I admit it, I blew it on the journalling point. And you're right on the money about defragmenting. Here's a point another poster made to me: if your drives are IDE and not SATA, the journalling in NTFS might not always recover after a crash, which explains what happened to the PCs in my office (corrupted registries, etc). That's interesting, isn't it? That the drive type might affect the outcome?
A rude Linux computer! That's hilarious! I bet you could get that with a short recompile... All the responses are probably coded as string constants, somewhere...
Oh, no, you don't understand -- the manual was written in really bad Engrish and the diagram didn't describe the plugs, or the cable colors, or anything really. So I had two cables which looked nearly identical (only different colors on the plastic part, too, which wasn't mentioned in the manual) and one of the cables was tucked way up by the power supply where I couldn't see it.
I read the manual, like, three times before I finally got it all figured out. Sort of. I'm just glad it ended up working instead of fried.;)
In my own defense, before I flamed him, he told me I was ignorant and uninformed, which I took somewhat personally. I feel I am neither, even if I was wrong on ONE LITTLE POINT (the NTFS/Journalling thing). The guy COULD have just disagreed with me without calling me names.
having said that, I think your reply was better than mine. Nicely done.
So I'm building a PC, right? And it's been a few years, so I'm not expecting the processor to have its own 4-plug cable. I'm looking at it, and looking at it, and wondering "what the fuck is up with this extra bit of cable on the power cable???"
So, I consult the manual, and I figure out that the four-plug cable goes into a socket hidden between two big capacitors on the motherboard. But the shape is a little off. I'm trying to get it to fit, and I find out it fits two possible ways. Not good, I think, but I gamely try it out.
ZORT! A loud shorting-out sound comes from the general direction of the processor. I scream "EEKY" and yank the cable back out. I find out that if I plug it in the A way, it ZORTs. If I plug it in the B way, it PFFTs. After a long while farting around with this, with no luck at all, I notice another cable tucked way up in the corner of the case. It ALSO has four plugs.
I try the new cable and the computer starts right up. It doesn't seem to have suffered any damage, either.
Boy, whatta relief...
This is in the "Anyone can be stupid for an hour or two" category.
WOAH, nelly! You know those VAIO Picturebooks have a half-height screen, right? It's an uncommon geometry. So, yeah, ok, you might have some "fun" setting that up in Linux. But you CAN get it to work. I did once, by using a custom modeline I downloaded from a VAIO FAQ. If that's too much of a pain in the butt for you (I fully agree that it's a humongous pain in the ass) I think SuSE and Fedora offer better installation support for that, and will probably set up normally. You'll probably have to go with a more commercial distro to get satisfaction, just my opinion.
As to your second point, what did you do to get a kernel panic??? I think I've only seen one of those once (and that was my fault, I was installing on weird old mil-spec hardware and the old distro I had at the time utterly freaked out over it). I must know how you arranged that; you have inspired much curiosity in me!
Ah... You've cleared up a few things for me -- our drives were almost certainly all IDE (our equipment wasn't particularly exciting), which explains our difficulties. Ah, well, what are you going to do? Government agencies never buy us the good stuff (budgets, etc).
Once again, I concede the point -- you are correct, NTFS seems to be journalling, and I have accepted this.
On another note, I can't believe you just threw the switch like that! You are a bad man. But it's cool, I guess I can see the allure of that. Did they make a cool "ZORT!" sound when they all blinked off?
P.S. The rest of my original post was sound, at least; the NTFS point was only one of several.;)
But, wait; how fast was your motherboard? We had 1Ghz machines, I think. My machine (which was a little slow but not too bad unless I was testing, at which point it would slow down a little more) was a Windows 2000 box with 512 MB ram, my buddy had a Windows 2000 box with 128 MB ram (his was really, really slow when he tried the testing tools), and the new test machines were XP boxes which started with 512 (but we were asking for 1GB). We were mixed, some Dells, some IBM, and the old 128MB machines were HPs.
Maybe if you're just doing normal stuff, it's not so bad. We were running a lot of developer's tools; I suppose maybe they used more memory than a normal app. But we basically considered 512MB the bare minimum to spec for a new machine, and we all really wanted to get 1GB. I don't think anyone got more than 512, though (we're non-profit too, government-style).
Ours were 1Ghz machines, FWIW. One or two guys on the floor had only 128MB, and their machines were pretty slow. They could run basic tools easily, but if you tried to fire up the tool suite we were using, the whole machine would just crawl. It would take minutes to finish some of the operations (basically static code review tools and the like, looking for syntax that didn't match rules, memory leaks, things like that). When we were testing a website, to see how it was using memory and processor, etc, EVERYTHING got slow on my machine (I had a Windows 2000 box with 512MB of Ram). I mean slow.
It didn't seem as though we were beating up the machine all that much, but maybe we were. Anyway, yeah, we were speccing 1GB of ram for our testing machines (developers got 512).
I once knew a girl who liked to be eaten. Once, twice, thrice she'd entreat me, Eat me, she'd say, eat me, EAT ME! And so I would; on the lass I'd dine. Now, you'd think that a strapping young girl would taste, Like beef, or lamb, or pork at least. But I tell you, this hot young lass of mine, always tasted like fish, each and every time.
1. BSD isn't "more liberal" than GPL; GPL ensures everyone's freedom to continue to use the software as they choose. BSD permits the commercialization of a tool, which can lead to a reduction in freedom. But this is a long and thorny discussion I don't want any part of.
2 -- (I suppose now you'll do three dashes?)
3. I'm sure there is a lot of free software for Windows. But there's far more available for Linux.
4. While Windows does autodetect some common types of hardware (like external hard disks, etc) most of the hardware you'll connect to your Windows box requires a driver from the manufacturer. This means you've got to go out to a website and hope the manufacturer has a free downloads section. As hardware ages, this becomes more problematic. Companies go out of business, some don't allow downloads, etc. In contrast, once a driver exists for Linux, it generally gets rolled into all new distributions. So, once a driver exists, everyone has it, forever. It's quite different. All the hardware I have here in my house was autodetected by SuSE as soon as I plugged it in. Some, like my networking PCMCIA card, worked fine in Linux but didn't work with Windows until I found a commercial driver on the company website (and that took a while, because it was an old card and I had to dig all over their site). What happens when that company drops support for the card, eh? It'll work in Linux but not in Windows. This is what I'm talking about.
5. PLEASE tell me you didn't pull this ancient argument out of the can... Linux is more secure because of its architecture, not because of its user base (although I'm sure having relatively technical users doesn't hurt). The entire OS is built from the ground up in a more secure way. Also, it profits from 30+ years of hacking and counterhacking experience; that's quite a head start over the Windows crowd, don't you think? I often find it flabbergasting that Microsoft continually insists on re-inventing the wheel instead of just licensing a Unix (why not a BSD?) and doing it right once and for all. Apple did! And look how good OS/X is. Why Bill G. can't catch on to this is anyone's guess. He's supposed to be smart, but he seems kind of thick to me (or maybe just stubborn).
6. Yeah, yeah, I've already conceded this point. However, I did keep one caveat: "yes, NTFS is journalling. But it's CRAP!" So there.
As for your snottiness in the last paragraph, well, you can blow me. "unfounded and uneducated", my ASS.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: another poster has confirmed that yes, NTFS is journalling. So I concede this point. But I still think it's a crap filesystem (nyah, nyah!).;)
Ok... I'll give you that one. I bow before the mighty wikipedia; just about everything's in there these days.
HOWEVER, I wasn't making up the part about garbled registries.
The systems in question that I was talking about were Windows 2000 systems, and the users didn't power down the systems (power was lost in the building, so the machines suddenly went off). Not ALL registries were corrupted, but a couple of people had to have their systems re-imaged. The tech guys who fixed the machines said that it happens sometimes if the system suddenly loses power. I'm pretty sure all those machines were set up with NTFS.
Now, in a good journalling filesystem, that wouldn't have happened. Reiser wouldn't fail that way. But NTFS apparently did. So given that you've demonstrated that NTFS has support for file system journalling, I'll have to modify my point and say that yes, NTFS offers file system journalling, but I think it's CRAP. Untrustworthy and unreliable.
More points to ponder:
When you manually powered down the computers, you weren't yanking the cords out of the wall, you were pushing the buttons, right? If they were relatively modern, that doesn't do a hard shut off, it sends a power down request to Windows. To do a hard shutdown, you have to hold the button for four seconds. So your action would've been harmless.
Second, Windows doesn't always use NTFS. When you install Windows 2000, it asks you which you want, NTFS or FAT. Most people wouldn't know the difference. Hell, most people don't install their windows -- the OEM does. So you're kind of stuck counting on someone you don't know, haven't met, never WILL meet... And most people don't have any idea how to see which they're using anyway.
Third, until Windows 2000, home users usually always used FAT, which isn't journalling. Windows XP apparently uses NTFS, as do newer versions of Windows like server 2003, so that's going away.
I think maybe this one of my points is a little weak; let's drop this one, I'll concede the point (although I still think NTFS is crap compared to Reiser). My others are still valid, though.
Uhhhh, you haven't really proven anything I've said to be incorrect. Your best points were that (you claim) NTFS is a "journalling filesystem" (ha ha ha!) and that Linux doesn't have driver support for acceleration features on 3D cards.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, Linux' driver support for 3D acceleration only matters if you're a video gamer, and this is hardly important these days (what with all the multiple consoles available for as little as a hundred bucks). Most people don't use their computers to play DOOM 3, so acceleration isn't an issue. I'm running my SuSE box with an ATI Radeon, and I couldn't get the accelerated driver to work. You know what? The system STILL WORKS JUST FINE. Big whoop! Open Office doesn't give a shit if I've disabled hardware acceleration. In fact, I was playing Quake and Quake II using Wine the other day and they didn't seem to mind either. I think this point is a non-starter.
As far as NTFS goes, its so-called journal SUCKS. If you lose power on a Windows system, you'd better cross yourself and say a little prayer before you turn it back on, because your registry might just be FUBAR. I've seen this happen a few times over the past few years, on Windows 2000 boxes no less. The tech guys didn't even want to deal with it, they just re-imaged the person's system. Pretty weak, dude... If I hard-cycle the power on my SuSE box, NOTHING HAPPENS. Of course, one of the great strengths of Linux is: THERE'S NO REGISTRY TO GET CORRUPTED! Thank GOD for the plain-text INI file and the startup script... Of course, Bill G. hates those, because the registry really was about "piracy", not efficiency. But we won't go there -- you'd probably blow a gasket.
Your ACL point didn't make any sense at all; Linux and its predecessor Unix have had user and group priviledges for thirty years, and more recently SELinux has added a whole bunch of new settings. SURELY you're not trying to say that Windows' namby-pamby user priviledges setup is even close to being what Linux gives you! Listen, just to be nice, I'll pretend that 90% of the users out there AREN'T running as Administrator because most Windows applications are written by retards still using ancient system calls. I won't mention that Linux software NEVER makes you run as root all the time. At most you might have to "sudo" occasionally. Oh, wait! I guess I just did. My bad.
As far as things available for free that are available for Linux ALSO being available for Windows, I have three things to say:
1. They're usually an afterthought, and don't run as well on Windows.
2. There is a far wider variety of tools available for free on Linux than on Windows. Go check out Sourceforge if you want to see for yourself.
3. When you get a Linux distribution, a VAST variety of software comes with it, right in the box, for FREE. Windows doesn't come with ANYTHING. So if you want the same stuff I've got running on my SuSE box, you'll have to spend a week downloading all the packages for Windows, IF they even exist on that platform.
I'd say YOU are the ignorant one. I highly doubt your job involves "developing multi-million dollar systems that run on it". If you did, you'd know better than to try and dicker over these points with me.
But thanks for the workout. I love a good argument.
Just to give you an idea, I'm a software developer and at the government agency where I used to work, I and a few other guys were tasked with setting up a disk image for computers that would be used for testing.
The computers ran Windows XP Pro, and were getting a full install of Visual Studio, plus a test suite called DevPartner installed. I believe they were also going to be able to serve web pages, not as a full blown server but just locally for testing purposes.
We found that the bare minimum we could use to do anything useful at all was 512MB, and that was a little slow when we were doing things like static code reviews. The general opinion we came to was that for the computer to be fast enough to use effectively, you'd need more like a gigabyte of RAM. 512 would work, but a gig was better.
We had another machine running Windows 2000, doing about the same things, That one would run ok on 512MB of ram, given all the tools we were using. Anything less than that crawled like molasses.
So, if you want to talk about actually DOING something, well, the memory requirements are a teensy bit more stringent.:)
Oh my god, you can't POSSIBLY be this big a sucker. Oh, you poor man. I bet you live in a "red state" and have a little metal trailer with a GTO up on blocks out front. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
People don't choose Linux over Windows because they want to run it on an old 486. Hell, you can buy a 600Mhz Pentium III that'll run any Linux distro on Earth for about 150 bucks on Ebay. Who cares about old hardware?
People buy Linux because:
1. It's much cheaper than Windows, with a much more liberal license which lets you do whatever you want without a huge, complex, draconian EULA;
2. It comes with a full set of development tools out of the box, and for most people offers all the software they will EVER need, so you don't have to blow hundreds of bucks on additional software packages;
3. Most of the additional tools people want can be had for free or very little money (like Java's SDK, which can be downloaded for nothing, or Oracle Express, which is also free).
4. It has better default driver support than Windows, without having to go out to a vendor site and hope they still offer downloads; In fact, most hardware is detected right off the bat nowadays.
5. YES, Linux is more secure than Windows, and offers better and more diverse tools for locking down your system. Also it tends to be more stable, and has much more gentle memory and disk requirements.
6. This one's esoteric, but what the hell: I can use Reiser FS on Linux; Windows didn't offer a journaling ANYTHING up until their latest greatest (does that even offer journals???). Under Windows, if you lose power suddenly, the next time you power up you could have a garbled registry (reinstall time!). Under Linux with Reiser, when you reboot, the system politely tells you it's going to check the journal, and it fixes itself. This alone is a good reason to prefer Linux.
Overall, Linux is better than Windows in almost every conceivable way. The only other operating systems that come close are Mac OS/X and the *BSDs.
But I guess, if I was Bill Gates, I'd want to divert everyone's attention away from the "Linux is better" problem, too. Hey, kids! Look over here! Windows installed on a 486! Don't pay any attention to that nasty Novell guy over there, with his nasty Kontact information manager, and all his talk of "security" and "stability" -- you don't want those, they're not good for you! Come have some Outlook and IE!
Feh.
Re:Next week we'll compare the PS one to the Xbox
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Comparing Xbox Launches
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· Score: 1, Interesting
yeah, I know what the score is, but it saddens me that it has to be this way. Luckily, there's a huge market of used equipment to fall back on. And I'm going to snap up some more PS-IIs (and related games) while they're dirt cheap. I figure, if I have a PS-II and some spares, I can go almost forever on my existing game collection alone.
The way I look at it, games are already "good enough" (read: cartoon quality or better) to be absolutely fun without all the fancy hardware. I'm just going to stock up on everything I can now, cheaply, and in a couple of years, maybe (MAYBE) pick up a next-gen console when they're cheaper and the bugs are worked out (like that one about the XBox 360 scratching disks).
Say, how do you like Half-Life II? I had a blast with it. It has replay value, too -- when you finish it, you can replay any level you want. That's so cool!
Re:Next week we'll compare the PS one to the Xbox
on
Comparing Xbox Launches
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Technically superior?
I just played through Half Life 2 on the original XBox, and it was pretty darn near photorealistic. The game looked fantastic. Many other games on the XBox look great, including Halo 2 and the original Halo. They're already at the point where they look like real life; how much better can graphics really get?
On top of that, even the Playstation II is showing some amazing graphics lately. I've played through some gorgeous games, where the backgrounds were just stunning.
To put this in perspective, I recently tried out a WWII game on the XBox 360 in a Gamestop store, and really, I couldn't see any big difference between that and Half Life II's graphics. It looked pretty much the same to me. I think the only real difference between the two was that the WWII game had clouds of smoke you could run through, which I didn't see too much of in Half Life. But Half Life DID have smoke, so this was probably a game design thing.
Come on, really -- what's the difference? What does the 360 provide that the XBox doesn't already give us? I'd like to know.
If it's just a small step up in graphics quality, what's the big deal?
Yeah, yeah, typical republican rant. Let's get a couple of things straight, shall we:
1. if the government REALLY wanted to make air travel straight, it'd mandate a solid cockpit door and allow pilots to carry firearms, plus make sure the door stays locked throughout the entire flight. INSTEAD, it does all this bullshit with the TSA and the NO-FLY-LIST (stop pretending it doesn't exist, you're embarassing yourself) because it gives them a little bit of extra power over us citizens and gets us used to diminishing civil liberties. The fact that you're too dim to understand this means nothing.
2. If you'd paid any attention to the articles about Patriot Act abuse, you'd see that people's civil liberties are being ignored, people are being beaten and abused in jail, and all sorts of activities that SHOULD be illegal are being carried out by the cops and the feds. Of course, you, being a Good Little Republican, wink and nod at all this, because it's not YOUR problem. Fuck you for that. Remember the old saw? "First they came for (group A) and I said nothing. Then they came for (group B) and I said nothing. Eventually they came for me, but nobody was left to say anything."
3. Just because you're willing to bend over and take it for the man doesn't make it right. And I think the rest of us would rather NOT bend over. People like you are traitors in a sense, because you don't stand up and do anything about your own democracy when it's threatened. "People who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
But you go on telling yourself whatever it takes to get you to forgive yourself for voting Bush in.
The rest of us are going to vote Democratic in 2008, and FIX the sorry mess you asshole republicans got us in.
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I admit it, I blew it on the journalling point. And you're right on the money about defragmenting. Here's a point another poster made to me: if your drives are IDE and not SATA, the journalling in NTFS might not always recover after a crash, which explains what happened to the PCs in my office (corrupted registries, etc). That's interesting, isn't it? That the drive type might affect the outcome?
I learn something every day here.
A rude Linux computer! That's hilarious! I bet you could get that with a short recompile... All the responses are probably coded as string constants, somewhere...
:)
That is a rather cool idea.
Oh, no, you don't understand -- the manual was written in really bad Engrish and the diagram didn't describe the plugs, or the cable colors, or anything really. So I had two cables which looked nearly identical (only different colors on the plastic part, too, which wasn't mentioned in the manual) and one of the cables was tucked way up by the power supply where I couldn't see it.
;)
I read the manual, like, three times before I finally got it all figured out. Sort of. I'm just glad it ended up working instead of fried.
The determination of which other points are jokes is an excercise left for the reader.
Uhh... You DO know #6 was a joke, right? But, perhaps you didn't know. Well, now you do.
So, you can get a kernel panic if you overload the box enough? That's interesting.
In my own defense, before I flamed him, he told me I was ignorant and uninformed, which I took somewhat personally. I feel I am neither, even if I was wrong on ONE LITTLE POINT (the NTFS/Journalling thing). The guy COULD have just disagreed with me without calling me names.
having said that, I think your reply was better than mine. Nicely done.
Funny "Zort" story (true!):
So I'm building a PC, right? And it's been a few years, so I'm not expecting the processor to have its own 4-plug cable. I'm looking at it, and looking at it, and wondering "what the fuck is up with this extra bit of cable on the power cable???"
So, I consult the manual, and I figure out that the four-plug cable goes into a socket hidden between two big capacitors on the motherboard. But the shape is a little off. I'm trying to get it to fit, and I find out it fits two possible ways. Not good, I think, but I gamely try it out.
ZORT! A loud shorting-out sound comes from the general direction of the processor. I scream "EEKY" and yank the cable back out. I find out that if I plug it in the A way, it ZORTs. If I plug it in the B way, it PFFTs. After a long while farting around with this, with no luck at all, I notice another cable tucked way up in the corner of the case. It ALSO has four plugs.
I try the new cable and the computer starts right up. It doesn't seem to have suffered any damage, either.
Boy, whatta relief...
This is in the "Anyone can be stupid for an hour or two" category.
You must be new here...
Oh, no, you didn't...
WOAH, nelly! You know those VAIO Picturebooks have a half-height screen, right? It's an uncommon geometry. So, yeah, ok, you might have some "fun" setting that up in Linux. But you CAN get it to work. I did once, by using a custom modeline I downloaded from a VAIO FAQ. If that's too much of a pain in the butt for you (I fully agree that it's a humongous pain in the ass) I think SuSE and Fedora offer better installation support for that, and will probably set up normally. You'll probably have to go with a more commercial distro to get satisfaction, just my opinion.
As to your second point, what did you do to get a kernel panic??? I think I've only seen one of those once (and that was my fault, I was installing on weird old mil-spec hardware and the old distro I had at the time utterly freaked out over it). I must know how you arranged that; you have inspired much curiosity in me!
Ah... You've cleared up a few things for me -- our drives were almost certainly all IDE (our equipment wasn't particularly exciting), which explains our difficulties. Ah, well, what are you going to do? Government agencies never buy us the good stuff (budgets, etc).
;)
Once again, I concede the point -- you are correct, NTFS seems to be journalling, and I have accepted this.
On another note, I can't believe you just threw the switch like that! You are a bad man. But it's cool, I guess I can see the allure of that. Did they make a cool "ZORT!" sound when they all blinked off?
P.S. The rest of my original post was sound, at least; the NTFS point was only one of several.
But, wait; how fast was your motherboard? We had 1Ghz machines, I think. My machine (which was a little slow but not too bad unless I was testing, at which point it would slow down a little more) was a Windows 2000 box with 512 MB ram, my buddy had a Windows 2000 box with 128 MB ram (his was really, really slow when he tried the testing tools), and the new test machines were XP boxes which started with 512 (but we were asking for 1GB). We were mixed, some Dells, some IBM, and the old 128MB machines were HPs.
Maybe if you're just doing normal stuff, it's not so bad. We were running a lot of developer's tools; I suppose maybe they used more memory than a normal app. But we basically considered 512MB the bare minimum to spec for a new machine, and we all really wanted to get 1GB. I don't think anyone got more than 512, though (we're non-profit too, government-style).
Ours were 1Ghz machines, FWIW. One or two guys on the floor had only 128MB, and their machines were pretty slow. They could run basic tools easily, but if you tried to fire up the tool suite we were using, the whole machine would just crawl. It would take minutes to finish some of the operations (basically static code review tools and the like, looking for syntax that didn't match rules, memory leaks, things like that). When we were testing a website, to see how it was using memory and processor, etc, EVERYTHING got slow on my machine (I had a Windows 2000 box with 512MB of Ram). I mean slow.
It didn't seem as though we were beating up the machine all that much, but maybe we were. Anyway, yeah, we were speccing 1GB of ram for our testing machines (developers got 512).
I once knew a girl who liked to be eaten.
Once, twice, thrice she'd entreat me,
Eat me, she'd say, eat me, EAT ME!
And so I would; on the lass I'd dine.
Now, you'd think that a strapping young girl would taste,
Like beef, or lamb, or pork at least.
But I tell you, this hot young lass of mine,
always tasted like fish, each and every time.
1. BSD isn't "more liberal" than GPL; GPL ensures everyone's freedom to continue to use the software as they choose. BSD permits the commercialization of a tool, which can lead to a reduction in freedom. But this is a long and thorny discussion I don't want any part of.
2 -- (I suppose now you'll do three dashes?)
3. I'm sure there is a lot of free software for Windows. But there's far more available for Linux.
4. While Windows does autodetect some common types of hardware (like external hard disks, etc) most of the hardware you'll connect to your Windows box requires a driver from the manufacturer. This means you've got to go out to a website and hope the manufacturer has a free downloads section. As hardware ages, this becomes more problematic. Companies go out of business, some don't allow downloads, etc. In contrast, once a driver exists for Linux, it generally gets rolled into all new distributions. So, once a driver exists, everyone has it, forever. It's quite different. All the hardware I have here in my house was autodetected by SuSE as soon as I plugged it in. Some, like my networking PCMCIA card, worked fine in Linux but didn't work with Windows until I found a commercial driver on the company website (and that took a while, because it was an old card and I had to dig all over their site). What happens when that company drops support for the card, eh? It'll work in Linux but not in Windows. This is what I'm talking about.
5. PLEASE tell me you didn't pull this ancient argument out of the can... Linux is more secure because of its architecture, not because of its user base (although I'm sure having relatively technical users doesn't hurt). The entire OS is built from the ground up in a more secure way. Also, it profits from 30+ years of hacking and counterhacking experience; that's quite a head start over the Windows crowd, don't you think? I often find it flabbergasting that Microsoft continually insists on re-inventing the wheel instead of just licensing a Unix (why not a BSD?) and doing it right once and for all. Apple did! And look how good OS/X is. Why Bill G. can't catch on to this is anyone's guess. He's supposed to be smart, but he seems kind of thick to me (or maybe just stubborn).
6. Yeah, yeah, I've already conceded this point. However, I did keep one caveat: "yes, NTFS is journalling. But it's CRAP!" So there.
As for your snottiness in the last paragraph, well, you can blow me. "unfounded and uneducated", my ASS.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: another poster has confirmed that yes, NTFS is journalling. So I concede this point. But I still think it's a crap filesystem (nyah, nyah!). ;)
Ok... I'll give you that one. I bow before the mighty wikipedia; just about everything's in there these days.
;)
HOWEVER, I wasn't making up the part about garbled registries.
The systems in question that I was talking about were Windows 2000 systems, and the users didn't power down the systems (power was lost in the building, so the machines suddenly went off). Not ALL registries were corrupted, but a couple of people had to have their systems re-imaged. The tech guys who fixed the machines said that it happens sometimes if the system suddenly loses power. I'm pretty sure all those machines were set up with NTFS.
Now, in a good journalling filesystem, that wouldn't have happened. Reiser wouldn't fail that way. But NTFS apparently did. So given that you've demonstrated that NTFS has support for file system journalling, I'll have to modify my point and say that yes, NTFS offers file system journalling, but I think it's CRAP. Untrustworthy and unreliable.
More points to ponder:
When you manually powered down the computers, you weren't yanking the cords out of the wall, you were pushing the buttons, right? If they were relatively modern, that doesn't do a hard shut off, it sends a power down request to Windows. To do a hard shutdown, you have to hold the button for four seconds. So your action would've been harmless.
Second, Windows doesn't always use NTFS. When you install Windows 2000, it asks you which you want, NTFS or FAT. Most people wouldn't know the difference. Hell, most people don't install their windows -- the OEM does. So you're kind of stuck counting on someone you don't know, haven't met, never WILL meet... And most people don't have any idea how to see which they're using anyway.
Third, until Windows 2000, home users usually always used FAT, which isn't journalling. Windows XP apparently uses NTFS, as do newer versions of Windows like server 2003, so that's going away.
I think maybe this one of my points is a little weak; let's drop this one, I'll concede the point (although I still think NTFS is crap compared to Reiser). My others are still valid, though.
Nicely done.
Uhhhh, you haven't really proven anything I've said to be incorrect. Your best points were that (you claim) NTFS is a "journalling filesystem" (ha ha ha!) and that Linux doesn't have driver support for acceleration features on 3D cards.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, Linux' driver support for 3D acceleration only matters if you're a video gamer, and this is hardly important these days (what with all the multiple consoles available for as little as a hundred bucks). Most people don't use their computers to play DOOM 3, so acceleration isn't an issue. I'm running my SuSE box with an ATI Radeon, and I couldn't get the accelerated driver to work. You know what? The system STILL WORKS JUST FINE. Big whoop! Open Office doesn't give a shit if I've disabled hardware acceleration. In fact, I was playing Quake and Quake II using Wine the other day and they didn't seem to mind either. I think this point is a non-starter.
As far as NTFS goes, its so-called journal SUCKS. If you lose power on a Windows system, you'd better cross yourself and say a little prayer before you turn it back on, because your registry might just be FUBAR. I've seen this happen a few times over the past few years, on Windows 2000 boxes no less. The tech guys didn't even want to deal with it, they just re-imaged the person's system. Pretty weak, dude... If I hard-cycle the power on my SuSE box, NOTHING HAPPENS. Of course, one of the great strengths of Linux is: THERE'S NO REGISTRY TO GET CORRUPTED! Thank GOD for the plain-text INI file and the startup script... Of course, Bill G. hates those, because the registry really was about "piracy", not efficiency. But we won't go there -- you'd probably blow a gasket.
Your ACL point didn't make any sense at all; Linux and its predecessor Unix have had user and group priviledges for thirty years, and more recently SELinux has added a whole bunch of new settings. SURELY you're not trying to say that Windows' namby-pamby user priviledges setup is even close to being what Linux gives you! Listen, just to be nice, I'll pretend that 90% of the users out there AREN'T running as Administrator because most Windows applications are written by retards still using ancient system calls. I won't mention that Linux software NEVER makes you run as root all the time. At most you might have to "sudo" occasionally. Oh, wait! I guess I just did. My bad.
As far as things available for free that are available for Linux ALSO being available for Windows, I have three things to say:
1. They're usually an afterthought, and don't run as well on Windows.
2. There is a far wider variety of tools available for free on Linux than on Windows. Go check out Sourceforge if you want to see for yourself.
3. When you get a Linux distribution, a VAST variety of software comes with it, right in the box, for FREE. Windows doesn't come with ANYTHING. So if you want the same stuff I've got running on my SuSE box, you'll have to spend a week downloading all the packages for Windows, IF they even exist on that platform.
I'd say YOU are the ignorant one. I highly doubt your job involves "developing multi-million dollar systems that run on it". If you did, you'd know better than to try and dicker over these points with me.
But thanks for the workout. I love a good argument.
Just to give you an idea, I'm a software developer and at the government agency where I used to work, I and a few other guys were tasked with setting up a disk image for computers that would be used for testing.
:)
The computers ran Windows XP Pro, and were getting a full install of Visual Studio, plus a test suite called DevPartner installed. I believe they were also going to be able to serve web pages, not as a full blown server but just locally for testing purposes.
We found that the bare minimum we could use to do anything useful at all was 512MB, and that was a little slow when we were doing things like static code reviews. The general opinion we came to was that for the computer to be fast enough to use effectively, you'd need more like a gigabyte of RAM. 512 would work, but a gig was better.
We had another machine running Windows 2000, doing about the same things, That one would run ok on 512MB of ram, given all the tools we were using. Anything less than that crawled like molasses.
So, if you want to talk about actually DOING something, well, the memory requirements are a teensy bit more stringent.
Oh my god, you can't POSSIBLY be this big a sucker. Oh, you poor man. I bet you live in a "red state" and have a little metal trailer with a GTO up on blocks out front. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Redneck moron.
People don't choose Linux over Windows because they want to run it on an old 486. Hell, you can buy a 600Mhz Pentium III that'll run any Linux distro on Earth for about 150 bucks on Ebay. Who cares about old hardware?
People buy Linux because:
1. It's much cheaper than Windows, with a much more liberal license which lets you do whatever you want without a huge, complex, draconian EULA;
2. It comes with a full set of development tools out of the box, and for most people offers all the software they will EVER need, so you don't have to blow hundreds of bucks on additional software packages;
3. Most of the additional tools people want can be had for free or very little money (like Java's SDK, which can be downloaded for nothing, or Oracle Express, which is also free).
4. It has better default driver support than Windows, without having to go out to a vendor site and hope they still offer downloads; In fact, most hardware is detected right off the bat nowadays.
5. YES, Linux is more secure than Windows, and offers better and more diverse tools for locking down your system. Also it tends to be more stable, and has much more gentle memory and disk requirements.
6. This one's esoteric, but what the hell: I can use Reiser FS on Linux; Windows didn't offer a journaling ANYTHING up until their latest greatest (does that even offer journals???). Under Windows, if you lose power suddenly, the next time you power up you could have a garbled registry (reinstall time!). Under Linux with Reiser, when you reboot, the system politely tells you it's going to check the journal, and it fixes itself. This alone is a good reason to prefer Linux.
Overall, Linux is better than Windows in almost every conceivable way. The only other operating systems that come close are Mac OS/X and the *BSDs.
But I guess, if I was Bill Gates, I'd want to divert everyone's attention away from the "Linux is better" problem, too. Hey, kids! Look over here! Windows installed on a 486! Don't pay any attention to that nasty Novell guy over there, with his nasty Kontact information manager, and all his talk of "security" and "stability" -- you don't want those, they're not good for you! Come have some Outlook and IE!
Feh.
yeah, I know what the score is, but it saddens me that it has to be this way. Luckily, there's a huge market of used equipment to fall back on. And I'm going to snap up some more PS-IIs (and related games) while they're dirt cheap. I figure, if I have a PS-II and some spares, I can go almost forever on my existing game collection alone.
The way I look at it, games are already "good enough" (read: cartoon quality or better) to be absolutely fun without all the fancy hardware. I'm just going to stock up on everything I can now, cheaply, and in a couple of years, maybe (MAYBE) pick up a next-gen console when they're cheaper and the bugs are worked out (like that one about the XBox 360 scratching disks).
Say, how do you like Half-Life II? I had a blast with it. It has replay value, too -- when you finish it, you can replay any level you want. That's so cool!
Technically superior?
I just played through Half Life 2 on the original XBox, and it was pretty darn near photorealistic. The game looked fantastic. Many other games on the XBox look great, including Halo 2 and the original Halo. They're already at the point where they look like real life; how much better can graphics really get?
On top of that, even the Playstation II is showing some amazing graphics lately. I've played through some gorgeous games, where the backgrounds were just stunning.
To put this in perspective, I recently tried out a WWII game on the XBox 360 in a Gamestop store, and really, I couldn't see any big difference between that and Half Life II's graphics. It looked pretty much the same to me. I think the only real difference between the two was that the WWII game had clouds of smoke you could run through, which I didn't see too much of in Half Life. But Half Life DID have smoke, so this was probably a game design thing.
Come on, really -- what's the difference? What does the 360 provide that the XBox doesn't already give us? I'd like to know.
If it's just a small step up in graphics quality, what's the big deal?
Yeah, yeah, typical republican rant. Let's get a couple of things straight, shall we:
1. if the government REALLY wanted to make air travel straight, it'd mandate a solid cockpit door and allow pilots to carry firearms, plus make sure the door stays locked throughout the entire flight. INSTEAD, it does all this bullshit with the TSA and the NO-FLY-LIST (stop pretending it doesn't exist, you're embarassing yourself) because it gives them a little bit of extra power over us citizens and gets us used to diminishing civil liberties. The fact that you're too dim to understand this means nothing.
2. If you'd paid any attention to the articles about Patriot Act abuse, you'd see that people's civil liberties are being ignored, people are being beaten and abused in jail, and all sorts of activities that SHOULD be illegal are being carried out by the cops and the feds. Of course, you, being a Good Little Republican, wink and nod at all this, because it's not YOUR problem. Fuck you for that. Remember the old saw? "First they came for (group A) and I said nothing. Then they came for (group B) and I said nothing. Eventually they came for me, but nobody was left to say anything."
3. Just because you're willing to bend over and take it for the man doesn't make it right. And I think the rest of us would rather NOT bend over. People like you are traitors in a sense, because you don't stand up and do anything about your own democracy when it's threatened. "People who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
But you go on telling yourself whatever it takes to get you to forgive yourself for voting Bush in.
The rest of us are going to vote Democratic in 2008, and FIX the sorry mess you asshole republicans got us in.