Sure... but doesn't an OS suck that can be taken down with a buggy Wordprocessor?
No. On my Linux box the other day, I hit some odd key combo completely by accident and I had a ton of help windows for the Gnome Calculator keep popping up. By the time I had maybe fifteen Gnome help windows open, the system was nearly unresponsive at the GUI level. Since I was using a remote GUI session, I had to go down to the basement and get on the console to try and reboot the system. It took a good ten minutes to get the machine to actually shutdown. If I was a less patient person, I probably would have hit the power button and then answered yes to he question about doing an fsck (I use ext3). So... does Linux suck because of all that? No. It's not a good idea to say any OS sucks if the OS didn't cause the problem.
See #1. There's no way a "misconfigured" wordprocessor should be able to take the system down.
Bullshit. Try installing VMware with your own custom compiled kernel and have it successfully compile it's modules with bugs in them that will cause the system to have severe problems. It's not Linus' or the other kernel hacker's fault though... It is possible for misconfigured software to cause problems for the OS. Plus... you need to lose the notion that bringing down an OS stricltly means a crash. From the user's perspective, not being able to use their mouse or type means that the OS went down. And that's the level of thinking that most people who say [insert OS here] sucks.
People really don't know what they're doing because all "Microsoft Training & Education" tells them where to click but not why and what is happening under the hood. I am not saying it is easy to get a Microsoft Cert, (you have to be able to memorize a lot of buttons and widgets in order to pass), but it leads people nowhere in terms of being able to really know the in's and outs of the system like an Unix Administrator knows hers.
Nothing to rebutt here. More Unix admins can fix Windows machines than the other way around. This is because Unix DOES force the admin to know their machine at almost every level. Windows just puts a lot of nice looking crap over the system in order to hide the "ugly" side of computers.
The only thing that should happen her is that the system slows down (a lot) (except for the overclocked CPU which should crash Windows even faster:-) )
Windows does seem to be more prone to failure on slower systems when you are talking about running Windows NT4 on a 486 DX2 66 with 16 Megs of RAM. Windows 2000 and XP won't run on systems that old as far as I know. Linux can run on these older systems more reliably. However, a slow system is an unusable system to the kind of person who is going to say that a certain OS sucks or "crashes" all the time. If you run Windows 2000 on a PIII or higher with 128 megs of RAM, you'll be fine. If you run Windows XP on a PIII with 256 Megs of RAM, you'll be fine. Unless of roucse those pesky apps that have a tendency to cause memory leaks or drivers that cause a BSOD strike. But that's still no fault of the OS. A vanilla install of any Windows product post Windows 2000 will run just fine as long as you don't put any crap on it. As soon as you want the box to do more than what a vanilla install will do, you run into problems. But this is also true of ANY OS. So again, you are incorrect sir.;)
Most of the SERVERhardware I've seen at companies running Windows (2003 Server etc.) are or are equivalent to IBM x-Series servers. Needless to say, their downtimes are a function of the OS they run.
I don't see too many geeks running these kinds of systems at home. And those are the people who are the most vocal about which OS sucks. It's more likely that the average geek is running their server OS on a desktop system. But, I've also seen plenty of businesses run server OSes on desktop machines because they can't see the difference between a desktop and
You are talking about data centers. I'm talking about home users. They are the source of most anecdotal "windows sucks" stories. Regardless, I've been in my share of data centers that have desktop machines for servers. It happens.
I'm not a cat, and I don't like to smile. It makes me look funny. Sorry, but you're all wet. I'm a true Linux guy. I'm just not someone who's willing to stick my head in the sand. Of course... you could just be trolling.
It sounds like you are assuming "crash" means BSOD. I am not. When it comes to people talking about how poor Windows at being stable, they always point to things like the system suddenly performing poorly, or not responding. Not necessarily a BSOD, but from the typical Windows "geek" perspective, it's a "crash". From a Linux user's perspective, it's an errant program. However, since Windows' GUI subsystem is tied into it's kernel, you have no option to recover from the buggy application. In Linux, you just kill X, or stop and start a service. But... that doesn't change the fact that the buggy app is what caused the problem. If the buggy app wasn't buggy... Windows would tick along just fine.
I do agree that people with certs tend to be pretty clueless. Not all, but most of them are. They usually have enough knowledge to damage something more than it already was to begin with.
Btw, replacing the BSOD with just rebooting the computer doesn't fix the problem.
Exactly my point. It's a workaround, not a fix. But it's not the fault of the OS either. BSODs on Windows are rarely caused by the OS. More often than not, that's the fault of flaky hardware and bad drivers. I should also have clarified that "crash" doesn't necessarily mean a BSOD. Sometimes, it means a memory leak, or poor performance, or the explorer shell dying, or some other weird behavior. Either way, these usually get clasified as "crashes" in anecdotal instances where someone is deriding Windows. I haven't run into any apps (other than the test app provided by M$) that actually cause a BSOD unless that app includes drivers that plug into the OS itself. Either way... it's still not the OS's fault. There are a few apps in Linuxland that I've played with that require kernel level drivers. In the alpha stage, they can also cause the kernel to oops if the driver has issues. Honestly, these days, with regard to stability Windows XP and 2003 Server are a lot better. Security-wise they still suck. Licensing-wise they still suck. They still can't hold a candle to Linux when it comes to being open and, of course, price and true freedom. So, I am a hardcore Linux advocate, but we really need to step away from the argument that Linux is better than Windows in the stability arena. They are about the same now.
First off... I'm a hardcore Linux guy. I only have one Windows box at home and that's because I have some professional hardware that doesn't yet have good support under Linux (Echo Layla audio interface. Yes there is an ALSA driver but I have yet to get it to work.). With that out of the way, I have to bring up a point that I've tried to make before. Windows has improved over time, and from my own experience with it both at work and at home I think they got a lot of things right. I've also noticed a lot of *nix-isms in it that have been hidden behind GUIs and friendly names. I won't get into that here though. My main point is this...
Starting around the time of Windows NT4, Windows got reasonably stable by itself. Windows 2000 took it a good deal further and there was less wrong with the OS than ever before (excluding security issues). Windows XP and 2003 Server have certainly raised the bar quite a bit. So why do we get all these stories about the OS "crashing" all the time? I'll tell you why:
1. Poorly written/Buggy application or server software (Office Suites, Web Servers, Mail Servers, etc...) 2. Misconfigured application or server software 3. Misconfigured OS settings by people who don't really know what they are doing despite their certs 4. Underpowered hardware (overclocked CPUs or just plain slow/older machines, not enough RAM, etc..) 5. Inappropriate hardware (Using a Gateway brand desktop PC as a Domain Controller) non-ECC RAM, etc.. 6. Malfunctioniing hardware (bad RAM, MB, CPU, cooling problems, etc...)
In many instances, the people responsible for these machines either don't know HOW to fix the problem, or CAN'T (proprietary software) until their vendor puts out a fix. These people may not know how to figure out where the problems is. Is it hardware? Is it software? Where in the chain does it exists? If anything, most tech's troubleshooting skills are pretty poor. But the ever present pressures from clueless suits to "make it work!" lead to workarounds or... the ubiquitous scheduled nightly reboot. This is NOT the fault of the OS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Windows is a reliable OS compared to other OSes. I'm saying it's more likely that the applications and services that people are running on their machines are more likely to be the cause of crashes or forcing the nightly reboot. Windows has plenty of issues at the server and the desktop that ARE Micro$oft's fault. But seriously people... put the blame where it belongs the other 50% of the time.
Recently I was discussing what I see to be a central conflict in human beings. It is the conflict of two desires that every human being has:
1. The desire to be an individual. To be unique. 2. The desire to be part of a group. To be accepted as being the same as others.
I'm not sure of the forces driving these two desires, but it certainly has an effect on making choices. Which leads to another issue which I think this article was focusing on: who has the control?
In situations where one entity has all the control (a centralized system), there are fewer choices to make and therefore the system tends to work better. However the downside is that the system will entity will naturally impose restrictions. This is the point where the desire for individuality comes into direct conflict with a centralized system.
In a situation where the individual has control, the system they are working within must allow for a variety of choices to be made since no individual is the same. With all this choice, the system has a tendency to be very complex and break down frequently (witness Macs vs. PCs, with PCs being more complex). It also has a tendency to lead to situaitons where there is no continuity. On the PC you have a gazillion choices no matter what OS you choose. Expand that to the hardware, and you have even more choices. With a Mac, you only have a handful of choices, but they are the "best" choices based on experience. The user gives up a certain level of control for a simpler experience.
So... what's the answer? There really isn't one. It's a flaw in human design. We would be largely better off without the desire for individuality and centralized control, but we would also be a lot less interesting. However, the trains would probably run on time...;P
Now you're talking hardware. That has nothing to do with the OS. But the same rules still apply... if you use it for work, it's a workstation. If you use it for play, it's a PC. If you use it to provide some backend service, it's a server. If you do all of the above on the same box, you're a geek.
Actually, I am aware that X can do it. But the one thing it can't do that VNC can is persistent sessions. I can disconnect from one system and leave all my apps running then pick up on another system elsewhere. Even over the net. It's worked out great because it doesn't matter what box I'm on, the apps are persistent and move anywhere I want them to. Plus I'm using VNC 4.0 beta which is A LOT better than previous versions in terms of latency. The only beef I have with it, is that it doesn't suport 3D acceleration if you aren't using it to transfer the local X server over VNC. I did try Quake 3 over VNC using the x0vncerver and it did work, but a little too slow even over 100 Mbits. If/when X can give me persistent sessions, I'll still need to use VNC. Probably the coolest thing about the setup I have is that I can use my "Desktop" here at home and at work over an ssh tunnel. It's VERY nice to have all of my mail and bookmarks centralized on one machine no matter where I am.:)
If you do it at home, then your machine is a PC and you're a geek. (meant in the kindest way possible). If you do it at work then it's a workstaion, and... GET BACK TO WORK and uninstall that silly FPS or you'll be an unemployed geek!!
Seriously, I have one system here at home which is my "develompent and gaming" system. As far as I'm concerned it's a PC. I've run DNS, Apache, LDAP, and CDDB on it. I also use G.I.M.P. and gcc on it quite frequently. And I've played Quake 3 and Unreal Tourney 2003 on it. It also wakes me up every morning with XMMS playing random Ogg Vorbis files from my file server. But... it's still a PC and I'm still a "geek".
That limitation only applies to NetBEUI as far as I know. It doesn't seem to affect TCP/IP connections. But thene again it's been a long time since I've used Windows and my MCSE cert is a little long in the tooth now.;P
The claim this dork I know made about running NT Server for better performance was that the GUI just felt "faster". He had the money to throw around too, so I think he was one of those fools easily separated from his money. Believe it or not, he actually thought that having NT Server on his desktop was a status symbol. When I moved to Linux, he kept telling me "You get what you pay for. You get what you pay for. You get what you pay for". Kind of like it was a mantra of his or something.
Personally, I think people like him are afflicted with a mental problem. He was this way in other situations too. In the early 90s he and his wife went out with an older couple that my wife knows. This older couple is pretty well off, but reasonable in their attitudes compared to most wealthy people. One time when we were hanging out with this older couple we put two and two together and figured out who they went out with. The whole time they were out, dorkboy and his wife desperately tried every trendy thing they could think of saying or doing to impress the older couple. Including the big 90s trend of smoking cigars. Imagining his wife (a dainty, prissy blonde) with a cigar in her mouth is just plain comical. We all had a laugh.
While I agree that Alphas were probably THE best platform out there, this is all very silly.
Looking at the rest of this thread I have to say that the designation you give a machine should be based on the appication, not what the boneheads who market the OS call it.
PC (as in PERSONAL COMPUTER): You run home user type stuff: games, web browsing, e-mail, music and video, word processing
Workstation: You run business software (ugh) and productivity applications: web, e-mail, office suite, field specific applications like CAD/CAM, Video NLE, Audio NLE, MIDI composition software, Scientific applications. Typically a little more horsepower is needed because of the fiel specific apps.
Server: Backends. Basically, web servers, file servers, database servers, mail servers, groupware servers, application server (thin client really is the best model) etc... Users don't interact directly with the servers, they just work with the clients.
So screw what Microsoft has to say about it. If you run Windows XP Professional or Windows NT4 Workstation at home and use it for games, music, web and mail and never run field specific apps, then it's NOT workstation. I knew a jackass who used to run a Windows NT4 Server as his desktop. All he would do on it is play Quake. For some horribly retarded reason, he was under the delusion that it ran better than NT Workstation. If there really WAS a difference, then why was Microsoft so quick to keep people from hacking the registry to change Windows NT Workstation into Windows NT Server? Sorry... but that's just lame as hell. Just a couple flags in the registry of the OS maintains this illusion of a difference between the versions? Bah.
Anyway... the way I see it I have Linux running on all of my boxes. They all perform "server" functions of various types (ssh, nfs, etc...), but as far as I'm concerned, they are just thin clients based on how I use them (Remote VNC sessions with my application server). I have two machines on my network that I *DO* think of as servers because they do REAL server stuff. Both of them are Linux boxes. One does internal and external DNS, Samba (WINS, PDC), mail, web (internal and external), VPN. I don't run apps on it or play games on it It doesn't have sound capabilities or a GUI. The other box is my application server/file server. It also doesn't have a GUI on it but gdm spawns eight VNC servers for multiple GUI based remote logins. Think Windows Terminal server and you've got the idea. I do run apps on it like games, music, video, web, mail and office type stuff, but tht's what makes it an application server. Note the use of the word "SERVER". So, the designation of a machine has little to do with marketing and EVERYTHING to do with the role. Know your role!!!;P
As a longtime Atari ST user, I have a fondness for GEM. So much so that when I moved to the PC in 1994, I bought a used copy of GEM for DOS and ran with that baby for quite a while. Looking at that simple desktop (luckily the ST still was able to use the disk and trash can icon metaphor unlike GEM for DOS) and the simple fonts really takes me back to when computers were REALLY fun. All those old ST games, paint programs, and of course MIDI software and the demo scene. Sure the Amigas had slightly better graphics (duck) but you couldn't beat the ST for MIDI. And since I was a musician at the time, that's mostly what I used the ST for, everything else was just nice icing on a very sweet cake. I also used to subscribe to ST Format magazine and hav it shipped from the UK to the states. I looked forward to those cover disks every month. You never knew what was going to come next. Somehow, it seems the Brits know how to do cover discs. Even with last year's issues of Future Music, there's actually useful stuff on cover disks. Here in the states, all we get is crappy AOL CDs or shit game previews. Oh well... it's been a long time since I've bought print magazines on a regular basis. But sometimes you just mss the old days, when magazine were glossy and used dense paper covers and there was a floppy with an attractive game or two on it. Ahhh... the old days.
...I can't stand TechTV. It's the biggest example of "armchair techie" pandering around. You can't watch TechTV and expect to learn anything from it that's of any use unless you're a typical home user or hobbyist. When I first got DirecTV, I was hoping that TechTV would be less consumer oriented and more technology oriented. But most of what they feature on their programming is very boring and old news. Then their non-technology programming blows pretty hard too. I mean, Thunderbirds? Come on! Why not feature good SciFi that is truly "geek worthy". Doctor Who comes to mind. Anyway.. I imagine TechTV will go from worse to hellish. Fortunately I don't watch much TV these days and I NEVER watch TechTV.
In the article, the author poses the question, what value would there be in sending humans into space. The answer is: slave labor. Where do you think Martha Stewart's corporate decendants are going to have all the crap to decorate their spaceships with made?;P
Those days are already here, just look at John Ashcroft and his fear of evil, satanic cats and women's breasts. If we get another four years of Bush, we'll be deep into the dark ages for some time to come. Thanks to the Republican party, we don't need to work on time travel, they've already perfected going backwards.
Re:Windows?
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
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· Score: 2, Informative
Anyone who admits to using MS Paint for screenshots is a moron. If you are trapped in the MS world, at least use the "Print Screen" key and paste into GIMP. It's a hell of a lot more useful than MS Paint. This is assuming that you don't have the money to buy Photoshop or the unscrupulous nature to pirate it. I can't waste $600 on something just for screenshots and I will NEVER pirate software. Of course, I don't need to worry about that since I use Linux.
Of course, since Darl and his flying monkey lawyers haven't clue about what Linux is (they seem to imply that ALL free/open software is "Linux"). they WILL try to inject "their code" into any free software and then claim that it's theirs because it's Linux! Here's an open message to Darl:
Slashdot Mirror
Hotchchacha!!!! ;P
[ROWR!]
No. On my Linux box the other day, I hit some odd key combo completely by accident and I had a ton of help windows for the Gnome Calculator keep popping up. By the time I had maybe fifteen Gnome help windows open, the system was nearly unresponsive at the GUI level. Since I was using a remote GUI session, I had to go down to the basement and get on the console to try and reboot the system. It took a good ten minutes to get the machine to actually shutdown. If I was a less patient person, I probably would have hit the power button and then answered yes to he question about doing an fsck (I use ext3). So... does Linux suck because of all that? No. It's not a good idea to say any OS sucks if the OS didn't cause the problem.
See #1. There's no way a "misconfigured" wordprocessor should be able to take the system down.
Bullshit. Try installing VMware with your own custom compiled kernel and have it successfully compile it's modules with bugs in them that will cause the system to have severe problems. It's not Linus' or the other kernel hacker's fault though... It is possible for misconfigured software to cause problems for the OS. Plus... you need to lose the notion that bringing down an OS stricltly means a crash. From the user's perspective, not being able to use their mouse or type means that the OS went down. And that's the level of thinking that most people who say [insert OS here] sucks.
People really don't know what they're doing because all "Microsoft Training & Education" tells them where to click but not why and what is happening under the hood. I am not saying it is easy to get a Microsoft Cert, (you have to be able to memorize a lot of buttons and widgets in order to pass), but it leads people nowhere in terms of being able to really know the in's and outs of the system like an Unix Administrator knows hers.
Nothing to rebutt here. More Unix admins can fix Windows machines than the other way around. This is because Unix DOES force the admin to know their machine at almost every level. Windows just puts a lot of nice looking crap over the system in order to hide the "ugly" side of computers.
The only thing that should happen her is that the system slows down (a lot) (except for the overclocked CPU which should crash Windows even faster :-) )
Windows does seem to be more prone to failure on slower systems when you are talking about running Windows NT4 on a 486 DX2 66 with 16 Megs of RAM. Windows 2000 and XP won't run on systems that old as far as I know. Linux can run on these older systems more reliably. However, a slow system is an unusable system to the kind of person who is going to say that a certain OS sucks or "crashes" all the time. If you run Windows 2000 on a PIII or higher with 128 megs of RAM, you'll be fine. If you run Windows XP on a PIII with 256 Megs of RAM, you'll be fine. Unless of roucse those pesky apps that have a tendency to cause memory leaks or drivers that cause a BSOD strike. But that's still no fault of the OS. A vanilla install of any Windows product post Windows 2000 will run just fine as long as you don't put any crap on it. As soon as you want the box to do more than what a vanilla install will do, you run into problems. But this is also true of ANY OS. So again, you are incorrect sir. ;)
Most of the SERVERhardware I've seen at companies running Windows (2003 Server etc.) are or are equivalent to IBM x-Series servers. Needless to say, their downtimes are a function of the OS they run.
I don't see too many geeks running these kinds of systems at home. And those are the people who are the most vocal about which OS sucks. It's more likely that the average geek is running their server OS on a desktop system. But, I've also seen plenty of businesses run server OSes on desktop machines because they can't see the difference between a desktop and
You are talking about data centers. I'm talking about home users. They are the source of most anecdotal "windows sucks" stories. Regardless, I've been in my share of data centers that have desktop machines for servers. It happens.
I'm not a cat, and I don't like to smile. It makes me look funny. Sorry, but you're all wet. I'm a true Linux guy. I'm just not someone who's willing to stick my head in the sand. Of course... you could just be trolling.
It sounds like you are assuming "crash" means BSOD. I am not. When it comes to people talking about how poor Windows at being stable, they always point to things like the system suddenly performing poorly, or not responding. Not necessarily a BSOD, but from the typical Windows "geek" perspective, it's a "crash". From a Linux user's perspective, it's an errant program. However, since Windows' GUI subsystem is tied into it's kernel, you have no option to recover from the buggy application. In Linux, you just kill X, or stop and start a service. But... that doesn't change the fact that the buggy app is what caused the problem. If the buggy app wasn't buggy... Windows would tick along just fine.
I do agree that people with certs tend to be pretty clueless. Not all, but most of them are. They usually have enough knowledge to damage something more than it already was to begin with.
What about "here hare"? (Note: You have to be a "Withnail and I Fan" to get this)
Exactly my point. It's a workaround, not a fix. But it's not the fault of the OS either. BSODs on Windows are rarely caused by the OS. More often than not, that's the fault of flaky hardware and bad drivers. I should also have clarified that "crash" doesn't necessarily mean a BSOD. Sometimes, it means a memory leak, or poor performance, or the explorer shell dying, or some other weird behavior. Either way, these usually get clasified as "crashes" in anecdotal instances where someone is deriding Windows. I haven't run into any apps (other than the test app provided by M$) that actually cause a BSOD unless that app includes drivers that plug into the OS itself. Either way... it's still not the OS's fault. There are a few apps in Linuxland that I've played with that require kernel level drivers. In the alpha stage, they can also cause the kernel to oops if the driver has issues. Honestly, these days, with regard to stability Windows XP and 2003 Server are a lot better. Security-wise they still suck. Licensing-wise they still suck. They still can't hold a candle to Linux when it comes to being open and, of course, price and true freedom. So, I am a hardcore Linux advocate, but we really need to step away from the argument that Linux is better than Windows in the stability arena. They are about the same now.
First off... I'm a hardcore Linux guy. I only have one Windows box at home and that's because I have some professional hardware that doesn't yet have good support under Linux (Echo Layla audio interface. Yes there is an ALSA driver but I have yet to get it to work.). With that out of the way, I have to bring up a point that I've tried to make before. Windows has improved over time, and from my own experience with it both at work and at home I think they got a lot of things right. I've also noticed a lot of *nix-isms in it that have been hidden behind GUIs and friendly names. I won't get into that here though. My main point is this...
Starting around the time of Windows NT4, Windows got reasonably stable by itself. Windows 2000 took it a good deal further and there was less wrong with the OS than ever before (excluding security issues). Windows XP and 2003 Server have certainly raised the bar quite a bit. So why do we get all these stories about the OS "crashing" all the time? I'll tell you why:
1. Poorly written/Buggy application or server software (Office Suites, Web Servers, Mail Servers, etc...)
2. Misconfigured application or server software
3. Misconfigured OS settings by people who don't really know what they are doing despite their certs
4. Underpowered hardware (overclocked CPUs or just plain slow/older machines, not enough RAM, etc..)
5. Inappropriate hardware (Using a Gateway brand desktop PC as a Domain Controller) non-ECC RAM, etc..
6. Malfunctioniing hardware (bad RAM, MB, CPU, cooling problems, etc...)
In many instances, the people responsible for these machines either don't know HOW to fix the problem, or CAN'T (proprietary software) until their vendor puts out a fix. These people may not know how to figure out where the problems is. Is it hardware? Is it software? Where in the chain does it exists? If anything, most tech's troubleshooting skills are pretty poor. But the ever present pressures from clueless suits to "make it work!" lead to workarounds or... the ubiquitous scheduled nightly reboot. This is NOT the fault of the OS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Windows is a reliable OS compared to other OSes. I'm saying it's more likely that the applications and services that people are running on their machines are more likely to be the cause of crashes or forcing the nightly reboot. Windows has plenty of issues at the server and the desktop that ARE Micro$oft's fault. But seriously people... put the blame where it belongs the other 50% of the time.
Recently I was discussing what I see to be a central conflict in human beings. It is the conflict of two desires that every human being has:
;P
1. The desire to be an individual. To be unique.
2. The desire to be part of a group. To be accepted as being the same as others.
I'm not sure of the forces driving these two desires, but it certainly has an effect on making choices. Which leads to another issue which I think this article was focusing on: who has the control?
In situations where one entity has all the control (a centralized system), there are fewer choices to make and therefore the system tends to work better. However the downside is that the system will entity will naturally impose restrictions. This is the point where the desire for individuality comes into direct conflict with a centralized system.
In a situation where the individual has control, the system they are working within must allow for a variety of choices to be made since no individual is the same. With all this choice, the system has a tendency to be very complex and break down frequently (witness Macs vs. PCs, with PCs being more complex). It also has a tendency to lead to situaitons where there is no continuity. On the PC you have a gazillion choices no matter what OS you choose. Expand that to the hardware, and you have even more choices. With a Mac, you only have a handful of choices, but they are the "best" choices based on experience. The user gives up a certain level of control for a simpler experience.
So... what's the answer? There really isn't one. It's a flaw in human design. We would be largely better off without the desire for individuality and centralized control, but we would also be a lot less interesting. However, the trains would probably run on time...
Now you're talking hardware. That has nothing to do with the OS. But the same rules still apply... if you use it for work, it's a workstation. If you use it for play, it's a PC. If you use it to provide some backend service, it's a server. If you do all of the above on the same box, you're a geek.
Actually, I am aware that X can do it. But the one thing it can't do that VNC can is persistent sessions. I can disconnect from one system and leave all my apps running then pick up on another system elsewhere. Even over the net. It's worked out great because it doesn't matter what box I'm on, the apps are persistent and move anywhere I want them to. Plus I'm using VNC 4.0 beta which is A LOT better than previous versions in terms of latency. The only beef I have with it, is that it doesn't suport 3D acceleration if you aren't using it to transfer the local X server over VNC. I did try Quake 3 over VNC using the x0vncerver and it did work, but a little too slow even over 100 Mbits. If/when X can give me persistent sessions, I'll still need to use VNC. Probably the coolest thing about the setup I have is that I can use my "Desktop" here at home and at work over an ssh tunnel. It's VERY nice to have all of my mail and bookmarks centralized on one machine no matter where I am. :)
Gotta love it. Someone didn't take his happy pills today.
If you do it at home, then your machine is a PC and you're a geek. (meant in the kindest way possible). If you do it at work then it's a workstaion, and... GET BACK TO WORK and uninstall that silly FPS or you'll be an unemployed geek!!
Seriously, I have one system here at home which is my "develompent and gaming" system. As far as I'm concerned it's a PC. I've run DNS, Apache, LDAP, and CDDB on it. I also use G.I.M.P. and gcc on it quite frequently. And I've played Quake 3 and Unreal Tourney 2003 on it. It also wakes me up every morning with XMMS playing random Ogg Vorbis files from my file server. But... it's still a PC and I'm still a "geek".
That limitation only applies to NetBEUI as far as I know. It doesn't seem to affect TCP/IP connections. But thene again it's been a long time since I've used Windows and my MCSE cert is a little long in the tooth now. ;P
The claim this dork I know made about running NT Server for better performance was that the GUI just felt "faster". He had the money to throw around too, so I think he was one of those fools easily separated from his money. Believe it or not, he actually thought that having NT Server on his desktop was a status symbol. When I moved to Linux, he kept telling me "You get what you pay for. You get what you pay for. You get what you pay for". Kind of like it was a mantra of his or something.
Personally, I think people like him are afflicted with a mental problem. He was this way in other situations too. In the early 90s he and his wife went out with an older couple that my wife knows. This older couple is pretty well off, but reasonable in their attitudes compared to most wealthy people. One time when we were hanging out with this older couple we put two and two together and figured out who they went out with. The whole time they were out, dorkboy and his wife desperately tried every trendy thing they could think of saying or doing to impress the older couple. Including the big 90s trend of smoking cigars. Imagining his wife (a dainty, prissy blonde) with a cigar in her mouth is just plain comical. We all had a laugh.
While I agree that Alphas were probably THE best platform out there, this is all very silly.
;P
Looking at the rest of this thread I have to say that the designation you give a machine should be based on the appication, not what the boneheads who market the OS call it.
PC (as in PERSONAL COMPUTER): You run home user type stuff: games, web browsing, e-mail, music and video, word processing
Workstation: You run business software (ugh) and productivity applications: web, e-mail, office suite, field specific applications like CAD/CAM, Video NLE, Audio NLE, MIDI composition software, Scientific applications. Typically a little more horsepower is needed because of the fiel specific apps.
Server: Backends. Basically, web servers, file servers, database servers, mail servers, groupware servers, application server (thin client really is the best model) etc... Users don't interact directly with the servers, they just work with the clients.
So screw what Microsoft has to say about it. If you run Windows XP Professional or Windows NT4 Workstation at home and use it for games, music, web and mail and never run field specific apps, then it's NOT workstation. I knew a jackass who used to run a Windows NT4 Server as his desktop. All he would do on it is play Quake. For some horribly retarded reason, he was under the delusion that it ran better than NT Workstation. If there really WAS a difference, then why was Microsoft so quick to keep people from hacking the registry to change Windows NT Workstation into Windows NT Server? Sorry... but that's just lame as hell. Just a couple flags in the registry of the OS maintains this illusion of a difference between the versions? Bah.
Anyway... the way I see it I have Linux running on all of my boxes. They all perform "server" functions of various types (ssh, nfs, etc...), but as far as I'm concerned, they are just thin clients based on how I use them (Remote VNC sessions with my application server). I have two machines on my network that I *DO* think of as servers because they do REAL server stuff. Both of them are Linux boxes. One does internal and external DNS, Samba (WINS, PDC), mail, web (internal and external), VPN. I don't run apps on it or play games on it It doesn't have sound capabilities or a GUI. The other box is my application server/file server. It also doesn't have a GUI on it but gdm spawns eight VNC servers for multiple GUI based remote logins. Think Windows Terminal server and you've got the idea. I do run apps on it like games, music, video, web, mail and office type stuff, but tht's what makes it an application server. Note the use of the word "SERVER". So, the designation of a machine has little to do with marketing and EVERYTHING to do with the role. Know your role!!!
As a longtime Atari ST user, I have a fondness for GEM. So much so that when I moved to the PC in 1994, I bought a used copy of GEM for DOS and ran with that baby for quite a while. Looking at that simple desktop (luckily the ST still was able to use the disk and trash can icon metaphor unlike GEM for DOS) and the simple fonts really takes me back to when computers were REALLY fun. All those old ST games, paint programs, and of course MIDI software and the demo scene. Sure the Amigas had slightly better graphics (duck) but you couldn't beat the ST for MIDI. And since I was a musician at the time, that's mostly what I used the ST for, everything else was just nice icing on a very sweet cake. I also used to subscribe to ST Format magazine and hav it shipped from the UK to the states. I looked forward to those cover disks every month. You never knew what was going to come next. Somehow, it seems the Brits know how to do cover discs. Even with last year's issues of Future Music, there's actually useful stuff on cover disks. Here in the states, all we get is crappy AOL CDs or shit game previews. Oh well... it's been a long time since I've bought print magazines on a regular basis. But sometimes you just mss the old days, when magazine were glossy and used dense paper covers and there was a floppy with an attractive game or two on it. Ahhh... the old days.
Ummmm... shouldn't that be RealMistake(tm)? ;)
...I can't stand TechTV. It's the biggest example of "armchair techie" pandering around. You can't watch TechTV and expect to learn anything from it that's of any use unless you're a typical home user or hobbyist. When I first got DirecTV, I was hoping that TechTV would be less consumer oriented and more technology oriented. But most of what they feature on their programming is very boring and old news. Then their non-technology programming blows pretty hard too. I mean, Thunderbirds? Come on! Why not feature good SciFi that is truly "geek worthy". Doctor Who comes to mind. Anyway.. I imagine TechTV will go from worse to hellish. Fortunately I don't watch much TV these days and I NEVER watch TechTV.
In the article, the author poses the question, what value would there be in sending humans into space. The answer is: slave labor. Where do you think Martha Stewart's corporate decendants are going to have all the crap to decorate their spaceships with made? ;P
Those days are already here, just look at John Ashcroft and his fear of evil, satanic cats and women's breasts. If we get another four years of Bush, we'll be deep into the dark ages for some time to come. Thanks to the Republican party, we don't need to work on time travel, they've already perfected going backwards.
Is that anything like "nasally fitted" fire? (Think HHGTTG here folks... it's funny, laugh, etc...)
No. Good guess though. ;P
Anyone who admits to using MS Paint for screenshots is a moron. If you are trapped in the MS world, at least use the "Print Screen" key and paste into GIMP. It's a hell of a lot more useful than MS Paint. This is assuming that you don't have the money to buy Photoshop or the unscrupulous nature to pirate it. I can't waste $600 on something just for screenshots and I will NEVER pirate software. Of course, I don't need to worry about that since I use Linux.
Of course, since Darl and his flying monkey lawyers haven't clue about what Linux is (they seem to imply that ALL free/open software is "Linux"). they WILL try to inject "their code" into any free software and then claim that it's theirs because it's Linux! Here's an open message to Darl:
Blow me.
...A Histroy of Evary GUI EVAR!!!!!1111!!!!!!
;P
Jeff K