It has been for a long time. No matter how brilliant a post you make, it'll hardly stay at 5 for very long - some dickjuice moderator will come by a few days after the discussion has died down and he'll dock you one Karma point with an Over-Rated.
It's almost as if some punk-ass retard uses his moderation points to simply go over old posts and knocking down the 5's.
As for the whole Tribes 2 bit, it's no secret that there are a lot of Tribes 2 fans. It's quite a popular game. I'm sure a lot of Slashdot readers are Tribes 2 players, but no matter how good a game is, that won't protect the developer from having to keep moving forward constantly.
Cavedog's excellent Total Annihilation didn't keep them around, and there are STILL dedicated TA fans out there.
ModPlug IS better than WinAmp's standard MOD plug-in, but if you download a plug-in called OldSch00l (I believe) WinAMP does every bit as well as ModPlug, and better in some ways. Plus it removes the need to have two seperate players so you can have your favorite mods in your playlist with MP3s.
You should be able to search for it at WinAMP.com.
By this you mean to say all Americans are driven by greed?
I beg to differ. I don't consider myself particularly greedy, but I'm too busy at my job making money to pay bills that I don't have NEARLY as much time to code as I would love to.
I have a love for coding. I have a love for staying up for days at a time living off of Tea and Cigarettes, doing nothing but wearing the letters off of the keys in front of my computer. My bills have a love for being paid on time.
Unfortunately, my job lays outside of my interests and the two don't have much time to cross into each other. Add into that school, an attempt at a social life, and taking care of other needs, and it leaves little time to work on the mile-high stack of coding projects I would LOVE to dedicate weeks on end to.
So, this leaves me to wonder: Are you trying to suggest that I would magically have more time to code if I moved to europe? After all, I apparently wouldn't need to work so much, since I'm not greedy.
I don't use floppies at all. For the most part I use CD-RWs.
But CD-RWs suck 'cuz it's a pain to burn a disk just for a few files.
Only if your CD-RW drive and it's software sucks. Any good Packet-Writing CD-RW drive will treat a RW disk just like any floppy. Sure, it only holds 512k and it has to be used in a drive the supports Packet Writing, but most high quality drives now days do.
My only real complaint here is that no Operating System as of yet has Packet-Writing as a standard available FS for use with CD-RWs.
(Perhaps if Amiga is smart AmigaOS 4.0 could take this opprotunity to further innovate by doing away with floppies and using CD-RW's with Packet Writing as the standard removable media...)
Or is it starting to look like the Technology enthusiast will one day be chased down in a witch-hunt type of fashion?
Case 1
Joe's computer crashes one night, and he immediately thinks of his computer literate neighbor, John, with whom he does not get along. It's then realizes that obviously he's been hacked and John should be arrested.
Case 2
Teacher Smith's system is suddenly missing some files inexplicably, and the little brainstar in the corner is actually a little peculiar this morning. To the principal's office he goes.
Case 3
A mother can't figure out how to send an e-mail, so she calls and harasses her son.
Thank you very much for that horribly uninsightful comment. There is of course no reason why it could not be backwards compatible just because it's serial.
Ir probably will not be simply because it's such a change from previous PCI that I seriously doubt that Intel wants people confused about what cards will work in what (as someone else mentioned, there are a lot of people out there would would try to shoe-horn a new card into a Pentium 75...)
Also, because it's intended to be more of a port, not a bus, one goal is to try to prevent conflicts, sharing, noise, and other things that severely limit current PCI technology.
There is no sound reason to assume that PCI 3.0 is "Foul Crap" except that you probably don't like Intel.
Cheapo: I'm not going to buy the Puttalong 5 when the Sell2moron Now with 3D-day costs $30 less.
Leetist: But they're both over $150, you might as well spend the extra $30.
Cheapo: I don't see the point. It's not worth the money.
Leetist: It's just $30.
Cheapo: It's $30 I don't have.
...
I'm sorry but my view on the situation is that if the decision of a CPU comes down to $30 -- perhaps you don't need to be into computers in the first place. Standard upkeep on a computer can sometimes cost more than that. You never know when a hard drive will go out, when you'll want to buy the newest game or accessory, and lord forbid something like your monitor ever fry.
Computers are expensive. Sometimes you have to accept the fact that you will be forking over a lot of cash. That doesn't mean get rediculous and spend $800 when you can spend $200, not at all. But some people act like they've done something wonderful by saving themselves $100 on the total cost of the computer by cutting costs "Here and There", then in the end they wonder why their system is cheap overall.
When you don't have the the fastest CPU, you don't have a whole lot of memory, when you don't have a huge hard drive, you don't have the best sound card, and your graphics card is fairly low grade, your whole system is usable at best, total rubbish at worst.
Don't complain when the money you saved costs you performance (or stability, or features, etc.)
Serious OS design would cause Black Ice and literally thousands of others to fail at startup, possibly with cryptic messages. And I agree with you that would be a good design decision. But that is not what they seem to be doing.
That is the primary side effect of it being done, like it or not. You can blame the reasons as to WHY it is being done on any conspiracy you care to dream up. The side effect is the same. Forward progress breaks legacy compatibility. WinXP is a better OS for it. Deal with it.
If Microsoft hadn't chosen to make WinXP a more modern OS keeping with Win9x, everybody would be bitching about how they just rename the OS and sell it again and again without "adding anything". Nevermind that 98, SE, and ME all added many things, the ones who scream the loudest are almost always the ones who know the least.
Me personally? I use many operating systems and I don't play favorites. But I'm not in the habit of shooting down Microsoft just because I don't like them.
Windows XP technically is a step in the right direction. Their liscensing schems, their content control plans, and their rigid rules for developement however leave me with some serious doubts about XP's future.
As for the ip not being static... Well if you have a router that has PPPoE support in the firmware, and always leave it plugged, you indeed get a pretty static ip. I've been connected for months in a row and my ip never changed.
It's either static, or it's dynamic. It can't be pretty one or the other.
User: "Your web-site is down."
Owner: "Yeah, my IP changed this morning and I haven't been able to update my DNS records."
...
Sorry, I love my Static IP with Telocity and I love how they don't care waht I do with my connection.
You guys can talk about how happy you are with your PPPoE -- and I'm glad you are -- but I've had a static IP with an always on connection for $49 per month and I'm not going back to a dynamic IP with Dial-On-Demand access.
Microsoft doesn't KNOW shit when it comes to these matters.
And quite apparently, neither do you.
Sometimes when you actually fix BS code in a broken OS such as Win 95-ME, older applications just stop working, esspecially if they were never doing things the "Right Way" to begin with. Dispite what a lot of programmers think, there are OS legal ways to do things, and there are seriously, SERIOUSLY --WRONG-- ways to do things.
Windows has up until lately been a crude platform, at best, and absolutely intelerably sloppy at worst. Microsoft is finally trying to make some rather strict guidelines not only about how their OS functions internally, but also as to how software on the platform operates, and uses OS functions. I too say "FINALLY", it's about damned time.
One of the biggest reasons Windows 32 crashes right now is because of the large number of applications written in exactly the same way today as they would have been back when Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 is still in use. I for one think windows should have stopped supporting the older, less stable software (by canning older system calls and DLLs) in favor of a more stable platform as early as Windows 98 - but it's people just like you who would have bitched and complained about having to upgrade both your OS and your applications.
A radical change in the OS often breaks software. It's a fact of life. Anything that doesn't run on the newer, more stable OS probably was never worth running in the first place. The same is true for the migration from Win32 to WinXP. If it doesn't run on XP, it probably sucked before hand (or it relied too much on legacy OS functions that should have been done away with 5 years ago).
A better test would be: if Linux had a wonderful graphics abstraction layer... and this graphics layer was much better than DirectX, would it automatically gain a huge amount of market share and have great support from video card makers?
No, actually, I'm willing to bet that if Linux had a really easy to impliment, highly functional API, similar to DirectX or not, there would a much higher level of support from video card vendors.
I admit, it still wouldn't be as high as Windows because of the whole "market share" issue, but it would be much higher than it is now.
It might even generate some Linux Only video cards. Don't believe it? Blah. It's not as if the Amiga didn't have it's share of Video Cards, and none of them work with the PC at all. The Amiga had a MUCH SMALLER market share than Lunix, even in it's prime.
Windows from day one (which I'm not sure I believe) has nothing to do with Windows, Microsoft, or the proprietariness of DirectX.
Most cards do work from day one, otherwise they'd have a very short life-span. There are a lot of examples of cards that died horribly on the market due to their crap drivers.
And you can believe DirectX hasn't helped video card venders all you want, but it doesn't change the truth.
The fact is -- most video cards almost never were well supported by any platform before DirectX started to mature. Even in the earliest days of Windows 95 (and certainly back in the 3.1 days) it wasn't uncommon for a video card to have features that just were never used. Resolutions that weren't available though technically possible, color depths that you couldn't use, etc.
I remember seeing many video cards capable of resolutions much higher than 1024x768 in 24 bit color years before you could use such features simply because even though the hardware did it, there weren't drives for it that worked well.
Once, back in the DOS days, a friend of mine had a video card capable of some insane high resolution, but while VPIC (or was it CSHOW? Some image viewing program) DID support his video card, Windows certainly did not.
If you don't think that DirectX has helped Windows attain the greatest amount of hardware support, you are being unrealistic. Marketshare alone only insures so much. Don't believe me? Explain to me how it is that not everything has Linux drivers dispite the amazing growth of Linux?
Compatibility in harware was nice, because you could take it and your software would work on any OS with a piece of compatible hardware without needing special drivers.
The problem with Compatibility in hardware is that it wasn't. How many 100% Vesa compatible devices do you remember that were 100% Vesa compatible? "Oh? Your Video Card's Vesa implimentation is non-standard? Well, just BUY Display Doctor, and you'll be okay!" No, screw that. Not only did the standard hold back hardware, it didn't even do what it was supposed to.
At least with a proprietary API such as DirectX, the inferior, crash-prone, nasty, closed Microsoft OS has one thing Unix still doesn't. Support for all video cards right off of the shelf, from day one. Most software works without any fight.
Well, there are some video card venders who seem to have trouble writting drivers even for a well established API, we'll leave them guys out of this since most of them are quickly dying or are now dead. Good riddance.
I really don't think the way NVidia and ATI are going to add their own unique features is going to make THAT much of a difference. At best, some coders will take advantage of one or the other, and at worst the rest will ignore anything not built into DirectX and the extra features won't matter.
Best to have features and not need, than to need and not have.
What would really amuse the hell out of me is if someone were to write a Worm that went out to IIS servers and patched them for the idiots who are too damned stupid to do it themselves.
Alternatively, someone should write a Worm that takes down the machine entirely and leaves a helpful note to the admin explaining to them how to take his or her head out of their arse (i.e. patch the system or run less exploitable software).
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Re:Oh good grief get over it. Troll.
on
An Amiga Round-up
·
· Score: 4
It's because Amiga is dead. It's not coming back in any form, be it virtually under Linux or otherwise. Can we please move on?
It's not dead as long as there are people still wanting to make a viable platform out of it.
I for one gave up on the Amiga a long time ago, specifically when the whole Amiga DE crap came about. I voiced my disapproval, I wrote a few e-mails, and I generally bitched and complained about how AmigaDE would not be the "real Amiga" but would rather be just some hoakie bullshit company using the Amiga name.
Then, something unheard of happened. Amiga Inc. apparently took the voices of thousands of people just like me into consideration.
What happened? Amiga OS 4.0 was to be based on the classic Amiga OS. AmigaOne "Zico" was to be based on the original Amiga hardware - as a transition platform - if you will.
They rethought their roadmap, and made way for fully retargetable hardware, not just graphics, but sound and IO. They considered what their users wanted, and they considered what they felt was necessary to build a whole new platform from something old and once loved.
If you ask me, they've made all the right decisions, and the only thing left to do is put their money where their mouth is and finally deliver upon a product.
November 1st is the day of judgement.
They've FINALLY given an official date by which they plan to have on the market their new vision of home computing. In my opinion, because they've listened to what the Amiga Community wants, they've earned my attention until at least November 1st.
I think anybody who once loved the Amiga would be well wise to give Amiga Inc. the benefit of the doubt until November 1st.
If it ever comes to the point that I can't open a file type such as a Word document, I'll just start insisting anybody I associate with send me stuff in something universal, such as plain ASCII, if they wish for me to view it.
Microsoft doesn't have any monopoly that we didn't gladly hand over. I use Windows, and even somewhat like it for some things (read: games) but I'm the first person on earth to preach the use of suitable alternatives whenever possible.
And no monopoly on earth is ever going to kill free software or the free expression of ideas.
What's the point in using Open Source if no-one else uses it?
What constitutes a useful program?
I ran an Amiga for many years when "nobody else used one", not only because there was great software that fit my needs available, but also because it was a great platform for developing some of the custom software I needed.
I never really gave up using the Amiga, even still today, it just got to the point where most of the new software I needed was on other platforms, so I changed with the times.
I'm not "locked" into Microsoft by any means. My current day Windows machines might always run Windows until they fall over and die, and my current BSD machine might run BSD until it crumbles into the dust.
But what future OS I may run will depend on what serves my needs then, and there will be a good chance that if I know where to look I'll find open source software. It may not be popular, and it may not be published by some big company, but if it works...
If corporations implement Gnome/Mono as a part of their IT strategy and suddenly Microsoft decides to strangle Mono to death with Passport, that's a fatal blow to the credibility of Open Source.
Oh get real!
So what if every single bloody Linux distribution company goes under? So what if 99.99% of the entire computer industry thinks Open Source software is unsupported rubbish run by college kids?
So what if the entire corporate world thinks the ONLY OS is a Microsoft OS?
That's not going to stop some from giving the source code away to a program they write. It's not going to stop someone else from improving upon those ideas, and spreading them out.
Open Source isn't going anywhere. It's been around much longer than Linux. It's been around much longer than Microsoft. The idea of free software has been around for much longer than most people who use Linux today, and Gnome/Mono are just petty projects in a much more massive movement.
You can ph33r Microsoft's 1337 455 control of your lives all you want.
But SOME of us will continue using free software whether it's just a neat little utility for Windows or a full blown operating system.
However, KDE is not as consistently easy to use as Windows. Some of the apps have horrible UIs or were written by people who don't speak English as a first language (KPackage comes to mind...). The Control Center, while powerful, is intimidating to users (so many panels!), and can't handle many things that Windows's can (like hardware setup - almost always requires command-line jockeying).
AMEN! I hate KDE, and I hate GNome, and I hate all of the others. I hate XWindows period. Really, I hate GUIs to begin with... but...
Even with pretty themes, it's still not nearly as usable as a well set-up Windows desktop. I even beg to differ on KDE being "more stable" than Windows, for that matter, since I see applications go down all the time (and --MY-- Windows ME machine almost NEVER crashes...)
I use KDE2, though, because of the many choices it's one of the better ones. Still, I hate how new windows open and force themselves into one of the four corners, or they stagger, or they want to dock themselves, or they're picky about where they want to be, and even applications which should obviously remember where you want windows to pop up don't seem to remmber it from session to session (and those that do randomly decide to forget.) Generally speaking, the look and feel just plain sucks. Compared to everything I've used spanning Amiga Workbench, MAC OS, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, and countless others -- the offerings on Unix blow.
The fact is - KDE could be called a Kludge, and while that might offend a lot of people, esspecially the people who are die hard Linux Lovers, they always fall back to pretty stupid defenses for their favorite desktops. The worst part about it is, I know a lot of RELIGIOUSLY FANATICAL Linux lovers who loath Windows, but then after watching them for about 10 minutes it's obvious they really don't even know how to USE Windows! (I guess what they say is true. Those who hate Windows run Linux. Those who love Unix run FreeBSD.)
I'm not defending Windows by far. I'd never run a server on it. NEVER. EVER. EVER. I wouldn't even DREAM of it. I'm a Unix lover. I think Unix is wonderful. It makes a great computing platform and it's an awesome server.
A desktop OS it is not. It nver has been, and it's got a whilte to go before it ever will be. Get over it. Deal with it. Some of us are cut out for Unix, the rest of the world shouldn't be using computers, much less the Internet, and definately not Unix.
Every "my little sister this" or "my mother that" story I hear makes me want to vomit. So what? You found a rare individual who "gets it" and wants to use a computer for more than browsing the web. Or maybe they just don't care about general interfaces. Functionality over Form, Purpose over Proposal. If that's the case, wonderful. Fine. Keen-O. Brill. I'm glad you've found users who are happier with Unix than Windows. Thrilled even. I hope they are productive. I hope they accomplish many great things. I hope they find the golden peanut in their feces.
Me personally? I'd prefer not even run XWindows at all because I prefer the command line. But then, I'd say that Mice have only been mainstream for about HALF of the time that I've been using computers, and my first Mouse came with my first Amiga and I hated using it even then. The only reason I use KDE at all is because it would be a little difficult to use LICQ or GAIM without a GUI... perhaps not entirely impossible, but certainly not a pain I want to put myself through just to discovered how difficult it actually is.
For everything else graphics I need, I actually do prefer using Windows. I have a few stable set-ups, they do what I need, and for my desktop (and gaming) usage, Windows is simply a better platform. Yes. Windows is better at some things. Get over it.
For my web-server, coding, poking around, and generally beeing a geek -- Windows doesn't touch my FreeBSD machine.
Even with the preview pane turned on, a user still has to click an EXE attachment.
Most users with any sense turn off the preview pane to keep java and html type messages from automatically downloading images (more than likely web-bugs), but more importantly, to keep your system from always showing at least one e-mail if your Outlook window is opened.
The only thing worse than security threats from the outside is security threats from the inside.
Naturally - I don't even open e-mail with attachments from people I don't know. And attachements from people I do know are only looked into if they are data files of some kind. (Real common sense stuff here, people.)
And most importantly - I show all file extensions. I think hiding the file extension, EVEN on known file types is something Microsoft should never, ever, ever, EVER even allow, but the OS ships with this "feature" on by default.
It's bad enough that the OS relies on filename extensions, but to turn around and hide them and dummy users as to the true names of their files just makes things worse.
The damange one can do with shortcuts alone is scary... but at least Outlook will show you that a file is a.PIF -- too bad most users haven't got a clue what one is.
One link to DELTREE.EXE/Y C:\WHATEVER\*.* >C:\WHATEVER\OWN3D.TXT is all it takes... and after clicking the pretty little (cleverly named and disguised) icon and not getting any results they won't even know they've just wiped something off of their system. *sigh*
do you know anything about the rumored SiliconFruit product?
Sorry to say, I'm not familiar with that project.
As an Ex-Amiga user/coder, I keep a pretty close eye on the affairs involving the Amiga.
I would like to say I have some faith that things look good for the future Amiga, but I can't honestly say that. The truth is, I firmly believe the ideas are sound and the product is solid, but the market isn't there (I don't think) and general public interest just isn't strong enough.
Fact is -- when I think about it -- everything I want from the Amiga, most Amiga users today have gone out of their way to move away from (in the way of stupid Workbench upgrades that clutter the desktop and take up resources).
I've sort of found a home with BSD for now, and I'm about to start working on some projects of my own.
Whether or not I develope the projects on the Amiga, or on BSD will depend not only on the ability of Amiga Inc. to make good on the truckload of promises, but also in public interest of the Amiga platform it's self.
Slashdot Mirror
It has been for a long time. No matter how brilliant a post you make, it'll hardly stay at 5 for very long - some dickjuice moderator will come by a few days after the discussion has died down and he'll dock you one Karma point with an Over-Rated.
It's almost as if some punk-ass retard uses his moderation points to simply go over old posts and knocking down the 5's.
As for the whole Tribes 2 bit, it's no secret that there are a lot of Tribes 2 fans. It's quite a popular game. I'm sure a lot of Slashdot readers are Tribes 2 players, but no matter how good a game is, that won't protect the developer from having to keep moving forward constantly.
Cavedog's excellent Total Annihilation didn't keep them around, and there are STILL dedicated TA fans out there.
ModPlug IS better than WinAmp's standard MOD plug-in, but if you download a plug-in called OldSch00l (I believe) WinAMP does every bit as well as ModPlug, and better in some ways. Plus it removes the need to have two seperate players so you can have your favorite mods in your playlist with MP3s.
You should be able to search for it at WinAMP.com.
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
By this you mean to say all Americans are driven by greed?
I beg to differ. I don't consider myself particularly greedy, but I'm too busy at my job making money to pay bills that I don't have NEARLY as much time to code as I would love to.
I have a love for coding. I have a love for staying up for days at a time living off of Tea and Cigarettes, doing nothing but wearing the letters off of the keys in front of my computer. My bills have a love for being paid on time.
Unfortunately, my job lays outside of my interests and the two don't have much time to cross into each other. Add into that school, an attempt at a social life, and taking care of other needs, and it leaves little time to work on the mile-high stack of coding projects I would LOVE to dedicate weeks on end to.
So, this leaves me to wonder: Are you trying to suggest that I would magically have more time to code if I moved to europe? After all, I apparently wouldn't need to work so much, since I'm not greedy.
Sure, it only holds 512k
CORRECTION! UGH!
I meant 512 megabytes. I can't believe I made such an error. Talk about an FS that really cripples! Shesh!
Actually, I agree with this.
I don't use floppies at all. For the most part I use CD-RWs.
But CD-RWs suck 'cuz it's a pain to burn a disk just for a few files.
Only if your CD-RW drive and it's software sucks. Any good Packet-Writing CD-RW drive will treat a RW disk just like any floppy. Sure, it only holds 512k and it has to be used in a drive the supports Packet Writing, but most high quality drives now days do.
My only real complaint here is that no Operating System as of yet has Packet-Writing as a standard available FS for use with CD-RWs.
(Perhaps if Amiga is smart AmigaOS 4.0 could take this opprotunity to further innovate by doing away with floppies and using CD-RW's with Packet Writing as the standard removable media...)
http://www.directvdsl.com
Formerly Telocity.
1.5 down. 256k up.
They don't care what you do.
They don't block any ports.
Their terms of service even say they don't mind what you do. It's your bandwidth.
They only have one rule. If you run something funky, don't go crying to their tech-help for support.
That's MORE than fair.
Or is it starting to look like the Technology enthusiast will one day be chased down in a witch-hunt type of fashion?
Case 1
Joe's computer crashes one night, and he immediately thinks of his computer literate neighbor, John, with whom he does not get along. It's then realizes that obviously he's been hacked and John should be arrested.
Case 2
Teacher Smith's system is suddenly missing some files inexplicably, and the little brainstar in the corner is actually a little peculiar this morning. To the principal's office he goes.
Case 3
A mother can't figure out how to send an e-mail, so she calls and harasses her son.
Oh, wait, this is already happening, isn't it?
Thank you very much for that horribly uninsightful comment. There is of course no reason why it could not be backwards compatible just because it's serial.
Ir probably will not be simply because it's such a change from previous PCI that I seriously doubt that Intel wants people confused about what cards will work in what (as someone else mentioned, there are a lot of people out there would would try to shoe-horn a new card into a Pentium 75...)
Also, because it's intended to be more of a port, not a bus, one goal is to try to prevent conflicts, sharing, noise, and other things that severely limit current PCI technology.
There is no sound reason to assume that PCI 3.0 is "Foul Crap" except that you probably don't like Intel.
Get over it.
Crap! This is really throwing off parody ideas...
Drug Wars
---------
A New Dope
The Empire Smokes Crack
Burn of the Red-Eye
The Fans of Morphine
...What are we supposed to do with Attack of the Clones!?
Cheapo: I'm not going to buy the Puttalong 5 when the Sell2moron Now with 3D-day costs $30 less.
Leetist: But they're both over $150, you might as well spend the extra $30.
Cheapo: I don't see the point. It's not worth the money.
Leetist: It's just $30.
Cheapo: It's $30 I don't have.
...
I'm sorry but my view on the situation is that if the decision of a CPU comes down to $30 -- perhaps you don't need to be into computers in the first place. Standard upkeep on a computer can sometimes cost more than that. You never know when a hard drive will go out, when you'll want to buy the newest game or accessory, and lord forbid something like your monitor ever fry.
Computers are expensive. Sometimes you have to accept the fact that you will be forking over a lot of cash. That doesn't mean get rediculous and spend $800 when you can spend $200, not at all. But some people act like they've done something wonderful by saving themselves $100 on the total cost of the computer by cutting costs "Here and There", then in the end they wonder why their system is cheap overall.
When you don't have the the fastest CPU, you don't have a whole lot of memory, when you don't have a huge hard drive, you don't have the best sound card, and your graphics card is fairly low grade, your whole system is usable at best, total rubbish at worst.
Don't complain when the money you saved costs you performance (or stability, or features, etc.)
Serious OS design would cause Black Ice and literally thousands of others to fail at startup, possibly with cryptic messages. And I agree with you that would be a good design decision. But that is not what they seem to be doing.
That is the primary side effect of it being done, like it or not. You can blame the reasons as to WHY it is being done on any conspiracy you care to dream up. The side effect is the same. Forward progress breaks legacy compatibility. WinXP is a better OS for it. Deal with it.
If Microsoft hadn't chosen to make WinXP a more modern OS keeping with Win9x, everybody would be bitching about how they just rename the OS and sell it again and again without "adding anything". Nevermind that 98, SE, and ME all added many things, the ones who scream the loudest are almost always the ones who know the least.
Me personally? I use many operating systems and I don't play favorites. But I'm not in the habit of shooting down Microsoft just because I don't like them.
Windows XP technically is a step in the right direction. Their liscensing schems, their content control plans, and their rigid rules for developement however leave me with some serious doubts about XP's future.
As for the ip not being static... Well if you have a router that has PPPoE support in the firmware, and always leave it plugged, you indeed get a pretty static ip. I've been connected for months in a row and my ip never changed.
It's either static, or it's dynamic. It can't be pretty one or the other.
User: "Your web-site is down."
Owner: "Yeah, my IP changed this morning and I haven't been able to update my DNS records."
...
Sorry, I love my Static IP with Telocity and I love how they don't care waht I do with my connection.
You guys can talk about how happy you are with your PPPoE -- and I'm glad you are -- but I've had a static IP with an always on connection for $49 per month and I'm not going back to a dynamic IP with Dial-On-Demand access.
Microsoft doesn't KNOW shit when it comes to these matters.
And quite apparently, neither do you.
Sometimes when you actually fix BS code in a broken OS such as Win 95-ME, older applications just stop working, esspecially if they were never doing things the "Right Way" to begin with. Dispite what a lot of programmers think, there are OS legal ways to do things, and there are seriously, SERIOUSLY --WRONG-- ways to do things.
Windows has up until lately been a crude platform, at best, and absolutely intelerably sloppy at worst. Microsoft is finally trying to make some rather strict guidelines not only about how their OS functions internally, but also as to how software on the platform operates, and uses OS functions. I too say "FINALLY", it's about damned time.
One of the biggest reasons Windows 32 crashes right now is because of the large number of applications written in exactly the same way today as they would have been back when Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 is still in use. I for one think windows should have stopped supporting the older, less stable software (by canning older system calls and DLLs) in favor of a more stable platform as early as Windows 98 - but it's people just like you who would have bitched and complained about having to upgrade both your OS and your applications.
A radical change in the OS often breaks software. It's a fact of life. Anything that doesn't run on the newer, more stable OS probably was never worth running in the first place. The same is true for the migration from Win32 to WinXP. If it doesn't run on XP, it probably sucked before hand (or it relied too much on legacy OS functions that should have been done away with 5 years ago).
A better test would be: if Linux had a wonderful graphics abstraction layer ... and this graphics layer was much better than DirectX, would it automatically gain a huge amount of market share and have great support from video card makers?
No, actually, I'm willing to bet that if Linux had a really easy to impliment, highly functional API, similar to DirectX or not, there would a much higher level of support from video card vendors.
I admit, it still wouldn't be as high as Windows because of the whole "market share" issue, but it would be much higher than it is now.
It might even generate some Linux Only video cards. Don't believe it? Blah. It's not as if the Amiga didn't have it's share of Video Cards, and none of them work with the PC at all. The Amiga had a MUCH SMALLER market share than Lunix, even in it's prime.
Windows from day one (which I'm not sure I believe) has nothing to do with Windows, Microsoft, or the proprietariness of DirectX.
Most cards do work from day one, otherwise they'd have a very short life-span. There are a lot of examples of cards that died horribly on the market due to their crap drivers.
And you can believe DirectX hasn't helped video card venders all you want, but it doesn't change the truth.
The fact is -- most video cards almost never were well supported by any platform before DirectX started to mature. Even in the earliest days of Windows 95 (and certainly back in the 3.1 days) it wasn't uncommon for a video card to have features that just were never used. Resolutions that weren't available though technically possible, color depths that you couldn't use, etc.
I remember seeing many video cards capable of resolutions much higher than 1024x768 in 24 bit color years before you could use such features simply because even though the hardware did it, there weren't drives for it that worked well.
Once, back in the DOS days, a friend of mine had a video card capable of some insane high resolution, but while VPIC (or was it CSHOW? Some image viewing program) DID support his video card, Windows certainly did not.
If you don't think that DirectX has helped Windows attain the greatest amount of hardware support, you are being unrealistic. Marketshare alone only insures so much. Don't believe me? Explain to me how it is that not everything has Linux drivers dispite the amazing growth of Linux?
It's not because the Market share isn't there.
Compatibility in harware was nice, because you could take it and your software would work on any OS with a piece of compatible hardware without needing special drivers.
The problem with Compatibility in hardware is that it wasn't. How many 100% Vesa compatible devices do you remember that were 100% Vesa compatible? "Oh? Your Video Card's Vesa implimentation is non-standard? Well, just BUY Display Doctor, and you'll be okay!" No, screw that. Not only did the standard hold back hardware, it didn't even do what it was supposed to.
At least with a proprietary API such as DirectX, the inferior, crash-prone, nasty, closed Microsoft OS has one thing Unix still doesn't. Support for all video cards right off of the shelf, from day one. Most software works without any fight.
Well, there are some video card venders who seem to have trouble writting drivers even for a well established API, we'll leave them guys out of this since most of them are quickly dying or are now dead. Good riddance.
I really don't think the way NVidia and ATI are going to add their own unique features is going to make THAT much of a difference. At best, some coders will take advantage of one or the other, and at worst the rest will ignore anything not built into DirectX and the extra features won't matter.
Best to have features and not need, than to need and not have.
What would really amuse the hell out of me is if someone were to write a Worm that went out to IIS servers and patched them for the idiots who are too damned stupid to do it themselves.
Alternatively, someone should write a Worm that takes down the machine entirely and leaves a helpful note to the admin explaining to them how to take his or her head out of their arse (i.e. patch the system or run less exploitable software).
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
It's because Amiga is dead. It's not coming back in any form, be it virtually under Linux or otherwise. Can we please move on?
It's not dead as long as there are people still wanting to make a viable platform out of it.
I for one gave up on the Amiga a long time ago, specifically when the whole Amiga DE crap came about. I voiced my disapproval, I wrote a few e-mails, and I generally bitched and complained about how AmigaDE would not be the "real Amiga" but would rather be just some hoakie bullshit company using the Amiga name.
Then, something unheard of happened. Amiga Inc. apparently took the voices of thousands of people just like me into consideration.
What happened? Amiga OS 4.0 was to be based on the classic Amiga OS. AmigaOne "Zico" was to be based on the original Amiga hardware - as a transition platform - if you will.
They rethought their roadmap, and made way for fully retargetable hardware, not just graphics, but sound and IO. They considered what their users wanted, and they considered what they felt was necessary to build a whole new platform from something old and once loved.
If you ask me, they've made all the right decisions, and the only thing left to do is put their money where their mouth is and finally deliver upon a product.
November 1st is the day of judgement.
They've FINALLY given an official date by which they plan to have on the market their new vision of home computing. In my opinion, because they've listened to what the Amiga Community wants, they've earned my attention until at least November 1st.
I think anybody who once loved the Amiga would be well wise to give Amiga Inc. the benefit of the doubt until November 1st.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
If it ever comes to the point that I can't open a file type such as a Word document, I'll just start insisting anybody I associate with send me stuff in something universal, such as plain ASCII, if they wish for me to view it.
Microsoft doesn't have any monopoly that we didn't gladly hand over. I use Windows, and even somewhat like it for some things (read: games) but I'm the first person on earth to preach the use of suitable alternatives whenever possible.
And no monopoly on earth is ever going to kill free software or the free expression of ideas.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
What's the point in using Open Source if no-one else uses it?
...
What constitutes a useful program?
I ran an Amiga for many years when "nobody else used one", not only because there was great software that fit my needs available, but also because it was a great platform for developing some of the custom software I needed.
I never really gave up using the Amiga, even still today, it just got to the point where most of the new software I needed was on other platforms, so I changed with the times.
I'm not "locked" into Microsoft by any means. My current day Windows machines might always run Windows until they fall over and die, and my current BSD machine might run BSD until it crumbles into the dust.
But what future OS I may run will depend on what serves my needs then, and there will be a good chance that if I know where to look I'll find open source software. It may not be popular, and it may not be published by some big company, but if it works
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
If corporations implement Gnome/Mono as a part of their IT strategy and suddenly Microsoft decides to strangle Mono to death with Passport, that's a fatal blow to the credibility of Open Source.
Oh get real!
So what if every single bloody Linux distribution company goes under? So what if 99.99% of the entire computer industry thinks Open Source software is unsupported rubbish run by college kids?
So what if the entire corporate world thinks the ONLY OS is a Microsoft OS?
That's not going to stop some from giving the source code away to a program they write. It's not going to stop someone else from improving upon those ideas, and spreading them out.
Open Source isn't going anywhere. It's been around much longer than Linux. It's been around much longer than Microsoft. The idea of free software has been around for much longer than most people who use Linux today, and Gnome/Mono are just petty projects in a much more massive movement.
You can ph33r Microsoft's 1337 455 control of your lives all you want.
But SOME of us will continue using free software whether it's just a neat little utility for Windows or a full blown operating system.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
As long as KDE doesn't go along with this .NET non-sense Open Source should be safe.
Open Source will be fine with or without KDE.
My Bash shell isn't going ANYWHERE.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
However, KDE is not as consistently easy to use as Windows. Some of the apps have horrible UIs or were written by people who don't speak English as a first language (KPackage comes to mind...). The Control Center, while powerful, is intimidating to users (so many panels!), and can't handle many things that Windows's can (like hardware setup - almost always requires command-line jockeying).
AMEN! I hate KDE, and I hate GNome, and I hate all of the others. I hate XWindows period. Really, I hate GUIs to begin with... but...
Even with pretty themes, it's still not nearly as usable as a well set-up Windows desktop. I even beg to differ on KDE being "more stable" than Windows, for that matter, since I see applications go down all the time (and --MY-- Windows ME machine almost NEVER crashes...)
I use KDE2, though, because of the many choices it's one of the better ones. Still, I hate how new windows open and force themselves into one of the four corners, or they stagger, or they want to dock themselves, or they're picky about where they want to be, and even applications which should obviously remember where you want windows to pop up don't seem to remmber it from session to session (and those that do randomly decide to forget.) Generally speaking, the look and feel just plain sucks. Compared to everything I've used spanning Amiga Workbench, MAC OS, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, and countless others -- the offerings on Unix blow.
The fact is - KDE could be called a Kludge, and while that might offend a lot of people, esspecially the people who are die hard Linux Lovers, they always fall back to pretty stupid defenses for their favorite desktops. The worst part about it is, I know a lot of RELIGIOUSLY FANATICAL Linux lovers who loath Windows, but then after watching them for about 10 minutes it's obvious they really don't even know how to USE Windows! (I guess what they say is true. Those who hate Windows run Linux. Those who love Unix run FreeBSD.)
I'm not defending Windows by far. I'd never run a server on it. NEVER. EVER. EVER. I wouldn't even DREAM of it. I'm a Unix lover. I think Unix is wonderful. It makes a great computing platform and it's an awesome server.
A desktop OS it is not. It nver has been, and it's got a whilte to go before it ever will be. Get over it. Deal with it. Some of us are cut out for Unix, the rest of the world shouldn't be using computers, much less the Internet, and definately not Unix.
Every "my little sister this" or "my mother that" story I hear makes me want to vomit. So what? You found a rare individual who "gets it" and wants to use a computer for more than browsing the web. Or maybe they just don't care about general interfaces. Functionality over Form, Purpose over Proposal. If that's the case, wonderful. Fine. Keen-O. Brill. I'm glad you've found users who are happier with Unix than Windows. Thrilled even. I hope they are productive. I hope they accomplish many great things. I hope they find the golden peanut in their feces.
Me personally? I'd prefer not even run XWindows at all because I prefer the command line. But then, I'd say that Mice have only been mainstream for about HALF of the time that I've been using computers, and my first Mouse came with my first Amiga and I hated using it even then. The only reason I use KDE at all is because it would be a little difficult to use LICQ or GAIM without a GUI... perhaps not entirely impossible, but certainly not a pain I want to put myself through just to discovered how difficult it actually is.
For everything else graphics I need, I actually do prefer using Windows. I have a few stable set-ups, they do what I need, and for my desktop (and gaming) usage, Windows is simply a better platform. Yes. Windows is better at some things. Get over it.
For my web-server, coding, poking around, and generally beeing a geek -- Windows doesn't touch my FreeBSD machine.
Biggest step to preventing this --
... but at least Outlook will show you that a file is a .PIF -- too bad most users haven't got a clue what one is.
/Y C:\WHATEVER\*.* >C:\WHATEVER\OWN3D.TXT is all it takes... and after clicking the pretty little (cleverly named and disguised) icon and not getting any results they won't even know they've just wiped something off of their system. *sigh*
Don't execute the attachment!
Even with the preview pane turned on, a user still has to click an EXE attachment.
Most users with any sense turn off the preview pane to keep java and html type messages from automatically downloading images (more than likely web-bugs), but more importantly, to keep your system from always showing at least one e-mail if your Outlook window is opened.
The only thing worse than security threats from the outside is security threats from the inside.
Naturally - I don't even open e-mail with attachments from people I don't know. And attachements from people I do know are only looked into if they are data files of some kind. (Real common sense stuff here, people.)
And most importantly - I show all file extensions. I think hiding the file extension, EVEN on known file types is something Microsoft should never, ever, ever, EVER even allow, but the OS ships with this "feature" on by default.
It's bad enough that the OS relies on filename extensions, but to turn around and hide them and dummy users as to the true names of their files just makes things worse.
The damange one can do with shortcuts alone is scary
One link to DELTREE.EXE
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
do you know anything about the rumored SiliconFruit product?
Sorry to say, I'm not familiar with that project.
As an Ex-Amiga user/coder, I keep a pretty close eye on the affairs involving the Amiga.
I would like to say I have some faith that things look good for the future Amiga, but I can't honestly say that. The truth is, I firmly believe the ideas are sound and the product is solid, but the market isn't there (I don't think) and general public interest just isn't strong enough.
Fact is -- when I think about it -- everything I want from the Amiga, most Amiga users today have gone out of their way to move away from (in the way of stupid Workbench upgrades that clutter the desktop and take up resources).
I've sort of found a home with BSD for now, and I'm about to start working on some projects of my own.
Whether or not I develope the projects on the Amiga, or on BSD will depend not only on the ability of Amiga Inc. to make good on the truckload of promises, but also in public interest of the Amiga platform it's self.
Only time will tell.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"