The argument about cars doesn't really apply, car manufacturers don't have any control of the roads or fuel etc, one car maker can't make the roads or the commonly available fuel incompatible with competing cars, and they cant make it difficult for existing users of their cars to send their car to the scrapheap and buy a competitor vehicle. This is exactly what microsoft do.
But your right about the EU going about this the wrong way, file formats, API's and network protocols need to be opened up fully so that competitors can write their own apps that are fully compatible.
I agree with "if you don't like it, don't buy it" whole heartedly.. However, MS tries to make sure that you HAVE to buy their stuff wether you like it or not, this is mine (and most peoples) biggest problem with ms. If they used open standards and you truly could just not buy their stuff, then i would be a lot happier.
It would make sense for the installation routine to check for a working libpng on the system, verify that it's compatible, and then use that... Failing that, if theres no libpng installed or a broken one, it could install a copy into it's local app dir.. The idea of a single package management tool managing the whole os is still better tho, unfortunately joe users will want to download $RANDOMAPP and install it in $RANDOMLOCATION regardless of his system package management.. There should be a custom installer tool that integrates with the most common package management tools, so that you can still update things centrally and any missing libs are installed using your existing package management scheme..
Well if IE conformed to standards, then that would remove the biggest hurdle most people have in ditching ie, the fact that lots of nonstandard sites don't work in other browsers.
But windows is the interface running on top, just like it used to run on top of dos.. The kernel is seperate and was originally well written, tho it's been screwed over pretty badly since then.
D1000 is HVD aswell, D1000 and A1000 share the same chassis/psu/fans etc, only the controller board is different.. The D1000 is a JBOD while the A1000 has a hardware array controller... Perhaps the fibrechannel device your thinking of is an A3000 or A5000
How about a standards compliant sound/video app, i'm using a SIP client for sound on my mac tho i wouldn't know where to start with video (i have no need for it). Standards compliant protocols are more widely supported (your not dependant on yahoo or any particular software/hardware vendor) and often supported by non-computer hardware devices (you can buy LOADS of SIP phones - which are much easier for someone technophobic to use than a computer, phones have been around much longer and almost anyone knows how to use one) if anyone wants to talk to me using something like yahoo, i always suggest that they use SIP to contact me, i also use sip(voip) for outgoing calls and incoming calls from regular telephone lines, and i have a fully feature pbx system courtesy of asterisk with voicemail, menu systems, extensions etc..
Well if your corporate website requires a particular platform and browser in order to work you will be turning potential customers away. As a mortgage company you don't have the luxury microsoft do of being able to abuse their monopoly position. You have competition from other mortgage lenders, and if their sites work correctly in a wider range of browsers then anyone using one of those browsers is far more likely to choose them. If your site fails to work correctly in a standards compliant browser, then it is your site that is broken. Whenever people come to me complaining that a particular site doesn't render correctly in firefox or safari that's the answer they generally get, and they also get advised not to use companies that can't produce a correctly functioning website.
Actually the mac version of IE5 is still way ahead of the windows version 6 in terms of support for modern standards, css works a lot better and the mac version seems to support png properly..
Only 3 disks? My Ultra-2 is hooked up to an A1000 array with 12x 15k disks! Now that is noisy, and it vibrates the table.. Incidentally, the Enterprise 250 makes a lot less noise than the Ultra-2, weird. I also have an SGI Onyx, noisy beast but it consumes too much electricity to keep running.
Funnily enough, even the desktop version of OSX can boot headless, i removed the displaycard from my mac (g4 desktop) and put in an incompatible one, it booted up with a blank screen but i could hear the disk being accessed like a normal bootup... Out of curiosity i tried to ssh to the machine and got in, it was running as normal just without the gui components loaded, i was able to do a gracefull shutdown and put the working displaycard back in.
Dell used to support linux, but their linux development unit was shitcanned at the request of microsoft.. They have never supported any other opensource os's.
But if your other machines get owned then the attacker can capture your login session to the openbsd box and therefore compromise that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client.
dell hardware is incredibly poor quality compared to other vendors, their support is also very poor. In terms of quality dell is comparable to the cheapest of asian vendors, but somehow people believe them to be superior just because they're american. This is just not the case, i have had no end of trouble from dell machines. I also don't like dell's closeness to microsoft and their willingness to drop linux so quickly, also the fact they take steps to render some of their systems incompatible with non windows os's (real example: update the bios on an inspiron 2600 laptop to the latest version and then try running X11 under any opensource os) I am dismayed to see openbsd giving money to dell when dell do nothing to help openbsd. They should be supporting vendors who support their os.
They don't use floppy drives on any of their machines anymore, you can always use a usb floppy drive with an eject button. But, not having the eject button has proved very usefull to prevent stupid users from ejecting the floppy while it's writing, and then wondering why it got corrupted.
Well it is a BETA... I'm sure beta versions of native linux tools were just as bad back when they were this new.. It's not fair to compare a beta product to something which has been around a few years..
Servers shouldn't discriminate against particular browsers, they should serve up standards compliant content and it is the browser's author's responsibility to ensure his browser can follow standards. If you do follow standards, your pages will be readable even with text based browsers or old browers, you may lose the fancy graphics but you'l still be able to read the content.
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The argument about cars doesn't really apply, car manufacturers don't have any control of the roads or fuel etc, one car maker can't make the roads or the commonly available fuel incompatible with competing cars, and they cant make it difficult for existing users of their cars to send their car to the scrapheap and buy a competitor vehicle. This is exactly what microsoft do.
But your right about the EU going about this the wrong way, file formats, API's and network protocols need to be opened up fully so that competitors can write their own apps that are fully compatible.
I agree with "if you don't like it, don't buy it" whole heartedly..
However, MS tries to make sure that you HAVE to buy their stuff wether you like it or not, this is mine (and most peoples) biggest problem with ms. If they used open standards and you truly could just not buy their stuff, then i would be a lot happier.
It would make sense for the installation routine to check for a working libpng on the system, verify that it's compatible, and then use that... Failing that, if theres no libpng installed or a broken one, it could install a copy into it's local app dir..
The idea of a single package management tool managing the whole os is still better tho, unfortunately joe users will want to download $RANDOMAPP and install it in $RANDOMLOCATION regardless of his system package management..
There should be a custom installer tool that integrates with the most common package management tools, so that you can still update things centrally and any missing libs are installed using your existing package management scheme..
Well if IE conformed to standards, then that would remove the biggest hurdle most people have in ditching ie, the fact that lots of nonstandard sites don't work in other browsers.
Many webservers are configured that way..
But windows is the interface running on top, just like it used to run on top of dos.. The kernel is seperate and was originally well written, tho it's been screwed over pretty badly since then.
But they did open them up eventually, it takes time to thoroughly test and document an API
D1000 is HVD aswell, D1000 and A1000 share the same chassis/psu/fans etc, only the controller board is different..
The D1000 is a JBOD while the A1000 has a hardware array controller...
Perhaps the fibrechannel device your thinking of is an A3000 or A5000
A1000 isnt FC, it's HVD scsi
How about a standards compliant sound/video app, i'm using a SIP client for sound on my mac tho i wouldn't know where to start with video (i have no need for it).
Standards compliant protocols are more widely supported (your not dependant on yahoo or any particular software/hardware vendor) and often supported by non-computer hardware devices (you can buy LOADS of SIP phones - which are much easier for someone technophobic to use than a computer, phones have been around much longer and almost anyone knows how to use one)
if anyone wants to talk to me using something like yahoo, i always suggest that they use SIP to contact me, i also use sip(voip) for outgoing calls and incoming calls from regular telephone lines, and i have a fully feature pbx system courtesy of asterisk with voicemail, menu systems, extensions etc..
Well if your corporate website requires a particular platform and browser in order to work you will be turning potential customers away.
As a mortgage company you don't have the luxury microsoft do of being able to abuse their monopoly position. You have competition from other mortgage lenders, and if their sites work correctly in a wider range of browsers then anyone using one of those browsers is far more likely to choose them.
If your site fails to work correctly in a standards compliant browser, then it is your site that is broken. Whenever people come to me complaining that a particular site doesn't render correctly in firefox or safari that's the answer they generally get, and they also get advised not to use companies that can't produce a correctly functioning website.
Actually the mac version of IE5 is still way ahead of the windows version 6 in terms of support for modern standards, css works a lot better and the mac version seems to support png properly..
Only 3 disks? My Ultra-2 is hooked up to an A1000 array with 12x 15k disks! Now that is noisy, and it vibrates the table.. Incidentally, the Enterprise 250 makes a lot less noise than the Ultra-2, weird.
I also have an SGI Onyx, noisy beast but it consumes too much electricity to keep running.
Funnily enough, even the desktop version of OSX can boot headless, i removed the displaycard from my mac (g4 desktop) and put in an incompatible one, it booted up with a blank screen but i could hear the disk being accessed like a normal bootup... Out of curiosity i tried to ssh to the machine and got in, it was running as normal just without the gui components loaded, i was able to do a gracefull shutdown and put the working displaycard back in.
Virtually all of microsoft's "standards" are also highly flawed, aswell as not being true standards.
Dell used to support linux, but their linux development unit was shitcanned at the request of microsoft.. They have never supported any other opensource os's.
But if your other machines get owned then the attacker can capture your login session to the openbsd box and therefore compromise that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client.
dell hardware is incredibly poor quality compared to other vendors, their support is also very poor.
In terms of quality dell is comparable to the cheapest of asian vendors, but somehow people believe them to be superior just because they're american. This is just not the case, i have had no end of trouble from dell machines. I also don't like dell's closeness to microsoft and their willingness to drop linux so quickly, also the fact they take steps to render some of their systems incompatible with non windows os's (real example: update the bios on an inspiron 2600 laptop to the latest version and then try running X11 under any opensource os)
I am dismayed to see openbsd giving money to dell when dell do nothing to help openbsd. They should be supporting vendors who support their os.
They don't use floppy drives on any of their machines anymore, you can always use a usb floppy drive with an eject button.
But, not having the eject button has proved very usefull to prevent stupid users from ejecting the floppy while it's writing, and then wondering why it got corrupted.
The kernel has packet writing too, or atleast patches exist, so you can actually mount it and copy files straight onto it like a floppy..
Well it is a BETA... I'm sure beta versions of native linux tools were just as bad back when they were this new.. It's not fair to compare a beta product to something which has been around a few years..
Servers shouldn't discriminate against particular browsers, they should serve up standards compliant content and it is the browser's author's responsibility to ensure his browser can follow standards.
If you do follow standards, your pages will be readable even with text based browsers or old browers, you may lose the fancy graphics but you'l still be able to read the content.
It's not the site authors fault that ie doesn't support a documented standard that is supported by every modern browser.
But it may aswell be, 6 offered very little above 5.. all my css pages look equally broken in both versions.
Your using gentoo and yet you install firefox from a binary? Shame on you!