I must though, then say I am sorry. I completely misread your original message and leaped overboard onto the burning ship. Thus flaming myself as well as anyone who tried to lend a hand to save me.:-/
Ah well, self flagellation with a cat-o-nine tails I believe is now in order.:-P
Yeah, well flamebait, your reply to my was (and I quote)
Yeah, any computer user should know that! Christ what a load of crap. Glad I don't need to be thinking about keeping my Powerbook running all the time. I have a life.
And maybe I took it the wrong way. I took it you were talking TOO me not agreeing with me. That what I had said was a "load of crap".
So tell me if I misread what you posted. If so, then I will post a public apology.
Yes and no. The only real power comes from Jolt-a-cola and being up until 2:17am after getting up at 6:00am the day before.
(And that is a joke as well!:-P )
So you don't use Norton's SpeedDisk under OS v9.2? So you don't use the antivirus softwares of OS v9.2? So you don't use the cookie programs for OS v9.2? So you don't go about cleaning up your temporary files under OS v9.2?
Oh yeah, I forgot! We all went to Mac OS X!
So you don't use the built in defragmentor under OS X? So you don't use any antivirus software for OS X? (Or don't download the virus updates?) So you don't use a cookie program for OS X? Even though cookies are still a problem if you even use cookies at all under Mac OS X? So you don't go about cleaning up your temporary files under OS X?
Sheesh! What a load of crap! You bet you do! If you want your system to function properly! And I bet you don't even use a router with a firewall - right!? Give me a break! You have to be an idiot to NOT try to at least ensure the basics are covered no matter what system or OS you are going to use.
VMS, Linux, Unix, BSD, ANY OS you use - if you use the internet - has to cover the basics. But the real idiocy is knowing you are going to use a Windows box and knowing what kind of viruses, cookies, and everything else is out there and NOT EVEN TRYING TO PROTECT YOURSELF BEFORE YOU GET ON THE INTERNET!!!! At least once a week on Slashdot, hell - almost every TV station, newspaper, magazine, and anyone else involved with computers and the news - talks about the latest viruses. You'd have to live in a cave, be a hermit, never talk to another human being for your entire life to not have at least heard about computer viruses. And the number one OS talked about? WINDOWS! How can someone be so stupid as to allow someone else (especially your girl friend) to set up a computer and blithely just get onto the internet.
So don't give me your holier than thou Christ what a load of crap because the only crap is coming from you. Because even though you may think your Powerbook is safe there are a lot of other people who have worked very hard to keep your happy ass safe. So remember - you may not be running these things actively - but it don't mean they aren't running on your system. Nor does it mean that you might not need to do so. Because you may actually have a problem but just don't know you do - yet.
I would neither say Linux sucks any more than I would say that games are only produced for Windows.
The truth is that there are a number of pre-written interfaces for the porting of games from one platform to another. Off the top of my head there are the libraries which Loki Software wrote and which they now allow others to use. There are a number of such packages at SourceForge including the wxwindows and others. So the lack of packages which you can use to have a game come out on all platforms is untrue.
The ONLY reason I can think of is INERTIA. Microsoft frowns upon companies which produce games for other platforms (since it can mean the loss of a sale of their OS et al) and I am sure that Microsoft does nasty things to companies who want to produce software for any platform other than the Microsoft platform. (As was shown in the AntiTrust case against Microsoft.) And while it may be true that DirectX is geared towards games; the last time I looked at NeverWinter Nights and others - they use OpenGL -or- DirectX. And sometimes both together.
Also, don't forget that Microsoft is now into the gaming industry big time and companies which have been bought by Microsoft (like the people who brought you Myth I & II ) will tend to only produce games for the Microsoft platform. (Or to release for the other platforms only after exhausting all income paths for the Microsoft platform.) So any game a Microsoft held company creates is probably going to stay running only on the Microsoft platform for quite a while before it is released to other platforms.
The real question which is not even being asked is that if Microsoft has actually converted their programs to run as native programs on the Macintosh (which is BSD based), then why don't they release their programs for Linux? The answer (to me) is that this is just one of the ways they can take a stab at Linux to get back at Linux users (ie: to punish them) for not just continuing to use their products. But then I've seen a lot of companies do very petty things just because one or two people in high ranking positions are upset with how something isn't going their way. But that is (as I've said) just my feelings on this subject.
To be fair with Microsoft: The original poster should have known better to get a router, use the built-in firewall, install a good anti-virus piece of software, install a cookie catcher (like SpyBot), get RegCleaner, and Empty Temp and then, on a regular - weekly basis - clean their system up. We have been really lucky or watchful (I don't know which) with our systems in that we have as of yet to get a virus or to allow cookies to remain on our systems for more than a day or two. SpyBot does a great job of keeping our system clean (I've donated a couple of times now to try to help out) and BitDefender does a great job of keeping viruses in check. Once a week run all of the above and clean the system up. Then scandisk and defrag over night. By doing this our systems have stayed virus/cookie free and we do not have a lot of crashes (unless I'm programming something and step on memory or something like that).
My concern would be that one of three things happen:
1. Iraqi hackers hack a robot and use that information to turn all of the robots against our own people.
2. The Iraqi's come up with a simple but effective EMP which causes all of the robots to go dormant.
3. Another sand storm hits Iraq, gunks up all of the robot's gears, and we have wasted millions of dollars on useless military gear which is now only good for the junk heap.
This is interesting because when the power went out at our house recently the base unit died along with everything else and I could not make a call with my TouchTone phone. Now, it is a wireless TouchTone phone which is most probably why.
So, so long as your TouchTone phone has a standard connector back to the base unit it too can be used. Very interesting indeed!:-)
Then my answer would still be the same. It is unlikely that, until you've connected to someone (like the operator) that a machine will notice anything. However, intermittent on/off signals do, after a while, cause a service tech to come on the line to test out what is going on. At that point, if the person is familiar with morse code, they would recognize what was being transmitted and respond. I believe you actually have a better chance with a tech person than you would with an operator. Since most phone operators are not required to know morse code.:-)
Yes, I probably should have qualified it I guess with that my rotary phone is from the phone company. Recently, when the power went out at our house the TouchTone phone we have died as well. So I got out the rotary phone and called the operator and asked her to connect me to the power company's offices.
Which is another interesting fact about rotary phones:
1. They don't need power because the phone line provides the power for the phone to work. Unlike many of the phones in use today, rotary phones operate off of (if I remember correctly) 5 volts. This is the charge carried in a normal phone line (in the USA). Thus, if the power goes out in your home - don't assume you can't call someone for help. You just have to have a rotary phone to do so (or a cell phone now-a-days).:-)
Ya know! There's something to be said for older technology somethings and reliability is one of those things. It may not be the easiest to use technology (remember Scotty in the StarTrek movie speaking to the mouse on the Mac?) - but it does still work.
BTW: Someone said that TouchTone phones were first shown in the 60s. Well, the first video phone was shown about the same time. It failed though. No one wanted someone else to see them in the morning. Especially ladies. Talk - yeah. See - no. Somehow I don't think that's changed all that much even after all of these decades.:-)
This is true and I should have said TouchTone phones. However, I have dialed a TouchTone phone by whistling into the headset.:-) If you are at work, bored silly, you may try anything.:-)
I used to do this with modems also.:-)
You could - but it is unlikely. Since the letters "SOS" are something like 858 (or maybe 868 - I don't have my phone handy). You would have to tap the line ten times (zero on a keypad) to first dial the operator - then do the "SOS".:-)
1. Rotary phones were built to last (unlike many digital phones). They can survive a drop from a two story building onto concrete. Just go down, pick it up, plug it in, and it will work.
2. Rotary phones can withstand 300lbs of pressure before they will break or deform.
3.Rotary phones can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. This may seem a stretch, but rotary phones have been in buildings which have burnt to the ground and still worked.
4. You do not need to be able to dial a rotary or digital phone. You just need to be able to push the button/hanger on the phone. As the original poster stated, the way in which rotary phones work (not cell phones mind you) is that they disconnect for a short period of time (like a 1/10 of a second) and then reconnect. What you might NOT know is that all digital land lines can be operated as a rotary phone too. So in an emergency, all you need to do is to tap the button/hanger on your phone's base with a slight pause between the dialing of the numbers. It will still connect. (So to call 1-411 would be one click, a slight pause, four clicks, pause, one click, pause, and one click. Try it sometime.) (I used to do this to dial out from the university on phones with a phone lock on them!;-) )
5. Digital phones sometimes have a switch on them to switch between rotary mode and digital mode. You can switch it to rotary mode, dial the number (and hear the antiquated clicks), and then switch back to digital mode to handle any of those "Press 1 to do Blah". I discovered this at my mom's house. She had rotary service (way out in the country!) but I'd dial the line, let the roatry part go through and then switch the phone over to digital mode to do things.
6. Digital phones can be dialed by whistling into them. It isn't easy but you can do it if you practice long enough (and are bored enough).
7. One of the last interesting things to know is that if you are ever, ever stranded somewhere with a broken phone and you need help, you can still use the phone line and dial the phone. All you need is to bare some of the wire and you have a telegraph. Hold the two wires together to complete the circuit and then use the two wires just like you would the button/hanger. Take them apart and you break the connection. Hold them together and you've got a connection. Operators are probably not as smart as they used to be about this (since telegraphs are not so common place anymore) but it used to be that you could do the old SOS and they would send someone. However, if you dial 911 using the above method and twist the two wires together afterwards the police will come out to investigate.
I'm just waiting for the first lawsuit to be filed. DRM infringes horribly on your rights. But then everyone here knows that. What these companies who want DRM installed keep forgetting is that you are guaranteed the right to:
1. Give a copy to your father or mother. 2. Give a copy to your sons and daughters. 3. Give a copy to your brothers and sisters. 4. Give a copy to your best friend.
What we need are stronger laws which prevent and curtail what a company can or can not do when it comes to infringing your rights. After all, it isn't John and Jane Doe who are pirating these people's goods - it is the major cartels. Why then, are the people made to suffer for something some organization is doing?
We aren't dogs. Mongrels who wear collars and go around on leashes. Nor were the copyright laws meant to curtail our ability to disperse copyrighted material. They were only meant to slow down this dispersal and to recognize who had created what. Is it our fault that the internet came along? That it is now almost instantaneous to move a three minute bee-bop song from point A to point B? No. It isn't. Nor can we put the worms back into the can now that we have opened the can and let them out. The internet not only is here but it is expanding still at a phenominal rate. Jumping from desktop computers, to laptops, to PDAs, and now to cell phones. Soon, the whole world will be connected. This is what corporations fear the most. That anyone will be able to know exactly what a corporation is doing anywhere in the world.
The fact that we have begun to grasp just how much power digital devices gives us over analog devices. How quickly digital devices seem to evolve, change, modify, and intrude into our lives. (After all, how many people now have microwave ovens and look at all of the things they can do now. Just a few short years ago you had dials you had to turn - now it is all digital with hundreds of functions.) Scares many people because those people feel they must maintain control over everything. In a horse and buggy era - they could. In a digital era - they can not. The digital era is the distributed era. Power, once held by only a few people in their ivory towers, is beginning to flow into the hands of the ordinary person.
And so they fight. They fight to keep that which they are losing quickly. The problem is though, with a distributed system no one person has the millions of dollars to do the things these corporations are doing because they do have a huge concentration of money. So as always I say - write/email your federal, state, and local government officals and let them know you do not want any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) put onto your CDs, DVDs, or anything else. That when these corporations sell you something that that is the end of their rights and the beginning of yours. And you - do not need them to try to lord it over you. You - have the right to do with your property whatever it is that pleases you. You - have the right to make copies. To give copies away to your other family members. That you - do not need big brother watching every single thing that you do. That you - do not recognize these company's cries that you should serve them at their whim. And that you want to have the freedom to exercise these rights when it pleases you and not some corporation.
The reason we are so behind is because of all of the regulations which we have put into place. A great example of just how badly regulated we have become is the earthquake which happened in California some years back.
The story goes like this: After the earthquakes subsided California was left with expressways which were ruined. Pancaked one on top of the other. Worked started, stopped, and then started again at a snail's pace. Everyone was being frustrated by all of the rules and regulations put into place to make everything better for everyone. After months of nothing really getting done a conference was held between the builders and the governments of the US, California, city's affected, and anyone else who might have a say-so in the problem. In this meeting the builders said that the whole problem was all of the regulations. That if the governments would just allow them to build the roads that they'd do as good of a job as they could. The governments agreed. The freeways were rebuilt in record time, were sound, and have stood ever since.
From what I heard, if the various governmental bodies could not have agreed to this, we would still be trying to rebuild them. IMHO, this is our problem now. Not enough common sense and too many laws. Further, the laws being passed are only being submitted by organizations and/or companies who's only thought it is to grab more power and/or control. While our heroic organizations (such as the EFF or FSF etc....) are having to run around putting out fires. Which means that they do not have the time to try to submit well balanced legislation. (After all, how many times have you heard of the EFF or some other organization submitting well thought out laws? It has been a very long time since I last heard of any organization submitting laws to help everyone. Usually they are trying to stave off some really horrible law submitted by some mouthpiece.)
There are other things which people probably do not think about. Other countries create companies in the United States to help further their needs and wants as well. I'm not trying to be paranoid. Nor am I trying to say we should kick these companies out. I'm just saying that these companies push their agenda just like the American companies push their agendas. The whole thing boils down to - we need a better system for the creation of laws. One where other people besides corporations and/or organizations gets to have a say-so in not only the creation of our laws, but for the passage of those laws too.
Or to put that in plain English: The current copyright laws would never have been passed had the government done the same thing with the creation of laws (and passage of them) as it does when a jury is needed to determine the guilt or innocent of someone. Pick people, at random, and give them the power to make decisions on whether or not to create and/or pass laws.
And yeah, I know someone's going to say "Blech! Why would Tommy Two-Thumbs know anything about copyright law?" Well, by forcing lawmakers to write the laws in English instead of Legaleze I believe that people would be more aware of just what is being done. And once that happens, a lot more laws would never get put into place. Like The Patriot Act which had a great spin name but which was a terrible set of laws to pass.
I know what you mean. When we worked on an IMAX film we had to break the images up into 4096x4096 parts in order to get the larger 19Kx19K sized images. We too, were limited by the OS's ability to ramp up past 2GBs in both memory as well as disk drive files.
The thing is - we now can do those huge films with ease because of the work done at IBM as well as at SGI. Their filing enhancements (and ext3) allow us to have huge files. The memory problem though - still exists.
As others have pointed out - Windows XP should handle these problems (although the disk drive problem of not really removing the directory entries will bite you sooner or later [and for evreyone out there I will try to find the SGI white paper on the problems of Windows XP's disk drive NTFS methodology]).
The high price is only for the current version of Dreamweaver. If you go to PriceWatch or PriceGrabber you can find older versions (I bought version 3.0 for around $60.00) for far less than the $400.00 price quoted in the article.
Yeah, now there's 64 locations to have problems instead of 32!;-) Does that mean we will have 2^64-1 number of viruses instead of only 2^32-1 of them?
Truthfully though, when microcomputers went from 8-bit to 16-bit they basically had a 1000% increase in speed simply because they could read twice as much. And yeah, going from 16mhz to 100mhz also had a bit to do with it. Going from 16-bit to 32-bit again greatly increased the speed of the computer. The move from 32-bit to 64-bit will again greatly increase the overall speed of the computer.
But there are a few things to think about. First, do you really need it? Computers are so fast now that most (but not all) common place usages are done instantaneously. Most (but again not all) games play smoothly. True, if you want to move even further down the road of real-time, photo realistic, computer graphics then 64-bit processors are the way to go (and so would 128-bit cpus). But this is only because it makes sense to be able to grab more information faster so it can be applied. But for most business usages? No. If it takes ten seconds or one second to recalculate an entire set of spreadsheets. Or if it takes a few seconds for MS-Word to reformat a paragraph - most people are satisfied.
Further, it is not just a matter of having a faster, better CPU. Whether 32 or 64 bit. It is also a matter of having faster memory, disk drives, graphic cards, and faster monitors. I just recently (like last week) had to replace my motherboard. The motherboard I had was from 1998. In computer terms - it was ancient. It used 133mhz memory and used the built in graphics (SIS) card. I've now upgraded to a new motherboard, 400mhz memory, and an ATI Sapphire graphics card. Just by doing that and keeping the same CPU the entire computer ramped up. It takes about a tenth of the time it used to to do anything. Never Winter Nights (or NWN) now runs without crashing, the game looks 100% better, response time is phenomenal. So although I know that a 64-bit computer would increase everything even further - this is really all I need for right now.
Finally, there is the consideration of money. First, we are going into tax season. Second, people have (and are) giving money to help out the people caught up in the tsunami incident. Third, how much will all of this cost? Will we have to rebuy everything yet again? If so, it is very unlikely that this will ever get off the ground for at least another five years. Not that it won't be available - just that most people are going to go "Why? What I've got is good enough."
Just a few thoughts.:-) And that is the main problem. Why upgrade when what you have is already good enough?
Hi! I hate to reply to your message twice but I remembered something I should have put into the first message that I believe is very, very important.
Under the copyright laws, when you BUY something (and not when you lease it) - you have the right to make a copy and give it to the following people:
1. Your wife/husband 2. Your children 3. Your parents 4. Your brothers and sisters
This is called the immediate family clause of the copyright laws. Remember that copyrights are not meant to obstruct the entire disemination of information. It is only meant to slow it down to a reasonable level. That is why there were court battles over whether or not you could let someone else read a book you had bought. The answer was not only yes but HELL YES! Once you have read a book you can give it to whomever you please. The same is true of software you can just GIVE it to whomever you please so long as you are not keeping it. But the special provisions of the copyright laws state that you can make copies and give these copies to your immediate family (as described above).
Further, you can give one copy to your best friend as well. This is where Napster messed up. You can not have a million best friends. You can have only one. And just because you happen to know someone doesn't mean they are your best friend. They are just an acquaintance. Why? Because there can only be one best friend. Not a couple million. That is why they are called your best friend.
This is something which the software companies are fighting over as well. They do not want you to give copies to your immediate family. They want to excluded from that. They want to be - special. But everyone has to be treated the same. So if you can do this with everything else - you can also do it with software. And this is what a lot of the fighting, new rules, and everything else boils down to. The companies want every single person in the world to have to buy a copy of their software for their own personal use but the copyright laws say you don't have to do so and these companies don't like that.
This country is of, by, and for the PEOPLE of the United States - not the corporations of the United States. We, the people suffer them to exist. They do not suffer us to exist. We are not their slaves and we have lived together (if not in perfect harmony then at least in some kind of co-existence where we don't kill each other off) for centuries. But the problem with merchants (in general) and not any one entity specifically) is that they tend to want to rule, like a king, over everyone and everything. The earliest known fight between the rights of people and the rights of merchants is (excuse me for sidestepping here) in the bible when Jesus threw the merchants out of the church. How dare they invade a religious temple! Right? Well, look at churches now. They are pretty much just another corporation. So the merchant's invasion is complete is it not?
Merchants do not know any better than you or I how to make things work the best you can. But they are great at dividing up the spoils and trying to keep everyone else from becoming as great as they are (or as rich as they are). You see, they learned from the Pharises, many centuries ago, that if you write words down on a piece of paper and you get enough military might to back you, then anything is possible. So now we have companies which are above the law (Congress put the insurance companies above the law when they began HMOs and PPOs and it wasn't until much later that that law was declared unconstitutional), companies attempting to twist our laws and rights so we don't have any (DMCA et al), and companies which are making bogus claims and using the FBI, CIA, and the United States Government's name as a way to enforce out laws in other countries(many examples could be given like to teenager in Norway who was arrested) which should be illegal. Basically, the people of the world are taking a back seat
Correct and incorrect. As another person replied: You are buying the software. It is a sale and no more. Yet M$ and many others have tried to twist the word license to mean lease. The reason is because under lease laws the software remains the property of the people who produced the software. Under a sale some (but not all) of the copyright's rights pass to the new owner. This issue has already been dealt with numerous times in the selling and reselling of books as well as the normal usage of parts of a book in other books (as in a reference or a paragraph or two).
In the case stated (Adobe vs Softman), all that Softman wanted to do was to get rid of the software. To resell it. Adobe sued them to prevent them from doing so. The judge correctly deduced that when Softman bought the hardware/software package that it was a sale and not a lease as Adobe tried to assert. The judge went even further though stating that ALL EULAs were invalid because of their overbearing nature. That EULAs had extended their reach farther than any copyright law allows. Placing undue burdens upon those who purchased software not only to be clairvoyant, but to assume burdens not easily understood or complied with.
My prophecy (which is a no brainer) is that M$ and others will again go back to Washington and ask for even stricter copyright laws which give them unlimited time, power, and rights so they can have their way. So speaks the Grand Poobah! (Like they aren't already trying to do this.) Be sure to write everyone in federal, state, and local governments and let them know you want the DMCA repealed and a more balanced law put into effect.
I believe that the blurring of lines between what is being sold to someone and what is being leased has not helped things out at all.
My take on the above is:
Sold: An item is sold to you when you do not have to make any other payments to the manufacturer and you do not have to give it back after a specific period of time.
Lease: An item is leased when you have to make payments based up a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly time period and, after the lease has expired, the item has to be returned to the manufacturer.
From the above, if you "buy" a copy of Windows and do not have to make any additional payments, then the copy has been sold to you - not leased. If this is true (ie: M$ sold the software to you and did not lease it) then all of the leasing agreements imposed by the EULA are null and void. Further, your rights as a purchaser of a product have just increased ten fold because there are a lot of rules and regulations about items which are sold which do not pertain to items which are leased.
With the recent decision by a court in California that M$ et al must display the EULA on the outside of the box and/or have it readily available for viewing before a purchase is made - the distinction of whether a piece of software is sold to the end user or leased will become a greater issue in the near future.
Uebermensch's are the way of the future. Even without the advent of engineering feats we might be able to, one day, use the full potential of our brains thus truly giving rise to mind over matter.
On vision: In 1975 I asked my eye doctor why they didn't perform surgury on the eye to correct the lenses. I was told it was impossible to operate on the eye because of how delicate the human eye was. Well.... My thoughts on engineering a better eye are that, in some cases, the lens is removed and replaced by a new lens. If, instead of just replacing it with a tiny piece of clear plastic (or a new organic lens donated by someone else) why not replace it with a transparent autofocusing lens using the now emerging transparent transistors. The device would use a low level laser to detect if it were in focus (ie: auto correcting) and something like squinting could cause the zoom capabilities to be used. (Squinting causes the eye muscles to increase the tension across the eye's membrane.) Or maybe a person could be taught to turn on the zoom capabilities in some way (like rolling their eyes up and then back down).
Hearing is already augmented in several ways and our vision is helped at night with Night Vision googles, infrared, ultraviolet googles. These capabilities can be integrated into the lenses placed into eyes as well.
However, it is more likely, IMHO, that genetics will play a greater role in what happens in the future. This is because engineering something into the human body is a lot harder (in the long run) than simply changing what something is like. Let me give an example. Which was it easier to do: Create larger more sturdy bulls via some engineering feat or through selective breeding and the chemicals which causes the bulls to grow larger than before? Although engineering did play a role in how we have managed to enlarge cows and bulls (and many other species); the work of genetics and chemistry have done more. Therefore, although it is nice to think about this - it is more likely that chemists and geneticists are going to be the ones who affect us the most in the future than engineers.
Notes: The average milk cow is now so enhanced that they produce, on average, 40,000 gallons of milk per year. At a recent livestock show there were bulls which stood ten feet tall on all fours (ie:not reared up). Absolutely HUGE!!!!!
Also: The average person has built in regulators on the usage of their muscles. (In order to not break everything you pick up.) As has been shown, through the use of certain drugs (like Crack Cocaine) these "regulators" are removed. This is why some people (but not all) can be shot and still walk around as if nothing has happened to them. These same people usually require three to four other people to just hold them still. Obviously there are still things we have as of yet to tap in the way of musculature.
Compiler Creep:Where a compiler, built to be used for operating system A (OS-A) moves on to operating system B(OS-B) and yet still says it will compile programs properly for OS-A. However, as time goes along, as OS-B moves further away from OS-A, the compilers for OS-B begin introducing calls to non-existent OS-A functions. Eventually, programs compiled under OS-B will no longer operate under OS-A. Manufacturer's solution: Upgrade your system!. User's outlook: Why should I?
One of the problems I am having happen more and more is to try to use a program which is really written for WindowsXP but also says it will work for Windows95/98/NT/2000/ME. Or even just 98se/NT/2000/ME. The truth is that since 98se is so old the current version of Microsoft's Visual Studio will not correctly compile complex programs for the 98 platform. This has been demonstrated several times now to different companies including Microsoft.
It is also one of the things which differentiate Linux from Microsoft. Because I can get to the source code I can recompile everything for my system (and yes - it does take quite a while to do so but it is worth it because I get all of the updates, can stay current, and yet don't have to buy a new system in order to do so which is the point of this post). Not everyone is a multimillionaire. Nor are a lot of the posters on Slashdot people who want to run up their credit card bills even more than they already are just to keep up with the Jones's and their computer buying habits. So Linux makes a lot of sense from that perspective. You get to keep your computer, upgrade everything, get new things, and you do not have to worry about compiler creep. Because the underlying OS reamins stable.
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Ah. I see. :-)
:-/
:-P
I must though, then say I am sorry. I completely misread your original message and leaped overboard onto the burning ship. Thus flaming myself as well as anyone who tried to lend a hand to save me.
Ah well, self flagellation with a cat-o-nine tails I believe is now in order.
Yeah, well flamebait, your reply to my was (and I quote)
Yeah, any computer user should know that! Christ what a load of crap. Glad I don't need to be thinking about keeping my Powerbook running all the time. I have a life.
And maybe I took it the wrong way. I took it you were talking TOO me not agreeing with me. That what I had said was a "load of crap".
So tell me if I misread what you posted. If so, then I will post a public apology.
Yes and no. The only real power comes from Jolt-a-cola and being up until 2:17am after getting up at 6:00am the day before. (And that is a joke as well! :-P )
But you still do it.
Don't care if it is automated out the wahzoo! It is still being done.
So you've made my point.
Thank you.
Oh really?
So you don't use Norton's SpeedDisk under OS v9.2?
So you don't use the antivirus softwares of OS v9.2?
So you don't use the cookie programs for OS v9.2?
So you don't go about cleaning up your temporary files under OS v9.2?
Oh yeah, I forgot! We all went to Mac OS X!
So you don't use the built in defragmentor under OS X?
So you don't use any antivirus software for OS X? (Or don't download the virus updates?)
So you don't use a cookie program for OS X? Even though cookies are still a problem if you even use cookies at all under Mac OS X?
So you don't go about cleaning up your temporary files under OS X?
Sheesh! What a load of crap! You bet you do! If you want your system to function properly! And I bet you don't even use a router with a firewall - right!? Give me a break! You have to be an idiot to NOT try to at least ensure the basics are covered no matter what system or OS you are going to use.
VMS, Linux, Unix, BSD, ANY OS you use - if you use the internet - has to cover the basics. But the real idiocy is knowing you are going to use a Windows box and knowing what kind of viruses, cookies, and everything else is out there and NOT EVEN TRYING TO PROTECT YOURSELF BEFORE YOU GET ON THE INTERNET!!!! At least once a week on Slashdot, hell - almost every TV station, newspaper, magazine, and anyone else involved with computers and the news - talks about the latest viruses. You'd have to live in a cave, be a hermit, never talk to another human being for your entire life to not have at least heard about computer viruses. And the number one OS talked about? WINDOWS! How can someone be so stupid as to allow someone else (especially your girl friend) to set up a computer and blithely just get onto the internet.
So don't give me your holier than thou Christ what a load of crap because the only crap is coming from you. Because even though you may think your Powerbook is safe there are a lot of other people who have worked very hard to keep your happy ass safe. So remember - you may not be running these things actively - but it don't mean they aren't running on your system. Nor does it mean that you might not need to do so. Because you may actually have a problem but just don't know you do - yet.
I would neither say Linux sucks any more than I would say that games are only produced for Windows.
The truth is that there are a number of pre-written interfaces for the porting of games from one platform to another. Off the top of my head there are the libraries which Loki Software wrote and which they now allow others to use. There are a number of such packages at SourceForge including the wxwindows and others. So the lack of packages which you can use to have a game come out on all platforms is untrue.
The ONLY reason I can think of is INERTIA. Microsoft frowns upon companies which produce games for other platforms (since it can mean the loss of a sale of their OS et al) and I am sure that Microsoft does nasty things to companies who want to produce software for any platform other than the Microsoft platform. (As was shown in the AntiTrust case against Microsoft.) And while it may be true that DirectX is geared towards games; the last time I looked at NeverWinter Nights and others - they use OpenGL -or- DirectX. And sometimes both together.
Also, don't forget that Microsoft is now into the gaming industry big time and companies which have been bought by Microsoft (like the people who brought you Myth I & II ) will tend to only produce games for the Microsoft platform. (Or to release for the other platforms only after exhausting all income paths for the Microsoft platform.) So any game a Microsoft held company creates is probably going to stay running only on the Microsoft platform for quite a while before it is released to other platforms.
The real question which is not even being asked is that if Microsoft has actually converted their programs to run as native programs on the Macintosh (which is BSD based), then why don't they release their programs for Linux? The answer (to me) is that this is just one of the ways they can take a stab at Linux to get back at Linux users (ie: to punish them) for not just continuing to use their products. But then I've seen a lot of companies do very petty things just because one or two people in high ranking positions are upset with how something isn't going their way. But that is (as I've said) just my feelings on this subject.
To be fair with Microsoft: The original poster should have known better to get a router, use the built-in firewall, install a good anti-virus piece of software, install a cookie catcher (like SpyBot), get RegCleaner, and Empty Temp and then, on a regular - weekly basis - clean their system up. We have been really lucky or watchful (I don't know which) with our systems in that we have as of yet to get a virus or to allow cookies to remain on our systems for more than a day or two. SpyBot does a great job of keeping our system clean (I've donated a couple of times now to try to help out) and BitDefender does a great job of keeping viruses in check. Once a week run all of the above and clean the system up. Then scandisk and defrag over night. By doing this our systems have stayed virus/cookie free and we do not have a lot of crashes (unless I'm programming something and step on memory or something like that).
And so they rig one with a bomb which goes off when it is taken out and used.
My concern would be that one of three things happen:
1. Iraqi hackers hack a robot and use that information to turn all of the robots against our own people.
2. The Iraqi's come up with a simple but effective EMP which causes all of the robots to go dormant.
3. Another sand storm hits Iraq, gunks up all of the robot's gears, and we have wasted millions of dollars on useless military gear which is now only good for the junk heap.
This is interesting because when the power went out at our house recently the base unit died along with everything else and I could not make a call with my TouchTone phone. Now, it is a wireless TouchTone phone which is most probably why.
:-)
So, so long as your TouchTone phone has a standard connector back to the base unit it too can be used. Very interesting indeed!
Then my answer would still be the same. It is unlikely that, until you've connected to someone (like the operator) that a machine will notice anything. However, intermittent on/off signals do, after a while, cause a service tech to come on the line to test out what is going on. At that point, if the person is familiar with morse code, they would recognize what was being transmitted and respond. I believe you actually have a better chance with a tech person than you would with an operator. Since most phone operators are not required to know morse code. :-)
Yes, I probably should have qualified it I guess with that my rotary phone is from the phone company. Recently, when the power went out at our house the TouchTone phone we have died as well. So I got out the rotary phone and called the operator and asked her to connect me to the power company's offices.
:-)
:-)
Which is another interesting fact about rotary phones:
1. They don't need power because the phone line provides the power for the phone to work. Unlike many of the phones in use today, rotary phones operate off of (if I remember correctly) 5 volts. This is the charge carried in a normal phone line (in the USA). Thus, if the power goes out in your home - don't assume you can't call someone for help. You just have to have a rotary phone to do so (or a cell phone now-a-days).
Ya know! There's something to be said for older technology somethings and reliability is one of those things. It may not be the easiest to use technology (remember Scotty in the StarTrek movie speaking to the mouse on the Mac?) - but it does still work.
BTW: Someone said that TouchTone phones were first shown in the 60s. Well, the first video phone was shown about the same time. It failed though. No one wanted someone else to see them in the morning. Especially ladies. Talk - yeah. See - no. Somehow I don't think that's changed all that much even after all of these decades.
This is true and I should have said TouchTone phones. However, I have dialed a TouchTone phone by whistling into the headset. :-) If you are at work, bored silly, you may try anything. :-)
I used to do this with modems also. :-)
You could - but it is unlikely. Since the letters "SOS" are something like 858 (or maybe 868 - I don't have my phone handy). You would have to tap the line ten times (zero on a keypad) to first dial the operator - then do the "SOS". :-)
1. Rotary phones were built to last (unlike many digital phones). They can survive a drop from a two story building onto concrete. Just go down, pick it up, plug it in, and it will work.
;-) )
:-)
2. Rotary phones can withstand 300lbs of pressure before they will break or deform.
3.Rotary phones can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. This may seem a stretch, but rotary phones have been in buildings which have burnt to the ground and still worked.
4. You do not need to be able to dial a rotary or digital phone. You just need to be able to push the button/hanger on the phone. As the original poster stated, the way in which rotary phones work (not cell phones mind you) is that they disconnect for a short period of time (like a 1/10 of a second) and then reconnect. What you might NOT know is that all digital land lines can be operated as a rotary phone too. So in an emergency, all you need to do is to tap the button/hanger on your phone's base with a slight pause between the dialing of the numbers. It will still connect. (So to call 1-411 would be one click, a slight pause, four clicks, pause, one click, pause, and one click. Try it sometime.) (I used to do this to dial out from the university on phones with a phone lock on them!
5. Digital phones sometimes have a switch on them to switch between rotary mode and digital mode. You can switch it to rotary mode, dial the number (and hear the antiquated clicks), and then switch back to digital mode to handle any of those "Press 1 to do Blah". I discovered this at my mom's house. She had rotary service (way out in the country!) but I'd dial the line, let the roatry part go through and then switch the phone over to digital mode to do things.
6. Digital phones can be dialed by whistling into them. It isn't easy but you can do it if you practice long enough (and are bored enough).
7. One of the last interesting things to know is that if you are ever, ever stranded somewhere with a broken phone and you need help, you can still use the phone line and dial the phone. All you need is to bare some of the wire and you have a telegraph. Hold the two wires together to complete the circuit and then use the two wires just like you would the button/hanger. Take them apart and you break the connection. Hold them together and you've got a connection. Operators are probably not as smart as they used to be about this (since telegraphs are not so common place anymore) but it used to be that you could do the old SOS and they would send someone. However, if you dial 911 using the above method and twist the two wires together afterwards the police will come out to investigate.
Just a bit of FYI stuff.
I'm just waiting for the first lawsuit to be filed. DRM infringes horribly on your rights. But then everyone here knows that. What these companies who want DRM installed keep forgetting is that you are guaranteed the right to:
1. Give a copy to your father or mother.
2. Give a copy to your sons and daughters.
3. Give a copy to your brothers and sisters.
4. Give a copy to your best friend.
What we need are stronger laws which prevent and curtail what a company can or can not do when it comes to infringing your rights. After all, it isn't John and Jane Doe who are pirating these people's goods - it is the major cartels. Why then, are the people made to suffer for something some organization is doing?
We aren't dogs. Mongrels who wear collars and go around on leashes. Nor were the copyright laws meant to curtail our ability to disperse copyrighted material. They were only meant to slow down this dispersal and to recognize who had created what. Is it our fault that the internet came along? That it is now almost instantaneous to move a three minute bee-bop song from point A to point B? No. It isn't. Nor can we put the worms back into the can now that we have opened the can and let them out. The internet not only is here but it is expanding still at a phenominal rate. Jumping from desktop computers, to laptops, to PDAs, and now to cell phones. Soon, the whole world will be connected. This is what corporations fear the most. That anyone will be able to know exactly what a corporation is doing anywhere in the world.
The fact that we have begun to grasp just how much power digital devices gives us over analog devices. How quickly digital devices seem to evolve, change, modify, and intrude into our lives. (After all, how many people now have microwave ovens and look at all of the things they can do now. Just a few short years ago you had dials you had to turn - now it is all digital with hundreds of functions.) Scares many people because those people feel they must maintain control over everything. In a horse and buggy era - they could. In a digital era - they can not. The digital era is the distributed era. Power, once held by only a few people in their ivory towers, is beginning to flow into the hands of the ordinary person.
And so they fight. They fight to keep that which they are losing quickly. The problem is though, with a distributed system no one person has the millions of dollars to do the things these corporations are doing because they do have a huge concentration of money. So as always I say - write/email your federal, state, and local government officals and let them know you do not want any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) put onto your CDs, DVDs, or anything else. That when these corporations sell you something that that is the end of their rights and the beginning of yours. And you - do not need them to try to lord it over you. You - have the right to do with your property whatever it is that pleases you. You - have the right to make copies. To give copies away to your other family members. That you - do not need big brother watching every single thing that you do. That you - do not recognize these company's cries that you should serve them at their whim. And that you want to have the freedom to exercise these rights when it pleases you and not some corporation.
As per Calvin and Hobbies: I hear marketing people laughing...
The reason we are so behind is because of all of the regulations which we have put into place. A great example of just how badly regulated we have become is the earthquake which happened in California some years back.
The story goes like this: After the earthquakes subsided California was left with expressways which were ruined. Pancaked one on top of the other. Worked started, stopped, and then started again at a snail's pace. Everyone was being frustrated by all of the rules and regulations put into place to make everything better for everyone. After months of nothing really getting done a conference was held between the builders and the governments of the US, California, city's affected, and anyone else who might have a say-so in the problem. In this meeting the builders said that the whole problem was all of the regulations. That if the governments would just allow them to build the roads that they'd do as good of a job as they could. The governments agreed. The freeways were rebuilt in record time, were sound, and have stood ever since.
From what I heard, if the various governmental bodies could not have agreed to this, we would still be trying to rebuild them. IMHO, this is our problem now. Not enough common sense and too many laws. Further, the laws being passed are only being submitted by organizations and/or companies who's only thought it is to grab more power and/or control. While our heroic organizations (such as the EFF or FSF etc....) are having to run around putting out fires. Which means that they do not have the time to try to submit well balanced legislation. (After all, how many times have you heard of the EFF or some other organization submitting well thought out laws? It has been a very long time since I last heard of any organization submitting laws to help everyone. Usually they are trying to stave off some really horrible law submitted by some mouthpiece.)
There are other things which people probably do not think about. Other countries create companies in the United States to help further their needs and wants as well. I'm not trying to be paranoid. Nor am I trying to say we should kick these companies out. I'm just saying that these companies push their agenda just like the American companies push their agendas. The whole thing boils down to - we need a better system for the creation of laws. One where other people besides corporations and/or organizations gets to have a say-so in not only the creation of our laws, but for the passage of those laws too.
Or to put that in plain English: The current copyright laws would never have been passed had the government done the same thing with the creation of laws (and passage of them) as it does when a jury is needed to determine the guilt or innocent of someone. Pick people, at random, and give them the power to make decisions on whether or not to create and/or pass laws.
And yeah, I know someone's going to say "Blech! Why would Tommy Two-Thumbs know anything about copyright law?" Well, by forcing lawmakers to write the laws in English instead of Legaleze I believe that people would be more aware of just what is being done. And once that happens, a lot more laws would never get put into place. Like The Patriot Act which had a great spin name but which was a terrible set of laws to pass.
I know what you mean. When we worked on an IMAX film we had to break the images up into 4096x4096 parts in order to get the larger 19Kx19K sized images. We too, were limited by the OS's ability to ramp up past 2GBs in both memory as well as disk drive files.
The thing is - we now can do those huge films with ease because of the work done at IBM as well as at SGI. Their filing enhancements (and ext3) allow us to have huge files. The memory problem though - still exists.
As others have pointed out - Windows XP should handle these problems (although the disk drive problem of not really removing the directory entries will bite you sooner or later [and for evreyone out there I will try to find the SGI white paper on the problems of Windows XP's disk drive NTFS methodology]).
Anyway, gotta run!
The high price is only for the current version of Dreamweaver. If you go to PriceWatch or PriceGrabber you can find older versions (I bought version 3.0 for around $60.00) for far less than the $400.00 price quoted in the article.
Yeah, now there's 64 locations to have problems instead of 32! ;-) Does that mean we will have 2^64-1 number of viruses instead of only 2^32-1 of them?
:-)
Truthfully though, when microcomputers went from 8-bit to 16-bit they basically had a 1000% increase in speed simply because they could read twice as much. And yeah, going from 16mhz to 100mhz also had a bit to do with it. Going from 16-bit to 32-bit again greatly increased the speed of the computer. The move from 32-bit to 64-bit will again greatly increase the overall speed of the computer.
But there are a few things to think about. First, do you really need it? Computers are so fast now that most (but not all) common place usages are done instantaneously. Most (but again not all) games play smoothly. True, if you want to move even further down the road of real-time, photo realistic, computer graphics then 64-bit processors are the way to go (and so would 128-bit cpus). But this is only because it makes sense to be able to grab more information faster so it can be applied. But for most business usages? No. If it takes ten seconds or one second to recalculate an entire set of spreadsheets. Or if it takes a few seconds for MS-Word to reformat a paragraph - most people are satisfied.
Further, it is not just a matter of having a faster, better CPU. Whether 32 or 64 bit. It is also a matter of having faster memory, disk drives, graphic cards, and faster monitors. I just recently (like last week) had to replace my motherboard. The motherboard I had was from 1998. In computer terms - it was ancient. It used 133mhz memory and used the built in graphics (SIS) card. I've now upgraded to a new motherboard, 400mhz memory, and an ATI Sapphire graphics card. Just by doing that and keeping the same CPU the entire computer ramped up. It takes about a tenth of the time it used to to do anything. Never Winter Nights (or NWN) now runs without crashing, the game looks 100% better, response time is phenomenal. So although I know that a 64-bit computer would increase everything even further - this is really all I need for right now.
Finally, there is the consideration of money. First, we are going into tax season. Second, people have (and are) giving money to help out the people caught up in the tsunami incident. Third, how much will all of this cost? Will we have to rebuy everything yet again? If so, it is very unlikely that this will ever get off the ground for at least another five years. Not that it won't be available - just that most people are going to go "Why? What I've got is good enough."
Just a few thoughts.
And that is the main problem. Why upgrade when what you have is already good enough?
Hi! I hate to reply to your message twice but I remembered something I should have put into the first message that I believe is very, very important.
Under the copyright laws, when you BUY something (and not when you lease it) - you have the right to make a copy and give it to the following people:
1. Your wife/husband
2. Your children
3. Your parents
4. Your brothers and sisters
This is called the immediate family clause of the copyright laws. Remember that copyrights are not meant to obstruct the entire disemination of information. It is only meant to slow it down to a reasonable level. That is why there were court battles over whether or not you could let someone else read a book you had bought. The answer was not only yes but HELL YES! Once you have read a book you can give it to whomever you please. The same is true of software you can just GIVE it to whomever you please so long as you are not keeping it. But the special provisions of the copyright laws state that you can make copies and give these copies to your immediate family (as described above).
Further, you can give one copy to your best friend as well. This is where Napster messed up. You can not have a million best friends. You can have only one. And just because you happen to know someone doesn't mean they are your best friend. They are just an acquaintance. Why? Because there can only be one best friend. Not a couple million. That is why they are called your best friend.
This is something which the software companies are fighting over as well. They do not want you to give copies to your immediate family. They want to excluded from that. They want to be - special. But everyone has to be treated the same. So if you can do this with everything else - you can also do it with software. And this is what a lot of the fighting, new rules, and everything else boils down to. The companies want every single person in the world to have to buy a copy of their software for their own personal use but the copyright laws say you don't have to do so and these companies don't like that.
This country is of, by, and for the PEOPLE of the United States - not the corporations of the United States. We, the people suffer them to exist. They do not suffer us to exist. We are not their slaves and we have lived together (if not in perfect harmony then at least in some kind of co-existence where we don't kill each other off) for centuries. But the problem with merchants (in general) and not any one entity specifically) is that they tend to want to rule, like a king, over everyone and everything. The earliest known fight between the rights of people and the rights of merchants is (excuse me for sidestepping here) in the bible when Jesus threw the merchants out of the church. How dare they invade a religious temple! Right? Well, look at churches now. They are pretty much just another corporation. So the merchant's invasion is complete is it not?
Merchants do not know any better than you or I how to make things work the best you can. But they are great at dividing up the spoils and trying to keep everyone else from becoming as great as they are (or as rich as they are). You see, they learned from the Pharises, many centuries ago, that if you write words down on a piece of paper and you get enough military might to back you, then anything is possible. So now we have companies which are above the law (Congress put the insurance companies above the law when they began HMOs and PPOs and it wasn't until much later that that law was declared unconstitutional), companies attempting to twist our laws and rights so we don't have any (DMCA et al), and companies which are making bogus claims and using the FBI, CIA, and the United States Government's name as a way to enforce out laws in other countries(many examples could be given like to teenager in Norway who was arrested) which should be illegal. Basically, the people of the world are taking a back seat
Correct and incorrect. As another person replied: You are buying the software. It is a sale and no more. Yet M$ and many others have tried to twist the word license to mean lease. The reason is because under lease laws the software remains the property of the people who produced the software. Under a sale some (but not all) of the copyright's rights pass to the new owner. This issue has already been dealt with numerous times in the selling and reselling of books as well as the normal usage of parts of a book in other books (as in a reference or a paragraph or two).
In the case stated (Adobe vs Softman), all that Softman wanted to do was to get rid of the software. To resell it. Adobe sued them to prevent them from doing so. The judge correctly deduced that when Softman bought the hardware/software package that it was a sale and not a lease as Adobe tried to assert. The judge went even further though stating that ALL EULAs were invalid because of their overbearing nature. That EULAs had extended their reach farther than any copyright law allows. Placing undue burdens upon those who purchased software not only to be clairvoyant, but to assume burdens not easily understood or complied with.
My prophecy (which is a no brainer) is that M$ and others will again go back to Washington and ask for even stricter copyright laws which give them unlimited time, power, and rights so they can have their way. So speaks the Grand Poobah! (Like they aren't already trying to do this.) Be sure to write everyone in federal, state, and local governments and let them know you want the DMCA repealed and a more balanced law put into effect.
Later!
I believe that the blurring of lines between what is being sold to someone and what is being leased has not helped things out at all.
My take on the above is:
Sold: An item is sold to you when you do not have to make any other payments to the manufacturer and you do not have to give it back after a specific period of time.
Lease: An item is leased when you have to make payments based up a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly time period and, after the lease has expired, the item has to be returned to the manufacturer.
From the above, if you "buy" a copy of Windows and do not have to make any additional payments, then the copy has been sold to you - not leased. If this is true (ie: M$ sold the software to you and did not lease it) then all of the leasing agreements imposed by the EULA are null and void. Further, your rights as a purchaser of a product have just increased ten fold because there are a lot of rules and regulations about items which are sold which do not pertain to items which are leased.
With the recent decision by a court in California that M$ et al must display the EULA on the outside of the box and/or have it readily available for viewing before a purchase is made - the distinction of whether a piece of software is sold to the end user or leased will become a greater issue in the near future.
Uebermensch's are the way of the future. Even without the advent of engineering feats we might be able to, one day, use the full potential of our brains thus truly giving rise to mind over matter.
On vision: In 1975 I asked my eye doctor why they didn't perform surgury on the eye to correct the lenses. I was told it was impossible to operate on the eye because of how delicate the human eye was. Well.... My thoughts on engineering a better eye are that, in some cases, the lens is removed and replaced by a new lens. If, instead of just replacing it with a tiny piece of clear plastic (or a new organic lens donated by someone else) why not replace it with a transparent autofocusing lens using the now emerging transparent transistors. The device would use a low level laser to detect if it were in focus (ie: auto correcting) and something like squinting could cause the zoom capabilities to be used. (Squinting causes the eye muscles to increase the tension across the eye's membrane.) Or maybe a person could be taught to turn on the zoom capabilities in some way (like rolling their eyes up and then back down).
Hearing is already augmented in several ways and our vision is helped at night with Night Vision googles, infrared, ultraviolet googles. These capabilities can be integrated into the lenses placed into eyes as well.
However, it is more likely, IMHO, that genetics will play a greater role in what happens in the future. This is because engineering something into the human body is a lot harder (in the long run) than simply changing what something is like. Let me give an example. Which was it easier to do: Create larger more sturdy bulls via some engineering feat or through selective breeding and the chemicals which causes the bulls to grow larger than before? Although engineering did play a role in how we have managed to enlarge cows and bulls (and many other species); the work of genetics and chemistry have done more. Therefore, although it is nice to think about this - it is more likely that chemists and geneticists are going to be the ones who affect us the most in the future than engineers.
Notes: The average milk cow is now so enhanced that they produce, on average, 40,000 gallons of milk per year. At a recent livestock show there were bulls which stood ten feet tall on all fours (ie:not reared up). Absolutely HUGE!!!!!
Also: The average person has built in regulators on the usage of their muscles. (In order to not break everything you pick up.) As has been shown, through the use of certain drugs (like Crack Cocaine) these "regulators" are removed. This is why some people (but not all) can be shot and still walk around as if nothing has happened to them. These same people usually require three to four other people to just hold them still. Obviously there are still things we have as of yet to tap in the way of musculature.
Compiler Creep: Where a compiler, built to be used for operating system A (OS-A) moves on to operating system B(OS-B) and yet still says it will compile programs properly for OS-A. However, as time goes along, as OS-B moves further away from OS-A, the compilers for OS-B begin introducing calls to non-existent OS-A functions. Eventually, programs compiled under OS-B will no longer operate under OS-A. Manufacturer's solution: Upgrade your system!. User's outlook: Why should I?
One of the problems I am having happen more and more is to try to use a program which is really written for WindowsXP but also says it will work for Windows95/98/NT/2000/ME. Or even just 98se/NT/2000/ME. The truth is that since 98se is so old the current version of Microsoft's Visual Studio will not correctly compile complex programs for the 98 platform. This has been demonstrated several times now to different companies including Microsoft.
It is also one of the things which differentiate Linux from Microsoft. Because I can get to the source code I can recompile everything for my system (and yes - it does take quite a while to do so but it is worth it because I get all of the updates, can stay current, and yet don't have to buy a new system in order to do so which is the point of this post). Not everyone is a multimillionaire. Nor are a lot of the posters on Slashdot people who want to run up their credit card bills even more than they already are just to keep up with the Jones's and their computer buying habits. So Linux makes a lot of sense from that perspective. You get to keep your computer, upgrade everything, get new things, and you do not have to worry about compiler creep. Because the underlying OS reamins stable.