Why do people (including Microsoft) always feel the need to point out just how much better the current(-ish) version is than the old one?
The commenter's original problem was that Windows kept crashing. He was looking for an alternative that his girlfriend would be happy with. No one could come up with a suitable Linux distro given his requirements, and one person suggested he buy her a Mac or just reinstall Windows and not let her install the addin crap. He said he had the problems even with fresh installs of Win98, Win98SE and WinME.
I have 7 years of professional experience with Win95, almost 3 years of professional experience with Windows 2000 and Windows NT and various experience with the other Windows versions. Windows 2000 is much more stable than what he used and fills his girlfriend's needs.
I am pro GNU/Linux, but it's not for everyone, and it's not a multimedia desktop OS for someone who doesn't want to tinker, and if you want Real Player, Flash and "the ability to play as many multimedia files as possible" (from the original question) then any distro of GNU/Linux or *BSD requires much tinkering.
Personally I think she'd be better off with a Mac. I have a serious woody for Mac OS X, but I don't run it because Apple hardware is just too darn expensive. If someone has the money to burn I'd recommend a Mac with OS X now.
By the way, Microsoft says the latest version is better because that's how they make their money. God forbid everyone finds out that Word 95 makes docuements just as well and easy as Word 2002.
In one year, you'll still say "There's your problem right there, Windows 2003 is much more stable than Windows 2000".
Not me. Windows 2000 is the best Windows I've seen so far. Screw XP. It's Win2k with DRM and eye candy.
If someone shot you last week, but only stabbed you this week, you don't have to thank them.
Cute, but show me a desktop OS that you can convince my users to use and my Fortue 500 company IT staff will support and convince the world that MS Word.doc files and MS Excel.xls files are not reasonable standard document formats and you'll be my hero. Give the original poster a GNU/Linux live cd with Flash, Real and massive multimedia support and you'll be his hero. Of course you'd probably get sued by Macromedia and Real Networks, but oh well.
I did overlook one possibility for his girlfriend's problems: It might be the hardware. It could be a flaky power supply or bad RAM, and then no OS will help his problems. In fact a true 32-bit OS would exacerbate a hardware issue.
if the trend of adding more [Linux] flavors continues
Um, I thought UnitedLinux was a specification for the member distros to adhere to, not a new distro itself. Suse, VA and the others are going to release distros that conform to the UnitedLinux spec but are still individualized.
That's the point of it being UnitedLinux: to reduce the worry of choosing.
I work for a Fortune 500 company, and there are way too many Excel and Word documents to ingore when considering an office suite. Many of the more useful Excel files use VBScript because many of the savvy users learned bit-by-bit how to do some neat feature in Excel. Don't underestimate the time it would take them to transfer those skills to another office suite and don't underestimate their loyalty to Excel.
I'm too far down the bureaucratic chain to know the hows and whys of our future software purchases, so I don't know if Suse running MS Office makes things more attractive for us or not. But I am fairly sure that all other user software needs (terminal sessions, browser plugins, other network clients etc.) are available with free software now.
I have a pipe dream of building a modified Debian distro targeted for my company with a distributed filesystem for the.deb files for fast reimaging and updating. Maybe I'll try it sometime.
From reading the other comments, Openexchange appears to have a 10 concurrent user license where Microsoft is per seat licensed.
So if you have 200 users but only 10 are connected to the server at any given time you'd need a 10-user Openexchange license or a 200-user MS Exchange license.
Plus MS server OSes require client licensing, too. Suse doesn't.
At work a group was all sold on using terminal services, so we have Win2k terminal servers running Citrix and administered through Novell DeFrame. There are 5 licenses (Windows server, Citrix, Novell user, Novell DeFrame and application) required for every user/application. Yikes! And some licenses are per seat and some are per concurrent user. I guess you could call it six licenses if you throw in the MS Windows client. Why not?
Yup, I saw it that time. It still has the large MSN 8 ad on the side AND the Partner AOL 7.0 link in the bottom right.
What's funny is this link won't even load in Mozilla 1.1 for me. The main page loaded fine, but this one just has the spinning "page loading" icon for a couple of minutes before I get bored and stop it.
I was curious how they did this becase I thought you had to use a plugin like Comet Cursor (=spyware) to do this. But they did it in Javascript. The 3rd <script> tag from the bottom is the group of functions that does it.
This page is a 58KB compilation of Javascript that does thing like manipulate many cookies and tries to figure out if it's your birthday. (I assume you have to have a user account/profile of some sort with them for them to know that.) The function name for the greeting (birthday, day of week, etc) is called function hugMe(); I thought that was cute. I can't quite figure out what function doIntercept does, though. I suppose all this Javascript is why Mozilla won't load it for me.
Okay, okay, there ARE software packages at 11 or higher. I tried (and apparently failed) to inject some Spinal Tap humor into the version number question posed by the parent post of the parent post. (The grandparent post?)
my girlfriend experienced a freaky butterfly icon chasing her mouse cursor around the weather channel site...
I checked and got nothing, but then realized I was using Mozilla and tried again with IE 6. No cursor-chasing butterfly for me, but the big Flash ad was the same MSN fat guy butterfly silhouette.
Plus in the upper-right corner it says "Sponsored by MSN 8". However, the lower-right corner says "Partner All-New AOL 7.0 1000 FREE Hours!" and the lower-left corner says "Powered by WorldCom". Sheesh!
Well MSN and AOL are on 8, Mac has gone to OS X, MS Office is on version 10. Nobody's higher than 10. See, what I've done is created a version 11. That's right, no one else has 11. This is one better than anything anyone else can hope for.
Did anyone else get the MSN ad with the silhouetted guy with the MSN butterfly suit IN the linked NYT article?
I did.
What's sad is that the extra publicity given by the NYT article, an angry NYC and Slashdot may be perceived as good. What's that marketing saying? There's no such thing as bad publicity? Makes me sick.
I started to make a similar point in a similar story but realized it's not really a fair comparison. Movies make most of their money in the theater run, and DVDs, pay-per-views, premium cable runs and so forth are secondary revenue streams, so the DVD production has been subsidised by the box office income. A music CD production doesn't have any such subsidy I can think of; it's the primary revenue source.
I still believe CDs are way overpriced, though. And I got burned a few times buying a band's CD from hearing one good song on the radio only to find out I paid $15+ for one good song that constantly plays on the radio plus 10 really crappy songs. So I have bought hardly any CDs lately. I'll only buy if I know there are several songs I like.
Because the whole point of staging at L1 is that it allows low-energy transfers to other points in the solar system. Launching a trip to Mars, for example, from L1 would require much less energy than from either the surface of the Earth, or low Earth orbit, or the surface of the moon.
I've seen this mentioned another time or two in these comments and in the article, but it doesn't quite make sense to me.
Sure, if we had a ship there it would be easy to launch, but we have to rotate crew, refuel, provide food and other consumables and presumably remove waste. Plus we have to get a ship there in the first place. There is nothing at the Ln points now: no building mateirals, food, fuel or even a picnic table and trash can. I don't quite see how having a station at L1 or Ln makes space travel any more convenient.
The only advantage I can begin to imagine would be a large reusable shuttle that you didn't have to launch from Earth every trip, but you still have to launch cargo, crew, fuel and supplies for each trip, and you have to have a pretty big ship or several small ships to get this hypothetical space-based shuttle furnished for another trip.
Ah, that graph brings back some memories. I miss working in a NOC for a colo facility.
We hosted WWII Online's web servers and game servers for a while. When it first was released many of their customers weren't happy because nothing worked right.
Apparently somebody got mad and had an OC3 available to try a DOS attack, but little did they know WWIIOL's servers had 200Mbps internet. The spike went up to 45mbit over normal for a short while, but I guess they quickly realized it didn't do any good and gave up.
I thought that was funny. But what was funnier is that one of their customers was clever enough to figure out how to get hold of the NOC and complained that the game servers were down! I couldn't tell him anything helpful except to contact the WWIIOL folks.
Of course it was also cool to play an online game with a ping of less than 10ms.:) (After they got the game servers up, of course.)
And then there was the time one of their techs was setting up a Linux server, stepped out for a few minutes and came back to find that it had been root kitted! He had just finished the base load and not patched it yet, thinking it would be okay long enough to get a bite to eat. He was pissed. But the script kiddie was stupid because he locked himself out by deleting the telnet and sshd servers and logging out before activating his trojan software.
Who would have expected the useful life of a machine to be limited by the availability of floppies?
Uh, many people. When was the last time you saw an 8" floppy? Or even a 5 1/4" floppy?
Before that, various tape formats have been obsoleted.
CD media is supposed to last 100 years, but I bet in 10-15 years we'll have trouble getting drives to read them, too. (I know that is a bit backwards from having no media for old hardware, but oh well.)
Slashdot Mirror
You're either a pengofoob, or you need to get laid. Soon.
Um, who doesn't need to get laid soon?
Why do people (including Microsoft) always feel the need to point out just how much better the current(-ish) version is than the old one?
.doc files and MS Excel .xls files are not reasonable standard document formats and you'll be my hero. Give the original poster a GNU/Linux live cd with Flash, Real and massive multimedia support and you'll be his hero. Of course you'd probably get sued by Macromedia and Real Networks, but oh well.
The commenter's original problem was that Windows kept crashing. He was looking for an alternative that his girlfriend would be happy with. No one could come up with a suitable Linux distro given his requirements, and one person suggested he buy her a Mac or just reinstall Windows and not let her install the addin crap. He said he had the problems even with fresh installs of Win98, Win98SE and WinME.
I have 7 years of professional experience with Win95, almost 3 years of professional experience with Windows 2000 and Windows NT and various experience with the other Windows versions. Windows 2000 is much more stable than what he used and fills his girlfriend's needs.
I am pro GNU/Linux, but it's not for everyone, and it's not a multimedia desktop OS for someone who doesn't want to tinker, and if you want Real Player, Flash and "the ability to play as many multimedia files as possible" (from the original question) then any distro of GNU/Linux or *BSD requires much tinkering.
Personally I think she'd be better off with a Mac. I have a serious woody for Mac OS X, but I don't run it because Apple hardware is just too darn expensive. If someone has the money to burn I'd recommend a Mac with OS X now.
By the way, Microsoft says the latest version is better because that's how they make their money. God forbid everyone finds out that Word 95 makes docuements just as well and easy as Word 2002.
In one year, you'll still say "There's your problem right there, Windows 2003 is much more stable than Windows 2000".
Not me. Windows 2000 is the best Windows I've seen so far. Screw XP. It's Win2k with DRM and eye candy.
If someone shot you last week, but only stabbed you this week, you don't have to thank them.
Cute, but show me a desktop OS that you can convince my users to use and my Fortue 500 company IT staff will support and convince the world that MS Word
I did overlook one possibility for his girlfriend's problems: It might be the hardware. It could be a flaky power supply or bad RAM, and then no OS will help his problems. In fact a true 32-bit OS would exacerbate a hardware issue.
...with fresh installs of 98, 98SE, and ME...
There's your problem right there. Windows 2000 (and I presume XP) is much more stable than the Win9x's. (Yes WinME is a Win9x.)
Are they ill-tempered supercomputer cycles?
if the trend of adding more [Linux] flavors continues
Um, I thought UnitedLinux was a specification for the member distros to adhere to, not a new distro itself. Suse, VA and the others are going to release distros that conform to the UnitedLinux spec but are still individualized.
That's the point of it being UnitedLinux: to reduce the worry of choosing.
I work for a Fortune 500 company, and there are way too many Excel and Word documents to ingore when considering an office suite. Many of the more useful Excel files use VBScript because many of the savvy users learned bit-by-bit how to do some neat feature in Excel. Don't underestimate the time it would take them to transfer those skills to another office suite and don't underestimate their loyalty to Excel.
.deb files for fast reimaging and updating. Maybe I'll try it sometime.
I'm too far down the bureaucratic chain to know the hows and whys of our future software purchases, so I don't know if Suse running MS Office makes things more attractive for us or not. But I am fairly sure that all other user software needs (terminal sessions, browser plugins, other network clients etc.) are available with free software now.
I have a pipe dream of building a modified Debian distro targeted for my company with a distributed filesystem for the
the main point is that this is now obviously the first truly open hardware project to have actually entered the martket.
Great! Where can I buy one?
Seriously, I want one but no one seems to actually be making or selling them.
And I live in the USA. If they start making these in (or for) India I hope I can get one shipped here.
So, Linux 2.6 will come out about the same time as the new Harry Potter book? Maybe it will be a joint release.
Can somebody check to see if Timothy has Alzheimer's?
ps. I dont give a damn about the spelling errors
You spelled "damn" correctly.
From reading the other comments, Openexchange appears to have a 10 concurrent user license where Microsoft is per seat licensed.
So if you have 200 users but only 10 are connected to the server at any given time you'd need a 10-user Openexchange license or a 200-user MS Exchange license.
Plus MS server OSes require client licensing, too. Suse doesn't.
At work a group was all sold on using terminal services, so we have Win2k terminal servers running Citrix and administered through Novell DeFrame. There are 5 licenses (Windows server, Citrix, Novell user, Novell DeFrame and application) required for every user/application. Yikes! And some licenses are per seat and some are per concurrent user. I guess you could call it six licenses if you throw in the MS Windows client. Why not?
Yup, I saw it that time. It still has the large MSN 8 ad on the side AND the Partner AOL 7.0 link in the bottom right.
What's funny is this link won't even load in Mozilla 1.1 for me. The main page loaded fine, but this one just has the spinning "page loading" icon for a couple of minutes before I get bored and stop it.
I was curious how they did this becase I thought you had to use a plugin like Comet Cursor (=spyware) to do this. But they did it in Javascript. The 3rd <script> tag from the bottom is the group of functions that does it.
This page is a 58KB compilation of Javascript that does thing like manipulate many cookies and tries to figure out if it's your birthday. (I assume you have to have a user account/profile of some sort with them for them to know that.) The function name for the greeting (birthday, day of week, etc) is called function hugMe(); I thought that was cute. I can't quite figure out what function doIntercept does, though. I suppose all this Javascript is why Mozilla won't load it for me.
Yes, that's it. That's what I was aiming for.
It's been waaaaaaaay too long since I've seen Spinal Tap.
In response to my version number critics:
Okay, okay, there ARE software packages at 11 or higher. I tried (and apparently failed) to inject some Spinal Tap humor into the version number question posed by the parent post of the parent post. (The grandparent post?)
my girlfriend experienced a freaky butterfly icon chasing her mouse cursor around the weather channel site...
I checked and got nothing, but then realized I was using Mozilla and tried again with IE 6. No cursor-chasing butterfly for me, but the big Flash ad was the same MSN fat guy butterfly silhouette.
Plus in the upper-right corner it says "Sponsored by MSN 8". However, the lower-right corner says "Partner All-New AOL 7.0 1000 FREE Hours!" and the lower-left corner says "Powered by WorldCom". Sheesh!
But then no one would notice the wings. See? They think these things through. Besides, fat guys work cheaper in advertising.
Well MSN and AOL are on 8, Mac has gone to OS X, MS Office is on version 10. Nobody's higher than 10. See, what I've done is created a version 11. That's right, no one else has 11. This is one better than anything anyone else can hope for.
Did anyone else get the MSN ad with the silhouetted guy with the MSN butterfly suit IN the linked NYT article?
I did.
What's sad is that the extra publicity given by the NYT article, an angry NYC and Slashdot may be perceived as good. What's that marketing saying? There's no such thing as bad publicity? Makes me sick.
I started to make a similar point in a similar story but realized it's not really a fair comparison. Movies make most of their money in the theater run, and DVDs, pay-per-views, premium cable runs and so forth are secondary revenue streams, so the DVD production has been subsidised by the box office income. A music CD production doesn't have any such subsidy I can think of; it's the primary revenue source.
I still believe CDs are way overpriced, though. And I got burned a few times buying a band's CD from hearing one good song on the radio only to find out I paid $15+ for one good song that constantly plays on the radio plus 10 really crappy songs. So I have bought hardly any CDs lately. I'll only buy if I know there are several songs I like.
Because the whole point of staging at L1 is that it allows low-energy transfers to other points in the solar system. Launching a trip to Mars, for example, from L1 would require much less energy than from either the surface of the Earth, or low Earth orbit, or the surface of the moon.
I've seen this mentioned another time or two in these comments and in the article, but it doesn't quite make sense to me.
Sure, if we had a ship there it would be easy to launch, but we have to rotate crew, refuel, provide food and other consumables and presumably remove waste. Plus we have to get a ship there in the first place. There is nothing at the Ln points now: no building mateirals, food, fuel or even a picnic table and trash can. I don't quite see how having a station at L1 or Ln makes space travel any more convenient.
The only advantage I can begin to imagine would be a large reusable shuttle that you didn't have to launch from Earth every trip, but you still have to launch cargo, crew, fuel and supplies for each trip, and you have to have a pretty big ship or several small ships to get this hypothetical space-based shuttle furnished for another trip.
Another space race? maybe China? I hope so.
China seems to be the most likely contender in my uninformed eyes.
I thought I remembered a story about them wanting to go to Mars, but all I found was a story about them wanting to build a moonbase.
If they actually follow through with something big in space, that ought to get us USAmericans back in the space race frame of mind.
But how do we get the images back or control it? Wouldn't we have to have a repeater station on the moon or at L4 or L5?
has anyone got any examples of this anywhere? i'd be curious to see some of these macros..
Perhaps he's referring to many of Microsoft's easter eggs in the OS and apps.
Isn't there a web browsing easter egg in some program? Don't recall if that was MS or not.
Ah, that graph brings back some memories. I miss working in a NOC for a colo facility.
:) (After they got the game servers up, of course.)
We hosted WWII Online's web servers and game servers for a while. When it first was released many of their customers weren't happy because nothing worked right.
Apparently somebody got mad and had an OC3 available to try a DOS attack, but little did they know WWIIOL's servers had 200Mbps internet. The spike went up to 45mbit over normal for a short while, but I guess they quickly realized it didn't do any good and gave up.
I thought that was funny. But what was funnier is that one of their customers was clever enough to figure out how to get hold of the NOC and complained that the game servers were down! I couldn't tell him anything helpful except to contact the WWIIOL folks.
Of course it was also cool to play an online game with a ping of less than 10ms.
And then there was the time one of their techs was setting up a Linux server, stepped out for a few minutes and came back to find that it had been root kitted! He had just finished the base load and not patched it yet, thinking it would be okay long enough to get a bite to eat. He was pissed. But the script kiddie was stupid because he locked himself out by deleting the telnet and sshd servers and logging out before activating his trojan software.
Who would have expected the useful life of a machine to be limited by the availability of floppies?
Uh, many people. When was the last time you saw an 8" floppy? Or even a 5 1/4" floppy?
Before that, various tape formats have been obsoleted.
CD media is supposed to last 100 years, but I bet in 10-15 years we'll have trouble getting drives to read them, too. (I know that is a bit backwards from having no media for old hardware, but oh well.)