No kidding. Over the weekend I needed to get started on a new writing project. The thought of using Word was very unappealing. I was thinking about how I was always MORE PRODUCTIVE on the Macintosh than the PC. I even thought wistfully about my first word processing system on the Apple II+, Apple P.I.E..
What made all of those more productive was the fact that one did not worry a whole bunch about formatting. You were taught to get the content in, then to come back and make it pretty later. Now, you could do this with Word, but somehow one does not. There is something about all the buttons, the self corrections, and the bars across the top of the screen that just get in the way of "getting content in."
I even thought about writing the book I was thinking about in by blog, but that text editor is worse as HTML embedded in something you paste in becomes very unwieldy if you don't remember to paste into notepad first, then copy from Notepad into the blogspot editor.
WordStar, once you knew the speed keys, had a feature where you could make all the menus leave the screen and just type on a blank screen. Word use to have speed keys. Maybe they still do. On the Macintosh and in early versions of Word, they made sense. But then they started changing them and it no longer paid to pay attention to what they were. Developers had an interest in my learning to use the features that they thought were cool competitive advantages.
The weakness in Open Source is user support, however. If you're not a technical expert and post a question on the newsgroups, even after you've done half a day of research, you are apt to get the glib RTFM answer from some self-appointed expert whose self-esteem depends upon impugning those less technical or less clued in.
Not many people know, but there was once a UNIX version of Word, for those of us who did not care for WordPerfect. Any chance MS will dust off and release that product for Linux?
Some fingerprint readers use ultra sound to read the ridges inside the skin. Iris scan is probably a better biometric, anyway. It is based on 3D samples of the iris and the iris deteriates within seconds of death. Addition of a PIN pretty much makes the smark card unusable to others, anyway.
Interesting note that Juniper uses BSD for core servers. I'll bet their office users still do their mail and memo's with Microsoft products. But hold it, Juniper routers are ASIC-based devices, so what are these awesome servers?
Everytime I work with Cisco IOS I find myself wishing that Microsoft would buy Cisco and give us a useable user interface.
Am I a Windows Zealot? I was doing UNIX before Linux was around, and for the record put the first UNIX-like system into the Peace Corps: SCO Xenix with an Oracle database.
Last week I completed the train-the-trainers course for Windows Server 2003. Yes I still run BSD, but it's something of an afterthought as I'm mostly interested in how to manage UNIX from a Windows seat. Doing things the hard way is for people who *need* to do something to feel more macho, not for those who already are.
Seems to me that evaluating an individual OS on an individual machine for resistance to attacks is kind of the "little picture" approach. It's not a systems approach, to be sure. Individuals who use OS's connect them to ISP's who are increasingly vigilant. Why worry about protecting my own DNS servers when I can use Verizon's? Businesses do not buy an OS for its resistance to attacks if they know they've already paid the price to stop such attacks at the firewalls and routers.
It is interesting that rather than meet technical arguments head-on, this writer already labels those who might disagree with ad hominem attacks. Zealots? It issort of the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?
As for command line configurability, everything in W2K3 is configurable from the command prompt. The problem is that it is not as simple an OS as Linux, so you might have to do some real study and learning before you can figure out how to be that dangerous.
As for *secure* scripting, I sure do not want to install certificate authorities and do signed code on UNIX in any business I'm going to support.
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Over the weekend I needed to get started on a new writing project. The thought of using Word was very unappealing. I was thinking about how I was always MORE PRODUCTIVE on the Macintosh than the PC. I even thought wistfully about my first word processing system on the Apple II+, Apple P.I.E.. What made all of those more productive was the fact that one did not worry a whole bunch about formatting. You were taught to get the content in, then to come back and make it pretty later. Now, you could do this with Word, but somehow one does not. There is something about all the buttons, the self corrections, and the bars across the top of the screen that just get in the way of "getting content in." I even thought about writing the book I was thinking about in by blog, but that text editor is worse as HTML embedded in something you paste in becomes very unwieldy if you don't remember to paste into notepad first, then copy from Notepad into the blogspot editor. WordStar, once you knew the speed keys, had a feature where you could make all the menus leave the screen and just type on a blank screen. Word use to have speed keys. Maybe they still do. On the Macintosh and in early versions of Word, they made sense. But then they started changing them and it no longer paid to pay attention to what they were. Developers had an interest in my learning to use the features that they thought were cool competitive advantages. The weakness in Open Source is user support, however. If you're not a technical expert and post a question on the newsgroups, even after you've done half a day of research, you are apt to get the glib RTFM answer from some self-appointed expert whose self-esteem depends upon impugning those less technical or less clued in.
Not many people know, but there was once a UNIX version of Word, for those of us who did not care for WordPerfect. Any chance MS will dust off and release that product for Linux?
Some fingerprint readers use ultra sound to read the ridges inside the skin. Iris scan is probably a better biometric, anyway. It is based on 3D samples of the iris and the iris deteriates within seconds of death. Addition of a PIN pretty much makes the smark card unusable to others, anyway.
Interesting note that Juniper uses BSD for core servers. I'll bet their office users still do their mail and memo's with Microsoft products. But hold it, Juniper routers are ASIC-based devices, so what are these awesome servers? Everytime I work with Cisco IOS I find myself wishing that Microsoft would buy Cisco and give us a useable user interface. Am I a Windows Zealot? I was doing UNIX before Linux was around, and for the record put the first UNIX-like system into the Peace Corps: SCO Xenix with an Oracle database. Last week I completed the train-the-trainers course for Windows Server 2003. Yes I still run BSD, but it's something of an afterthought as I'm mostly interested in how to manage UNIX from a Windows seat. Doing things the hard way is for people who *need* to do something to feel more macho, not for those who already are. Seems to me that evaluating an individual OS on an individual machine for resistance to attacks is kind of the "little picture" approach. It's not a systems approach, to be sure. Individuals who use OS's connect them to ISP's who are increasingly vigilant. Why worry about protecting my own DNS servers when I can use Verizon's? Businesses do not buy an OS for its resistance to attacks if they know they've already paid the price to stop such attacks at the firewalls and routers. It is interesting that rather than meet technical arguments head-on, this writer already labels those who might disagree with ad hominem attacks. Zealots? It issort of the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? As for command line configurability, everything in W2K3 is configurable from the command prompt. The problem is that it is not as simple an OS as Linux, so you might have to do some real study and learning before you can figure out how to be that dangerous. As for *secure* scripting, I sure do not want to install certificate authorities and do signed code on UNIX in any business I'm going to support.