Why not get yourself a mac at home? Noone is forcing you to run XP there... You can even try a hacked copy of OSX that will run on a regular x86 machine...
Actually, your application menus change, but the apple menu remains the same, which is the same as the behaviour of other environments, except that the menus are always in the same place instead of moving around when you move the app window...
And AmigaOS did it the mac way, having the menu at the top of the screen, but it never had an apple style consistent menu.
1. Would not be an issue if they ran without admin privs 2. Same... 3. Software firewalls are more of a nuisance than anything, especially when the local user has admin privileges on the machine. If the user can disable it, then so can any piece of malware... all the firewall does is stop incoming connections to vulnerable services that should have never been listening on the network in the first place (why does a home user's desktop need to offer rpc services to the network?).. software firewalls break apps that people commonly run (p2p etc) and the easiest thing to do (especially for someone not very technically competent) is turn it off rather than configure it to allow those apps. 4. also wouldn't be much of a problem if they didnt have admin privs
A USB thumbdrive device won't be able to play music when you leave the car... An iPod can also be used as a USB storage too, so you could plug it in to the same usb port and play the mp3 files stored on it.
In an auto, the difference between your current velocity and the idle speed is absorbed by the torque converter and brakes... You can sit stationary in an auto with the brakes applied without doing it any harm. Ofcourse idling along slowly with the brakes applied to keep your speed down very quickly grinds your pads away.
PCs were more than fast enough to multitask before, they just weren't fast enough to multitask bloated code like windows... There were multitasking unix variants running on lowend PCs, and the amiga was multitasking with a gui on much slower hardware.
Another problem windows has, is it's inability to size fonts correctly. Any modern monitor knows it's physical size and can communicate this to the host computer, and font sizes are specified in points, points have nothing to do with pixels and actually have a physical size associated with them (72 points = 1 inch), yet windows relates them to pixels rather than working out the DPI of the monitor and thus the appropriate size for fonts. What this means is, when running at a high resolution the fonts on windows are too small to read (when infact they should be the same size, but more detailed because of the better resolution) and this causes people to run their machines at much lower resolutions than they are capable of.
I have a 1995 Jag which has a 6 CD changer, it plays CDR's perfectly, and i never intend to be in the car long enough to listen to 6 CDs worth of music... With the price of blank CDs nowadays, it`s not too much hassle to burn a big stack of them and swap them around every now and again, i have a spindle of about 70 CD's full of music sitting near the changer in the trunk.
They also stated somewhere that they're currently using NT4, which is no longer supported, so they *HAD* to migrate anyway... I wonder what the costs of upgrading to a current supported version of windows would have been?
I find the lack of mainstream apps quite a blessing... Most mainstream apps i've seen tend to be very inflexible in their usage and suffering from huge feature bloat. Aside from that, i have often found alternatives, better or "good enough", to be available for free.
Firstly because software has not matured like the auto industry has, people are still using horrendously unreliable software which often requires expert knowledge to make it work correctly, and has huge areas of the market where there are no defined standards (or standards are ignored).
In a market like this, consumers are often uninformed and get ripped off by vendors and third parties, just like some people get ripped off by unscrupulous mechanics. That's why non standards can emerge and become widespread, who would buy a car that didn't run on a standard type of fuel?
Improved security is not a benefit of vista tho, it's a problem microsoft has created with their current versions. Microsoft should be punished for poor security, not allowed to make more money fixing problems they created.
A lot of museums and science exhibits used unix systems for demonstrations, i went to an aircraft museum which had a bunch of SGI machines showing 3d representations of various aircraft that you could manipulate yourself...
Quite a few schools had unix machines in those days, or were in some way associated with the local college/university which did. Aside from the fact that this kid was the daughter of someone incredibly rich, who probably would have had unix machines in his house.
It's quite disturbing, that kids a few years ago knew DOS and BASIC etc, because that's what their computers had... Nowadays, most kids are barely able to click an icon.
I have a cousin who showed me how to program on a C64 many years ago, now after years of being stuck with windows, she can't do anything outside of the gui and even then gets stuck if any errors crop up.
Well, users *MAY* do all kinds of things... Why not just include every possible server application, and create a distribution coming on 20 DVDs and requiring a terabyte of HD to install?
Come to think of it, microsoft servers tend to be based on desktops with extra stuff bolted on, instead of actually being designed for server use, so we should include every possible desktop application too!
You see how ridiculous this sounds? servers and workstations serve completely different purposes, and so should come with radically different sets of default apps, and NEITHER of them should have anything which can't be removed (or not installed in the first place) by the standard installer program.
And why should it be necessary to install third party tools just to remove default crap? Why doesn't the standard installer provide a way to remove it, or install without it?
I have seen quite a few live acts... Many of them are small minor acts in local pubs ec, and i`m quite happy to buy a CD from them because by handing them cash, i know they get to keep it all.
Because a majority of the cost goes to the RIAA, the actual artist gets very little. If i really liked an artist, i would go and see them live, there's a great atmosphere and they actually have to work for their money, unlike all the lazy artists that sit on their backsides collecting royalties from songs they sung 20 years ago!
But why should you be forced to pay for WMP? Many computers are _NEVER_ used for playing music, and yet WMP is included even on versions of windows which are supposedly for servers.
The best case against the new windows mediaplayer i saw, was in about 2001... There was a box that had mediaplayer 7 (the first skinnable version) and 6 installed, as well as some dodgy sound card drivers that played a logo video at bootup... When you played that logo video with mediaplayer 7, even with the most simple of skins or the "classic" skin it stuttered... When you played it with 6, it played perfectly.
Pure luck that this machine was exactly the right level of performance to demonstrate this, a slightly faster cpu and i imagine it would have played fine in both.
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Why not get yourself a mac at home? Noone is forcing you to run XP there...
You can even try a hacked copy of OSX that will run on a regular x86 machine...
Actually, your application menus change, but the apple menu remains the same, which is the same as the behaviour of other environments, except that the menus are always in the same place instead of moving around when you move the app window...
And AmigaOS did it the mac way, having the menu at the top of the screen, but it never had an apple style consistent menu.
1. Would not be an issue if they ran without admin privs
2. Same...
3. Software firewalls are more of a nuisance than anything, especially when the local user has admin privileges on the machine. If the user can disable it, then so can any piece of malware... all the firewall does is stop incoming connections to vulnerable services that should have never been listening on the network in the first place (why does a home user's desktop need to offer rpc services to the network?).. software firewalls break apps that people commonly run (p2p etc) and the easiest thing to do (especially for someone not very technically competent) is turn it off rather than configure it to allow those apps.
4. also wouldn't be much of a problem if they didnt have admin privs
A USB thumbdrive device won't be able to play music when you leave the car...
An iPod can also be used as a USB storage too, so you could plug it in to the same usb port and play the mp3 files stored on it.
In an auto, the difference between your current velocity and the idle speed is absorbed by the torque converter and brakes... You can sit stationary in an auto with the brakes applied without doing it any harm.
Ofcourse idling along slowly with the brakes applied to keep your speed down very quickly grinds your pads away.
PCs were more than fast enough to multitask before, they just weren't fast enough to multitask bloated code like windows...
There were multitasking unix variants running on lowend PCs, and the amiga was multitasking with a gui on much slower hardware.
Another problem windows has, is it's inability to size fonts correctly. Any modern monitor knows it's physical size and can communicate this to the host computer, and font sizes are specified in points, points have nothing to do with pixels and actually have a physical size associated with them (72 points = 1 inch), yet windows relates them to pixels rather than working out the DPI of the monitor and thus the appropriate size for fonts.
What this means is, when running at a high resolution the fonts on windows are too small to read (when infact they should be the same size, but more detailed because of the better resolution) and this causes people to run their machines at much lower resolutions than they are capable of.
X11 and OSX don't have this problem.
I have a 1995 Jag which has a 6 CD changer, it plays CDR's perfectly, and i never intend to be in the car long enough to listen to 6 CDs worth of music...
With the price of blank CDs nowadays, it`s not too much hassle to burn a big stack of them and swap them around every now and again, i have a spindle of about 70 CD's full of music sitting near the changer in the trunk.
They also stated somewhere that they're currently using NT4, which is no longer supported, so they *HAD* to migrate anyway...
I wonder what the costs of upgrading to a current supported version of windows would have been?
I find the lack of mainstream apps quite a blessing...
Most mainstream apps i've seen tend to be very inflexible in their usage and suffering from huge feature bloat.
Aside from that, i have often found alternatives, better or "good enough", to be available for free.
Firstly because software has not matured like the auto industry has, people are still using horrendously unreliable software which often requires expert knowledge to make it work correctly, and has huge areas of the market where there are no defined standards (or standards are ignored).
In a market like this, consumers are often uninformed and get ripped off by vendors and third parties, just like some people get ripped off by unscrupulous mechanics. That's why non standards can emerge and become widespread, who would buy a car that didn't run on a standard type of fuel?
And then on top of it, were bolted lots of legacy interfaces and technologies that weren`t, and herein lies the problem.
NT3.5 would be more stable, because video drivers run in userspace, and video drivers are one of the most common factors causing xp to crash.
Or you could eat the cookies, thus destroying the wealth by converting the cookies to feces which has a negative value.
Improved security is not a benefit of vista tho, it's a problem microsoft has created with their current versions.
Microsoft should be punished for poor security, not allowed to make more money fixing problems they created.
A lot of museums and science exhibits used unix systems for demonstrations, i went to an aircraft museum which had a bunch of SGI machines showing 3d representations of various aircraft that you could manipulate yourself...
Quite a few schools had unix machines in those days, or were in some way associated with the local college/university which did.
Aside from the fact that this kid was the daughter of someone incredibly rich, who probably would have had unix machines in his house.
It's quite disturbing, that kids a few years ago knew DOS and BASIC etc, because that's what their computers had...
Nowadays, most kids are barely able to click an icon.
I have a cousin who showed me how to program on a C64 many years ago, now after years of being stuck with windows, she can't do anything outside of the gui and even then gets stuck if any errors crop up.
Or, if you have an IRIX machine you can download the real thing from:
http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html
Well, users *MAY* do all kinds of things...
Why not just include every possible server application, and create a distribution coming on 20 DVDs and requiring a terabyte of HD to install?
Come to think of it, microsoft servers tend to be based on desktops with extra stuff bolted on, instead of actually being designed for server use, so we should include every possible desktop application too!
You see how ridiculous this sounds? servers and workstations serve completely different purposes, and so should come with radically different sets of default apps, and NEITHER of them should have anything which can't be removed (or not installed in the first place) by the standard installer program.
And why should it be necessary to install third party tools just to remove default crap? Why doesn't the standard installer provide a way to remove it, or install without it?
I have seen quite a few live acts...
Many of them are small minor acts in local pubs ec, and i`m quite happy to buy a CD from them because by handing them cash, i know they get to keep it all.
But most of those utilities can be uninstalled easily, so they're not a concern. The problem is with non-removeable stuff.
Because a majority of the cost goes to the RIAA, the actual artist gets very little.
If i really liked an artist, i would go and see them live, there's a great atmosphere and they actually have to work for their money, unlike all the lazy artists that sit on their backsides collecting royalties from songs they sung 20 years ago!
But why should you be forced to pay for WMP?
Many computers are _NEVER_ used for playing music, and yet WMP is included even on versions of windows which are supposedly for servers.
The best case against the new windows mediaplayer i saw, was in about 2001...
There was a box that had mediaplayer 7 (the first skinnable version) and 6 installed, as well as some dodgy sound card drivers that played a logo video at bootup...
When you played that logo video with mediaplayer 7, even with the most simple of skins or the "classic" skin it stuttered...
When you played it with 6, it played perfectly.
Pure luck that this machine was exactly the right level of performance to demonstrate this, a slightly faster cpu and i imagine it would have played fine in both.