Case in point: I saw today linked from Techbargains (too late to order, they were sold out) a combo package of Netgear 802.11 card and Netgear ("cisco";)) AP for $19.99 after (multiple, annoying) rebates.
Still, if they hadn't been out of stock, I would have gone for this deal. I keep finding people without wireless, and that's annoying when I'm looking for places from which to connect;)
The competition is such that I've bought APs, in some cases to give them away (or end up giving them away unintentionally... someone still has my own Netgear, and she's unlikely to give it back I guess), usually paying $50 or less.
I kept your note in there; figured that otherwise a distractingly high number of comments would be grousing that you were gaming the contest.
I would like an ipod (esp now thwt I've discovered worthwhile stuff to put on it at rusc.com) or a monitor, sure, but not enough to upset the balance of the force;)
rather than new ones at $23k, MS should supply everyone with 2 gently used subarus. That way, you get rid if the '1st-scratch' anxiety, so I could take mine to the mountains and beach neurosis free.
Also, I'd like one to be the 'baja' variety; yes, ugly as sin, but they look rather useful.
"i certainly didn't mean to point anyone at the idea of religious relativism:)"
Oh, I didn't either, and didn't think you were. Only agreeing with you (I think) that the nature of the discussion is inseparable from the nature of that which is under debate... i.e. If God, then God can do anything and as he pleases, in accordance with his own nature:)
That's one of the best answers I've seen to religious (and anti-religious) certainty I've read.
When people are argue about God / religion in general, they often seem to be starting on completely different "idea maps" of the world.
As you say, if you start with a belief in an omniscient, omnipowerful, omnipresent, eternally existing God (or even in The Force) then even the most otherwise unbelievable things can be plausibly explained as emanating from God (or whatever object of faith). The explanation might end at "and then a miracle occurred," but that becomes an acceptable answer if (axiom time, I know) you believe in a higher power capable of miracles.
Arguing the specifics of religious beliefs doesn't make much sense to me (would God like this green tie better? Or the blue stripey one?), because the existence or non-existence pretty much trumps the detail, at least if you're talking monotheism with a 'friendly' God. (I see plenty of holes in that statement, but don't feel like typing enough to get into all of them;))
Can't find the link right now (damn badly indexed megaretailer sites!), but I've seen a fry's a bulky waist-worn iPod pouch with (get this) a series of blinking LEDs on the outside that pulse their blueness to the world.
I wonder if they blink Morse for "mug wearer -- iPod enclosed... mug wearer -- iPod enclosed... mug wearer - iPod enclosed..."
Right -- I was just pointing out that there are lots of *non* "piracy" uses / reasons for downloading material, pointing out the silliness of demonizing the entire class of "downloading online media content" as "piracy."
Do people illegally download copyright material? Sure. But --
Is it piracy when I download out-of-copyright old radio programs*? Or sample songs from bands who specifically encourage this? What about lectures stored on a Morpheus server in L. Lessig's campus office?:)
Both "downloading" and "p2p" can mean a lot of things. I plan to buy a CD of Nero Wolfe MP3s in part because of the excellent episodes I've downloaded so far.
Ah, well.
timothy
* Orson Welles' radio stuff is pretty incredible; his presentation of Dracula in particular is great
You wrote "Debian's good for people who already have some clue about Linux, or indeed experience with *nix-alike OSen."
True, if you mean *installing* Debian, at least the Debian way:)
But for testing out whether Linux could work on one's hardware, and to give a lot of software a spin, Live CDs (I'm partial to Knoppix, partly because a lot of others, including Gnoppix, which I'd otherwise love to love, don't work as well with my hardware) are an excellent beginner course and don't cost a hard drive (or repartitioning a current one).
(And Knoppix makes IMO a pretty good 'migration' mechanism, too... slight messiness of hard drive partitioning / formatting is the worst stickiness; other than that it is, for good and bad, a pretty limited install. After it's on, though, apt can be used to trim or expand the available software.)
I use gnome sometimes, and sometimes I use KDE. More often than either, I use fluxbox, especially when on my oldest laptop, which has "only" 96MB of RAM. (I wish I didn't know how much of my college money went toward 4 extra MB of RAM for my Mac in 1992.)
Gnome and KDE have different feels -- and tastes certainly vary -- but they're both "good." I like Gnome's clean, simple feeling (in contrast, KDE's defaults seem sort of clinical and harsh edged to me... if not to you, then more power etc.), and KDE's integration of parts. Nautilus is actually prettier, but the ability to split views in Konqueror usually wins if I'm moving files from dir to dir.
Still, they're both well past "good enough" for my use at least (maybe yours, maybe not, in which case take it up with them, not me:)), to the point that it's like arguing cuisine. Is Thai better than Mexican? It all depends on the context -- mood, individual preferences, specifics of what you'll order, etc.
timothy
a not-very-serious answer :)
on
The Zenith Angle
·
· Score: 2, Funny
There's a lot of overlap in their subject matter (near future to distant future, high-tech worlds full of mindboggling creatures and machines you can see slowly gathering on the current horizon), but...
Sterling's style is more "serious" (IMO) and therefore easier to parody:) Gibson seemingly has more fun, though much of his work is anything but lighthearted. I have (somewhere) the unabridged audio version of "Neuromancer," and Gibson's voice (he's the narrator, unusual and good for audio books) has a cynical, nasal sound that makes me want to go place the world's most serious, biting, unbelievably bitter and pessimistic fast-food order. It took me a little while to stop being weirded out by his voice, and now I will (no great stretch) submit his is the perfect voice for the story. It is, well, *his* voice and his story, so it's not like I can object very well;)
"Do your fries have genetically engineered crypto-organisms put there by the military industrial complex on them just to spy on my ultradrug mind-enhancement? No? I don't believe you, but make it a large."
"Oh look, a free independant website. And another. And another. Must be an optical illusion."
Sorry, could have been clearer. I was talking about commercial websites (like Salon). Independent / non-commercial / non-reader-paid websites (such as tax-supported ones) are great too.
Ads can be (are not always) annoying, in any medium, but they make the content possible.
Radio ads drone on seemingly forever, but they pay for me to listen to Coast to Coast a.m. once in a while, or NPR (whose ads, in the form of begging, are even worse, but whose content is better). Television ads, on programs not caught to TiVo, can be obnoxious, too.
The Salon article *can* cost money (that is, you can subscribe to Salon to read it), but you can also watch an ad (or you can click on the ad and carefully look away from it) and then read the article for free. That's what I do. Sites not run as charities need to pay for their content somehow: Even some commercial websites don't make money per se, but are justified by other means (goodwill, information spreading leading to sales, etc), and some are free to read and make money with banners. Salon, unlike some sites, has provided two ways to read their stuff, meaning (I hope) that they stay in business, since I like some of their original stories. Note that reading Salon by the watch-ad/get-daypass means doesn't require you to give them demographic information, answer surveys, surrender your email, click checkboxes to avoid (yeah right!) spam, choose a password, or pay any money.
Probably someone will come up with a way to block the content of the interstitial Salon ads: the arms race continues. But I prefer their approach to the increasing number of news sources that require registration and / or a paid subscription. The New York Times is annoying but hard to ignore as a news source, enough so that we link to it from Slashdot despite the required registration process; other papers, barring unusal circumstances, we won't link to because it's annoying to keep so many username / password combinations and have to login to read their content.
And that it's someone from Salon who submitted... Na und? An editor or writer with a publication or website can submit just like anyone else; I'm glad when they're up-front about it. Would you rather A. Leonard have submitted more sneakily from a throwaway hotmail account?:)
I'm glad that 802.11 is becoming closer to a standard option on (esp. portable) hardware. The lack of external antenna options when it's built in is a pain, though: my fancy new wireless card with antenna jacks is cool so long as there's a PCMCIA slot to stick it into, but I can't use it in my iBook, only my x86 laptop.
I used to care about having a slot (or a serial port) for a modem, but nowadays, wireless and ethernet takes care of that even if it's a modem the data is eventually going over, because an external modem hooked to a base station is a more flexible solution anyhow.
What I would like to see in these things though is 1) a PCMCIA slot (or two); despite what I just said about modems, I have a couple of PCMCIA modems and ethernet cards, would be nice to be able to use them to extend a system and 2) CF card slot (or two), likewise, so I could use the CF 802.11 card from my Zaurus, could dump in digital photos without a dangling reader, etc.
If you want a computer on a bike, you need not wait for nano-ITX:)
Try this google search for lots of cool stuff on Steve Roberts, ueber-nomad. He has shifted a lot of effort to boats now, but I prefer Behemoth:)
timothy
true but silly / silly but true
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 1
GM, too, will die. Chrysler would be dead now if not for a tax-funded bailout. Mother Theresa is currently dead, and one day (sad but true, the world is unfair) so will be Lucy Liu *and* Portia de Rossi. Me, too. Also, the Universe will eventually suffer its famous upcoming heat death.
So what?:)
Predictions that certain businesses or specific consumer electronics items "will die" are pretty boring without specifics, the closer the better. Will die:... next month, because the predictor knows inside dirt on the company, or that Chile will be nationalizing all the Tivonium mines?... next year, because suddenly PCs will be cheap enough and friendly enough to match the stand-alone devices?... next decade, because a markedly superior product will eventually displace TiVo as a recording device?... sometime next century, as holographic pornography gradually takes up more of the average entertainment schedule?
... is still in the mail. Also, one of those little Smart ID WiFi detectors; somewhere I have one of the Kensington ones, but it did not work as well as I'd hoped except when near enough to an access point that the blinking LEDs are close enough to read by. This, uh, limits the usefulness. I wish more wireless cards had both internal antennas and jacks for external; the antenna-ready one I'm getting costs about 5X the cheap but perfectly functional U.S. Robotics one I've loaned to a friend. (So the distance tradeoff better be worth it!:))
PS [Feels stupid for having wasted time submitting an 'article' to/.]:)"
Well, *many* people submitted this story, and I look back with nostalgic regret as I recall yours, the best headline, the one I probably should have used. But I liked this version of the story best...
If Microsoft has to make "design decisions favoring running a few processes faster but then finds itself forced first to layer in backward compatibility and then to engage in a patch-and-kludge upgrade process," with the problems that go along with that decision branch, Linux sometimes has the opposite thing: design decisions that ignore (or devalue) backward compatibility in favor of future improvements. [There are *lots* of examples showing that Linux developers are extremely concerned about backward compatibility, but they are also not bound to it by welded chains.]
I prefer the Linux approach:)
However, going from an older version of Windows to a new one does not have a reputation for breaking things like USB or sound card drivers -- Linux does break compatibility once in a while, if you try to stay on the bleeding edge. (This is why I'm using 2.6 only from a LiveCD for a while;))
As an argument for Windows / against Linux, this doesn't hold much water to me though, since the simple fact is this situation is so only because with Linux and other Free software, the user is allowed to participate in the whole ride -- even the bumpy parts. It's the "bust" part of "robust", and it's something like the chance to get killed on the Crusades: the glory is a tradeoff for some risk, but if you don't want to participate you can stay at home and eat unseasoned mud, participate in cholera parties, etc.
With Windows, any bugs / breakages are ones that were *supposed* to be taken care of by beta testing at the latest:) If you want fewer surprises, there are plenty of Linux distros that are very conservative in what they include.
My parents (not in same household, as me or as each other) ask me about computer stuff sometimes, but do different things with that information.
1) When my mom needed a computer for college homework, around the time my sister decided my cast-off P100 was not sufficient and *she* needed a college computer, too, I told her that the smartest thing to do was get an iBook, because Apples are well-built and have a better-than-Windows interface. Or maybe I suggested it first to my sister, point is the same -- soon *they* both had iBooks, and since I was looking for a laptop at the time and was likely to be Mom's tech support (however woefully unequipped I am for that), I ended up getting one too. So, three iBooks, extra memory soon in sister's and mine (it was cheap! $35 for 256 megs, 3 years ago), airport card in Mom's and mine. (Sister didn't need it as much, college ethernet etc.)
All three of them are still working great, have been updated infrequently but without incident, no virus problems, no dead screens, etc. The occasional lockup, the occasional crash (only on my machine that I know of), but mostly, good workhorses. Once in a while my mom calls to complain that her Mozilla icon has disappeared (why? I do not understand what could have happened to it -- couldn't have gotten far on foot...), but for the most part, they works well. Cheap laser printer from Samsung, Bang, works.
It's not my *favorite* laptop -- I dislike the keyboard, esp. the lack of a real page-up / page-down key, among other shortcomings -- but it seems the most robust. Strong hinge, a screen that's survived some rough treatment, a battery that's on the way out but still working as well as one can expect in a 3-year-old battery.
(The other reason it's not my favorite is that I like Fluxbox, KDE and Gnome at least as well as I do OS X, and Linux distros come with a lot more included software that I actually use -- so I like the Toshiba I'm typing on more than I do the iBook; maybe I'll put Linux on the iBook and like it better;))
2) Dad, on the other hand, pays for cheap, low-end computers, then keeps paying and paying and paying... he ignores the virus warnings, because none of the several anti-virus programs he's put on seem to fully cleanse his PC. The machine crashes frequently with Windows 98, but he thinks about like I do of Windows XP's required registration stuff. (On another one of his machines, a laptop that came pre-loaded with XP, it asks you to register every time you start up; he's tried to register several times, to no avail. It works fine other than that, though, so it seems less broken than if that part *did* work!) I pointed out to him that this could mean he's sending personal documents all over the internet, that his machine could be a zombie for DoSes, that he's probably spreading viruses to everyone with Windows in his address book. He sort of shrugs and winces, and every few months says "Y'know, maybe you're right and Apple is the way to go..." Twice a year, he pays some local guy to expunge viruses -- if he'd just save the money from that, he could better justify getting an iBook or Powerbook and not worrying about those things so much. His Compaq laptop (my advice had been "OK, if you're going to get an Intel-type laptop, just make sure to avoid Compaq!" was of course studiously ignored;)) has had numerous hardware problems, compounded by inadequate repair service and piss-poor customer service. What I should do is tell him "OK, just make sure not to get an Apple..."
Slashdot Mirror
but with nothing following that leader ;)
;)) AP for $19.99 after (multiple, annoying) rebates.
;)
... someone still has my own Netgear, and she's unlikely to give it back I guess), usually paying $50 or less.
;)
Case in point: I saw today linked from Techbargains (too late to order, they were sold out) a combo package of Netgear 802.11 card and Netgear ("cisco"
Still, if they hadn't been out of stock, I would have gone for this deal. I keep finding people without wireless, and that's annoying when I'm looking for places from which to connect
The competition is such that I've bought APs, in some cases to give them away (or end up giving them away unintentionally
Which is a less technical way to say "me too!"
timothy
thanks just the same - wouldn't be proper ;)
good luck to the competitors, I suppose, and good luck to google in sorting junk from jelly.
timothy
I kept your note in there; figured that otherwise a distractingly high number of comments would be grousing that you were gaming the contest.
;)
I would like an ipod (esp now thwt I've discovered worthwhile stuff to put on it at rusc.com) or a monitor, sure, but not enough to upset the balance of the force
timothy
rather than new ones at $23k, MS should supply everyone with 2 gently used subarus. That way, you get rid if the '1st-scratch' anxiety, so I could take mine to the mountains and beach neurosis free.
Also, I'd like one to be the 'baja' variety; yes, ugly as sin, but they look rather useful.
timothy
Actually, M. Morgan got it right :) My role was much smaller. Glad you liked his review, I certainly did.
timothy
"i certainly didn't mean to point anyone at the idea of religious relativism :)"
... i.e. If God, then God can do anything and as he pleases, in accordance with his own nature :)
Oh, I didn't either, and didn't think you were. Only agreeing with you (I think) that the nature of the discussion is inseparable from the nature of that which is under debate
timothy
I assumed this was just the poster being a bit snarky. Could well be wrong, since I often am ...
timothy
That's one of the best answers I've seen to religious (and anti-religious) certainty I've read.
;))
When people are argue about God / religion in general, they often seem to be starting on completely different "idea maps" of the world.
As you say, if you start with a belief in an omniscient, omnipowerful, omnipresent, eternally existing God (or even in The Force) then even the most otherwise unbelievable things can be plausibly explained as emanating from God (or whatever object of faith). The explanation might end at "and then a miracle occurred," but that becomes an acceptable answer if (axiom time, I know) you believe in a higher power capable of miracles.
Arguing the specifics of religious beliefs doesn't make much sense to me (would God like this green tie better? Or the blue stripey one?), because the existence or non-existence pretty much trumps the detail, at least if you're talking monotheism with a 'friendly' God. (I see plenty of holes in that statement, but don't feel like typing enough to get into all of them
timothy
hey, your guesses are as good as mine. :) It arrived pre-(semi-)bowlderized.
Tim
Can't find the link right now (damn badly indexed megaretailer sites!), but I've seen a fry's a bulky waist-worn iPod pouch with (get this) a series of blinking LEDs on the outside that pulse their blueness to the world.
... mug wearer -- iPod enclosed... mug wearer - iPod enclosed ..."
I wonder if they blink Morse for "mug wearer -- iPod enclosed
timothy
Right -- I was just pointing out that there are lots of *non* "piracy" uses / reasons for downloading material, pointing out the silliness of demonizing the entire class of "downloading online media content" as "piracy."
timothy
"Its still piracy," you say. What is?
:)
Do people illegally download copyright material? Sure. But --
Is it piracy when I download out-of-copyright old radio programs*? Or sample songs from bands who specifically encourage this? What about lectures stored on a Morpheus server in L. Lessig's campus office?
Both "downloading" and "p2p" can mean a lot of things. I plan to buy a CD of Nero Wolfe MP3s in part because of the excellent episodes I've downloaded so far.
Ah, well.
timothy
* Orson Welles' radio stuff is pretty incredible; his presentation of Dracula in particular is great
You wrote "Debian's good for people who already have some clue about Linux, or indeed experience with *nix-alike OSen."
:)
... slight messiness of hard drive partitioning / formatting is the worst stickiness; other than that it is, for good and bad, a pretty limited install. After it's on, though, apt can be used to trim or expand the available software.)
True, if you mean *installing* Debian, at least the Debian way
But for testing out whether Linux could work on one's hardware, and to give a lot of software a spin, Live CDs (I'm partial to Knoppix, partly because a lot of others, including Gnoppix, which I'd otherwise love to love, don't work as well with my hardware) are an excellent beginner course and don't cost a hard drive (or repartitioning a current one).
(And Knoppix makes IMO a pretty good 'migration' mechanism, too
timothy
I use gnome sometimes, and sometimes I use KDE. More often than either, I use fluxbox, especially when on my oldest laptop, which has "only" 96MB of RAM. (I wish I didn't know how much of my college money went toward 4 extra MB of RAM for my Mac in 1992.)
... if not to you, then more power etc.), and KDE's integration of parts. Nautilus is actually prettier, but the ability to split views in Konqueror usually wins if I'm moving files from dir to dir.
:)), to the point that it's like arguing cuisine. Is Thai better than Mexican? It all depends on the context -- mood, individual preferences, specifics of what you'll order, etc.
Gnome and KDE have different feels -- and tastes certainly vary -- but they're both "good." I like Gnome's clean, simple feeling (in contrast, KDE's defaults seem sort of clinical and harsh edged to me
Still, they're both well past "good enough" for my use at least (maybe yours, maybe not, in which case take it up with them, not me
timothy
There's a lot of overlap in their subject matter (near future to distant future, high-tech worlds full of mindboggling creatures and machines you can see slowly gathering on the current horizon), but ...
:) Gibson seemingly has more fun, though much of his work is anything but lighthearted. I have (somewhere) the unabridged audio version of "Neuromancer," and Gibson's voice (he's the narrator, unusual and good for audio books) has a cynical, nasal sound that makes me want to go place the world's most serious, biting, unbelievably bitter and pessimistic fast-food order. It took me a little while to stop being weirded out by his voice, and now I will (no great stretch) submit his is the perfect voice for the story. It is, well, *his* voice and his story, so it's not like I can object very well ;)
Sterling's style is more "serious" (IMO) and therefore easier to parody
"Do your fries have genetically engineered crypto-organisms put there by the military industrial complex on them just to spy on my ultradrug mind-enhancement? No? I don't believe you, but make it a large."
timothy
"Oh look, a free independant website. And another. And another. Must be an optical illusion."
Sorry, could have been clearer. I was talking about commercial websites (like Salon). Independent / non-commercial / non-reader-paid websites (such as tax-supported ones) are great too.
timothy
Ads can be (are not always) annoying, in any medium, but they make the content possible.
... Na und? An editor or writer with a publication or website can submit just like anyone else; I'm glad when they're up-front about it. Would you rather A. Leonard have submitted more sneakily from a throwaway hotmail account? :)
Radio ads drone on seemingly forever, but they pay for me to listen to Coast to Coast a.m. once in a while, or NPR (whose ads, in the form of begging, are even worse, but whose content is better). Television ads, on programs not caught to TiVo, can be obnoxious, too.
The Salon article *can* cost money (that is, you can subscribe to Salon to read it), but you can also watch an ad (or you can click on the ad and carefully look away from it) and then read the article for free. That's what I do. Sites not run as charities need to pay for their content somehow: Even some commercial websites don't make money per se, but are justified by other means (goodwill, information spreading leading to sales, etc), and some are free to read and make money with banners. Salon, unlike some sites, has provided two ways to read their stuff, meaning (I hope) that they stay in business, since I like some of their original stories. Note that reading Salon by the watch-ad/get-daypass means doesn't require you to give them demographic information, answer surveys, surrender your email, click checkboxes to avoid (yeah right!) spam, choose a password, or pay any money.
Probably someone will come up with a way to block the content of the interstitial Salon ads: the arms race continues. But I prefer their approach to the increasing number of news sources that require registration and / or a paid subscription. The New York Times is annoying but hard to ignore as a news source, enough so that we link to it from Slashdot despite the required registration process; other papers, barring unusal circumstances, we won't link to because it's annoying to keep so many username / password combinations and have to login to read their content.
And that it's someone from Salon who submitted
Cheers,
timothy
I'm glad that 802.11 is becoming closer to a standard option on (esp. portable) hardware. The lack of external antenna options when it's built in is a pain, though: my fancy new wireless card with antenna jacks is cool so long as there's a PCMCIA slot to stick it into, but I can't use it in my iBook, only my x86 laptop.
I used to care about having a slot (or a serial port) for a modem, but nowadays, wireless and ethernet takes care of that even if it's a modem the data is eventually going over, because an external modem hooked to a base station is a more flexible solution anyhow.
What I would like to see in these things though is 1) a PCMCIA slot (or two); despite what I just said about modems, I have a couple of PCMCIA modems and ethernet cards, would be nice to be able to use them to extend a system and 2) CF card slot (or two), likewise, so I could use the CF 802.11 card from my Zaurus, could dump in digital photos without a dangling reader, etc.
timothy
If you want a computer on a bike, you need not wait for nano-ITX :)
:)
Try this google search for lots of cool stuff on Steve Roberts, ueber-nomad. He has shifted a lot of effort to boats now, but I prefer Behemoth
timothy
GM, too, will die. Chrysler would be dead now if not for a tax-funded bailout. Mother Theresa is currently dead, and one day (sad but true, the world is unfair) so will be Lucy Liu *and* Portia de Rossi. Me, too. Also, the Universe will eventually suffer its famous upcoming heat death.
:)
... next month, because the predictor knows inside dirt on the company, or that Chile will be nationalizing all the Tivonium mines? ... next year, because suddenly PCs will be cheap enough and friendly enough to match the stand-alone devices? ... next decade, because a markedly superior product will eventually displace TiVo as a recording device? ... sometime next century, as holographic pornography gradually takes up more of the average entertainment schedule?
So what?
Predictions that certain businesses or specific consumer electronics items "will die" are pretty boring without specifics, the closer the better. Will die:
timothy
... is still in the mail. Also, one of those little Smart ID WiFi detectors; somewhere I have one of the Kensington ones, but it did not work as well as I'd hoped except when near enough to an access point that the blinking LEDs are close enough to read by. This, uh, limits the usefulness. I wish more wireless cards had both internal antennas and jacks for external; the antenna-ready one I'm getting costs about 5X the cheap but perfectly functional U.S. Robotics one I've loaned to a friend. (So the distance tradeoff better be worth it! :))
timothy
PS [Feels stupid for having wasted time submitting an 'article' to /.] :)"
...
Well, *many* people submitted this story, and I look back with nostalgic regret as I recall yours, the best headline, the one I probably should have used. But I liked this version of the story best
50,000 Lobster fans can't be wrong, or something.
timothy
Hey, some people *pay* to have another copy in another country, and some people (in Orem) can't even keep their domestic version going very well.
...
OK, that was offside
timothy
If Microsoft has to make "design decisions favoring running a few processes faster but then finds itself forced first to layer in backward compatibility and then to engage in a patch-and-kludge upgrade process," with the problems that go along with that decision branch, Linux sometimes has the opposite thing: design decisions that ignore (or devalue) backward compatibility in favor of future improvements. [There are *lots* of examples showing that Linux developers are extremely concerned about backward compatibility, but they are also not bound to it by welded chains.]
:)
;))
:) If you want fewer surprises, there are plenty of Linux distros that are very conservative in what they include.
I prefer the Linux approach
However, going from an older version of Windows to a new one does not have a reputation for breaking things like USB or sound card drivers -- Linux does break compatibility once in a while, if you try to stay on the bleeding edge. (This is why I'm using 2.6 only from a LiveCD for a while
As an argument for Windows / against Linux, this doesn't hold much water to me though, since the simple fact is this situation is so only because with Linux and other Free software, the user is allowed to participate in the whole ride -- even the bumpy parts. It's the "bust" part of "robust", and it's something like the chance to get killed on the Crusades: the glory is a tradeoff for some risk, but if you don't want to participate you can stay at home and eat unseasoned mud, participate in cholera parties, etc.
With Windows, any bugs / breakages are ones that were *supposed* to be taken care of by beta testing at the latest
timothy
My parents (not in same household, as me or as each other) ask me about computer stuff sometimes, but do different things with that information.
...), but for the most part, they works well. Cheap laser printer from Samsung, Bang, works.
;))
... he ignores the virus warnings, because none of the several anti-virus programs he's put on seem to fully cleanse his PC. The machine crashes frequently with Windows 98, but he thinks about like I do of Windows XP's required registration stuff. (On another one of his machines, a laptop that came pre-loaded with XP, it asks you to register every time you start up; he's tried to register several times, to no avail. It works fine other than that, though, so it seems less broken than if that part *did* work!) I pointed out to him that this could mean he's sending personal documents all over the internet, that his machine could be a zombie for DoSes, that he's probably spreading viruses to everyone with Windows in his address book. He sort of shrugs and winces, and every few months says "Y'know, maybe you're right and Apple is the way to go ..." Twice a year, he pays some local guy to expunge viruses -- if he'd just save the money from that, he could better justify getting an iBook or Powerbook and not worrying about those things so much. His Compaq laptop (my advice had been "OK, if you're going to get an Intel-type laptop, just make sure to avoid Compaq!" was of course studiously ignored ;)) has had numerous hardware problems, compounded by inadequate repair service and piss-poor customer service. What I should do is tell him "OK, just make sure not to get an Apple ..."
1) When my mom needed a computer for college homework, around the time my sister decided my cast-off P100 was not sufficient and *she* needed a college computer, too, I told her that the smartest thing to do was get an iBook, because Apples are well-built and have a better-than-Windows interface. Or maybe I suggested it first to my sister, point is the same -- soon *they* both had iBooks, and since I was looking for a laptop at the time and was likely to be Mom's tech support (however woefully unequipped I am for that), I ended up getting one too. So, three iBooks, extra memory soon in sister's and mine (it was cheap! $35 for 256 megs, 3 years ago), airport card in Mom's and mine. (Sister didn't need it as much, college ethernet etc.)
All three of them are still working great, have been updated infrequently but without incident, no virus problems, no dead screens, etc. The occasional lockup, the occasional crash (only on my machine that I know of), but mostly, good workhorses. Once in a while my mom calls to complain that her Mozilla icon has disappeared (why? I do not understand what could have happened to it -- couldn't have gotten far on foot
It's not my *favorite* laptop -- I dislike the keyboard, esp. the lack of a real page-up / page-down key, among other shortcomings -- but it seems the most robust. Strong hinge, a screen that's survived some rough treatment, a battery that's on the way out but still working as well as one can expect in a 3-year-old battery.
(The other reason it's not my favorite is that I like Fluxbox, KDE and Gnome at least as well as I do OS X, and Linux distros come with a lot more included software that I actually use -- so I like the Toshiba I'm typing on more than I do the iBook; maybe I'll put Linux on the iBook and like it better
2) Dad, on the other hand, pays for cheap, low-end computers, then keeps paying and paying and paying
Ah, well.
timothy