I think if home users were more aware of licensing terms and restrictions, they would reject Windows and similar software. People don't treat licensing seriously, and I think that's going to change in the future -- I think with DRM and activation schemes becoming mroe prevalent, people will turn toward Free Software. I think GNU/Linux will end up right where it began -- as a social movement designed to make better software more available to everyone to use as they see fit.
I think if there is a Linux Revolution it is already happening in Europe and Asia, and eventually Africa will be there too. It'll take more DRM and product activation to really move the mainstream US toward GNU/Linux though.
After reading several TCO reports and even writing one myself, I've come to the conclusion that TCO is not something that one can make a sweeping generalization about.
Cost is one thing and convenience and time are another thing. Windows costs more than GNU/Linux is most cases, but no doubt someone somewhere can twist the numbers to make it look otherwise. Windows is less secure than GNU/Linux, but again -- someone, somewhere will come up with bullshit numbers or statistics or outright lies (Steve Ballmer!) to "prove" differently.
Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that. If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows.
Everyone has their own take on TCO and TBO (Total Benefit of Ownership) and anyone can make either "side" look like it "wins." Licensing costs and rights are undeniable though; that's one area that is not up for debate. What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...
Hmmm.... no, you weren't trolled, but you are trolling.
I have confidence in my reviews. If you have a problem with that, too bad. Maybe that's why you're a nameless coward on/. and not writing your own reviews?
Yeah, I'll have a very good review up later this week on The Jem Report, and I'll be testing in FreeBSD and GNU/Linux as well as Windows. I'll have some very interesting (possibly/.-worthy) things to write about if all of my testing goes as planned.
And... most importantly, I will be using retail product, not pre-release samples like all of the reviews posted above. That means you get the real review, not prototype results.
-Jem
Re:GNU/Linux, Windows, and refusing to support MS
on
Linux Going Mainstream
·
· Score: 2, Informative
No, they could also use Free/Open/NetBSD. Or Darwin x86, or Solaris x86, or FreeDOS. But GNU/Linux offers the best ease of use and ease of installation for a moderately experienced Windows user.
I don't even use GNU/Linux -- I use FreeBSD most of the time. But when I work on someone's computer, it's a community GNU/Linux distro or nothing. Occasionally I offer to put Windows on if they go out and buy the CD from the store, but that is never a viable option for them.
Sometimes this process involves switching people from AOL to a different ISP, usually broadband. I find that when people are fed up with Windows, this often coincides with being fed up with dialup Internet service as well.
I simply got sick of running over to other people's houses again and again to reinstall Windows for whatever reason. It's easier to just ask them what software they need, borrow their system and bring it back in a few days with everything they need on it. You're essentially turning an unsafe Windows system into an interactive Linux appliance. It doesn't take long to explain the basics to them, either, and I offer free support through the message forums on my website if they get stuck.
In the end it works out for everyone. The vast majority of home users only need good programs for email, the web, word processing, music and card games. If you can cut out the virus and security threats, popup ads, and crashes from someone's computing life, they'll be more than willing to deal with the temporary inconvenience of switching OSes.
You are, as you pointed out, free to do as you will. When I was younger I wanted to help and show off my computer knowledge to my friends and family, but now I just want them to stop bugging me with computer problems. GNU/Linux allows me to help them once and for all, and for free. As far as freedom is concerned, yes I'm making the choice of which distro to use... but the end-user is the one who chooses to go with me and Linux or someone else and Windows (again and again).
Want to convert someone? It's easy. Just remind them how many times you've fixed their computer and how many times you've reinstalled Windows with your CD and CD Key, which is illegal. Explain how it is illegal. Explain how GNU/Linux is free from such restrictions. Explain how Windows viruses and security threats don't affect GNU/Linux. Ask them what software they need or what they need their computer for. Then develop a solution... I suggest Ark Linux, Knoppix, Morphix, Gnoppix, and Fedora Core as potential distros to use. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's really just a fifteen minute conversation and if it is successful it'll save you a lot of headaches in the future.
-Jem
GNU/Linux, Windows, and refusing to support MS
on
Linux Going Mainstream
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
As with most people in the IT field I get a lot of requests for help from friends and family. It's almost never a hardware problem that they have -- it's always some virus or spyware program or some Windows corruption someplace. I found that I was reinstalling Windows every time I worked on someone's computer. And I was using my copies of Windows because they never had their own.
The first thing I want to know is, just how many people are using pirated copies of Windows? I don't even know one person who is now using a legitimate copy of Windows. Why pay when your pal can get it from work, or now from the net? How does this figure into the estimates of Windows domination and market share? Surely if you only counted legitimate, purchased and properly licensed copies of Windows, the home user market share would be drastically lower. Businesses are more or less forced by threat of litigation, fines, and raids, to be legitimate. That's why the first wave of GNU/Linux migration has been happening in the business sector. No matter how many bullshit Gartner studies "prove" that Windows has a lower TCO, it just doesn't. It costs more to buy, it costs more to maintain, and it costs more to upgrade.
I think the best thing that could happen to GNU/Linux right now is for Microsoft to crack down on home user piracy. Activation schemes are a step in the right direction. With more hassle, increased costs and the apparent (or at least, apparent to those who don't know how to get an activation crack) inability to get a copy from a friend, GNU/Linux will look like a much better choice to home users.
But back to my main point: service. I have continued to refuse to service a Windows machine unless it involves replacing the operating system with a Free alternative. Don't like it? Find someone else to do the work... but it'll cost more. I think if more people refused to work on Windows for friends and family, the death of Windows as a dominant desktop platform would be much more speedy.
Most open-source projects are now in the process of, or have completed AMD64 compatibility. I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on AMD64 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. I have a whole bunch of programs from the Ports system that work perfectly... the ones that aren't ported yet are the proprietary clones, like the Flash plugin, GAIM, and Java. Opera doesn't work in 64-bit mode yet either, neither does TextMaker.
I don't have any data on if they work any faster, but each program certainly compiles faster in 64-bit mode than in 32-bit mode. Noticeably faster. I have numbers to prove it, but I'm waiting to publish all my data in an article sometime soon.
Almost the entire FreeBSD ports tree works just fine on AMD64, although some programs have to be compiled with -fPIC.
OpenOffice doesn't work yet because Java doesn't compile yet, but this will be fixed very soon as Sun is working on porting Solaris and Java to AMD64 right now. KDE, GNOME, and all associated programs work just fine in FreeBSD/AMD64. Grip, XMMS, Mozilla, Evolution, Bluefish... they all work perfectly.
Someone said above that there are no good AMD64 OSes... bullshit... SuSE 9.0 AMD64 is more than usable, and FreeBSD 5.2 AMD64 is almost perfect; in fact I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE AMD64 right now.
Justin Walker's description of Darwin's heritage is:
Mac OS X began life as a child of OpenStep 4.x. The first stage in the evolution was the move from OpenStep 4.x to Rhapsody, which was based on BSD Lite2, with a batch of NeXT-instigated changes. When we shifted to Mac OS X from Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server, we incorporated FreeBSD 3.2 changes for the networking piece. The rest of the BSD portion of the kernel remained more or less as it was. At the same time, we (i.e., Fred, with your [Darwin's] help) pulled in command and library updates. Most of these are from FreeBSD, although I'm not positive about the heritage of the pieces that are now in the system.
Warm regards indeed; pleased to meet you and sorry about the troll comment.
I didn't just fall off of the silicon truck -- I've written reviews of Sun products before and I'm working on one more right now. I gave Sun several days to read the article before it was posted. This gives them a chance to correct any major mistakes that I might have made, and it also gives them a chance to respond if they feel I've been unfair. Then I wrote one last warning saying I was going to publish it if I hadn't heard back within another day.
I have a pretty good relationship with Sun, and I don't feel that the article was at all negative or unfair... and if they did, they had every opportunity to work with me to change anything biased or factually incorrect. And if they hated the review, why did they post it in their Press section? I don't think I've been unfair with them at all; it seems that they don't feel that way either.
In regards to the benchmarking tests, it was my guess that they only wanted to show that it was faster than the Blade 150 and didn't care about much else, or perhaps they didn't have anything to send me. Their primary target with the Blade 1500 is customers who already have a Blade 150. Benchmarking is just gravy anyway; I value a good review with a few pictures over a poor review with lots of graphs any day. That's what makes my site unique among review sites. Anyway, all that potential customers (readers, in other words) really want to know is that the Blade 1500 is twice as fast CPU-wise as the Blade 150 and there is no need to change software when upgrading. In the workstation market that's a tremendous value, even if it seems trivial to us desktop users.
Okay, I know this is feeding the trolls and such, but I knew this issue would come up.
I did ask Sun, not only for benchmarks that they used for testing, but at very least for results that they'd gotten from their SPEC benchmarks that everybody runs. I waited, re-requested and did not receive them.
The reason why SPEC ViewPerf wouldn't install was because of a problem with GCC that I couldn't figure out and couldn't get from Google. Since it wasn't an issue with Solaris 8 (well, sort of) and wasn't an issue with the hardware, I didn't publish anything that I couldn't verify personally. If you feel that's poor journalism then, quite frankly, you don't belong on the Internet.
The Blade 1500 has been for sale since November. It's completely unreasonable to assume that only I had access to it...
Well, at Sun they run Solaris on everything except for cross-platform testing and development. I'm kind of surprised that IBM would use anything other than what they're selling to their customers... especially since it would be cheaper to do that than to buy licenses from Microsoft, Sun, or someone else.
Okay so if his next film's "motifs" are CAT FOOD and IGNORANCE, which are equally favored by TV commercial producers and just as close to the human heart, does that mean that I need to kiss another $7.50 goodbye so that QT can smoke pot and screen crappy 70s B movies (which, I might add, are B movies because they suck) for his friends?
Kill Bill was not only the year's worst movie, it was humanity's worst movie. No matter what is produced in the future it cannot be worse than Kill Bill. It was an entire movie about violence with the most minimal plot that a movie can possibly have. What story there was didn't make any sense or provide any real motivation for the characters to do what they did.
Trying to describe the plot of Kill Bill actually makes it sound more interesting than it is on the screen. If you like watching people lose arms and legs and be impaled, dismembered and disembowled in strange and unusual ways then you need psychological help... Kill Bill was like a purposefully fake Faces Of Death without the pretense of reality.
I walked out of Kill Bill and I swore I would never walk out of a movie, ever. I didn't anticipate the level of shittiness that QT attained in Kill Bill. In fact, I'm going to invoice the bastard for the cost of my movie ticket.
I will never see another QT film again. Actually, I'll never see another Uma Thurman movie either. Oh yes, the movie is that bad...
You're missing the point, which is that you shouldn't have to buy a new iPod because you use a different OS. This is just the latest in a long line of examples of Apple's abandonment of their own hardware. Ignoring quality, compatibility, ease of use, price, value, and performance, the one and only reason why I think Apple really sucks is because they consistently pull shit like this with the iPod.
Nearly every new Power Mac uses a totally different architecture, forcing upgraders to buy not only a new OS but all new software as well. You're also locked into the Apple OS and expensive proprietary hardware (with a few exceptions). Apple has abandoned each batch of customers since the first PCs they created. If Windows has only one single advantage over the Macintosh OS, it is that it will work with all previous generations of x86 PCs back to the 386 -- and there are very, very few hardware devices that it does not work with. I'm no fan of Windows at all, and I hate Microsoft, but I'd buy Microsoft's crap forever if the only alternative were Apple.
Not true. The WMP browser plugin is used quite often for playing video clips and music. Wouldn't that be a disappointment if you couldn't watch your porn websites anymore?
Review samples, if they are pre-release prototypes, are always better than the finished products that you and I can buy in the store.
Time and time again I have seen erroneous reviews based on prototype samples, specifically: the Asus P4S8X review sampled buried the final retail editions in terms of performance and ATI video card compatibility. The Asus P4SDX had many more options in the review samples than the retail edition ended up with. The Intel E7205 chipset was also grossly overrated due to pre-release samples -- specifically the Gigabyte 8INXP, which got glowing reviews from Dufus Overclock on motherboards.org, and ended up having severe issues with ATI video cards (the 9700, specifically) among other performance and manufacturing problems that resulted in a poor-quality retail edition.
Video cards are notorious for having altered prototype samples and even altered prototype drivers.
You've got it backwards... this clown Paul Revered his paranoid Y2K delusions to the extent that businesses and individuals spent billions of dollars on upgrades that they didn't need and can't afford. The Y2K scare was arguably one of the things that caused the tech bubble to burst.
No critical systems were affected because at the time few critical services were computerized, and the ones that were did not have date-sensitive information or programs. The problem was real, but its significance was blown so out of proportion that it's almost comical looking back on it. Newspapers and TV news shows quoted people like de Jager as saying that nuclear weapons could be launched or power plants could blow up, etc. which is not only false but ridiculously impossible.
Never trust anyone who talks about his opinions in front of crowds for a living.
Peter de Jager? Why is he being linked to here, of all places? This is the same asshole who brought us the Y2K paranoia. I will never listen to anything this moron has to say ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if home users were more aware of licensing terms and restrictions, they would reject Windows and similar software. People don't treat licensing seriously, and I think that's going to change in the future -- I think with DRM and activation schemes becoming mroe prevalent, people will turn toward Free Software. I think GNU/Linux will end up right where it began -- as a social movement designed to make better software more available to everyone to use as they see fit.
I think if there is a Linux Revolution it is already happening in Europe and Asia, and eventually Africa will be there too. It'll take more DRM and product activation to really move the mainstream US toward GNU/Linux though.
-JemAfter reading several TCO reports and even writing one myself, I've come to the conclusion that TCO is not something that one can make a sweeping generalization about.
Cost is one thing and convenience and time are another thing. Windows costs more than GNU/Linux is most cases, but no doubt someone somewhere can twist the numbers to make it look otherwise. Windows is less secure than GNU/Linux, but again -- someone, somewhere will come up with bullshit numbers or statistics or outright lies (Steve Ballmer!) to "prove" differently.
Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that. If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows.
Everyone has their own take on TCO and TBO (Total Benefit of Ownership) and anyone can make either "side" look like it "wins." Licensing costs and rights are undeniable though; that's one area that is not up for debate. What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...
-JemHmmm.... no, you weren't trolled, but you are trolling.
I have confidence in my reviews. If you have a problem with that, too bad. Maybe that's why you're a nameless coward on /. and not writing your own reviews?
-JemYeah, I'll have a very good review up later this week on The Jem Report, and I'll be testing in FreeBSD and GNU/Linux as well as Windows. I'll have some very interesting (possibly /.-worthy) things to write about if all of my testing goes as planned.
And... most importantly, I will be using retail product, not pre-release samples like all of the reviews posted above. That means you get the real review, not prototype results.
-JemNo, they could also use Free/Open/NetBSD. Or Darwin x86, or Solaris x86, or FreeDOS. But GNU/Linux offers the best ease of use and ease of installation for a moderately experienced Windows user.
I don't even use GNU/Linux -- I use FreeBSD most of the time. But when I work on someone's computer, it's a community GNU/Linux distro or nothing. Occasionally I offer to put Windows on if they go out and buy the CD from the store, but that is never a viable option for them.
Sometimes this process involves switching people from AOL to a different ISP, usually broadband. I find that when people are fed up with Windows, this often coincides with being fed up with dialup Internet service as well.
I simply got sick of running over to other people's houses again and again to reinstall Windows for whatever reason. It's easier to just ask them what software they need, borrow their system and bring it back in a few days with everything they need on it. You're essentially turning an unsafe Windows system into an interactive Linux appliance. It doesn't take long to explain the basics to them, either, and I offer free support through the message forums on my website if they get stuck.
In the end it works out for everyone. The vast majority of home users only need good programs for email, the web, word processing, music and card games. If you can cut out the virus and security threats, popup ads, and crashes from someone's computing life, they'll be more than willing to deal with the temporary inconvenience of switching OSes.
You are, as you pointed out, free to do as you will. When I was younger I wanted to help and show off my computer knowledge to my friends and family, but now I just want them to stop bugging me with computer problems. GNU/Linux allows me to help them once and for all, and for free. As far as freedom is concerned, yes I'm making the choice of which distro to use... but the end-user is the one who chooses to go with me and Linux or someone else and Windows (again and again).
Want to convert someone? It's easy. Just remind them how many times you've fixed their computer and how many times you've reinstalled Windows with your CD and CD Key, which is illegal. Explain how it is illegal. Explain how GNU/Linux is free from such restrictions. Explain how Windows viruses and security threats don't affect GNU/Linux. Ask them what software they need or what they need their computer for. Then develop a solution... I suggest Ark Linux, Knoppix, Morphix, Gnoppix, and Fedora Core as potential distros to use. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's really just a fifteen minute conversation and if it is successful it'll save you a lot of headaches in the future.
-JemAs with most people in the IT field I get a lot of requests for help from friends and family. It's almost never a hardware problem that they have -- it's always some virus or spyware program or some Windows corruption someplace. I found that I was reinstalling Windows every time I worked on someone's computer. And I was using my copies of Windows because they never had their own.
The first thing I want to know is, just how many people are using pirated copies of Windows? I don't even know one person who is now using a legitimate copy of Windows. Why pay when your pal can get it from work, or now from the net? How does this figure into the estimates of Windows domination and market share? Surely if you only counted legitimate, purchased and properly licensed copies of Windows, the home user market share would be drastically lower. Businesses are more or less forced by threat of litigation, fines, and raids, to be legitimate. That's why the first wave of GNU/Linux migration has been happening in the business sector. No matter how many bullshit Gartner studies "prove" that Windows has a lower TCO, it just doesn't. It costs more to buy, it costs more to maintain, and it costs more to upgrade.
I think the best thing that could happen to GNU/Linux right now is for Microsoft to crack down on home user piracy. Activation schemes are a step in the right direction. With more hassle, increased costs and the apparent (or at least, apparent to those who don't know how to get an activation crack) inability to get a copy from a friend, GNU/Linux will look like a much better choice to home users.
But back to my main point: service. I have continued to refuse to service a Windows machine unless it involves replacing the operating system with a Free alternative. Don't like it? Find someone else to do the work... but it'll cost more. I think if more people refused to work on Windows for friends and family, the death of Windows as a dominant desktop platform would be much more speedy.
-JemMost open-source projects are now in the process of, or have completed AMD64 compatibility. I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on AMD64 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. I have a whole bunch of programs from the Ports system that work perfectly... the ones that aren't ported yet are the proprietary clones, like the Flash plugin, GAIM, and Java. Opera doesn't work in 64-bit mode yet either, neither does TextMaker.
-JemI don't have any data on if they work any faster, but each program certainly compiles faster in 64-bit mode than in 32-bit mode. Noticeably faster. I have numbers to prove it, but I'm waiting to publish all my data in an article sometime soon.
-JemAlmost the entire FreeBSD ports tree works just fine on AMD64, although some programs have to be compiled with -fPIC.
OpenOffice doesn't work yet because Java doesn't compile yet, but this will be fixed very soon as Sun is working on porting Solaris and Java to AMD64 right now. KDE, GNOME, and all associated programs work just fine in FreeBSD/AMD64. Grip, XMMS, Mozilla, Evolution, Bluefish... they all work perfectly.
-JemI wrote an AMD64 article a while ago... something a little simpler, for those not so technically-minded:
AMD 64 Explained
Someone said above that there are no good AMD64 OSes... bullshit... SuSE 9.0 AMD64 is more than usable, and FreeBSD 5.2 AMD64 is almost perfect; in fact I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE AMD64 right now.
-Jem
The ability to build Han Solo in carbonite out of legos is insignificant compared with the power of the Force.
The OpenDarwin FAQ is where my facts came from:
Justin Walker's description of Darwin's heritage is: Mac OS X began life as a child of OpenStep 4.x. The first stage in the evolution was the move from OpenStep 4.x to Rhapsody, which was based on BSD Lite2, with a batch of NeXT-instigated changes. When we shifted to Mac OS X from Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server, we incorporated FreeBSD 3.2 changes for the networking piece. The rest of the BSD portion of the kernel remained more or less as it was. At the same time, we (i.e., Fred, with your [Darwin's] help) pulled in command and library updates. Most of these are from FreeBSD, although I'm not positive about the heritage of the pieces that are now in the system.
-JemBetter reviews of keyboards and mice can be found here:
Keyboard reviews
Mouse reviews
-JemWarm regards indeed; pleased to meet you and sorry about the troll comment.
I didn't just fall off of the silicon truck -- I've written reviews of Sun products before and I'm working on one more right now. I gave Sun several days to read the article before it was posted. This gives them a chance to correct any major mistakes that I might have made, and it also gives them a chance to respond if they feel I've been unfair. Then I wrote one last warning saying I was going to publish it if I hadn't heard back within another day.
I have a pretty good relationship with Sun, and I don't feel that the article was at all negative or unfair... and if they did, they had every opportunity to work with me to change anything biased or factually incorrect. And if they hated the review, why did they post it in their Press section? I don't think I've been unfair with them at all; it seems that they don't feel that way either.
In regards to the benchmarking tests, it was my guess that they only wanted to show that it was faster than the Blade 150 and didn't care about much else, or perhaps they didn't have anything to send me. Their primary target with the Blade 1500 is customers who already have a Blade 150. Benchmarking is just gravy anyway; I value a good review with a few pictures over a poor review with lots of graphs any day. That's what makes my site unique among review sites. Anyway, all that potential customers (readers, in other words) really want to know is that the Blade 1500 is twice as fast CPU-wise as the Blade 150 and there is no need to change software when upgrading. In the workstation market that's a tremendous value, even if it seems trivial to us desktop users.
Okay, I know this is feeding the trolls and such, but I knew this issue would come up.
I did ask Sun, not only for benchmarks that they used for testing, but at very least for results that they'd gotten from their SPEC benchmarks that everybody runs. I waited, re-requested and did not receive them.
The reason why SPEC ViewPerf wouldn't install was because of a problem with GCC that I couldn't figure out and couldn't get from Google. Since it wasn't an issue with Solaris 8 (well, sort of) and wasn't an issue with the hardware, I didn't publish anything that I couldn't verify personally. If you feel that's poor journalism then, quite frankly, you don't belong on the Internet.
The Blade 1500 has been for sale since November. It's completely unreasonable to assume that only I had access to it...
-JemWell, at Sun they run Solaris on everything except for cross-platform testing and development. I'm kind of surprised that IBM would use anything other than what they're selling to their customers... especially since it would be cheaper to do that than to buy licenses from Microsoft, Sun, or someone else.
-JemOkay so if his next film's "motifs" are CAT FOOD and IGNORANCE, which are equally favored by TV commercial producers and just as close to the human heart, does that mean that I need to kiss another $7.50 goodbye so that QT can smoke pot and screen crappy 70s B movies (which, I might add, are B movies because they suck) for his friends?
-JemAre you JOKING?
Kill Bill was not only the year's worst movie, it was humanity's worst movie. No matter what is produced in the future it cannot be worse than Kill Bill. It was an entire movie about violence with the most minimal plot that a movie can possibly have. What story there was didn't make any sense or provide any real motivation for the characters to do what they did.
Trying to describe the plot of Kill Bill actually makes it sound more interesting than it is on the screen. If you like watching people lose arms and legs and be impaled, dismembered and disembowled in strange and unusual ways then you need psychological help... Kill Bill was like a purposefully fake Faces Of Death without the pretense of reality.
I walked out of Kill Bill and I swore I would never walk out of a movie, ever. I didn't anticipate the level of shittiness that QT attained in Kill Bill. In fact, I'm going to invoice the bastard for the cost of my movie ticket.
I will never see another QT film again. Actually, I'll never see another Uma Thurman movie either. Oh yes, the movie is that bad...
-JemYou're missing the point, which is that you shouldn't have to buy a new iPod because you use a different OS. This is just the latest in a long line of examples of Apple's abandonment of their own hardware. Ignoring quality, compatibility, ease of use, price, value, and performance, the one and only reason why I think Apple really sucks is because they consistently pull shit like this with the iPod.
Nearly every new Power Mac uses a totally different architecture, forcing upgraders to buy not only a new OS but all new software as well. You're also locked into the Apple OS and expensive proprietary hardware (with a few exceptions). Apple has abandoned each batch of customers since the first PCs they created. If Windows has only one single advantage over the Macintosh OS, it is that it will work with all previous generations of x86 PCs back to the 386 -- and there are very, very few hardware devices that it does not work with. I'm no fan of Windows at all, and I hate Microsoft, but I'd buy Microsoft's crap forever if the only alternative were Apple.
-JemEm... a friend told me.
-Jem
Not true. The WMP browser plugin is used quite often for playing video clips and music. Wouldn't that be a disappointment if you couldn't watch your porn websites anymore?
-Jem
Review samples, if they are pre-release prototypes, are always better than the finished products that you and I can buy in the store.
Time and time again I have seen erroneous reviews based on prototype samples, specifically: the Asus P4S8X review sampled buried the final retail editions in terms of performance and ATI video card compatibility. The Asus P4SDX had many more options in the review samples than the retail edition ended up with. The Intel E7205 chipset was also grossly overrated due to pre-release samples -- specifically the Gigabyte 8INXP, which got glowing reviews from Dufus Overclock on motherboards.org, and ended up having severe issues with ATI video cards (the 9700, specifically) among other performance and manufacturing problems that resulted in a poor-quality retail edition.
Video cards are notorious for having altered prototype samples and even altered prototype drivers.
-JemYou've got it backwards... this clown Paul Revered his paranoid Y2K delusions to the extent that businesses and individuals spent billions of dollars on upgrades that they didn't need and can't afford. The Y2K scare was arguably one of the things that caused the tech bubble to burst.
No critical systems were affected because at the time few critical services were computerized, and the ones that were did not have date-sensitive information or programs. The problem was real, but its significance was blown so out of proportion that it's almost comical looking back on it. Newspapers and TV news shows quoted people like de Jager as saying that nuclear weapons could be launched or power plants could blow up, etc. which is not only false but ridiculously impossible.
Never trust anyone who talks about his opinions in front of crowds for a living.
-JemPeter de Jager? Why is he being linked to here, of all places? This is the same asshole who brought us the Y2K paranoia. I will never listen to anything this moron has to say ever again.
-JemActually NetBSD is the furthest along in terms of AMD64 maturity -- not GNU/Linux. FreeBSD also has an AMD64 port in development.
-Jem