Microsoft is a marketing company, which happens to sell software.
I knew someone (in a course Linux, no less) who had done the same in the past with meat. He didn't produce anything, he just bought ready made meats and marketed them.
Cigarettes is also mostly marketing, although they have the advantage that their customers get addicted.
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, I am sure people can think of other companies which are much more marketing driven than excellence driven.
Even that mode is copied, because the Japanese industry worked in that mode in the seventies and eighties.
Re:Surley we will not see Vista viruses for some t
on
Vista Hackers Get Busy
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· Score: 1
I had trouble with Mac viruses already in 1990. And they were very obnoxious, because the Apple automounted floppy disks. If you inserted one with a virus, your system immediately got infected. If you inserted a new floppy, that immediately got infected too. The only way to clean up was to have a non-writable floppy disk available with the necessary tools.
I have the same sentiments here in Belgium, and I am not the only one.
The Ministry of Education thinks that choosing for Free Software or open source is an ideological choice.
But I have left Microsoft Windows for what it is already sixteen years ago on purely technical grounds. I have never reconsidered it, because of the saying "once bitten, twice shy".
My experience through the years when being in Windows environments only reinforced that feeling. I have never regretted choosing for OS/2 first, and Linux later.
Well what security model can prevent a user from a program running under that user account modifying that user's files, but without denying access to that user when he wants it?
Using a restricted shell in a separate directory. Restricted shells cannot do operations on directories above the current directory (ie. no../ operations).
"'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is
This from the company which probably wrote the book on deploying software when it's 'good enough'.
This 'Microsoft Syndrome' is even already fairly old. I remember someone being really angry at me for wanting to upgrade her dekstop with DR-DOS 5.0 or 6.0, instead of MS-DOS 5.0 at the time (1992-1993). She knew nothing about computers, but was already completely indoctrinated that MS was the only true way.
Aldus Pagemaker, which was written for Windows 2.0 or Windows 3.1, did not run well on Windows 3.0/3.1. That was 1992. I know this is an old example, but I think that MS's 'backward compatibility' is something that was only retained for some well known and much used applications.
There was also never a good mechanism available to catch those programs that wanted to access hardware directly. Due to that I once rebooted the accounting server by trying to play 'Carrier Strike' on it (Windows NT 4.0/1997).
I also recently locked up my Windows 2000 Professional workstation by trying to run DOS compatible instances of chipmunk log.
Backwards compatibility ? Hah. They may come back on that in 25 years, to see if they can match the backwards compatibility of mainframe class machines, like IBM zSeries, iSeries, WANG, SunOS backward compatibility on Solaris.
No Microsoft operating system has ever been designed with backward compatibility in mind, that was purely accidental.
I have always the feeling that 'The Number of The Beast' was a kind of end point started with 'Stranger In A Strange Land', where he uses the concept of multiple dimensions to make his books alternative realities.
He starts it first by letting Michael (from SIASL ) things disappear in a dimension perpendicular to our own, and then uses the concept in 'The Number of The Beast' to pull together his own realities, realities from other writers (Oz) and creating a new one.
With this background you do not need to find his juvenile books outdated. Just imagine them in one of Heinlein's parallel universes and consider them a nice adventure story.
I am pretty sure that the kind of people who kill Michael at the end of the book do still exist in the US today, and that if the US society really would have moved on, there would not have been such a stink about Janet Jackson's tit.
I only use Linux at home, on my main system, a satellite system, and my portables. My wife uses it too, mainly Firefox, Kmail and OpenOffice.
There is no software that runs purely on Windows that I need.
Where I work, the platforms we use are a mix of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.
I run a cluster of build servers on Windows 2003, and these things have to run 24 by 7.
I am pissed off by the monthly patch, for me this is a first sign of unprofessionalism. These things should not even be capable of being on the Internet, but of course IE is mandatory, because it is part of the OS.
You can't run these things reliable, and by reliable I mean, a) keep running and running, and b) if something happens, that you can find out what the cause is. I have had several strange things, and they always come at critical moments. A system runs reliably for some time, and then out of the blue it does something which screws up its task and everyone is baffled, including IT (a service which ran for more than a year, suddenly refused to execute deltree or del, while all other ways to execute the same job still succeeded. This happened last Tuesday, and is for me only the umpteenth nail in the MS coffin)/
Of which speaking, Windows propagates bad IT practices and makes it possible for people who don't really know anything about electronics, computers, programming or operating systems, to hold other people as hostages.
When I entered work sixteen years ago, it did not take me long to find out that Microsoft was not a professional software company. Apple and Compaq where the professionals then. I still do not think that Microsoft is a professional software company. They are only a professional marketing company, which excels in persuading people to think that they are too dumb to know about computers and that 'father Microsoft' will help them with all their problems.
The bottomline is this : if you need something that only must be up for a couple of hours a day, then Microsoft may be good enough. But if you need reliability, even while using only a simple PC, Microsoft software should not even enter the picture.
But Scheme looks like one of the many programming languages developed for parsers and compilers, instead of for the people. Programming languages should be easy to read for humans too.
Despite liking KDE more than GNOME, this is one area where GNOME is superior, in activation (by default) and operational.
In KDE you first have to activate the Device Manager applet. Unmounting is sometimes a little buggy. I haven't experimented with their appearance on the KDE desktop yet.
Slashdot Mirror
'Innovation' is a word that has been slapped to death in the last two years, and which has completely lost its meaning.
My default mode has now become to distrust everyone who happens to use the word 'innovation'.
Microsoft is a marketing company, which happens to sell software.
I knew someone (in a course Linux, no less) who had done the same in the past with meat. He didn't produce anything, he just bought ready made meats and marketed them.
Cigarettes is also mostly marketing, although they have the advantage that their customers get addicted.
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, I am sure people can think of other companies which are much more marketing driven than excellence driven.
Even that mode is copied, because the Japanese industry worked in that mode in the seventies and eighties.
I had trouble with Mac viruses already in 1990. And they were very obnoxious, because the Apple automounted floppy disks. If you inserted one with a virus, your system immediately got infected. If you inserted a new floppy, that immediately got infected too. The only way to clean up was to have a non-writable floppy disk available with the necessary tools.
Hate and anti are too strong.
Loathing is the feeling that best describes my feelings towards MS.
I have the same sentiments here in Belgium, and I am not the only one.
The Ministry of Education thinks that choosing for Free Software or open source is an ideological choice.
But I have left Microsoft Windows for what it is already sixteen years ago on purely technical grounds. I have never reconsidered it, because of the saying "once bitten, twice shy".
My experience through the years when being in Windows environments only reinforced that feeling. I have never regretted choosing for OS/2 first, and Linux later.
Well what security model can prevent a user from a program running under that user account modifying that user's files, but without denying access to that user when he wants it?
Using a restricted shell in a separate directory. Restricted shells cannot do operations on directories above the current directory (ie. no ../ operations).
"'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is
This from the company which probably wrote the book on deploying software when it's 'good enough'.
I agree with you here, since Joel also has a lot of articles about testing.
This 'Microsoft Syndrome' is even already fairly old. I remember someone being really angry at me for wanting to upgrade her dekstop with DR-DOS 5.0 or 6.0, instead of MS-DOS 5.0 at the time (1992-1993). She knew nothing about computers, but was already completely indoctrinated that MS was the only true way.
The ultimate of backwards compatibility is IBM mainframes or VAX emulators running code from 40 and 20 years old.
Aldus Pagemaker, which was written for Windows 2.0 or Windows 3.1, did not run well on Windows 3.0/3.1. That was 1992. I know this is an old example, but I think that MS's 'backward compatibility' is something that was only retained for some well known and much used applications.
There was also never a good mechanism available to catch those programs that wanted to access hardware directly. Due to that I once rebooted the accounting server by trying to play 'Carrier Strike' on it (Windows NT 4.0/1997).
I also recently locked up my Windows 2000 Professional workstation by trying to run DOS compatible instances of chipmunk log.
Backwards compatibility ? Hah. They may come back on that in 25 years, to see if they can match the backwards compatibility of mainframe class machines, like IBM zSeries, iSeries, WANG, SunOS backward compatibility on Solaris.
No Microsoft operating system has ever been designed with backward compatibility in mind, that was purely accidental.
I have always the feeling that 'The Number of The Beast' was a kind of end point started with 'Stranger In A Strange Land', where he uses the concept of multiple dimensions to make his books alternative realities.
He starts it first by letting Michael (from SIASL ) things disappear in a dimension perpendicular to our own, and then uses the concept in 'The Number of The Beast' to pull together his own realities, realities from other writers (Oz) and creating a new one.
With this background you do not need to find his juvenile books outdated. Just imagine them in one of Heinlein's parallel universes and consider them a nice adventure story.
I am pretty sure that the kind of people who kill Michael at the end of the book do still exist in the US today, and that if the US society really would have moved on, there would not have been such a stink about Janet Jackson's tit.
I only use Linux at home, on my main system, a satellite system, and my portables. My wife uses it too, mainly Firefox, Kmail and OpenOffice.
There is no software that runs purely on Windows that I need.
Where I work, the platforms we use are a mix of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.
I run a cluster of build servers on Windows 2003, and these things have to run 24 by 7.
I am pissed off by the monthly patch, for me this is a first sign of unprofessionalism. These things should not even be capable of being on the Internet, but of course IE is mandatory, because it is part of the OS.
You can't run these things reliable, and by reliable I mean, a) keep running and running, and b) if something happens, that you can find out what the cause is. I have had several strange things, and they always come at critical moments. A system runs reliably for some time, and then out of the blue it does something which screws up its task and everyone is baffled, including IT (a service which ran for more than a year, suddenly refused to execute deltree or del, while all other ways to execute the same job still succeeded. This happened last Tuesday, and is for me only the umpteenth nail in the MS coffin)/
Of which speaking, Windows propagates bad IT practices and makes it possible for people who don't really know anything about electronics, computers, programming or operating systems, to hold other people as hostages.
When I entered work sixteen years ago, it did not take me long to find out that Microsoft was not a professional software company. Apple and Compaq where the professionals then. I still do not think that Microsoft is a professional software company. They are only a professional marketing company, which excels in persuading people to think that they are too dumb to know about computers and that 'father Microsoft' will help them with all their problems.
The bottomline is this : if you need something that only must be up for a couple of hours a day, then Microsoft may be good enough. But if you need reliability, even while using only a simple PC, Microsoft software should not even enter the picture.
You are lucky.
I learned to program on my own, then had more formal courses.
What I learned afterwards out of school was mostly how not to do things.
Programs (especially in business settings) work sometimes by accident.
I cleaned up a whole lot of debris from accidents.
Yes, 4 GB of changes in less than two weeks. I keep a local mirror, so I see what changes.
I have updated my father's PC on Monday, his local mirror even had 10 GB of changes, that is probably about 2/3 of sid.
LOL!!
Thanks for the laugh.
But Scheme looks like one of the many programming languages developed for parsers and compilers, instead of for the people. Programming languages should be easy to read for humans too.
Like COBOL, you mean ?
Or incf and decf.
Yes. And could you go smaller than SIOD ?
Despite liking KDE more than GNOME, this is one area where GNOME is superior, in activation (by default) and operational.
In KDE you first have to activate the Device Manager applet. Unmounting is sometimes a little buggy. I haven't experimented with their appearance on the KDE desktop yet.
I should have added ;-)
A fast Ruby with a compiler is called Common Lisp.
For the people who might find this unclear :
I ask, because I worked for a business of twenty people as the full-time IT staff, from 1997 to 1998.
I mean, I was the single-person IT staff for a company composed of 20, at most 25 people.