all of our faculty to know how to write HTML (especially English teachers!). Since Word is the de-facto word processor is it unreasonable to expect Microsoft respect established standards (like HTML 3.2/4.0) or to give the user more choices (like save as HTML 3.2/4.0)?
It is O.K. to hate Micro$oft because sometimes their software sucks. And many times the good software is unattainable because licenses cost lots of $$$ and many organizations don't have that kind of money lying around.
I am glad I can run Linux. A stable Apache/MySQL/PHP rules! Programming languages galore - C/C++/Perl/Python/TCL/etc! Databases left and right - Oracle/Postgres/MySQL/etc! A choice of Desktops/Window Managers: from the full-blown KDE to the miminalistic Sawfish! Multiple desktops kick ass! And all this out of the (virtual) box
And yes, I know you can customize Windows to a large extent, but why? Why pay lots of cash for the add-ons that should be part of the OS? Especially when the OS already sets you back a couple of hundred dollars (I build my own machines and I don't bootleg software).
Why should I pirate Windows software when I can download Mandrake ISOs? Why run Windows at all?
I am not totally against Microsoft - Office 97 is nice and I like Money 2000 - but why can't I buy those products for Linux? Supposedly they are crack programmers but they can't write software for Linux? It is not like Microsoft can't download and install Mandrake...
But the biggest thing that bothers me is that Microsoft is certainly not a corporate angel. I still resent the fact that they effectively killed OS/2, forcing me to switch from Warp to Windows 98. OS/2 Warp was not perfect, but IBM released 36 fixpacks before I finally had to switch to Windows.
Windows Explorer was a pale imitation of the OS/2 Workplace Shell, a major step back in productivity. To tell you the truth it wasn't until Linux appeared that I fell in love with computers again.
So while you see "impressive merits", I see an attempt at "embrace and extend", co-opting standards to their benefit all in the name at trying to keep their desktop monopoly. To bad the Department of Justice has no balls when it comes to corporate criminals like Microsoft...
Many of the people flipping burger are minorities, who already are having problems with economic racism (lack of quality affordable housing in minority neighborhoods, redlining in non-minority neighborhoods, etc). Saying that they should not own their own homes is tantamount to condoning economic racism.
It trips me out when White Ditto-heads spew crap like this. They seem to think that just because they know how to operate a computer better than the average person it means that they know what they are talking about. As soon as they open their mouths it is immediately obvious that they do not have a clue...
If you are lucky, you will find one that sucks GOOD!