The majority of computer users may not know a lot about stuff these days, but they know enough to see what's good and what's not.
Your post was well reasoned and polite but I had to take exception to this point. In my experience doing tech support most users do not know enough to know whats good, they know enough to know what is familiar, WIndows in its many permutations is familiar so they stick with it.
I personally liked Windows 2000, it was it seemed the best marriage of the NT line with the "Oooh Pretty" look and feel of Win9x, however it suffered majorly in terms of security.
Just one other point, Microsoft started out with a decent OS for its market, end-users who didn't know a lot about computers, but as it grew it depended less and less on the quality of the OS and more and more on business practices that would entrench its dominance. Just look at the various deals they did with the OEMs.
Windows is not a decent OS, its a dominant OS. One does not necessarily lead to the other.
The reason Microsoft is dominant is not because of technical merit, instead it can thank its marketing department and a severe fuck up at IBM that let them sell the original DOS to the clone makers.
Show me where an independant body - by which I mean a truly independant body, not one paid for by either side claims Windows is the best all round OS on the market and I will withdraw my comments.
I'ld say objectify them back, but considering most of the males in the IT industry, I don't know anyone who could drag themselves to think of them as some sort of sex object, maybe an object of pity or derision.
At the moment we have a Prime Minister who has managed to wedge his head so far up Bush's arse he has wonderful view of GW's tonsils from the back.
The liberals are amazingly pro-americam, to the point where they signed up to a so-called "Free Trade Agreement" that basically says American companies have the right to challange Australian law on American terms.
The sad thing is, they have just won another election which has given them a majority in both houses of parliament, garuanteeing them the power to do whatever the fuck they like without any checks or balances.
Over here possession of child pornography is illegal as well, recently we had a series of raids that netted over 80 people who had accessed a site in Eastern Europe that pushed child pornography, big scare that prompted this legislation.
Speaking as a victim of child abuse, anybody who kills or tortures in my name is going to find me up in their face demanding to know where I signed up to it.
I have no problem with peadophiles going to jail for a looong time, nor do I have problems with the concept of medical castration for peadophiles and rapists, however torture and murder brings you down to their level, making you as bad as them.
I have two kids of my own with another on the way, I'm pretty sure that I would do serious bodily harm to any one who molested my kids, but I would expect to pay the price.
To all the Americans bashing the UN, how about you pay your fees before you start attacking an institution that you yourselves were instrumental in creating.
Now thats out of the way, I too believe that ICANN should either give over its responsiblities to an Independant International Body, or in itself become that body. Notice I said Independant, this means not beholden to one organisation/nation or another, not the UN, not the US or any other group.
You should check out the starter plans offered by the big telcos down here. THe biggest rip off I have ever seen.
Telstra: $29.95 per month 256/128 200 MB Download
Optus: Same
AAPT: Similar
My father in law signed up to the AAPT plan and now he is stuck on a twelve month contract paying through the nose for a measly 200mb per month. I use to get more than that with my dialup.
I know, replying to an AC and all that, only encourages them.
Linux by definition cannot become the next Microsoft. Linux is not a private company it is an OS, and more specifically its a kernel. Some of the Linux based companies might try to become the next Microsoft but again they will have a harder time of it because a) Industry is not going to want to see another 800 pound gorilla and b) The very nature of the linux kernel ensures that if some company tries to dick around with it they can't.
Somebody posts a comparison of an application running on different OS's as a system benchmark, and what do people do? Attack MySQL.
God guys get over it, MySQL is here and it has actually proven itself to be usefull. Yes its missing features and has issues, but it fills the niche it is aimed at.
For its niche target MySQL is perfect. We manage to run a nice little sales reporting system using MySQL as the backend and we haven't had any problems.
The DB's you have listed can be serious overkill when you are dealing with small to medium sized businesses especially when you have OSS dbs such as MySQL and PostgreSQL available.
Actually I will allow you one point - Windows is the biggest "Target" partly because of market share. However it also has to do with the fact that it has been the single most over engineered, over marketed piece of software in the world.
This means that while it may get the most attempts at cracking, it also gets the largest amount of succesful cracks (as a precentage of attacks on Windows systems) because of stupid fucking mistake^H^Hfeatures.
Some how I suspect that robot grafitti is going to run into space problems. For instance "Cops Suck Balls" comes out as 01000011, 01101111, 01110000, 01110011, 00100000, 01010011, 01110101, 01100011, 01101011, 00100000, 01000010, 01100001, 01101100, 01101100, 01110011
[Yorkie]When I was a lad, we had to spend twenty-six hours down mine, assembling atoms using our teeth - which we had to pay for - then we'ld come home, eat a bucket of tar, clean out the reactor core using our eye lashes and then da' would cut off our 'eads and send us to bed. And we'ld be grateful for it.[/Yorkie]
Luxury! When I was a lad we didn't have any of this pre-built DNA muck, no we had to build our trees and squids out of protien strands. Blunt ones at that!
Yes but nine women can make nine babies in nine months, this is the sort of thinking that causes developer bloat - "If One Developer can do this amount of work in a month then Nine Developers should be able to do nine times the amount of work". Then they go off and think about trying to make nine women pregnant in one day.
Thats great for those who only want to surf the net or look at email, however you are leaving out the large and growing market segment - the prosumer. These are people who are not content with just typing a couple of documents or sending some emails, instead, they want to edit their home videos, play high powered games or any number of other activities that will suffer if the machine they are running on is limited to ISP speeds.
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The majority of computer users may not know a lot about stuff these days, but they know enough to see what's good and what's not.
Your post was well reasoned and polite but I had to take exception to this point. In my experience doing tech support most users do not know enough to know whats good, they know enough to know what is familiar, WIndows in its many permutations is familiar so they stick with it.
I personally liked Windows 2000, it was it seemed the best marriage of the NT line with the "Oooh Pretty" look and feel of Win9x, however it suffered majorly in terms of security.
Just one other point, Microsoft started out with a decent OS for its market, end-users who didn't know a lot about computers, but as it grew it depended less and less on the quality of the OS and more and more on business practices that would entrench its dominance. Just look at the various deals they did with the OEMs.
Windows is not a decent OS, its a dominant OS. One does not necessarily lead to the other.
The reason Microsoft is dominant is not because of technical merit, instead it can thank its marketing department and a severe fuck up at IBM that let them sell the original DOS to the clone makers.
Show me where an independant body - by which I mean a truly independant body, not one paid for by either side claims Windows is the best all round OS on the market and I will withdraw my comments.
I'ld say objectify them back, but considering most of the males in the IT industry, I don't know anyone who could drag themselves to think of them as some sort of sex object, maybe an object of pity or derision.
Build a decent OS?
At the moment we have a Prime Minister who has managed to wedge his head so far up Bush's arse he has wonderful view of GW's tonsils from the back.
The liberals are amazingly pro-americam, to the point where they signed up to a so-called "Free Trade Agreement" that basically says American companies have the right to challange Australian law on American terms.
The sad thing is, they have just won another election which has given them a majority in both houses of parliament, garuanteeing them the power to do whatever the fuck they like without any checks or balances.
Over here possession of child pornography is illegal as well, recently we had a series of raids that netted over 80 people who had accessed a site in Eastern Europe that pushed child pornography, big scare that prompted this legislation.
Speaking as a victim of child abuse, anybody who kills or tortures in my name is going to find me up in their face demanding to know where I signed up to it.
I have no problem with peadophiles going to jail for a looong time, nor do I have problems with the concept of medical castration for peadophiles and rapists, however torture and murder brings you down to their level, making you as bad as them.
I have two kids of my own with another on the way, I'm pretty sure that I would do serious bodily harm to any one who molested my kids, but I would expect to pay the price.
To all the Americans bashing the UN, how about you pay your fees before you start attacking an institution that you yourselves were instrumental in creating.
Now thats out of the way, I too believe that ICANN should either give over its responsiblities to an Independant International Body, or in itself become that body. Notice I said Independant, this means not beholden to one organisation/nation or another, not the UN, not the US or any other group.
You should check out the starter plans offered by the big telcos down here. THe biggest rip off I have ever seen.
Telstra: $29.95 per month 256/128 200 MB Download
Optus: Same
AAPT: Similar
My father in law signed up to the AAPT plan and now he is stuck on a twelve month contract paying through the nose for a measly 200mb per month. I use to get more than that with my dialup.
Why hasn't this company been banned from having anything to do with the Internet?
Time and time again it gets busted doing crap like the SiteFinder fiasco and still they get away with it.
I know, replying to an AC and all that, only encourages them.
Linux by definition cannot become the next Microsoft. Linux is not a private company it is an OS, and more specifically its a kernel. Some of the Linux based companies might try to become the next Microsoft but again they will have a harder time of it because a) Industry is not going to want to see another 800 pound gorilla and b) The very nature of the linux kernel ensures that if some company tries to dick around with it they can't.
Because I read the intro and I thought it referred to a full sized remotely controlled abrahms.
Well I can dream
Somebody posts a comparison of an application running on different OS's as a system benchmark, and what do people do? Attack MySQL.
God guys get over it, MySQL is here and it has actually proven itself to be usefull. Yes its missing features and has issues, but it fills the niche it is aimed at.
For its niche target MySQL is perfect. We manage to run a nice little sales reporting system using MySQL as the backend and we haven't had any problems.
The DB's you have listed can be serious overkill when you are dealing with small to medium sized businesses especially when you have OSS dbs such as MySQL and PostgreSQL available.
Thats what I thought so I switched away from Windows and went with Fedora.
Um just let me say - horse hockey.
Actually I will allow you one point - Windows is the biggest "Target" partly because of market share. However it also has to do with the fact that it has been the single most over engineered, over marketed piece of software in the world.
This means that while it may get the most attempts at cracking, it also gets the largest amount of succesful cracks (as a precentage of attacks on Windows systems) because of stupid fucking mistake^H^Hfeatures.
The spanish should get out more
Yes I think I know what you mean.
Heres another deep question: Define morals and if there is such a thing as an absolute morality, if so prove it
Some how I suspect that robot grafitti is going to run into space problems. For instance "Cops Suck Balls" comes out as 01000011, 01101111, 01110000, 01110011, 00100000, 01010011, 01110101, 01100011, 01101011, 00100000, 01000010, 01100001, 01101100, 01101100, 01110011
I know, Im bored
Okay how about this:
- MS United Players to bloated to fit down the players tunnel, Goal Keeper impressive though.
- MS United Player sin binned after trying to embrace and extend an opposing player,
- MS United starts own league with rules only it knows. Claims its easier for the average fan to watch.
- MS United coach declares amatuer players as "Communists" because they let people watch for free.
- MS United team banned in Europe for "bundling" own referees
Right!
[Yorkie]When I was a lad, we had to spend twenty-six hours down mine, assembling atoms using our teeth - which we had to pay for - then we'ld come home, eat a bucket of tar, clean out the reactor core using our eye lashes and then da' would cut off our 'eads and send us to bed. And we'ld be grateful for it.[/Yorkie]
Luxury! When I was a lad we didn't have any of this pre-built DNA muck, no we had to build our trees and squids out of protien strands. Blunt ones at that!
Yes but nine women can make nine babies in nine months, this is the sort of thinking that causes developer bloat - "If One Developer can do this amount of work in a month then Nine Developers should be able to do nine times the amount of work". Then they go off and think about trying to make nine women pregnant in one day.
Damn how hard can it be to run a script to install UT2004? Hell if you double click on it it will start.
Thats great for those who only want to surf the net or look at email, however you are leaving out the large and growing market segment - the prosumer. These are people who are not content with just typing a couple of documents or sending some emails, instead, they want to edit their home videos, play high powered games or any number of other activities that will suffer if the machine they are running on is limited to ISP speeds.