The last time I remember getting a BSOD was on NT4.0. An electrician had shorted out a power line with a network cable and it fried the machine.
Last time for me was on XP using a fairly new (at the time) Linksys ethernet card.
These stability jokes really only attest to the author's cluelessness.
Sorry, but Windows still bluescreens (often unnoticed due to the "reboot automatically" feature). If there's any cluelessness involved here, it's that your personal experiences don't correspond to those of others, or that you've not had to read through the newer KB articles written describing such problems.
Why don't you just do a regular ping? Jeez, anyone can come up with an artificially lame example in any language.
That could have been a really good question.
A better question would have been is "If everything is a frigging object, then WTF is this ping executable doing on my drive?" Or how about, "If you folks can write ping, WTF can't you write programs for standard sysadmin functions (i.e., coreutils) and we can all skip this passing object nonsense?" Or maybe "Why am I forced to use WMI for certain things, but not others?" If the inconsistencies are starting to dawn on you, do let me know.
In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or.NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Feel the power:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='127.0.0.1'" -ComputerName . | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=46 ms 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0 ms 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0 ms ^C ----127.0.0.1 PING Statistics---- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/med = 0/15/46/0
No doubt PowerShell offers unheard of (til now) functionality, and to the degree that statement is more meaningful than saying "Best Windows version yet!", I'd say PowerShell is awkward, clumsy, and verbose and indicative of how Microsoft still doesn't "get it".
Who know? Maybe in Windows 8 they might even take the bold step of rewriting cmd.exe, the Notepad of terminals, and really impress everyone, leaving us waiting with baited breath for symlinks in Windows 9.
It's a good thing that Irish computers never get infected with spyware, worms, or viruses, or such that could relay a music download.
Maybe I haven't kept up, but I'm not aware of malware in the wild that would cause your computer to download the latest Backstreet Boys CD.
The concept, however, does raise an interesting question. If "aiding and abetting" merits a "graduated response" on the part of the ISP, then why aren't those users participating in botnets subject to a similar response?
If such a feature was implemented in a mail client, I would use the mail client.
So use a client where the threading mode is configurable, and additionally gives you the ability to link threads.
I use mutt, and regularly link threads. But that's mostly to correct the errors by folks who don't understand threading, and relying on "conversations" feature of their email client, screw things up for the rest of us.
No, the important development here is that now, you don't need an email client... The reason most (if not all of us) switched to and stayed with GMail in the first place back in 2004 and 2005 was the interface... Show a user IMAP through Thunderbird and Gmail side-by-side and see what interface they prefer.
Sorry, to put it kindly, the above is no different from the advocacy and arguments put forward by WebTV and AOL users. They, too, are very happy with their setup.
I've had a Gmail account for years, but wouldn't consider "switching" to it (whatever that means), am not impressed with it's features or its interface, and the spam filtering doesn't impress me. And given the choice between Thunderbird (which I don't use) or Gmail, I'd pick Thunderbird.
Absurd from your point of view? Hardly. I recognise that while my needs are hardly unique, they're obviously not the same as yours. Or any other person who uses email.
I'd suggest their's more two it then just playing lose with homonyms and we should call a spayed a spayed and sea it four what it is (illiteracy). But than, some won wood insist that its all rite. They new what was meant when they red it.
Konsole is not yet ported. Which makes me very sad since I switched to Windows 7 until KDE 4 stops being the trainwreck that it is, but I miss having a terminal emulator that doesn't suck (aka Konsole). Putty is pretty awful in comparison.
Agreed on putty, but hey, Windows users (including the leet PowerShell users) are still using cmd.exe, the notepad of terminals, and think it's fine.
Depending on your needs, Cygwin might suit you. Say what you want about emulation, there's something invaluable about have a standard set of unix tools available on a Windows system. Rxvt is the typically used as the default terminal, but there's been a lot of discussion about mintty. Also, console might be worth having a look at.
As others have suggested just kill explorer.exe to free your machine from the default Windows desktop.
Not familiar with running KDE on Windows, but the "choice" of Windows shell is set in the registry (the default being "explorer.exe"). Killing off the process may work, but generally the approach used by the various shell-replacements (Litestep, etc.) is to reset the registry key instead. Explorer has a nasty tendency to restart itself for inexplicable, just as related programs/features have a tendency to require explorer be running.
Not familiar with it, but Soekris boxes run just short of that (typically around $300), and they're extremely popular at those prices. I guess I'll have to place future orders with the knowledge that I'm buying discontinued stock.
Do text apps still have a place in today's world? Heck, network speeds and capacities (read bandwidth) have improved a great deal.
You're probably seeing things from the point of A User and His Desktop, so I'll skip the installation, updates, maintenance, monitoring etc. tasks that are workaday experience for any sysadmin, or anyone working with more than one or two machines, and describe my own experiences from a similar point of view.
I recently upgraded my home network to gigabit. The reasons for doing so were multiple, and I regret having waited so long do so. That said, my daily email, usenet, torrent, etc. activities are all done using text-based interfaces. My file management (naming, organising, sorting, archiving, burning of CDs and DVDs, etc.) is done using a text-based interface, as is routine maintenance (networking, backups, etc.), the usual writing and printing letters and documents. And finally, because my primary workstation isn't Windows, my "desktop" configuration is done using a text-based interface.
Mind you, I do use a GUI browser for most websites, but your question could be rephrased as "Why are you opening all these windowed applications to perform tasks that could better be done using a simpler and typically more feature-filled approach that's already at your fingertips?"
Text is the closest and most direct method of interfacing with your computer. That was true decades ago, and it's just as true today. If using a text-based approach requires too much thinking or learning, then by all means, click on that icon. By the time the program loads and you rummage around in menus to find what you want to do, I'll have already done it and moved on to something more interesting. Like reading the latest Slashdot story about Midnight Commander.
For example: Level 5 articles, "Full Publication" are basically all the things on Wikipedia now. Level 1 are minutia of almost no interest to anyone but a select few, and only accessible to logged-in users. All new articles start at Level 1. Level 0 and -1 are candidates for deletion.
So you're proposing a Slashdot moderation system for Wikipedia? Brilliant! Just send over the Slashdot moderators and we can end this resolve these issues today. BTW, where would kdawson fit into this scheme?
What has surprised me about the Obama campaign was how they used information technology effectively to get their message out. These people get it.
Indeed. Now that the election is over, I think it would be fun to look back at how it is we got to where we are, and thereby make wild-assed deductions about individual candidates approach to technology. From Site Operating System and Server by Candidate
FreeBSD
- Barack Obama (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
- Christopher Dodd (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Linux
- Joe Biden (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- John Edwards (D) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
- Bill Richardson (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- Wesley Clark (D) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
- Al Gore (D) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Jim Gilmore (R) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
- Rudy Giuliani (R) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
- Ron Paul (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Dennis Kucinich (D) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
- Mitt Romney (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Windows
- Hillary Clinton (D) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0
- Sam Brownback (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting
- Mike Huckabee (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Duncun Hunter (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- John McCain (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
- Tom Tancredo (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
- Fred Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Tommy Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom
- Chuck Hagel (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- Newt Gingrich (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Not entirely certain that the above could be translated as "FreeBSD: Change We Can Believe In!", but interesting nonetheless.
On the other hand, both pmo.gov.ps and knesset.gov.il use Windows/IIS, so whatever the "Change" strategy is, it will have to be implemented by diplomatic efforts on the part the Secretary of State, perhaps in conjunction with the help of individuals with sufficient technological expertise. I hear that the ex-chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation might be available.
Personally I dislike having a screen littered with little icons representing files, and I also seem to have much higher expectations about performance than a lot of people. That's why I use fluxbox.
Agreed. But then I use fluxbox, too, so no surprise there.
What is surprising, and why I read these Gnome/KDE flamewars is the degree to which both sides screw up, leaving the community as a whole in disarray. On the one hand, you have Gnome, a perfectly usable desktop that could fit nicely into any corporate or home environment, but refuses to consider the user may their own preferences, or allow them to make them. On the other, you have KDE with all its features, configurability and enough bling to make a pimp blush, but has trouble working.
Lots of alternative "choices" of course. The problem is the majority of people insist on an all-singing all-dancing desktop environment, so few of those choices (except XFCE, perhaps) are viable, leaving us with the great Gnome/KDE debate.
The people I know who don't want internet are all older folks who are very set in their ways.
Visit a few retirement communities or similar accomodations and you'd have no trouble finding any number of older folks that depend on it daily for communicating with their friends and family.
I volunteer on occasion to help out older folks in my local community. Over the years, I've been privileged to be able develop friendships with some of them. One of them is a man in 70's who has trouble walking, speaks poor English, has no real friends or family, but the computer is on most of the day and the AOL browser is open. It's his way of keeping in touch in the world and the few on-line friends he's made. Another is a woman in her 60s whose kids and grandkids live in another part of the country; she gets videos from them by by email.
I could go on. These are obviously just anecdotal stories, but I don't think you'd be hard pressed to see perfectly ordinary, non-computer-literate older folks who rely on their network connections. All of them, you can be sure, are set in their ways.
You could give them free broadband and a free computer and they still wouldn't use it.
Perhaps, but most of old folks I've seen with computers received them as gifts from others. Allow me to add one more example. My sister (who is by no means old) has a MacBook. Her husband bought it for her to replace the IBM Thinkpad he bought for her years before that she never used (refused, actually). She still hates computers, but uses the MacBook daily to shop for "stuff".
I remember back when we had lie 8 channels on TV and that was with Cable. If you had all three networks and PBS what else did you need?
I have a cable subscription that gives me all the channels (except Al Jazeera, which the rest of the world gets). The last few months I've been spending a lot of time pondering the analog cut off and trying to understand WTF I have cable.
There's been nothing on cable since the Sopranos ended years ago, and what movies are there are diminishing are in quality (including IFC and Sundance). The new or better movies are already at my local video store. That leaves me with the low-brow entertainment provided by such shows as Dirty Jobs and MythBusters, along with pseudo-informative content of the History Channel, The Dog Whisperer. and cable news.
The answer to your "What else do I need?", at least in my case, is nothing except PBS. And possibly CPAN on occasion. Everything else is available elsewhere or simply not worth the time.
The intarweb, on the other hand, is very different. Easy to adopt a cynical attitude and dismiss what many (most, perhaps) use it for, but that's a luddite response that hides the potential that could fundamentally change (to the extent it hasn't already) our lives for the better.
In anticipation of the Vista jokes, the following excerpt from an article on the subject may help shed some light on the matter:
The direct impact of falling personal-computer sales, which roiled Intel last week, were evident in Microsoft's results, as sales of its PC operating-system software dove 8 percent to $3.98 billion from $4.33 billion last year... Blaming market uncertainty, Microsoft declined to issue a revenue or earnings forecast for the rest of its fiscal year.
I think a fair translation of the above would be that the economy is in the toilet no one knows if Vista will sell. Err... Windows 7.
On the other hand, with people being put out of work, it's a lot less fun to bash Microsoft.
Among the statements: " The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software." seemed the silliest in that it implies that six-year old software (WinXP?) is "old".
If you want silly, here's silly:
During the senate subcomittee hearings on the "lost email" fiasco (broadcast on CSPAN), the White House's "Chief Technologist" prefaced a description of the problems they were having with their new Exchange servers by championing their move from "obsolete technologies".
The committee member nodded their heads approvingly.
It seems that Windows 7 is still a lot like Vista to me.
Shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a half a brain in his head (or has any memory of Microsoft product releases), but that said, take it from the horse's mouth.
PBS' Charlie Rose interviewed Bill Gates a few weeks back and asked him whether Windows 7 was indeed new, or it whether it represented an incremental improvement to Vista. Gates became uncomfortable, went silent for a few seconds, and muttered it was the latter. An awkward pause ensued before the next question was asked. Unsurprisingly, he was more forthcoming and talkative when the questions were general, and weren't about Microsoft or Windows.
So there you have it kids. Windows 7 is the marketing name for Vista SP3. It should really be SP2.5, but the small collections of features to Windows 7 as sales enticements merit some recognition. But then, that's from someone who thought Win98SE was kind of cool.
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I named all of mine George
LOL. I name mine after all the things I can't afford:
Tiffany
Mercedes
Porsche
Jewel
etc.
Actually, they're all names of black girls I've known, but don't tell anyone. I'm particularly embarrassed by Buick, but that's another story.
The last time I remember getting a BSOD was on NT4.0. An electrician had shorted out a power line with a network cable and it fried the machine.
Last time for me was on XP using a fairly new (at the time) Linksys ethernet card.
These stability jokes really only attest to the author's cluelessness.
Sorry, but Windows still bluescreens (often unnoticed due to the "reboot automatically" feature). If there's any cluelessness involved here, it's that your personal experiences don't correspond to those of others, or that you've not had to read through the newer KB articles written describing such problems.
fyi- if it's made in Scotland, you spell it "whisky" (no 'e'), if it's anywhere else, it's "whiskey" (with an 'e').
No matter how it's spelled, if it's pronounced by a true Scotsman, it'll require subtitles in the US.
Why don't you just do a regular ping? Jeez, anyone can come up with an artificially lame example in any language.
That could have been a really good question.
A better question would have been is "If everything is a frigging object, then WTF is this ping executable doing on my drive?" Or how about, "If you folks can write ping, WTF can't you write programs for standard sysadmin functions (i.e., coreutils) and we can all skip this passing object nonsense?" Or maybe "Why am I forced to use WMI for certain things, but not others?" If the inconsistencies are starting to dawn on you, do let me know.
In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Feel the power:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='127.0.0.1'" -ComputerName . | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=46 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0 ms
^C
----127.0.0.1 PING Statistics----
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/med = 0/15/46/0
No doubt PowerShell offers unheard of (til now) functionality, and to the degree that statement is more meaningful than saying "Best Windows version yet!", I'd say PowerShell is awkward, clumsy, and verbose and indicative of how Microsoft still doesn't "get it".
Who know? Maybe in Windows 8 they might even take the bold step of rewriting cmd.exe, the Notepad of terminals, and really impress everyone, leaving us waiting with baited breath for symlinks in Windows 9.
It's a good thing that Irish computers never get infected with spyware, worms, or viruses, or such that could relay a music download.
Maybe I haven't kept up, but I'm not aware of malware in the wild that would cause your computer to download the latest Backstreet Boys CD.
The concept, however, does raise an interesting question. If "aiding and abetting" merits a "graduated response" on the part of the ISP, then why aren't those users participating in botnets subject to a similar response?
If such a feature was implemented in a mail client, I would use the mail client.
So use a client where the threading mode is configurable, and additionally gives you the ability to link threads.
I use mutt, and regularly link threads. But that's mostly to correct the errors by folks who don't understand threading, and relying on "conversations" feature of their email client, screw things up for the rest of us.
No, the important development here is that now, you don't need an email client ... The reason most (if not all of us) switched to and stayed with GMail in the first place back in 2004 and 2005 was the interface ... Show a user IMAP through Thunderbird and Gmail side-by-side and see what interface they prefer.
Sorry, to put it kindly, the above is no different from the advocacy and arguments put forward by WebTV and AOL users. They, too, are very happy with their setup.
I've had a Gmail account for years, but wouldn't consider "switching" to it (whatever that means), am not impressed with it's features or its interface, and the spam filtering doesn't impress me. And given the choice between Thunderbird (which I don't use) or Gmail, I'd pick Thunderbird.
Absurd from your point of view? Hardly. I recognise that while my needs are hardly unique, they're obviously not the same as yours. Or any other person who uses email.
I'd suggest their's more two it then just playing lose with homonyms and we should call a spayed a spayed and sea it four what it is (illiteracy). But than, some won wood insist that its all rite. They new what was meant when they red it.
Konsole is not yet ported. Which makes me very sad since I switched to Windows 7 until KDE 4 stops being the trainwreck that it is, but I miss having a terminal emulator that doesn't suck (aka Konsole). Putty is pretty awful in comparison.
Agreed on putty, but hey, Windows users (including the leet PowerShell users) are still using cmd.exe, the notepad of terminals, and think it's fine.
Depending on your needs, Cygwin might suit you. Say what you want about emulation, there's something invaluable about have a standard set of unix tools available on a Windows system. Rxvt is the typically used as the default terminal, but there's been a lot of discussion about mintty. Also, console might be worth having a look at.
As others have suggested just kill explorer.exe to free your machine from the default Windows desktop.
Not familiar with running KDE on Windows, but the "choice" of Windows shell is set in the registry (the default being "explorer.exe"). Killing off the process may work, but generally the approach used by the various shell-replacements (Litestep, etc.) is to reset the registry key instead. Explorer has a nasty tendency to restart itself for inexplicable, just as related programs/features have a tendency to require explorer be running.
Not familiar with it, but Soekris boxes run just short of that (typically around $300), and they're extremely popular at those prices. I guess I'll have to place future orders with the knowledge that I'm buying discontinued stock.
Do text apps still have a place in today's world? Heck, network speeds and capacities (read bandwidth) have improved a great deal.
You're probably seeing things from the point of A User and His Desktop, so I'll skip the installation, updates, maintenance, monitoring etc. tasks that are workaday experience for any sysadmin, or anyone working with more than one or two machines, and describe my own experiences from a similar point of view.
I recently upgraded my home network to gigabit. The reasons for doing so were multiple, and I regret having waited so long do so. That said, my daily email, usenet, torrent, etc. activities are all done using text-based interfaces. My file management (naming, organising, sorting, archiving, burning of CDs and DVDs, etc.) is done using a text-based interface, as is routine maintenance (networking, backups, etc.), the usual writing and printing letters and documents. And finally, because my primary workstation isn't Windows, my "desktop" configuration is done using a text-based interface.
Mind you, I do use a GUI browser for most websites, but your question could be rephrased as "Why are you opening all these windowed applications to perform tasks that could better be done using a simpler and typically more feature-filled approach that's already at your fingertips?"
Text is the closest and most direct method of interfacing with your computer. That was true decades ago, and it's just as true today. If using a text-based approach requires too much thinking or learning, then by all means, click on that icon. By the time the program loads and you rummage around in menus to find what you want to do, I'll have already done it and moved on to something more interesting. Like reading the latest Slashdot story about Midnight Commander.
Now you're being sensationalist.
The fair way to describe the situation is that Vista/Windows 7 isn't dead -- it's just resting.
For example: Level 5 articles, "Full Publication" are basically all the things on Wikipedia now. Level 1 are minutia of almost no interest to anyone but a select few, and only accessible to logged-in users. All new articles start at Level 1. Level 0 and -1 are candidates for deletion.
So you're proposing a Slashdot moderation system for Wikipedia? Brilliant! Just send over the Slashdot moderators and we can end this resolve these issues today. BTW, where would kdawson fit into this scheme?
What has surprised me about the Obama campaign was how they used information technology effectively to get their message out. These people get it.
Indeed. Now that the election is over, I think it would be fun to look back at how it is we got to where we are, and thereby make wild-assed deductions about individual candidates approach to technology. From Site Operating System and Server by Candidate
FreeBSD
- Barack Obama (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
- Christopher Dodd (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Linux
- Joe Biden (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- John Edwards (D) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
- Bill Richardson (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- Wesley Clark (D) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
- Al Gore (D) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Jim Gilmore (R) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
- Rudy Giuliani (R) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
- Ron Paul (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Dennis Kucinich (D) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
- Mitt Romney (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Windows
- Hillary Clinton (D) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0
- Sam Brownback (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting
- Mike Huckabee (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Duncun Hunter (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- John McCain (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
- Tom Tancredo (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
- Fred Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Tommy Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom
- Chuck Hagel (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- Newt Gingrich (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Not entirely certain that the above could be translated as "FreeBSD: Change We Can Believe In!", but interesting nonetheless.
On the other hand, both pmo.gov.ps and knesset.gov.il use Windows/IIS, so whatever the "Change" strategy is, it will have to be implemented by diplomatic efforts on the part the Secretary of State, perhaps in conjunction with the help of individuals with sufficient technological expertise. I hear that the ex-chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation might be available.
Thus proving beyond the shadow of a doubt the weakness of arguments from authority.
Bill Gates uses Windows, no doubt approves of it, and few complain about the desktop environment.
Discuss.
Personally I dislike having a screen littered with little icons representing files, and I also seem to have much higher expectations about performance than a lot of people. That's why I use fluxbox.
Agreed. But then I use fluxbox, too, so no surprise there.
What is surprising, and why I read these Gnome/KDE flamewars is the degree to which both sides screw up, leaving the community as a whole in disarray. On the one hand, you have Gnome, a perfectly usable desktop that could fit nicely into any corporate or home environment, but refuses to consider the user may their own preferences, or allow them to make them. On the other, you have KDE with all its features, configurability and enough bling to make a pimp blush, but has trouble working.
Lots of alternative "choices" of course. The problem is the majority of people insist on an all-singing all-dancing desktop environment, so few of those choices (except XFCE, perhaps) are viable, leaving us with the great Gnome/KDE debate.
The people I know who don't want internet are all older folks who are very set in their ways.
Visit a few retirement communities or similar accomodations and you'd have no trouble finding any number of older folks that depend on it daily for communicating with their friends and family.
I volunteer on occasion to help out older folks in my local community. Over the years, I've been privileged to be able develop friendships with some of them. One of them is a man in 70's who has trouble walking, speaks poor English, has no real friends or family, but the computer is on most of the day and the AOL browser is open. It's his way of keeping in touch in the world and the few on-line friends he's made. Another is a woman in her 60s whose kids and grandkids live in another part of the country; she gets videos from them by by email.
I could go on. These are obviously just anecdotal stories, but I don't think you'd be hard pressed to see perfectly ordinary, non-computer-literate older folks who rely on their network connections. All of them, you can be sure, are set in their ways.
You could give them free broadband and a free computer and they still wouldn't use it.
Perhaps, but most of old folks I've seen with computers received them as gifts from others. Allow me to add one more example. My sister (who is by no means old) has a MacBook. Her husband bought it for her to replace the IBM Thinkpad he bought for her years before that she never used (refused, actually). She still hates computers, but uses the MacBook daily to shop for "stuff".
I remember back when we had lie 8 channels on TV and that was with Cable. If you had all three networks and PBS what else did you need?
I have a cable subscription that gives me all the channels (except Al Jazeera, which the rest of the world gets). The last few months I've been spending a lot of time pondering the analog cut off and trying to understand WTF I have cable.
There's been nothing on cable since the Sopranos ended years ago, and what movies are there are diminishing are in quality (including IFC and Sundance). The new or better movies are already at my local video store. That leaves me with the low-brow entertainment provided by such shows as Dirty Jobs and MythBusters, along with pseudo-informative content of the History Channel, The Dog Whisperer. and cable news.
The answer to your "What else do I need?", at least in my case, is nothing except PBS. And possibly CPAN on occasion. Everything else is available elsewhere or simply not worth the time.
The intarweb, on the other hand, is very different. Easy to adopt a cynical attitude and dismiss what many (most, perhaps) use it for, but that's a luddite response that hides the potential that could fundamentally change (to the extent it hasn't already) our lives for the better.
In anticipation of the Vista jokes, the following excerpt from an article on the subject may help shed some light on the matter:
I think a fair translation of the above would be that the economy is in the toilet no one knows if Vista will sell. Err ... Windows 7.
On the other hand, with people being put out of work, it's a lot less fun to bash Microsoft.
Among the statements: " The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software." seemed the silliest in that it implies that six-year old software (WinXP?) is "old".
If you want silly, here's silly:
During the senate subcomittee hearings on the "lost email" fiasco (broadcast on CSPAN), the White House's "Chief Technologist" prefaced a description of the problems they were having with their new Exchange servers by championing their move from "obsolete technologies".
The committee member nodded their heads approvingly.
What was this "obsolete technology"? Lotus Notes.
[Citation needed]
It seems that Windows 7 is still a lot like Vista to me.
Shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a half a brain in his head (or has any memory of Microsoft product releases), but that said, take it from the horse's mouth.
PBS' Charlie Rose interviewed Bill Gates a few weeks back and asked him whether Windows 7 was indeed new, or it whether it represented an incremental improvement to Vista. Gates became uncomfortable, went silent for a few seconds, and muttered it was the latter. An awkward pause ensued before the next question was asked. Unsurprisingly, he was more forthcoming and talkative when the questions were general, and weren't about Microsoft or Windows.
So there you have it kids. Windows 7 is the marketing name for Vista SP3. It should really be SP2.5, but the small collections of features to Windows 7 as sales enticements merit some recognition. But then, that's from someone who thought Win98SE was kind of cool.
One thing about botnets... I don't really understand why there couldn't be a blacklist of known botnet controllers ...
Like this one?