I find its file manager usable, but not that great. I love XFCE though so what I do is run XFCE4, run nautilus as a desktop [for icons] and filemanager, with gnome-volume-manager running in the background to automount USB and CD drives.
I know nautilus kills some of the memory advantages over gnome, but it is still better. Of course this is all on my gaming machine.
On my lower-end machines I'll run XFCE without nautilus, so no desktop icons [just the panel at the bottom], and use either XFFM [the XFCE filemanager] or the CLI.
As I said, XFFM is usable but it takes a bit of getting used to. Apparrently a lot of people also suggest using ROX as a filemanager but I can't stand it so I stick with XFFM. YMMV of course.
My guess is you are not from the US, most likely somewhere in europe. Not because you use metric, but because you find 27 miles a long distance.
Not only that, but he guestimated a house as only being about 32ft wide. Our McMansions [sigh - Yes I'm guilty, it was cheap and in a great school district] are closer to 50ft wide on a standard 60ft wide lot.
Ok sorry, the GP didn't specify what DVI version he was talking about and I forgot about the two versions myself.
I'm also curious how this will work with the Xbox 360 that will supposedly have an external HD-DVD drive, considering it doesn't offer any digital outputs to speak of.
[tinfoil hat] Hmm, maybe this is all just a ruse by Microsoft to get people to buy an Xbox 360 since it will be the only player capable of outputting full resolution to analog component inputs? [/tinfoil hat]
Given the price of devices that do similar things (DVI to VGA for computers, for example) I'm not optimistic on pricing.
I think you picked a poor example of something that's difficult and pricey. I got 2 DVI to VGA converters included with my video card. You can get them online for a few bucks.
Perhaps a better example would be the current DVI/VGA[RGB] to component[YPbPr] converters currently on the market for $100-300 each.
Sony has patented a technology that allows for Blu-ray discs to be designed such that they lock themselves to the first player they are played on. I don't know the technical details of how it works, but that's the functional end of it. Now, of course, this does not mean that Blu-ray players will end up working this way, but it does give one pause. Why would they develop such a thing? It seems a likely reason would be to deploy players where you couldn't resell discs. You buy a disc, it locks to you, you never play it elsewhere.
Ah, I almost hope they do something like that. I can just see it now. Joe-sixpack buys a player and a bunch of movies. A year later the player dies [Oops, little Johnny-sixpack just crammed a slice of balogna in the DVD player]. He goes and buys another one and finds out that none of his NASCAR movies will play. Sony tells him he needs to buy the movies again in order to watch them on a new player.
He's going to be pissed. That might finally get people mad enough to tell the media companies to go screw themselves.
Of course it'd be easier if Sony et al. just realized what a horrible, horrible idea that is and avoided it in the first place, but I'm not holding my breath.
The only legitimate use for this type of product is to violate my copyright to the content I own. I lobby congress to ban media devices which do not support the protection scheme. They willingly oblige, and then crawl back under my desk.
Then we stop buying your product, you still go broke and said ice weasels still kill and eat your children. You still lose.:)
That's a perfect analogy. DIVX was a miserable failure because of many of the same restrictions [or close relatives] that the new HD-DVD format[s] is trying out.
Obviously they haven't learned yet. If I can't play it on my TV [HDTV w/component input only] then I'm not going to friggin' buy it. I'd rather just buy a player and some movies, but if the only way I can get full resolution is to download a pirate copy, guess which I'm going to do?
Uploading images via a web interface is a PITA, and can you even control in which folder your pages and images end up? I want to be able to park my existing site (few dozen pages, maybe 100 photos) in one go, not one piece at a time.
There are plenty of pay hosting services for reasonable rates [$2.99/month and up] that will allow you to do this.
Complaining that a free, beta hosting service doesn't allow you to do this is just selfish and stupid. If that is what you want/need in a hosting service then GooglePages isn't meant for you.
Why would you think that? Microsoft has the BEST support for multiple OS and backwards compatibility that I've ever seen in the entire software industry. The vast majority of current software designed for Win32 runs on any of their platforms from the past 10 years. Can you think of any vendor that has better cross-OS and backwards compatibility support? I certainly can't.
At the risk of being labeled a troll, I have to suggest that perhaps this is because they don't actually change their OS. They just add crappy layer upon crappy layer so that the old stuff runs because every old Microsoft OS is still buried in there somewhere.
At this point I've got almost as many dead computers as live ones.
Live: 1. Game Machine: Athlon 64 2800+, GF6800GT, 1GB RAM, 810GB HD [610 Usable due to 200GB mirror] running WinXP & Ubuntu 2. Firewall: DEC Alpha 550Mhz LX164, 128MB, 40GB - A little overkill but replaced the P133 that recently died. Running Debian Sarge 3. P4 1.8Ghz, 1GB, 360GB HD - attempted HTPC & Fileserver still in testing 4. Athlon 700, 640MB RAM, 160GB [2 x 50GB & 1x 9GB SCSI] - in testing fileserver? 5. eMachines Celeron 1.? Ghz, 256MB, 40GB HD. Wife's business machine 6. Toshiba P3 700Mhz laptop, 384MB RAM, 40GB HD. In living room for general surfing. 7. AT WORK: P3 500Mhz, 512MB RAM, 11GB HD - Web/Email/FTP/Teamspeak server on Debian Sarge [at work until they make me take it off the network:) ]
Only the firewall and the laptop are generally on 24/7 at home.
Dead: Dual PPro 200Mhz Single PPro 200Mhz P133Mhz Sun Sparcstation 2 IBM PS/2 386
And of course I've get the Tivo, PS2 and Dreamcast going too.
At some point I'd like to get rid of most of that crap and just have a litle linksys router w/linux and a massive fileserver. My Game machine doesn't really need 800GB of HD's in it. It weighs a ton which sucks for LAN parties!
NewEgg doesn't offer net terms to businesses. This is probably the main reason they don't appear on most company's approved vendor lists.
This is one of the reasons my company won't use them. The other reason is that even if the company pays with a credit card, NewEgg will NOT ship to any address other than what is on the CC. So if the LA office pays for something, it gets shipped to LA, then has to be re-shipped to Dallas or whatever other office it needs to go to.
As a result my company apparrently uses CDW and BestBuyForBusiness.com.
For my personal purchases I use NewEgg almost exclusively although I had good luck buying a laptop HD from ZipZoomFly [but back when they were called Googlewear].
Very true, it would be nice. I do have an LJ journal, but what I like about Blogger that got me started using it is the ability to have the entire blog hosted on my own machine with my own domain name. That way I have control over everything but the user account really.
But it would be nice if Picasa supported other blogs.
I *would* switch to KDE if it got panel drawers, because in every other respect I *hate* the direction Gnome has been going since 2.0.
Well, you might try this...
Right click the panel and add, special button, quick browser. Point quick browser to a directory containing links to your favourite applications, or images etc.
Perhaps it isn't an optimal solution since you'll have to create a directory with the links/shortcuts you want, but it will work as a panel drawer in KDE.
I like XFCE's way of doing it though. When you put an icon on the panel, if there are other applications of the same type [or not if you wish] you can add a launcher menu to that icon [a little arrow to the right of the icon] that will pull up a panel drawer with whatever other apps in there you want. Kind of the best of both worlds. For instance 90% of the time I use Nautilus as a file browser so I have a Nautilus icon on the panel, but if I want to go ahead and use xffm or konqueror, I can quickly pull those up without having to go through the main menu.
In my case it's not the file manager, but the file chooser. Gnome developers decided to develop the GTK file chooser. That's nice, but gnome has many other needs that gtk doesn't. Using the file chooser is PAINFUL. You just have the name, and the "modified" field and a list of favourite locations. You can't even order things by SIZE.
Agree'd, the gtk file chooser is a royal pain in the ass. I don't particularly like GNOME, but I am an avid user of XFCE4. Most of the software I prefer just happens to be GTK software, such as Gimp, Grip, GAIM, xsane, Firefox, etc. The only QT software I really use now is Amarok [Rhythmbox is ok to just play the music but seriously lacking in features]. I used to use K3b, but it hasn't been working for me lately, so I've switched to Gnomebaker and the Nautilus CD Burner. I also sometimes will use a KDE program to print things. The KDE print manager lets me change the printer resolution and toner saving options when I print. The GTK/XFCE programs don't seem to let me change those things on the fly as I print each document.
I use XFCE4 with a Nautilus desktop, and gnome-volume-manager for automounting CD/USB/Firewire drives and dropping the icon on the desktop. It works quite well actually, although admittedly Nautilus kills some of the memory saving features of XFCE4, but it is still better than an all GNOME or all KDE desktop and I really like the Nautilus filemanager in browser mode. And while the QT/KDE file chooser is better [And I'm sorry I hate MS but the file-chooser in Windows is quite nice], I can't stand using konqueror as a file-manager. I can't really put it into words, but something about it just gets on my nerves.
Now if they can fix the GTK file-chooser, get XFCE to give me more printer config options, and make a GTK based music player that's as featureful as Amarok, I'll be set! Considering what a pain all the OSS desktops were just a few years ago, I think they're doing pretty well now. Just a few more buttons to sew up and we're good.
Picasa might be a nice "value-add" app to your existing desktop, but it's not going to get many people to switch OSes.
No, Picasa itself will likely not get anyone to switch OS's, but it will be one less reason to not switch for someone who is thinking about it.
Each piece of the puzzle that's filled in is one less reason for someone to decide not to switch.
Personally I'll love having Picasa in Linux. I'm tired of rebooting to deal with our pictures. The only problem I have with Picasa [other than it being a windows only program] is that it won't let me post multiple pictures to my blog at one time. Other than that I really like it.
You know you're probably mostly right. Now that I think about it, most of the people I know who got into programming just because it is [or at least was] a good way to make money are doing Windows programming. The people I know who got into programming because they really love it, do Linux/*nix and a sometimes a little bit of Mac programming.
So I guess for now it comes down to there being more people in programming who are in it for the money [which is in Windows for now]. Plus I'm sure there are plenty of programmers in it for the love who whether they actually love programming Windows, or find themselves programming Windows anyway, end up helping the behemoth.
For now there is certainly still a large amount of inertia for Windows in the marketplace. That inertia seems [to me] to be slowing down a little bit. Eventually either Linux or some other wonderful technology will be so enticing to the businesses [either in TCO or technological ability or both] that they will start to switch. I wish it would be sooner but most likely it will be later.
If I ever own a business, I for one will have a Microsoft free business. [Except maybe my Microsoft Intellimouse. Only thing MS ever did that I think is decent:) ]
However, a better measure should be admin per server cost in which Linux is cheaper.
This is VERY true. I worked at a hosting company. We had 6 Windows Admins to handle the 300 Win2K servers [and boy were they overworked when the Witty Worm destroyed a couple hundred of those servers]. We had 6 Linux Admins to handle the 3000+ Linux servers, and we spent most of our time surfing Slashdot and Fark. About half of our busy time just came from replacing dying HD's that physically died.
I'd like to see them calculate that out and see which platform has the lower TCO...
Apple tried it in the 80's, and what they found out was business didn't care what you were used to. Meat fresh from campus is low enough on the totem pole to be ground up and spit out if they don't like what the business is using.
I think the problem was that apple wasn't pushing Apple's as something to learn to program on. Sure all the kids in Elementary and Jr High were using Apples. But the people I knew who were learning programming were NOT programming on Apples. They were programming on DOS/Windows machines.
So when they got out into the world to program applications, they made Windows apps because that's what they knew how to program. We may not like the result, but Microsoft made it easy to whip up a functional [if not exactly stable or secure] application quickly.
The programmers are more likely to drive the direction of computers than the users. If all the apps are made for windows and none are made for Linux, nobody is going to use Linux. If the apps start becoming available for Linux, more people will start using Linux [or whatever OS the apps are running on].
all I did was play SimCity. Man, if I had been programming back then I would pwn!
I know the feeling. I started way earlier than you [TI 99/4A] but I also wasted all my time playing games and never learned to program the computers. I wish I could go back and tell myself to start learning that stuff...
I never had a C64. We started out with a TI 99/4A. I just wasted all my time playing Parsec while my mom tried to learn BASIC. The first computer *I* technically owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with the 16K upgrade. I got it at a garage sale for like $5. I played with it for about 30 minutes and got bored with it. Then we got an AT&T 6300+. I miss that computer. It was KIND OF a 286 [and yet not], but was one of the first PC's that could run Unix and DOS. Unfortunately I never got Unix for it so I'm way behind where I should be with *nix's.
At first glance, it seems like a nice progression but what you can't tell is that A: I was WAY behind. We got the 6300+ when 486's were out. I didn't get the P90 until the P2's were out. And I was still using 2 40MB MFM HD's from the 286 with that P90! Those drives were SO FREAKIN' SLOW! I did a test on them a few times and I think I averaged like 200kb/s transfers from those drives. I was still using those and people had parallel port zip-drives that were larger [100MB] and FASTER!
So happy to have my Athlon 64 with SATA HD's now:)
Well, you would have more fun than the average employee trying to get the chip close enough to the reader to gain access.
Been there, done that! We had a security system with RFID cards. Everyone would just put them in their wallet. The readers near the doors were low enough that you didn't have to take out or wallet or anything. Everyone just backed their ass up to the reader and the door would unlock.
"We are still planning to take the dog to the vets on Friday, but we think it's going to be expensive than we had anticipated. Can you ask mother to send $100? Thanks."
Except that this is obviously a terrorist message bcause nobody would use the word "mother" in this context. They'd use 'mom', or maybe 'our mother'. Anyone using mother in that way is either a terrorist or a psychopath and should be brought in for questioning.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I find its file manager usable, but not that great. I love XFCE though so what I do is run XFCE4, run nautilus as a desktop [for icons] and filemanager, with gnome-volume-manager running in the background to automount USB and CD drives.
I know nautilus kills some of the memory advantages over gnome, but it is still better. Of course this is all on my gaming machine.
On my lower-end machines I'll run XFCE without nautilus, so no desktop icons [just the panel at the bottom], and use either XFFM [the XFCE filemanager] or the CLI.
As I said, XFFM is usable but it takes a bit of getting used to. Apparrently a lot of people also suggest using ROX as a filemanager but I can't stand it so I stick with XFFM. YMMV of course.
My guess is you are not from the US, most likely somewhere in europe. Not because you use metric, but because you find 27 miles a long distance.
Not only that, but he guestimated a house as only being about 32ft wide. Our McMansions [sigh - Yes I'm guilty, it was cheap and in a great school district] are closer to 50ft wide on a standard 60ft wide lot.
Ok sorry, the GP didn't specify what DVI version he was talking about and I forgot about the two versions myself.
I'm also curious how this will work with the Xbox 360 that will supposedly have an external HD-DVD drive, considering it doesn't offer any digital outputs to speak of.
[tinfoil hat]
Hmm, maybe this is all just a ruse by Microsoft to get people to buy an Xbox 360 since it will be the only player capable of outputting full resolution to analog component inputs?
[/tinfoil hat]
Given the price of devices that do similar things (DVI to VGA for computers, for example) I'm not optimistic on pricing.
I think you picked a poor example of something that's difficult and pricey. I got 2 DVI to VGA converters included with my video card. You can get them online for a few bucks.
Perhaps a better example would be the current DVI/VGA[RGB] to component[YPbPr] converters currently on the market for $100-300 each.
Sony has patented a technology that allows for Blu-ray discs to be designed such that they lock themselves to the first player they are played on. I don't know the technical details of how it works, but that's the functional end of it. Now, of course, this does not mean that Blu-ray players will end up working this way, but it does give one pause. Why would they develop such a thing? It seems a likely reason would be to deploy players where you couldn't resell discs. You buy a disc, it locks to you, you never play it elsewhere.
Ah, I almost hope they do something like that. I can just see it now. Joe-sixpack buys a player and a bunch of movies. A year later the player dies [Oops, little Johnny-sixpack just crammed a slice of balogna in the DVD player]. He goes and buys another one and finds out that none of his NASCAR movies will play. Sony tells him he needs to buy the movies again in order to watch them on a new player.
He's going to be pissed. That might finally get people mad enough to tell the media companies to go screw themselves.
Of course it'd be easier if Sony et al. just realized what a horrible, horrible idea that is and avoided it in the first place, but I'm not holding my breath.
The only legitimate use for this type of product is to violate my copyright to the content I own. I lobby congress to ban media devices which do not support the protection scheme. They willingly oblige, and then crawl back under my desk.
:)
Then we stop buying your product, you still go broke and said ice weasels still kill and eat your children. You still lose.
Oh, sure...and you could resell a DIVX, too.
That's a perfect analogy. DIVX was a miserable failure because of many of the same restrictions [or close relatives] that the new HD-DVD format[s] is trying out.
Obviously they haven't learned yet. If I can't play it on my TV [HDTV w/component input only] then I'm not going to friggin' buy it. I'd rather just buy a player and some movies, but if the only way I can get full resolution is to download a pirate copy, guess which I'm going to do?
Uploading images via a web interface is a PITA, and can you even control in which folder your pages and images end up?
I want to be able to park my existing site (few dozen pages, maybe 100 photos) in one go, not one piece at a time.
There are plenty of pay hosting services for reasonable rates [$2.99/month and up] that will allow you to do this.
Complaining that a free, beta hosting service doesn't allow you to do this is just selfish and stupid. If that is what you want/need in a hosting service then GooglePages isn't meant for you.
Why would you think that? Microsoft has the BEST support for multiple OS and backwards compatibility that I've ever seen in the entire software industry. The vast majority of current software designed for Win32 runs on any of their platforms from the past 10 years. Can you think of any vendor that has better cross-OS and backwards compatibility support? I certainly can't.
At the risk of being labeled a troll, I have to suggest that perhaps this is because they don't actually change their OS. They just add crappy layer upon crappy layer so that the old stuff runs because every old Microsoft OS is still buried in there somewhere.
At this point I've got almost as many dead computers as live ones.
:) ]
Live:
1. Game Machine: Athlon 64 2800+, GF6800GT, 1GB RAM, 810GB HD [610 Usable due to 200GB mirror] running WinXP & Ubuntu
2. Firewall: DEC Alpha 550Mhz LX164, 128MB, 40GB - A little overkill but replaced the P133 that recently died. Running Debian Sarge
3. P4 1.8Ghz, 1GB, 360GB HD - attempted HTPC & Fileserver still in testing
4. Athlon 700, 640MB RAM, 160GB [2 x 50GB & 1x 9GB SCSI] - in testing fileserver?
5. eMachines Celeron 1.? Ghz, 256MB, 40GB HD. Wife's business machine
6. Toshiba P3 700Mhz laptop, 384MB RAM, 40GB HD. In living room for general surfing.
7. AT WORK: P3 500Mhz, 512MB RAM, 11GB HD - Web/Email/FTP/Teamspeak server on Debian Sarge [at work until they make me take it off the network
Only the firewall and the laptop are generally on 24/7 at home.
Dead:
Dual PPro 200Mhz
Single PPro 200Mhz
P133Mhz
Sun Sparcstation 2
IBM PS/2 386
And of course I've get the Tivo, PS2 and Dreamcast going too.
At some point I'd like to get rid of most of that crap and just have a litle linksys router w/linux and a massive fileserver. My Game machine doesn't really need 800GB of HD's in it. It weighs a ton which sucks for LAN parties!
Nope, I too thought they were the current ressurection of Egghead.
NewEgg doesn't offer net terms to businesses. This is probably the main reason they don't appear on most company's approved vendor lists.
This is one of the reasons my company won't use them. The other reason is that even if the company pays with a credit card, NewEgg will NOT ship to any address other than what is on the CC. So if the LA office pays for something, it gets shipped to LA, then has to be re-shipped to Dallas or whatever other office it needs to go to.
As a result my company apparrently uses CDW and BestBuyForBusiness.com.
For my personal purchases I use NewEgg almost exclusively although I had good luck buying a laptop HD from ZipZoomFly [but back when they were called Googlewear].
Very true, it would be nice. I do have an LJ journal, but what I like about Blogger that got me started using it is the ability to have the entire blog hosted on my own machine with my own domain name. That way I have control over everything but the user account really.
But it would be nice if Picasa supported other blogs.
I *would* switch to KDE if it got panel drawers, because in every other respect I *hate* the direction Gnome has been going since 2.0.
Well, you might try this...
Right click the panel and add, special button, quick browser.
Point quick browser to a directory containing links to your favourite
applications, or images etc.
Perhaps it isn't an optimal solution since you'll have to create a directory with the links/shortcuts you want, but it will work as a panel drawer in KDE.
I like XFCE's way of doing it though. When you put an icon on the panel, if there are other applications of the same type [or not if you wish] you can add a launcher menu to that icon [a little arrow to the right of the icon] that will pull up a panel drawer with whatever other apps in there you want. Kind of the best of both worlds. For instance 90% of the time I use Nautilus as a file browser so I have a Nautilus icon on the panel, but if I want to go ahead and use xffm or konqueror, I can quickly pull those up without having to go through the main menu.
In my case it's not the file manager, but the file chooser. Gnome developers decided to develop the GTK file chooser. That's nice, but gnome has many other needs that gtk doesn't. Using the file chooser is PAINFUL. You just have the name, and the "modified" field and a list of favourite locations. You can't even order things by SIZE.
Agree'd, the gtk file chooser is a royal pain in the ass. I don't particularly like GNOME, but I am an avid user of XFCE4. Most of the software I prefer just happens to be GTK software, such as Gimp, Grip, GAIM, xsane, Firefox, etc. The only QT software I really use now is Amarok [Rhythmbox is ok to just play the music but seriously lacking in features]. I used to use K3b, but it hasn't been working for me lately, so I've switched to Gnomebaker and the Nautilus CD Burner. I also sometimes will use a KDE program to print things. The KDE print manager lets me change the printer resolution and toner saving options when I print. The GTK/XFCE programs don't seem to let me change those things on the fly as I print each document.
I use XFCE4 with a Nautilus desktop, and gnome-volume-manager for automounting CD/USB/Firewire drives and dropping the icon on the desktop. It works quite well actually, although admittedly Nautilus kills some of the memory saving features of XFCE4, but it is still better than an all GNOME or all KDE desktop and I really like the Nautilus filemanager in browser mode. And while the QT/KDE file chooser is better [And I'm sorry I hate MS but the file-chooser in Windows is quite nice], I can't stand using konqueror as a file-manager. I can't really put it into words, but something about it just gets on my nerves.
Now if they can fix the GTK file-chooser, get XFCE to give me more printer config options, and make a GTK based music player that's as featureful as Amarok, I'll be set! Considering what a pain all the OSS desktops were just a few years ago, I think they're doing pretty well now. Just a few more buttons to sew up and we're good.
Picasa might be a nice "value-add" app to your existing desktop, but it's not going to get many people to switch OSes.
No, Picasa itself will likely not get anyone to switch OS's, but it will be one less reason to not switch for someone who is thinking about it.
Each piece of the puzzle that's filled in is one less reason for someone to decide not to switch.
Personally I'll love having Picasa in Linux. I'm tired of rebooting to deal with our pictures. The only problem I have with Picasa [other than it being a windows only program] is that it won't let me post multiple pictures to my blog at one time. Other than that I really like it.
You know you're probably mostly right. Now that I think about it, most of the people I know who got into programming just because it is [or at least was] a good way to make money are doing Windows programming. The people I know who got into programming because they really love it, do Linux/*nix and a sometimes a little bit of Mac programming.
:) ]
So I guess for now it comes down to there being more people in programming who are in it for the money [which is in Windows for now]. Plus I'm sure there are plenty of programmers in it for the love who whether they actually love programming Windows, or find themselves programming Windows anyway, end up helping the behemoth.
For now there is certainly still a large amount of inertia for Windows in the marketplace. That inertia seems [to me] to be slowing down a little bit. Eventually either Linux or some other wonderful technology will be so enticing to the businesses [either in TCO or technological ability or both] that they will start to switch. I wish it would be sooner but most likely it will be later.
If I ever own a business, I for one will have a Microsoft free business. [Except maybe my Microsoft Intellimouse. Only thing MS ever did that I think is decent
Why don't you just set up Teamspeak or Roger Wilco or Ventrilo or something?
However, a better measure should be admin per server cost in which Linux is cheaper.
This is VERY true. I worked at a hosting company. We had 6 Windows Admins to handle the 300 Win2K servers [and boy were they overworked when the Witty Worm destroyed a couple hundred of those servers]. We had 6 Linux Admins to handle the 3000+ Linux servers, and we spent most of our time surfing Slashdot and Fark. About half of our busy time just came from replacing dying HD's that physically died.
I'd like to see them calculate that out and see which platform has the lower TCO...
Apple tried it in the 80's, and what they found out was business didn't care what you were used to. Meat fresh from campus is low enough on the totem pole to be ground up and spit out if they don't like what the business is using.
I think the problem was that apple wasn't pushing Apple's as something to learn to program on. Sure all the kids in Elementary and Jr High were using Apples. But the people I knew who were learning programming were NOT programming on Apples. They were programming on DOS/Windows machines.
So when they got out into the world to program applications, they made Windows apps because that's what they knew how to program. We may not like the result, but Microsoft made it easy to whip up a functional [if not exactly stable or secure] application quickly.
The programmers are more likely to drive the direction of computers than the users. If all the apps are made for windows and none are made for Linux, nobody is going to use Linux. If the apps start becoming available for Linux, more people will start using Linux [or whatever OS the apps are running on].
all I did was play SimCity. Man, if I had been programming back then I would pwn!
I know the feeling. I started way earlier than you [TI 99/4A] but I also wasted all my time playing games and never learned to program the computers. I wish I could go back and tell myself to start learning that stuff...
I never had a C64. We started out with a TI 99/4A. I just wasted all my time playing Parsec while my mom tried to learn BASIC. The first computer *I* technically owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with the 16K upgrade. I got it at a garage sale for like $5. I played with it for about 30 minutes and got bored with it. Then we got an AT&T 6300+. I miss that computer. It was KIND OF a 286 [and yet not], but was one of the first PC's that could run Unix and DOS. Unfortunately I never got Unix for it so I'm way behind where I should be with *nix's.
:)
The progression goes like this.
TI-99/4A --> Timex Sinclair 1000 [16KB] --> AT&T 6300 [286ish - 1MB RAM] --> 286 [1MB] --> 386SX-16Mhz [4MB] --> P90 [16MB] --> K6-300 --> K6/2-350 --> K6/2-500 --> Athlon 700 --> P4 1.8Ghz [512MB] --> Athlon 64 2800+ [1GB RAM].
At first glance, it seems like a nice progression but what you can't tell is that A: I was WAY behind. We got the 6300+ when 486's were out. I didn't get the P90 until the P2's were out. And I was still using 2 40MB MFM HD's from the 286 with that P90! Those drives were SO FREAKIN' SLOW! I did a test on them a few times and I think I averaged like 200kb/s transfers from those drives. I was still using those and people had parallel port zip-drives that were larger [100MB] and FASTER!
So happy to have my Athlon 64 with SATA HD's now
Well, you would have more fun than the average employee trying to get the chip close enough to the reader to gain access.
:)
Been there, done that! We had a security system with RFID cards. Everyone would just put them in their wallet. The readers near the doors were low enough that you didn't have to take out or wallet or anything. Everyone just backed their ass up to the reader and the door would unlock.
We called it the "Identi-fart" security system.
Just sayin' is all...
You've never been to Britain, have you?
:)
No, but you're all obviously psychopaths or terrorists, right?
I keeed, I keeed...
"We are still planning to take the dog to the vets on Friday, but we think it's going to be expensive than we had anticipated. Can you ask mother to send $100? Thanks."
:)
Except that this is obviously a terrorist message bcause nobody would use the word "mother" in this context. They'd use 'mom', or maybe 'our mother'. Anyone using mother in that way is either a terrorist or a psychopath and should be brought in for questioning.