Lots of old (and not-so-old) hardware won't work in a newer version of Windows. I've had several cases where a hardware vendor spent a year or more promising drivers for the latest version of Windows any day now, while selling the same functions with drivers in their current product.
I've installed about 10 copies of Linux, mostly Mandrake. I've had 2 hardware compatability problems that weren't solved trivially--One was onboard sound (solved by adding a soundcard) and one was a laptop modem, and the modem wouldn't work under Windows 2000, either.
The library was the main soruce. Encyclopedias, card catalog, or asking the librarian. For hobbies you might join a club or subscribe to a magazine, the magazines would usually cycle through the beginner topics in about a year and a half, but this was usually intersperced with "you have to buy lots of stuff to be a real "
Government does NOT pay his debts. Depending on which chapeter he files under (I didn't RTFA) either most of his assets will be liquidated, and his creditors get some of what they are owed, or he gets a court-ordered payment plan in exchange for no collection activity as long as he fulfils that plan.
At my local WalMarts, once you swipe the card the reader always tries to go debit, but you can click cancel and get options for credit. Doesn't seem to matter what you do with the main tocuhscreen first.
There will be something called Windows for the forseeable future, but there is little certainty that it will run current apps and/or current hardware, and it's almost certain that at some point you'll have to make the jump to avoid an exploit that won't be fixed in your current version. I've got an NT4 server like that--Vendor never updated the app to 2000/2003, and refuses to, unless we finance the development (at a silly price tag), then they will sell the results to us and our competitors.
Most browsers have a back list, where you can select from the last few pages you've visited. Firefox has a drop-down button to the right of back, on others if you click and hold the back button you get the list.
Gerber is of variable quality. I've 2 of the smallest/cheapest Gerbers (Scissors, no file, single knife blade), and I'm happy with them. Somewhere I've got an old bigger one with non-locking bits, a file and 2 knife blades (and an added glass cutter for the job I had at the time) and although I'd rather it locked, it's quality was good. However my experience with the bigger, more tools and more expensive Gerbers hasn't been as good. The file on those is about a half step up from a fingernail file and the phillips bit is brittle and weak--These can be ID'd by the shaft being an X cross section rather than solid square.
My point is that the user on Win98 probably didn't install that himself either. If the user wants to install 98 from scratch on current hardware, he's reasonably likely to find hardware with no driver available. Likewise if he's installing 2000 or XP on 1998 hardware. When you install Windows on hardware entirely from it's era, you are by default selecting for some compatability, but if you mix and match Windows year and hardware year you aren't much better off than installing Linux on non-selected hardware.
For me the thing that makes Windows a bit easier is about 8 extra years of experience with it.
Is a system with a bare hard drive and a set of XP and Office and EZ-CD and printer driver and scanner driver and and and CD's ready for the average user? That's the real comparison, and I don't think Windows is ready here, either. If the hardware is compatable, a Mandrake install is easier than a Windows install, because when you are done, you have a working system with useful stuff on it. If the system builder spends the same time on Linux compatability as they would for XP driver compatability (and making substitutions as necessary) the end result is likely to be similar. There are driver problems with either--Mandrake didn't like the Compaq soundcard on my box, but I've had problems with Windows not having a driver for the version/hardware combination I'm using, too.
I don't think laws have that much of an effect on the number of addicts--A first offence drug bust is just about the most minor of the bad thing drugs can do to you. Either way, no job etc. Not a solution, but lower cost mitigates the effect on the rest of us. I'm also in favor of eliminating laws when they don't affect others. If you are quietly drunk or stoned and not endangering others, you should be left alone. If you are endangering others due to imparement, it shouldn't matter much why. The only exception I can think of is driving (or operating other dangerous machinery) while impared.
But if drugs were legal, they'd be a fraction of their current cost, so if nothing else addicts wouldn't have to steal as much, and more of them would be able to support their habit without other crime. If police and the courts don't have to spend time dealing with drug crime, they will have more time to deal with crime that affects the rest of us directly.
If you are charged with a crime without overwhelming evedence against you, your choices will often boil down to:
Pleading guilty to a much smaller charge with a fraction of the penalty
or
Hiring a lawyer and fighting.
It's not at all uncommon for the guilty plea to be effectively a smaller punishment than fighting and winning would be--misdemeanor with a small fine and probation vs. expensive lawyers, maybe expert witnesses, time off work, your name in the news, etc. And that's assuming the innocent alwasy go free.
Most of the time you're right, it's your own fault for being on probation. However it's also true that money helps keep people off probation.
The US has started "doing something about it" fairly early, and that is actually a problem with Kyoto--The baseline year for emmissions is after the US took care of a lot of the easy fixes, but before a lot of other countries did. I'm not trying to say that's sufficient for the US to abandon Kyoto, just that it isn't as simple as "we don't care".
I could have even dealt with the conversion step, if it worked something like Nero or K3b converting MP3's to music CD format. Instead it's like they wanted to get you to buy it based on MP3 compatability, but punish you for using MP3's.
Probably not interested, unless I could demo a version someone already had installed. I've already spent too much time on it, I've moved on to other solutions, and using a Windows box at home is no longer convienient for more than brief periods.
On a side note, I never understood why Sony didn't push a minidisk computer data drive in the early days of MD. Remember this was before CDR, ZIP or Superdrive. If they could have created a computer drive near the price of the standalone players it would have been cheaper for both media and drive than anything widely available at the time.
I think primarily the minidisk players. I bought a NetMD player for my wife last year, and once music was on the thing, it was fantastic--Good price for the unit, unbeatable price for disks compared to equal capacity flash, the player was rugged and a good form factor. With native MP3 support and decent software for transferring files, it's only real rival would have been the iPod.
Unfortunatly the software made it nearly impossible to put music from MP3's on the player, even though there was a big MP3 label on the box. Both buggy and with a horrible user interface. Putting a batch of MP3's on is a two-stage process with lots of individual steps requiring user interaction, lots of time and a good chance it would crash before you were done. If that part was easier, I'd have bought several more players, but as is nobody wants to use the one we have.
To some extent, that's what happens--I'm nowhere nere an expert (but if I get it wrong, I'm sure an expert or 70 will show up to correct me) but there is platform-specific code in the source that only gets used when compiling for that platform. That means in most cases you can optimize for one platform without harming another. Keeping the base code platform-neutral as much as possible is more difficult, but long term benefits all platforms, even X86. And difficult is less of a problem with a popular open-source program.
Because there are situations where X86 is irrelevant, but Linux is a top OS contender. In these cases, someone has (probably correctly) decided that resources are better spent customizing Linux to run on their hardware than it would be to start from scratch.
Same way DejaGoogle did (counting Dejanews in this, since Google paid money nobody else was willing to for their work) Run a news server, store what crosses it, and piece the rest together from old media.
Unless you are making an argument along the lines of "Google maintained their copy of the usenet archives, allowed free public access until nobody else wanted to bother, then when there was no competition screwed it up on puprpose", I can't see how this is evil, or how maintaining a public access copy obligates them to continue to maintain a public access copy with a particular interface forever. It's great that they took over when Dejanews tanked, but unless they are somehow preventing others from getting a copy of the archives in the same way they did I can't see a foul.
Slashdot Mirror
I initially misread this as "furry creatures that eat meat and performers..."
Because they allow MS operating systems on their network?
Lots of old (and not-so-old) hardware won't work in a newer version of Windows. I've had several cases where a hardware vendor spent a year or more promising drivers for the latest version of Windows any day now, while selling the same functions with drivers in their current product.
I've installed about 10 copies of Linux, mostly Mandrake. I've had 2 hardware compatability problems that weren't solved trivially--One was onboard sound (solved by adding a soundcard) and one was a laptop modem, and the modem wouldn't work under Windows 2000, either.
The library was the main soruce. Encyclopedias, card catalog, or asking the librarian. For hobbies you might join a club or subscribe to a magazine, the magazines would usually cycle through the beginner topics in about a year and a half, but this was usually intersperced with "you have to buy lots of stuff to be a real "
For lots of stuff you just remained ignorant.
Government does NOT pay his debts. Depending on which chapeter he files under (I didn't RTFA) either most of his assets will be liquidated, and his creditors get some of what they are owed, or he gets a court-ordered payment plan in exchange for no collection activity as long as he fulfils that plan.
At my local WalMarts, once you swipe the card the reader always tries to go debit, but you can click cancel and get options for credit. Doesn't seem to matter what you do with the main tocuhscreen first.
There will be something called Windows for the forseeable future, but there is little certainty that it will run current apps and/or current hardware, and it's almost certain that at some point you'll have to make the jump to avoid an exploit that won't be fixed in your current version. I've got an NT4 server like that--Vendor never updated the app to 2000/2003, and refuses to, unless we finance the development (at a silly price tag), then they will sell the results to us and our competitors.
In the US, it's by Hershey. Unfortunately.
Most browsers have a back list, where you can select from the last few pages you've visited. Firefox has a drop-down button to the right of back, on others if you click and hold the back button you get the list.
Gerber is of variable quality. I've 2 of the smallest/cheapest Gerbers (Scissors, no file, single knife blade), and I'm happy with them. Somewhere I've got an old bigger one with non-locking bits, a file and 2 knife blades (and an added glass cutter for the job I had at the time) and although I'd rather it locked, it's quality was good. However my experience with the bigger, more tools and more expensive Gerbers hasn't been as good. The file on those is about a half step up from a fingernail file and the phillips bit is brittle and weak--These can be ID'd by the shaft being an X cross section rather than solid square.
My point is that the user on Win98 probably didn't install that himself either. If the user wants to install 98 from scratch on current hardware, he's reasonably likely to find hardware with no driver available. Likewise if he's installing 2000 or XP on 1998 hardware. When you install Windows on hardware entirely from it's era, you are by default selecting for some compatability, but if you mix and match Windows year and hardware year you aren't much better off than installing Linux on non-selected hardware.
For me the thing that makes Windows a bit easier is about 8 extra years of experience with it.
Is a system with a bare hard drive and a set of XP and Office and EZ-CD and printer driver and scanner driver and and and CD's ready for the average user? That's the real comparison, and I don't think Windows is ready here, either. If the hardware is compatable, a Mandrake install is easier than a Windows install, because when you are done, you have a working system with useful stuff on it. If the system builder spends the same time on Linux compatability as they would for XP driver compatability (and making substitutions as necessary) the end result is likely to be similar. There are driver problems with either--Mandrake didn't like the Compaq soundcard on my box, but I've had problems with Windows not having a driver for the version/hardware combination I'm using, too.
...as long as they get themselves killed cheaply, not at great taxpayer (or insurance company) expense.
I don't think laws have that much of an effect on the number of addicts--A first offence drug bust is just about the most minor of the bad thing drugs can do to you. Either way, no job etc. Not a solution, but lower cost mitigates the effect on the rest of us. I'm also in favor of eliminating laws when they don't affect others. If you are quietly drunk or stoned and not endangering others, you should be left alone. If you are endangering others due to imparement, it shouldn't matter much why. The only exception I can think of is driving (or operating other dangerous machinery) while impared.
But if drugs were legal, they'd be a fraction of their current cost, so if nothing else addicts wouldn't have to steal as much, and more of them would be able to support their habit without other crime. If police and the courts don't have to spend time dealing with drug crime, they will have more time to deal with crime that affects the rest of us directly.
If you are charged with a crime without overwhelming evedence against you, your choices will often boil down to:
Pleading guilty to a much smaller charge with a fraction of the penalty
or
Hiring a lawyer and fighting.
It's not at all uncommon for the guilty plea to be effectively a smaller punishment than fighting and winning would be--misdemeanor with a small fine and probation vs. expensive lawyers, maybe expert witnesses, time off work, your name in the news, etc. And that's assuming the innocent alwasy go free.
Most of the time you're right, it's your own fault for being on probation. However it's also true that money helps keep people off probation.
The US has started "doing something about it" fairly early, and that is actually a problem with Kyoto--The baseline year for emmissions is after the US took care of a lot of the easy fixes, but before a lot of other countries did. I'm not trying to say that's sufficient for the US to abandon Kyoto, just that it isn't as simple as "we don't care".
I could have even dealt with the conversion step, if it worked something like Nero or K3b converting MP3's to music CD format. Instead it's like they wanted to get you to buy it based on MP3 compatability, but punish you for using MP3's.
Probably not interested, unless I could demo a version someone already had installed. I've already spent too much time on it, I've moved on to other solutions, and using a Windows box at home is no longer convienient for more than brief periods.
On a side note, I never understood why Sony didn't push a minidisk computer data drive in the early days of MD. Remember this was before CDR, ZIP or Superdrive. If they could have created a computer drive near the price of the standalone players it would have been cheaper for both media and drive than anything widely available at the time.
I think primarily the minidisk players. I bought a NetMD player for my wife last year, and once music was on the thing, it was fantastic--Good price for the unit, unbeatable price for disks compared to equal capacity flash, the player was rugged and a good form factor. With native MP3 support and decent software for transferring files, it's only real rival would have been the iPod.
Unfortunatly the software made it nearly impossible to put music from MP3's on the player, even though there was a big MP3 label on the box. Both buggy and with a horrible user interface. Putting a batch of MP3's on is a two-stage process with lots of individual steps requiring user interaction, lots of time and a good chance it would crash before you were done. If that part was easier, I'd have bought several more players, but as is nobody wants to use the one we have.
To some extent, that's what happens--I'm nowhere nere an expert (but if I get it wrong, I'm sure an expert or 70 will show up to correct me) but there is platform-specific code in the source that only gets used when compiling for that platform. That means in most cases you can optimize for one platform without harming another. Keeping the base code platform-neutral as much as possible is more difficult, but long term benefits all platforms, even X86. And difficult is less of a problem with a popular open-source program.
Because there are situations where X86 is irrelevant, but Linux is a top OS contender. In these cases, someone has (probably correctly) decided that resources are better spent customizing Linux to run on their hardware than it would be to start from scratch.
Same way DejaGoogle did (counting Dejanews in this, since Google paid money nobody else was willing to for their work) Run a news server, store what crosses it, and piece the rest together from old media.
Oh, but that's haaard...
Unless you are making an argument along the lines of "Google maintained their copy of the usenet archives, allowed free public access until nobody else wanted to bother, then when there was no competition screwed it up on puprpose", I can't see how this is evil, or how maintaining a public access copy obligates them to continue to maintain a public access copy with a particular interface forever. It's great that they took over when Dejanews tanked, but unless they are somehow preventing others from getting a copy of the archives in the same way they did I can't see a foul.