Just tried it on a whim--double-clicking the clock also brings up the calendar.
An entire week with Windows XP, and RobLimo never bothered to double-click the calendar? That's the most obvious thing to do. Something VERY fishy there.
I like that most of his article is about the initial setup of things instead of the actual week of usage of Windows XP. Entire sections devoted to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, when he abandoned those the first day anyway. What happened to the rest of the week?
Someone switched from Linux to Windows, so I'm going to just baselessly rule it out because I don't agree with anybody switching from Linux to Windows.
I'm going to shrug anything pro-Windows off as a "Microsoft press release," because that's the cliched and obvious thing to do. All Microsoft is evil and bad.
Rob's article was incredibly biased. His first complaint is about copying and pasting, which is simply a result of the fact he's used to the other method. No method is greater than the other.
Then he says Windows "ordered" him to download patches, and that it didn't tell him what they were or whether or not he could install them. This is COMPLETELY FALSE. Windows Update, whether in IE or in the system tray, allows you to view every patch. If it's the system tray app, it lets you uncheck any patch you don't want. If it's the website, you can click the button to remove it from installation.
Then he complains that Windows doesn't come with office productivity software, which is a little bizarre considering you know he'd be bitching about Microsoft and their monopolistic practice of including an office suite. They're damned either way.
He mentioned installing mIRC didn't require a root password, and goes on to mention spyware problems. Of course, his account is set up with administrator privileges, and if he was set to a limited account, he could prevent installation and so forth. The standard Slashdot argument against this is that installation should ask you to do this by default, but since we're dealing with RobLimo the Suse Linux user, you'd think that'd be the first thing he do anyway due to Linux experience with managing user accounts. But, of course, now it is a "security risk."
Then his complaints are with mIRC and his inability to uncheck the dialog box so it stops popping up. At this point, I stared at the screen with my jaw dropped. Was RobLimo purposely being stupid? I've used xchat and mIRC, and mIRC wins hands-down as an IRC client. Even if you don't like mIRC, it's so customizable you can create your own IRC client using its scripting capabilities. xchat is godawful, interface-wise and customizability-wise.
But, again, that has nothing to do with Windows. In fact, xchat for Windows works just fine (and retains the ugly-ass GTK widgets), so RobLimo should have stuck with it, but he needed something to complain about, right?
He rightfully complains about Internet Explorer, but then waits four hours before bothering to get Mozilla (Opera is the best one anyway, just not free). He just needed to bitch about Internet Explorer for a paragraph, when most Linux users switching to Windows wouldn't bother with IE to begin with. He's purposely dumbing down his using experience to complain about Windows.
He does the same for Outlook Express. Why would he use Outlook Express if he just downloaded Mozilla? Again, he's purposely dumbing down his using experience to have more complaints. His spam comments don't even affect me since I use Outlook 2003 which has great built-in junk mail filtering.
Windows Messenger is easy to disable from starting up. Especially for an advanced Linux user like RobLimo. Another biased complaint.
Apparently, RobLimo's only slowdown problem is CTRL-C and CTRL-V. Of course, for Windows users, those are incredibly fast shortcuts for them. I use them all the time. If this is all he can offer alongside pointless IE/OE bitching, there is no other point for his article than to be Windows flamebait. In fact, I find it amusing he complains about the copy/paste shortcuts and ignores the fact that Linux can barely copy/paste anything between apps. With Windows, it's almost sickening what you can play around with and copy between apps. But that never gets mentioned. In fact, there are no real positives mentioned.
RobLimo vaguely mentions "slowdowns" and "idle time" problems. Huh? Nice specifics, there. I've experienced weird little quirks in all Linux distributions as well. I chalked it up to cache flushes, swap space, whatever. Since RobLimo never, ever mentions what exactly he's talking about, we'll never know what he meant.
Then he goes on to mention "little specialty programs" that he would have to pay for on Windows, which, of course is false. There is tons of freeware for Windows,
Business codes to make money, and their money comes from users. Therefore, they code for users so that users give them money. Businesses code for users.
The result of that fundamental difference is that OSS codes selfishly, while business codes for the user. Hence, the hellish experience that is the Linux desktop world.
In that sense, IE has failed as both a user experience and as a business strategy. However, it is still most-used because alternatives like Mozilla or Firebird (both extremely slow and bloated) and Opera (actually costs money) aren't as freely accessible.
I had always used Mozilla or Firebird, switching back and forth. I went to Firebird hoping for efficiency and a speed increase and got none, and switched back to Mozilla to make up for missing features in Firebird, and back and forth.
Then, on a whim, I FINALLY tried Opera. I was blown away. It started up instantly. I checked the memory footprint and noted that it was 1/5 that of Mozilla, and I had 14 pages open! The interface was much more customizable, and switching themes, amazing me the most, took less than a second. No restart. Just immediate new theme.
I don't know why anyone would use Mozilla over Opera. Mozilla is incredibly slow and a resource hog. Opera is blazingly fast and doesn't eat up all my memory. I'm really curious how they did it. Check it out.
Five years ago, Slashbots bitched when IE was the best browser out there and yet was being included with Windows. Five years later, Slashbots bitch that Microsoft hasn't improved on that browser.
I installed several distributions in the 2.4 series, and at least a dozen different kernel releases, and never saw, experienced or heard about any file system corruption due to the kernel. Then again, most intellegent people don't load the freshest kernel on a production machine.
Then you weren't paying attention. 2.4.x was a complete wreck, and everyone complained. I still remember the infamous Thanksgiving "turkey" kernel that randomly corrupted ext3 partitions.
The base definition of an operating system is the kernel running it, dummy. Linux is the system operating my devices and letting me operate my computer.
Windows also has permissions. Every single Windows network I've ever run or worked with operated the same way.
Another "GNU/Linux" weenie. Here's the part where someone mods me down instead of posting in disagreement.
Look at all the twisting and turning you make to justify the double standard.
Face it. All the Linux users will freely ignore and disregard corrupting kernel releases. If Microsoft even dared do something like corrupting everyone's NTFS installations, they'd be eaten alive by hundreds of fanatical posts here.
User-transmitted e-mail virusses? That's called a trojan horse.
A trojan horse is a program that sits in waiting until a specified condition, dummy.
Microsoft's operating system and Microsoft's browser -- depend on bugs and design in Microsoft's software and that's squarely their responsibility (e.g. why is RPC even listening to anything but localhost by default? If you needed it to listen to the entire internet, you'd know and could change the default).
Sobig required the user to execute it. If they're executing an app, there's not much you can do.
But, of course, you'll perpetuate the double standard, because it's a "Microsoft hole," right?
Besides, those crappy kernels you mention haven't affected me one bit.
And those Windows problems have never, ever affected me.
Whereas I've spent quite some time getting people to install patches, firewalls, and remove those darned worms.
They should have already been patched. RPC was fixed a whole month before through Windows Update.
Some people may have a certain amount of unfounded (or at least, not founded in technical fact) animosity towards Microsoft, but let's face it, most mature open source software we rely on is much, much more secure, stable and well-designed than MS Outlook and its ilk.
It's all much, much less full of features, usable, or even efficient. Might I also mention taking a look at my sig and seeing that OSS is just as full of bugs as Microsoft? Need I mention the "Linux Most Attacked OS" article Slashdot posted that linked to a study showing Linux as the most breached server on the net? Need I mention ssh/ssl? Bind? Sendmail? I could go on and on...
More hypocrisy, like before. Linux can put out several filesystem corrupting kernel releases and major showstoppers as in the 2.4.x series, but if a user-transmitted e-mail virus makes the rounds, it's a "Microsoft hole."
I don't know, since BSODs are a thing of the 90s, and most Slashbots are stuck in the last decade as they use a BSOD as their only desperate attack against a Windows world that moved on four years ago.
No, it's not. It was introduced with XP and manages DLL versioning to forever eliminate DLL dependency hell (something the Linux experience still forces on its users to this day).
Windows File Protection, themes, much better hardware support, wider application compatibility, great laptop support (Win2k refuses to run correctly on my laptop), built-in media support, System Restore, and much more.
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Just tried it on a whim--double-clicking the clock also brings up the calendar.
An entire week with Windows XP, and RobLimo never bothered to double-click the calendar? That's the most obvious thing to do. Something VERY fishy there.
I like that most of his article is about the initial setup of things instead of the actual week of usage of Windows XP. Entire sections devoted to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, when he abandoned those the first day anyway. What happened to the rest of the week?
Just curious.
In other words, your post reads as...
Someone switched from Linux to Windows, so I'm going to just baselessly rule it out because I don't agree with anybody switching from Linux to Windows.
I'm going to shrug anything pro-Windows off as a "Microsoft press release," because that's the cliched and obvious thing to do. All Microsoft is evil and bad.
Rob's article was incredibly biased. His first complaint is about copying and pasting, which is simply a result of the fact he's used to the other method. No method is greater than the other.
Then he says Windows "ordered" him to download patches, and that it didn't tell him what they were or whether or not he could install them. This is COMPLETELY FALSE. Windows Update, whether in IE or in the system tray, allows you to view every patch. If it's the system tray app, it lets you uncheck any patch you don't want. If it's the website, you can click the button to remove it from installation.
Then he complains that Windows doesn't come with office productivity software, which is a little bizarre considering you know he'd be bitching about Microsoft and their monopolistic practice of including an office suite. They're damned either way.
He mentioned installing mIRC didn't require a root password, and goes on to mention spyware problems. Of course, his account is set up with administrator privileges, and if he was set to a limited account, he could prevent installation and so forth. The standard Slashdot argument against this is that installation should ask you to do this by default, but since we're dealing with RobLimo the Suse Linux user, you'd think that'd be the first thing he do anyway due to Linux experience with managing user accounts. But, of course, now it is a "security risk."
Then his complaints are with mIRC and his inability to uncheck the dialog box so it stops popping up. At this point, I stared at the screen with my jaw dropped. Was RobLimo purposely being stupid? I've used xchat and mIRC, and mIRC wins hands-down as an IRC client. Even if you don't like mIRC, it's so customizable you can create your own IRC client using its scripting capabilities. xchat is godawful, interface-wise and customizability-wise.
But, again, that has nothing to do with Windows. In fact, xchat for Windows works just fine (and retains the ugly-ass GTK widgets), so RobLimo should have stuck with it, but he needed something to complain about, right?
He rightfully complains about Internet Explorer, but then waits four hours before bothering to get Mozilla (Opera is the best one anyway, just not free). He just needed to bitch about Internet Explorer for a paragraph, when most Linux users switching to Windows wouldn't bother with IE to begin with. He's purposely dumbing down his using experience to complain about Windows.
He does the same for Outlook Express. Why would he use Outlook Express if he just downloaded Mozilla? Again, he's purposely dumbing down his using experience to have more complaints. His spam comments don't even affect me since I use Outlook 2003 which has great built-in junk mail filtering.
Windows Messenger is easy to disable from starting up. Especially for an advanced Linux user like RobLimo. Another biased complaint.
Apparently, RobLimo's only slowdown problem is CTRL-C and CTRL-V. Of course, for Windows users, those are incredibly fast shortcuts for them. I use them all the time. If this is all he can offer alongside pointless IE/OE bitching, there is no other point for his article than to be Windows flamebait. In fact, I find it amusing he complains about the copy/paste shortcuts and ignores the fact that Linux can barely copy/paste anything between apps. With Windows, it's almost sickening what you can play around with and copy between apps. But that never gets mentioned. In fact, there are no real positives mentioned.
RobLimo vaguely mentions "slowdowns" and "idle time" problems. Huh? Nice specifics, there. I've experienced weird little quirks in all Linux distributions as well. I chalked it up to cache flushes, swap space, whatever. Since RobLimo never, ever mentions what exactly he's talking about, we'll never know what he meant.
Then he goes on to mention "little specialty programs" that he would have to pay for on Windows, which, of course is false. There is tons of freeware for Windows,
Bzzt. Nice try.
Business codes to make money, and their money comes from users. Therefore, they code for users so that users give them money. Businesses code for users.
Next.
The result of that fundamental difference is that OSS codes selfishly, while business codes for the user. Hence, the hellish experience that is the Linux desktop world.
In that sense, IE has failed as both a user experience and as a business strategy. However, it is still most-used because alternatives like Mozilla or Firebird (both extremely slow and bloated) and Opera (actually costs money) aren't as freely accessible.
Opera recently put out version 7.2.
I had always used Mozilla or Firebird, switching back and forth. I went to Firebird hoping for efficiency and a speed increase and got none, and switched back to Mozilla to make up for missing features in Firebird, and back and forth.
Then, on a whim, I FINALLY tried Opera. I was blown away. It started up instantly. I checked the memory footprint and noted that it was 1/5 that of Mozilla, and I had 14 pages open! The interface was much more customizable, and switching themes, amazing me the most, took less than a second. No restart. Just immediate new theme.
I don't know why anyone would use Mozilla over Opera. Mozilla is incredibly slow and a resource hog. Opera is blazingly fast and doesn't eat up all my memory. I'm really curious how they did it. Check it out.
Sigh. You do know he never said that about 640kb, don't you? It's an urban myth.
It wouldn't have mattered if he had said it, anyway. In 1982, 640kb WAS enough for anybody.
Five years ago, Slashbots bitched when IE was the best browser out there and yet was being included with Windows. Five years later, Slashbots bitch that Microsoft hasn't improved on that browser.
Slashbots just love to bitch at Microsoft.
While a lot of slashdot readers probably don't use IE as a main browser
CmdrTaco always mentions that the vast majority of Slashdot users are through IE.
If chess was "purely mathematical" then there would exhist an optimal solution(s).
It's called fuzzy logic.
The universe is really shaped like a genuine Red Ryder 200-shot Combine Action Air Rifle.
Kind of like how Windows had done with every service pack since Windows Update was first put in place?
So you'd rather use an operating system that won't even use your sound card instead of assigning some IRQ values in Device Manager. Nice.
Everyone says it should, but I saw no difference at all.
I installed several distributions in the 2.4 series, and at least a dozen different kernel releases, and never saw, experienced or heard about any file system corruption due to the kernel. Then again, most intellegent people don't load the freshest kernel on a production machine.
Then you weren't paying attention. 2.4.x was a complete wreck, and everyone complained. I still remember the infamous Thanksgiving "turkey" kernel that randomly corrupted ext3 partitions.
The base definition of an operating system is the kernel running it, dummy. Linux is the system operating my devices and letting me operate my computer.
Windows also has permissions. Every single Windows network I've ever run or worked with operated the same way.
Another "GNU/Linux" weenie. Here's the part where someone mods me down instead of posting in disagreement.
Look at all the twisting and turning you make to justify the double standard.
Face it. All the Linux users will freely ignore and disregard corrupting kernel releases. If Microsoft even dared do something like corrupting everyone's NTFS installations, they'd be eaten alive by hundreds of fanatical posts here.
User-transmitted e-mail virusses? That's called a trojan horse.
A trojan horse is a program that sits in waiting until a specified condition, dummy.
Microsoft's operating system and Microsoft's browser -- depend on bugs and design in Microsoft's software and that's squarely their responsibility (e.g. why is RPC even listening to anything but localhost by default? If you needed it to listen to the entire internet, you'd know and could change the default).
Sobig required the user to execute it. If they're executing an app, there's not much you can do.
But, of course, you'll perpetuate the double standard, because it's a "Microsoft hole," right?
Besides, those crappy kernels you mention haven't affected me one bit.
And those Windows problems have never, ever affected me.
Whereas I've spent quite some time getting people to install patches, firewalls, and remove those darned worms.
They should have already been patched. RPC was fixed a whole month before through Windows Update.
Some people may have a certain amount of unfounded (or at least, not founded in technical fact) animosity towards Microsoft, but let's face it, most mature open source software we rely on is much, much more secure, stable and well-designed than MS Outlook and its ilk.
It's all much, much less full of features, usable, or even efficient. Might I also mention taking a look at my sig and seeing that OSS is just as full of bugs as Microsoft? Need I mention the "Linux Most Attacked OS" article Slashdot posted that linked to a study showing Linux as the most breached server on the net? Need I mention ssh/ssl? Bind? Sendmail? I could go on and on...
Cool, sounds precisely like a driver corruption issue you need to sort out.
I won't even get into the hell that has been setting up X for the past ten years, no matter the distribution or video card.
...except that the patch is already available anyway.
Next.
More hypocrisy, like before. Linux can put out several filesystem corrupting kernel releases and major showstoppers as in the 2.4.x series, but if a user-transmitted e-mail virus makes the rounds, it's a "Microsoft hole."
I don't know, since BSODs are a thing of the 90s, and most Slashbots are stuck in the last decade as they use a BSOD as their only desperate attack against a Windows world that moved on four years ago.
Nice refuting of the points. The grandparent post had no humor whatsoever.
WFP is a Win2k feature, actually.
No, it's not. It was introduced with XP and manages DLL versioning to forever eliminate DLL dependency hell (something the Linux experience still forces on its users to this day).
What does that have to do with anything at all? XP is based off of 2k, so of course it's a point release.
Are you saying there isn't a significant difference between kernels 2.4 and 2.5 as well?
Wow. An entire article and subsequent discussion devoted to a single tiny patent feature everyone thinks already existed.
But it's Microsoft. Need the page hits.
Windows File Protection, themes, much better hardware support, wider application compatibility, great laptop support (Win2k refuses to run correctly on my laptop), built-in media support, System Restore, and much more.
Yep. Upgrade.