Try WINE. If it's the same app I'm thinking it is (ExamView 4) then it'll run just fine. I use it to generate and host exams for the classes I teach just fine. I was thinking of writing a replacement in TCL as a side project. I have run it under FreeBSD and OSX this way. I'd love the native mac version of ExamView but the school refuses to pay for it and I'm pretty broke.
For fairly basic typical win32 apps, I've had really good luck with WINE lately.
building infrastructure like decent roads and water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa (and enabling basic economic development and human welfare)
And why should sub-Saharan Africa be improved with AMERICAN tax dollars? I'm pretty sure they have the capability to make their own asphalt. But if we subsidize it all for them, maybe even their own SPACESHIP!! WHOA!!!
Most Americans (native or not) didn't have decent roads or sparkly filtered treated water for quite a while yet we are far from extinct. We even had successful trade going on back then. Doctors, though less enlightened than today, were still around. Let those people stand on their own two feet. Let nature run its course, they'll either figure it out or they won't.
Personally, and I think most Americans stand with me on this, I value space travel a HELL of a lot more than I value some little third world nation's "progress". F**k 'em.
or replacing high-pressure sodium streetlamps with LEDs (decreasing inner-city suicide risks, saving power, reducing emissions associated with that power)
Oh please.... gimme a break. Since when is it the government OR the people's job to pay for expensive special lighting to reduce unproven "suicide risk". It's not the government's job to protect people from themselves. It's not your job either. Or mine. The emissions are really not all that awful.
LED's are not exactly non-toxic when disposed of either. They are also very expensive which would eat any short term energy savings and possibly long-term depending on how expensive an LED array of that magnitude would be.
Wanna reduce harmful emissions by quite a bit? The solution was found over 50 years ago. Nuclear. Not solar, not wind, not pixie farts. Nuclear. Producing enough solar cells to match a nuke plant would probably cast MUCH more nasty waste into the environment than the nuke plant does in its operational lifetime.
or filtering the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any of millions of other priorities.
That's a worthy cause but one I put below manned spaceflight. We need much further progress before things become cheap in this regard. If it's put off, it will never happen.
I would hazard a guess that garbage patch already has more tax dollars associated with it than the school systems in my state.
If near-to-intermediate-term space travel development for the next few centuries really had a shadow of a chance of insuring us against the catastrophe of extinction as a species, then things would be different,
Uhhhh.... it does. There's an awful lot of unwatched space out there and observatories losing funding by the minute.
and that would be a premium I'd be willing to support, but I don't think it makes sense today. If attempting to develop space travel were actually bringing about significant development of new technologies useful elsewhere - in excess of those which would occur were the money spent elsewhere, that could defray the costs, but NASA's track record, especially in recent years, is not all that spectacular, as has been noted in TFA. So why not pull the plug? Emotional reasons, mostly, I imagine...
We can't discover much if we aren't there to experiment now can we? I'm not saying NASA has a good rep. Pulling the plug is not the answer, gutting the bureaucracy, rebuilding and letting the scientists do their job is the answer. Eliminating Cost+ contracts is another part of the equation. Make Boeing and friends compete for business just like the new kids on the block.
I'd say let them reimburse you for the laptop, then take the $1250 and grab another one (or a really nice netbook and pocket the change) for personal use. If you leave the company and they ask for the laptop, oh well. If they don't, you have an extra laptop. If you insist on having personal data on a machine used for work, then use truecrypt for your personal files.
A netbook wouldn't add much weight to your bag either.
That's my opinion. I'm stuck using my personal laptop as my employer won't cover one but they know damn well it's mine (along with any of my personal pet projects) and any attempt to steal my personal work through litigation may result in health complications.
I installed Snow Leopard on my Early 2009 Macbook and so far I'm pretty impressed.
Same basic interface with some minor tweaks.
The Cocoa-based Finder kicks ass. No more weird hangs when I have mounted shares and lose connectivity or anything like that. It's much more responsive and snappy than the old Carbon finder. This alone is worth $30.
GrandCentral and OpenCL look really interesting, I haven't dug into it much yet but several Apple apps already use them (at least GrandCentral).
Overall my machine seems quite a bit more responsive than with 10.5 and my GeekBench scores are a little higher. The only App which the upgrade broke was an old-ass version of OmniFocus. Office, CS4, etc all work just fine.
Any bugs I've encountered have all been very minor. It really is a worthwhile upgrade. I've been running 10A432 for over a week now with no problems.
As long as she didn't break in somewhere or anything, public records are fair game. Stalking laws are BS, try to invoke one against a law enforcement officer. You'll be laughed out of court even if it was done with no warrant or real probable cause. Follow a cop for a few minutes and suddenly you're a criminal.
Where do people go who can't afford private healthcare?
The emergency room, mostly. Of course, they'll still be billed, and if they can't pay, the hospital tries to recoup these losses by charging all the other patients more. Since that's more difficult if the patient actually has health insurance (due to contracts/agreements with the insurance provider), they'll mostly do that to anyone who's uninsured.
Here in South Carolina they will not only bill you and trash your credit, they get the state department of revenue to act as their collection agency and take your tax returns. They also have the power to seize property. It gets treated like a tax debt.
It's insane, I've had it happen to me a few times and it's drowning me because there's nothing I can do about it.
I was in a car accident, was seen for 5 minutes in the ER, waited 4 hours to be seen with visible burns and bleeding, and was then billed for well over $5,000 for a single X-Ray and a cheap disposable set of crutches. My wife had a relatively simple hernia surgery and that rang in at a little over $10,000. My credit is trashed and the State Department of Revenue consistently harasses us.
If the answer is "nowhere", how can that system possibly work?
It doesn't. Only an ER will see you and they will charge 10x what the visit is worth and generally treat you like s**t if you are uninsured. They will write you prescriptions but there's no assistance in getting them filled unless you fall under the cap for medicaid which is rediculously low.
Basically, if you're lower middle class in the US, you are f**ked. The poor and those who scam the system get free healthcare. Those making more than $40,000/yr can afford family coverage. Making between 30 and 40 grand? Nobody gives a rats ass about you and treats you worse than the poor.
Family coverage with my employer would cost $1200/mo for my family here.
It sounds like your healthcare system needs fixing,
You think? In my opinion, socialized medicine isn't the way to go. I think medical insurance should be outlawed. That will force doctors and hospitals to compete for business and lower prices. They won't be able to live off of the top 1% that can afford to pay out of pocket.
If you want to have a free market, have a free market with just enough rules to make things fair for consumers and companies alike and keep government intervention to a minimum. A drastic takeover is not the answer, our government turns anything it has complete control of into crap.
I'm a libertarian but I don't believe in stripping away EVERYTHING and letting everyone fend for themselves like some of the wacko ultraminimalist guys. The government needs to secure the rights of the people, I think healthcare is one of those rights so a little regulation is warranted when those rights are stepped on.
I hope that you are also an expert in fixing... cars, plumbing, roofs, TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines; all of which I garauntee will break down at some point if your life.
If you can be a competent, knowledgeable PC hardware tech (a real one who actually understands how the hardware works, not just how to swap a dead part).... basic car repair, basic plumbing, TV repair and washing machines shouldn't be a big problem. I can pull off all of them unless the broken pipe happens to be under solid concrete or something. I could replace the compressor in my fridge if need be as well.
With a little intelligence and half a clue, most of those things you mentioned are actually rather easy. Especially the washing machine. Roofing can be tough though and in SC, it's worth the money to not suffer 110 degree F temps on the roof to try to save a few bucks.
Would I want to port and polish the heads in my car or attempt to supercharge it at home? No.... but I can damn sure replace a serpentine belt, alternator, water pump, radiator, EGR valve, etc.
My motto is if I don't understand how it works in at least a basic sense... I probably shouldn't own it. Would you give a Ford Mustang to a 16 yr old that didn't have a license and tell him to have fun? Then why would you give someone who is totally computer illiterate a computer with no training?
him, he has made a important contribution to the computing industry: Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.
Yeah, let's forget about the fact that several companies had vastly superior GUI-based environments back in the 80's before Windows 3.0 was ever released. And they were much more fluid and easier to use. In most cases, an Atari ST was much cheaper than any comparable PC of the time.
Apple - MacOS Atari and Digital Research - GEM Commodore - AmigaOS Workbench NeXT - NeXTStep and OpenStep (cool but pricy)
And if we aren't talking about GUI-based environments, the Apple II predates the PC and was cheaper and just as capable. Atari had the Atari 800-series and various other 8-bit machines. Commodore had the Commodore 64.
Microsoft brought a subpar desktop computing experience to people who were duped into thinking there was no way IBM could produce a piece of crap machine. Microsoft simply hung on to IBM's coat tails because they knew the PC would sell because it had an IBM logo on it.
Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1? Do you think that if computers still consisted on thin-client-server models based on huge VAX mainframes,
You seem to know nothing of DEC machines. They had VAX desktops in the 80's but they were expensive. You also seem to have missed the whole home computing scene that existed on low cost 8, 16 and 32-bit micros. Most VAX machines were not mainframes, they were minicomputers. The DEC PDP10 and IBM System 370 were mainframes. What you have on your desk is a microcomputer. Time for you to go back to school.
that Joe and Jane Smith would be able to dial-in to AOL and connect to thousands of people around the world? Would the Internet have blossomed into the vast information network it is today without the aid of easy-to-use software from Microsoft? How about Grandma who wants to set up a webcam so she can chat with her grandchildren?
I was dialing BBS's on my Atari 8-bit as a kid. In fact, my grandmother was dialing community church BBS's on her Atari ST we got her back in the day.
And grandma isn't even capable of setting up a webcam under Windows XP. She'd have to get YOU to do it. If she can set it up under Winblows, she can do it much easier under OS X. In fact, I think the mac mini is the ONLY machine to not come with an integrated webcam these days.
modern computing has been made easy and affordable to everyone, thanks to pioneers like Bill Gates.
It was quite affordable with the right products before Windows ever existed. You just didn't have $200 unreliable bargain basement IBM PC clones that come stock with plenty of adware.
You sir, need a clue. I suggest doing some research before opening your mouth in the future.
I doubt that XBOX version of IL2 will let you tweak response curves by hand or let you have multiple input devices like rudder pedals and a joystick.
Those multihead hacks for grand turismo are cute but unsupported for other games and require too much equipment. And I can't imagine the latency is low over ethernet for that GT4 hack either.
Consoles are cool but are no replacement for a good PC. And they never will be. Try setting up head tracking and stereoscopic video on that IL2 port for the XBOX 360 for example.
I'm getting a little sick of hearing "we know the linux nvidia drivers suck compared to the windows drivers.... besides, you should just get a console."
I'm not saying consoles aren't cool, they are great but they are just not a PC replacement. And if you don't think you get a "dumbed down" gaming experience on them you aren't paying attention.
I'd much rather swap a disk when it dies then go through a long and painful restore process from tape or a network. Disks fail.... a lot. Especially cheaper SATA and IDE drives.
Anyone that says "HDD's are reliable, RAID is useless, just use a backup device" needs their head checked. You need RAID AND A DECENT BACKUP.
RAID won't save you from yourself or OS bugs but it is far from useless. I would not trust a single HDD with my data. I also would not trust myself to keep an impeccable backup schedule where I back things up several times a day so without RAID if a drive dies I WILL lose data. Not a heck of a lot but I'm going to lose SOMETHING.
On another note, maybe I should take a look at Time Machine in OSX.
Now another thing about consoles. Try playing a realistic flight or space sim on them. You'll run out of buttons real quick. Consoles are USELESS when it comes to realistic sims. Especially something like IL2 Sturmovik.
Consoles are neat but with the limited controllers and little room for expansion when it comes to things like flightsticks and rudder pedals and such they just don't interest me much.
Plug 3 video cards into a console.... can't do that either. Multihead gaming.... also cool for sims. How about stereoscopic video for true 3D? Well... last I checked the PS3 and XBOX 360 can't do that either. While the average 12 yr old may not be interested, mommy can't afford it or they can't fit 3 displays in their living room, these technologies interest ME.
I don't want my game experience dumbed down so they can make a few more sales to 12 year old kids. THAT is the problem with consoles.
I had an Atari ST and used to make similar arguments. The ST was pretty cool as well. The simple fact is.... nobody really cares.
Maybe if they came back and made an Amiga covered in chrome with an 8" exhaust tip and some "No Fear" stickers, people would give a crap. Throw in some buzzwords like "Multitouch" and you'll have a winner. It's not technological marvels and engineering that sells computers, it's marketing departments and sales monkeys.
The fact that Windows 2000/XP is on near everyone's desktop despite being riddled with flaws in nearly every OS component over the years should be blatant evidence.
You must be really young and don't remember the earlier macs "when they came out". Either that or you jumped into computing late in the game hoping to get rich quick. In case you are braindead, macs have been around since 1984.
You're thinking of a couple of models of Performa/Centris (i.e. Centris 610) and possibly the PowerMac 6100 (first PowerPC mac). The Centris 610 had a 68040 though it may have had the FPU-less crippled 68LC040, I can't remember.
Anyway, a power button on the front was NOT a common mac trait.
Yeah, totally. We should like burn the Wright Flyer and close the Smithsonian too. They're like boring and old and stuff. Then we can go get some Brawndo.
You really are a tarded aren't you? Thought about being a pilot?
There's a bunch of asteroids containing mercury floating around the solar system. If one of them hits, imagine the environmental catastrophe! We gotta ban asteroids right now!
Environazis can twist stats to no end to make anyone look evil. Coal is crap anyway, "clean coal" is a joke, the only REAL workable solution is nuclear power and waste reprocessing for nuke plants.
Too bad the cold war and cheesy 50's/60's sci-fi kinda killed it. I'd love to be driving around a car with 1500bhp powered by a few uranium marbles that only needs to be refueled every decade or two.
A scaled down pebble-bed reactor would probably do nicely and could easily be armored enough to withstand a high-speed crash.
The oldest piece of equipment I have that still actually works is a VAXstation 3100 m30 with a few modern SCSI drives w/ SCA adapters built in 1987 I think. I still fire it up once in a while. I have a couple serial terminals dangling off of it. Technically, as configured it's a VAXserver 3100. It has 16MB of RAM.
It runs ULTRIX 4.4 and NetBSD 1.4.
It's 22 years old. Still running strong. Still capable of running a modern version of BSD........slowly. I think it's clocked at around ~11mhz but the official speed rating is 2.8 VUPs. Clock rate is pretty meaningless anyway.
I'm not against ROM-based OS's, hell, most home computers I owned in the past before I started messing with PeeCee's, Macs, Sun and DEC gear had the OS in ROM.
My Atari 400/800/800XL/130XE (ROM Basic and a simple OS... I went through several Atari 8-bits as a kid)
My Atari ST (TOS and GEM GUI in ROM)
My Mac Classic (System 6 in ROM)
Early PC's had a BASIC interpreter in ROM. At least the old IBM PC 5150 I use as an exhibit at the school has one.
Manufacturers may even start trying to get it right the first time instead of relying on automatic updates to allow them to push beta-quality software as production ready.
An embedded OS with nothing but an IP stack and a browser would suck however. Cloud computing is a fad that I hope dies the horrible death it deserves. What happens when Cox or Time Warner starts throttling RPC and whatever protocol is used for message passing between processes?
What about rural customers that can't get decent net access beyond a cell modem or dialup?
I'm not going to put my business or personal life in the hands of anybody but myself. Nor will I pay recurring fees just to run an app.
Hell, I won't even buy an iPhone because of the App Store.
"Drop to the terminal", you've already lost most users.
Those same users would have been forced to learn at least some basic DOS commands back in the day just to use their computer and even start WordPerfect.
It's laziness. The CLI is the SIMPLEST of computer interfaces.
The command line isn't mysterious and can actually be quite simple. You simply have to learn something instead of repeating tasks your buddy/supervisor/IT monkey told you.
If they aren't willing to learn anything about the tool they are using, maybe they should use a typewriter. It's got a much simpler interface and makes it real easy to tell what's going on.
When it's time for my son to learn how to drive, I'm not just going to hand him a Mustang GT and tell him to have fun.
Personally I don't think anyone should be able to claim they know how to use a computer without at least knowing some basic CLI commands (DOS or UNIX). It's part of truly knowing how to use a computer.
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Try WINE. If it's the same app I'm thinking it is (ExamView 4) then it'll run just fine. I use it to generate and host exams for the classes I teach just fine. I was thinking of writing a replacement in TCL as a side project. I have run it under FreeBSD and OSX this way. I'd love the native mac version of ExamView but the school refuses to pay for it and I'm pretty broke.
For fairly basic typical win32 apps, I've had really good luck with WINE lately.
building infrastructure like decent roads and water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa (and enabling basic economic development and human welfare)
And why should sub-Saharan Africa be improved with AMERICAN tax dollars? I'm pretty sure they have the capability to make their own asphalt. But if we subsidize it all for them, maybe even their own SPACESHIP!! WHOA!!!
Most Americans (native or not) didn't have decent roads or sparkly filtered treated water for quite a while yet we are far from extinct. We even had successful trade going on back then. Doctors, though less enlightened than today, were still around. Let those people stand on their own two feet. Let nature run its course, they'll either figure it out or they won't.
Personally, and I think most Americans stand with me on this, I value space travel a HELL of a lot more than I value some little third world nation's "progress". F**k 'em.
or replacing high-pressure sodium streetlamps with LEDs (decreasing inner-city suicide risks, saving power, reducing emissions associated with that power)
Oh please.... gimme a break. Since when is it the government OR the people's job to pay for expensive special lighting to reduce unproven "suicide risk". It's not the government's job to protect people from themselves. It's not your job either. Or mine. The emissions are really not all that awful.
LED's are not exactly non-toxic when disposed of either. They are also very expensive which would eat any short term energy savings and possibly long-term depending on how expensive an LED array of that magnitude would be.
Wanna reduce harmful emissions by quite a bit? The solution was found over 50 years ago. Nuclear. Not solar, not wind, not pixie farts. Nuclear. Producing enough solar cells to match a nuke plant would probably cast MUCH more nasty waste into the environment than the nuke plant does in its operational lifetime.
or filtering the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any of millions of other priorities.
That's a worthy cause but one I put below manned spaceflight. We need much further progress before things become cheap in this regard. If it's put off, it will never happen.
I would hazard a guess that garbage patch already has more tax dollars associated with it than the school systems in my state.
If near-to-intermediate-term space travel development for the next few centuries really had a shadow of a chance of insuring us against the catastrophe of extinction as a species, then things would be different,
Uhhhh.... it does. There's an awful lot of unwatched space out there and observatories losing funding by the minute.
and that would be a premium I'd be willing to support, but I don't think it makes sense today. If attempting to develop space travel were actually bringing about significant development of new technologies useful elsewhere - in excess of those which would occur were the money spent elsewhere, that could defray the costs, but NASA's track record, especially in recent years, is not all that spectacular, as has been noted in TFA. So why not pull the plug? Emotional reasons, mostly, I imagine...
We can't discover much if we aren't there to experiment now can we? I'm not saying NASA has a good rep. Pulling the plug is not the answer, gutting the bureaucracy, rebuilding and letting the scientists do their job is the answer. Eliminating Cost+ contracts is another part of the equation. Make Boeing and friends compete for business just like the new kids on the block.
I remember it in an absolutely hideous shade of green with b&w bitmaps for icons.
I'd say let them reimburse you for the laptop, then take the $1250 and grab another one (or a really nice netbook and pocket the change) for personal use. If you leave the company and they ask for the laptop, oh well. If they don't, you have an extra laptop. If you insist on having personal data on a machine used for work, then use truecrypt for your personal files.
A netbook wouldn't add much weight to your bag either.
That's my opinion. I'm stuck using my personal laptop as my employer won't cover one but they know damn well it's mine (along with any of my personal pet projects) and any attempt to steal my personal work through litigation may result in health complications.
I think that totally went over his head. For the uneducated:
1Gb = 1 gigabit
1GB = 1 gigabyte
8 bits = 1 byte
Case matters.
I installed Snow Leopard on my Early 2009 Macbook and so far I'm pretty impressed.
Same basic interface with some minor tweaks.
The Cocoa-based Finder kicks ass. No more weird hangs when I have mounted shares and lose connectivity or anything like that. It's much more responsive and snappy than the old Carbon finder. This alone is worth $30.
GrandCentral and OpenCL look really interesting, I haven't dug into it much yet but several Apple apps already use them (at least GrandCentral).
Overall my machine seems quite a bit more responsive than with 10.5 and my GeekBench scores are a little higher. The only App which the upgrade broke was an old-ass version of OmniFocus. Office, CS4, etc all work just fine.
Any bugs I've encountered have all been very minor. It really is a worthwhile upgrade. I've been running 10A432 for over a week now with no problems.
As long as she didn't break in somewhere or anything, public records are fair game. Stalking laws are BS, try to invoke one against a law enforcement officer. You'll be laughed out of court even if it was done with no warrant or real probable cause. Follow a cop for a few minutes and suddenly you're a criminal.
Where do people go who can't afford private healthcare?
The emergency room, mostly. Of course, they'll still be billed, and if they can't pay, the hospital tries to recoup these losses by charging all the other patients more. Since that's more difficult if the patient actually has health insurance (due to contracts/agreements with the insurance provider), they'll mostly do that to anyone who's uninsured.
Here in South Carolina they will not only bill you and trash your credit, they get the state department of revenue to act as their collection agency and take your tax returns. They also have the power to seize property. It gets treated like a tax debt.
It's insane, I've had it happen to me a few times and it's drowning me because there's nothing I can do about it.
I was in a car accident, was seen for 5 minutes in the ER, waited 4 hours to be seen with visible burns and bleeding, and was then billed for well over $5,000 for a single X-Ray and a cheap disposable set of crutches. My wife had a relatively simple hernia surgery and that rang in at a little over $10,000. My credit is trashed and the State Department of Revenue consistently harasses us.
If the answer is "nowhere", how can that system possibly work?
It doesn't. Only an ER will see you and they will charge 10x what the visit is worth and generally treat you like s**t if you are uninsured. They will write you prescriptions but there's no assistance in getting them filled unless you fall under the cap for medicaid which is rediculously low.
Basically, if you're lower middle class in the US, you are f**ked. The poor and those who scam the system get free healthcare. Those making more than $40,000/yr can afford family coverage. Making between 30 and 40 grand? Nobody gives a rats ass about you and treats you worse than the poor.
Family coverage with my employer would cost $1200/mo for my family here.
It sounds like your healthcare system needs fixing,
You think? In my opinion, socialized medicine isn't the way to go. I think medical insurance should be outlawed. That will force doctors and hospitals to compete for business and lower prices. They won't be able to live off of the top 1% that can afford to pay out of pocket.
If you want to have a free market, have a free market with just enough rules to make things fair for consumers and companies alike and keep government intervention to a minimum. A drastic takeover is not the answer, our government turns anything it has complete control of into crap.
I'm a libertarian but I don't believe in stripping away EVERYTHING and letting everyone fend for themselves like some of the wacko ultraminimalist guys. The government needs to secure the rights of the people, I think healthcare is one of those rights so a little regulation is warranted when those rights are stepped on.
I hope that you are also an expert in fixing... cars, plumbing, roofs, TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines; all of which I garauntee will break down at some point if your life.
If you can be a competent, knowledgeable PC hardware tech (a real one who actually understands how the hardware works, not just how to swap a dead part).... basic car repair, basic plumbing, TV repair and washing machines shouldn't be a big problem. I can pull off all of them unless the broken pipe happens to be under solid concrete or something. I could replace the compressor in my fridge if need be as well.
With a little intelligence and half a clue, most of those things you mentioned are actually rather easy. Especially the washing machine. Roofing can be tough though and in SC, it's worth the money to not suffer 110 degree F temps on the roof to try to save a few bucks.
Would I want to port and polish the heads in my car or attempt to supercharge it at home? No.... but I can damn sure replace a serpentine belt, alternator, water pump, radiator, EGR valve, etc.
My motto is if I don't understand how it works in at least a basic sense... I probably shouldn't own it. Would you give a Ford Mustang to a 16 yr old that didn't have a license and tell him to have fun? Then why would you give someone who is totally computer illiterate a computer with no training?
him, he has made a important contribution to the computing industry: Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.
Yeah, let's forget about the fact that several companies had vastly superior GUI-based environments back in the 80's before Windows 3.0 was ever released. And they were much more fluid and easier to use. In most cases, an Atari ST was much cheaper than any comparable PC of the time.
Apple - MacOS
Atari and Digital Research - GEM
Commodore - AmigaOS Workbench
NeXT - NeXTStep and OpenStep (cool but pricy)
And if we aren't talking about GUI-based environments, the Apple II predates the PC and was cheaper and just as capable. Atari had the Atari 800-series and various other 8-bit machines. Commodore had the Commodore 64.
Microsoft brought a subpar desktop computing experience to people who were duped into thinking there was no way IBM could produce a piece of crap machine. Microsoft simply hung on to IBM's coat tails because they knew the PC would sell because it had an IBM logo on it.
Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1? Do you think that if computers still consisted on thin-client-server models based on huge VAX mainframes,
You seem to know nothing of DEC machines. They had VAX desktops in the 80's but they were expensive. You also seem to have missed the whole home computing scene that existed on low cost 8, 16 and 32-bit micros. Most VAX machines were not mainframes, they were minicomputers. The DEC PDP10 and IBM System 370 were mainframes. What you have on your desk is a microcomputer. Time for you to go back to school.
that Joe and Jane Smith would be able to dial-in to AOL and connect to thousands of people around the world? Would the Internet have blossomed into the vast information network it is today without the aid of easy-to-use software from Microsoft? How about Grandma who wants to set up a webcam so she can chat with her grandchildren?
I was dialing BBS's on my Atari 8-bit as a kid. In fact, my grandmother was dialing community church BBS's on her Atari ST we got her back in the day.
And grandma isn't even capable of setting up a webcam under Windows XP. She'd have to get YOU to do it. If she can set it up under Winblows, she can do it much easier under OS X. In fact, I think the mac mini is the ONLY machine to not come with an integrated webcam these days.
modern computing has been made easy and affordable to everyone, thanks to pioneers like Bill Gates.
It was quite affordable with the right products before Windows ever existed. You just didn't have $200 unreliable bargain basement IBM PC clones that come stock with plenty of adware.
You sir, need a clue. I suggest doing some research before opening your mouth in the future.
I doubt that XBOX version of IL2 will let you tweak response curves by hand or let you have multiple input devices like rudder pedals and a joystick.
Those multihead hacks for grand turismo are cute but unsupported for other games and require too much equipment. And I can't imagine the latency is low over ethernet for that GT4 hack either.
Consoles are cool but are no replacement for a good PC. And they never will be. Try setting up head tracking and stereoscopic video on that IL2 port for the XBOX 360 for example.
I'm getting a little sick of hearing "we know the linux nvidia drivers suck compared to the windows drivers.... besides, you should just get a console."
I'm not saying consoles aren't cool, they are great but they are just not a PC replacement. And if you don't think you get a "dumbed down" gaming experience on them you aren't paying attention.
What about Volume Shadow Copy in Winblows or Time Machine in OSX? They seem pretty useful in the "man, that was dumb" scenarios.
RAID != backup but it's still quite useful.
I'd much rather swap a disk when it dies then go through a long and painful restore process from tape or a network. Disks fail.... a lot. Especially cheaper SATA and IDE drives.
Anyone that says "HDD's are reliable, RAID is useless, just use a backup device" needs their head checked. You need RAID AND A DECENT BACKUP.
RAID won't save you from yourself or OS bugs but it is far from useless. I would not trust a single HDD with my data. I also would not trust myself to keep an impeccable backup schedule where I back things up several times a day so without RAID if a drive dies I WILL lose data. Not a heck of a lot but I'm going to lose SOMETHING.
On another note, maybe I should take a look at Time Machine in OSX.
I agree....
Now another thing about consoles. Try playing a realistic flight or space sim on them. You'll run out of buttons real quick. Consoles are USELESS when it comes to realistic sims. Especially something like IL2 Sturmovik.
Consoles are neat but with the limited controllers and little room for expansion when it comes to things like flightsticks and rudder pedals and such they just don't interest me much.
Plug 3 video cards into a console.... can't do that either. Multihead gaming.... also cool for sims. How about stereoscopic video for true 3D? Well... last I checked the PS3 and XBOX 360 can't do that either. While the average 12 yr old may not be interested, mommy can't afford it or they can't fit 3 displays in their living room, these technologies interest ME.
I don't want my game experience dumbed down so they can make a few more sales to 12 year old kids. THAT is the problem with consoles.
I had an Atari ST and used to make similar arguments. The ST was pretty cool as well. The simple fact is.... nobody really cares.
Maybe if they came back and made an Amiga covered in chrome with an 8" exhaust tip and some "No Fear" stickers, people would give a crap. Throw in some buzzwords like "Multitouch" and you'll have a winner. It's not technological marvels and engineering that sells computers, it's marketing departments and sales monkeys.
The fact that Windows 2000/XP is on near everyone's desktop despite being riddled with flaws in nearly every OS component over the years should be blatant evidence.
You must be really young and don't remember the earlier macs "when they came out". Either that or you jumped into computing late in the game hoping to get rich quick. In case you are braindead, macs have been around since 1984.
You're thinking of a couple of models of Performa/Centris (i.e. Centris 610) and possibly the PowerMac 6100 (first PowerPC mac). The Centris 610 had a 68040 though it may have had the FPU-less crippled 68LC040, I can't remember.
Anyway, a power button on the front was NOT a common mac trait.
Yeah, totally. We should like burn the Wright Flyer and close the Smithsonian too. They're like boring and old and stuff. Then we can go get some Brawndo.
You really are a tarded aren't you? Thought about being a pilot?
I seem to remember my monochrome Apple Newton and early color iPaq screens being readable in daylight.
There's a bunch of asteroids containing mercury floating around the solar system. If one of them hits, imagine the environmental catastrophe! We gotta ban asteroids right now!
Environazis can twist stats to no end to make anyone look evil. Coal is crap anyway, "clean coal" is a joke, the only REAL workable solution is nuclear power and waste reprocessing for nuke plants.
Too bad the cold war and cheesy 50's/60's sci-fi kinda killed it. I'd love to be driving around a car with 1500bhp powered by a few uranium marbles that only needs to be refueled every decade or two.
A scaled down pebble-bed reactor would probably do nicely and could easily be armored enough to withstand a high-speed crash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
The oldest piece of equipment I have that still actually works is a VAXstation 3100 m30 with a few modern SCSI drives w/ SCA adapters built in 1987 I think. I still fire it up once in a while. I have a couple serial terminals dangling off of it. Technically, as configured it's a VAXserver 3100. It has 16MB of RAM.
It runs ULTRIX 4.4 and NetBSD 1.4.
It's 22 years old. Still running strong. Still capable of running a modern version of BSD........slowly. I think it's clocked at around ~11mhz but the official speed rating is 2.8 VUPs. Clock rate is pretty meaningless anyway.
I got rid of the other old crap years ago.
EXACTLY!
Mod parent up.
military intelligence. The biggest oxymoron in human history.
What was that new-fangled hip young lingo? Epic Fail?
I'm not against ROM-based OS's, hell, most home computers I owned in the past before I started messing with PeeCee's, Macs, Sun and DEC gear had the OS in ROM.
My Atari 400/800/800XL/130XE (ROM Basic and a simple OS... I went through several Atari 8-bits as a kid)
My Atari ST (TOS and GEM GUI in ROM)
My Mac Classic (System 6 in ROM)
Early PC's had a BASIC interpreter in ROM. At least the old IBM PC 5150 I use as an exhibit at the school has one.
Manufacturers may even start trying to get it right the first time instead of relying on automatic updates to allow them to push beta-quality software as production ready.
An embedded OS with nothing but an IP stack and a browser would suck however. Cloud computing is a fad that I hope dies the horrible death it deserves. What happens when Cox or Time Warner starts throttling RPC and whatever protocol is used for message passing between processes?
What about rural customers that can't get decent net access beyond a cell modem or dialup?
I'm not going to put my business or personal life in the hands of anybody but myself. Nor will I pay recurring fees just to run an app.
Hell, I won't even buy an iPhone because of the App Store.
"Drop to the terminal", you've already lost most users.
Those same users would have been forced to learn at least some basic DOS commands back in the day just to use their computer and even start WordPerfect.
It's laziness. The CLI is the SIMPLEST of computer interfaces.
The command line isn't mysterious and can actually be quite simple. You simply have to learn something instead of repeating tasks your buddy/supervisor/IT monkey told you.
If they aren't willing to learn anything about the tool they are using, maybe they should use a typewriter. It's got a much simpler interface and makes it real easy to tell what's going on.
When it's time for my son to learn how to drive, I'm not just going to hand him a Mustang GT and tell him to have fun.
Personally I don't think anyone should be able to claim they know how to use a computer without at least knowing some basic CLI commands (DOS or UNIX). It's part of truly knowing how to use a computer.
Chances are that granny will have an easier time with installing Ubuntu than getting Windows XP installed.