I think I'm part of a new subcategory of Mac owners--I didn't get one until OS X 10.1, and so have no desire to run OS 9 or Classic apps.
And I go completely in the opposite direction. I used to revile Macs and Apple. My first Mac experience was poking around on a Mac Plus I got at a thift store long after it was obsolete, and then awhile later running NetBSD on an SE/30.
Now I'm becoming sort of an after-the-fact semi-expert on old Apple hardware. Primarily because it's been showing up at local surplus equipment auctions and I'm figuring it out, shining it up and testing it, and selling it to people on eBay and locally. I seldom have more than one or two machines on hand that I can run anything newer than OS9 on. And I've come to have a lot of affection for one machine in particular, my PowerBook 165c, which I paid $5 for and which is a great little machine for OS 7 but since it's completely unsalable (people don't buy anything older than 7300s unless there's 'classic' interest, like SE/30s, Classics, maybe nicer Quadras) I am keeping it around. It's a really nice little system for getting away from the modern madness of today, to retreat to Claris Works and do some writing.
So I'm a new Mac convert, someone who didn't 'see the light' until after OSX came out, who doesn't run, and in fact has never touched the keyboard on a Mac running OSX.
Darwin x86 is an excercize in portability, which is a smart thing for the Darwin developers to do. Design for portability, i.e. NetBSD, keeps things a lot cleaner.
Darwin, however, gives you a command prompt and XFree86. Cool and useful to some of us, but it ain't OSX.
Memmaker was a utility in DOS that went away with Windows 95. It was a useful 'script' of sorts for optimizing your memory to run DOS and Windows 3.1.
I agree that troubleshooting Windows 9x is no picnic. It was so much easier with Windows 3.x when it was a series of plaintext.ini files, and the whole system was 8.3 files in a plain vanilla filesystem that you could just yank off in pieces on floppys to move around.
BeOS installed 'smooth and easy' like that on my x86 box. Because I was lucky enough to have the right hardware. I tried it again, another time, with the wrong hardware. Boy was it a mess.
What graphics hardware did that release support? Possibly it had limited 'demo grade' support for moderatly high resolution generic SVGA that would have crapped out if you tried to do anything fancier. That's my experience with the BeOS installer.
Apple isn't particularly good at supporting third party hardware on the system level. They don't have to be, it isn't one of their goals.
I don't think floppies were supposed to last 25 years.
I installed Windows 1.03 from original 5-1/4" floppy diskettes * on an old Compaq Portable just last week. Floppy diskettes DO last a long time. If properly taken care of, and 3-1/2" disks are significantly less durable.
(* just because. doesn't *everybody* run Windows 1.03 on at least one of their machines??)
Neither of your two 'standing a mile in the air' ideas sound practical. Clearly, though, the one you favor would be much more expensive to implement, far more complex, with more possible points of failure.
But I'm picking on your ill-thought-out hypothetical example. The 'meat' of your message is probably a better thing to examine.
What does said 'regular transport pipeline' between the Earth and Moon carry? Transport lines never, ever, thrive all on their own. If there's nothing to carry on them, they're expensive and aren't maintained. There's a limited market for $1,000,000 day trips to the moon. Is it going to be funded by Moon rock sales on eBay?
In Linux happy notebooks, for example, the OEMs don't choose to include WinModems.
Perhaps I've flipped over into being a broadband fascist, but I'd shy away from any machine built and sold as new today that even included a modem. Especially if it meant that it didn't have built-in ethernet.
Then again, I switched to broadband from an external US Robotics V.everything. I guess if I had a portable machine with a Winmodem built in, I'd dig in to find out if there were pins or traces I could cut to kill the fugger and get a little more battery life somehow. And I'd never, EVER buy a machine that I couldn't slap in a PCMCIA modem/ethernet.
I'd agree with you, but I'm not going to spend money on any new computer stuff in the forseeable future.
My most recent project has been populating all the drive bays in the 4-way PentiumPro server I bought at auction last month for $15 at a University Auction. I'm dabbling in 4-way SMP with freenixes. My biggest 'spending' decision has been deciding if I should spring for PPro chips with 1M cache or not (they're fricking $19 these days on eBay. Remember what that chip USED to cost??)
The fastest machine in this house is a Pentium III 800 and that machine is dedicated to video capture and editing.
The days of ever-increasing need for hardware are over. Most people's computer needs, even if they play some (not the ones that seem to be designed around eating as much power as possible for ever-diminishing features) games. My wife is a Diablo II fanatic and she didn't even notice when I swapped out her Pentium III 450 box for an HP Vectra Pentium II 400 (the new machine has better video hardware built in, tho, which sorta slants things).
I'd like to upgrade my laptop to a Pentium based system, but hell, I just got my first active-matrix color laptop (Toshiba 486) with a built in CD drive in December.
Well, as long as that two-column table can contain links to multimedia content based on open standards, yes.
There is a huge gap between the information content of many web pages and the 'filler' content. A picture is NOT worth a thousand words when the picture is a jpeg of the several words of the title for a page 'because the designer wanted a specific font to display,' or worse yet, a jpeg that's a single letter as the first char on the lead word of a paragraph. (why do they DO that?!?)
I guess it's grumpy to be literacy-oriented. Maybe it's not fair to the illiterate to feel that 'stab at pretty picture' websites are a dumbing down of the Web. But that's the way it goes.
The identity of the person is important, in fact it's of paramount importance. It could just be some zealot who made it up. Without some credibility behind the source, it makes the 'Linux community' look even more like a bunch of damned fools who will hoot and holler and rail against Microsoft whenever given the opportunity.
Frankly, people should have better things to do with their time.
I don't make use of either of them because they're 'fun' to use, except occasionally. I'm not crazy enough to cut up the big branches that the wind blows out of the ancient maple trees in my yard with the pen knife, though it probably is theoretically possible.
And I don't cut the skin off oranges I want to eat with the chainsaw, though I suppose that is theoretically possible as well.
Netcraft will never prove anything except how many vanity pages are hosted on Free software web servers and OSes on the public-facing Internet.
It's worthless information to companies determining what to run on their internal business servers.
Really, the Linux community discredits themselves, and show themselves up as being web-monkeys with no clue about Business Operations when they quote Netcraft stats as proof of Linux 'market share.'
I'm quite sure they honestly believe that having everyone using Microsoft software - to the exclusion of all alternatives - is a good thing. Much like Hitler was probably sure that eliminating the Jews and annexing Poland and Austria was a good thing for Germans.
The same sort of immoderate view expressed by people who wholeheartedly (and sincerely) belive in the GNU philosophy is just as frightening.
Any time a belief system becomes that deep a part of somebody's motivation, it's unhealthy.
"But wait! Wait! We're the good guys and we . . . "
They cut the scenes where the older long-term 'geeks on campus' initiate young new Linux enthusiasts in the 'private meeting room' after the campus LUG meeting.
"Ooooh, he's got a hacker's beard and he doesn't appear to have 'sold out' like most of the other people his age" says the impressionable College Freshman. And so the cycle goes.
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I think I'm part of a new subcategory of Mac owners--I didn't get one until OS X 10.1, and so have no desire to run OS 9 or Classic apps.
And I go completely in the opposite direction. I used to revile Macs and Apple. My first Mac experience was poking around on a Mac Plus I got at a thift store long after it was obsolete, and then awhile later running NetBSD on an SE/30.
Now I'm becoming sort of an after-the-fact semi-expert on old Apple hardware. Primarily because it's been showing up at local surplus equipment auctions and I'm figuring it out, shining it up and testing it, and selling it to people on eBay and locally. I seldom have more than one or two machines on hand that I can run anything newer than OS9 on. And I've come to have a lot of affection for one machine in particular, my PowerBook 165c, which I paid $5 for and which is a great little machine for OS 7 but since it's completely unsalable (people don't buy anything older than 7300s unless there's 'classic' interest, like SE/30s, Classics, maybe nicer Quadras) I am keeping it around. It's a really nice little system for getting away from the modern madness of today, to retreat to Claris Works and do some writing.
So I'm a new Mac convert, someone who didn't 'see the light' until after OSX came out, who doesn't run, and in fact has never touched the keyboard on a Mac running OSX.
And really, Jobs was probably the only downside for Apple in the NeXT acquisition.
(pardon me, I'm currently reading a copy of John Scully's book, the one he wrote a few years after canning Jobs)
Darwin x86 is an excercize in portability, which is a smart thing for the Darwin developers to do. Design for portability, i.e. NetBSD, keeps things a lot cleaner.
Darwin, however, gives you a command prompt and XFree86. Cool and useful to some of us, but it ain't OSX.
Memmaker was a utility in DOS that went away with Windows 95. It was a useful 'script' of sorts for optimizing your memory to run DOS and Windows 3.1.
.ini files, and the whole system was 8.3 files in a plain vanilla filesystem that you could just yank off in pieces on floppys to move around.
I agree that troubleshooting Windows 9x is no picnic. It was so much easier with Windows 3.x when it was a series of plaintext
BeOS installed 'smooth and easy' like that on my x86 box. Because I was lucky enough to have the right hardware. I tried it again, another time, with the wrong hardware. Boy was it a mess.
What graphics hardware did that release support? Possibly it had limited 'demo grade' support for moderatly high resolution generic SVGA that would have crapped out if you tried to do anything fancier. That's my experience with the BeOS installer.
Apple isn't particularly good at supporting third party hardware on the system level. They don't have to be, it isn't one of their goals.
I don't think floppies were supposed to last 25 years.
I installed Windows 1.03 from original 5-1/4" floppy diskettes * on an old Compaq Portable just last week. Floppy diskettes DO last a long time. If properly taken care of, and 3-1/2" disks are significantly less durable.
(* just because. doesn't *everybody* run Windows 1.03 on at least one of their machines??)
Neither of your two 'standing a mile in the air' ideas sound practical. Clearly, though, the one you favor would be much more expensive to implement, far more complex, with more possible points of failure.
But I'm picking on your ill-thought-out hypothetical example. The 'meat' of your message is probably a better thing to examine.
What does said 'regular transport pipeline' between the Earth and Moon carry? Transport lines never, ever, thrive all on their own. If there's nothing to carry on them, they're expensive and aren't maintained. There's a limited market for $1,000,000 day trips to the moon. Is it going to be funded by Moon rock sales on eBay?
It sounds like all he can think of is 'Space Food Sticks.'
It's sad, isn't it?
Which International Court do you refer to?
There are so many. As many, actually, as any ad-hoc group of angry people choose to drum up.
(I would suggest you take your interest in fantasy World Government and apply them to a little reality)
Actually, far more of us know where Belgium is than need to.
It's a pretty irrelevant place in the larger scheme of things.
In Linux happy notebooks, for example, the OEMs don't choose to include WinModems.
Perhaps I've flipped over into being a broadband fascist, but I'd shy away from any machine built and sold as new today that even included a modem. Especially if it meant that it didn't have built-in ethernet.
Then again, I switched to broadband from an external US Robotics V.everything. I guess if I had a portable machine with a Winmodem built in, I'd dig in to find out if there were pins or traces I could cut to kill the fugger and get a little more battery life somehow. And I'd never, EVER buy a machine that I couldn't slap in a PCMCIA modem/ethernet.
I'd agree with you, but I'm not going to spend money on any new computer stuff in the forseeable future.
My most recent project has been populating all the drive bays in the 4-way PentiumPro server I bought at auction last month for $15 at a University Auction. I'm dabbling in 4-way SMP with freenixes. My biggest 'spending' decision has been deciding if I should spring for PPro chips with 1M cache or not (they're fricking $19 these days on eBay. Remember what that chip USED to cost??)
The fastest machine in this house is a Pentium III 800 and that machine is dedicated to video capture and editing.
The days of ever-increasing need for hardware are over. Most people's computer needs, even if they play some (not the ones that seem to be designed around eating as much power as possible for ever-diminishing features) games. My wife is a Diablo II fanatic and she didn't even notice when I swapped out her Pentium III 450 box for an HP Vectra Pentium II 400 (the new machine has better video hardware built in, tho, which sorta slants things).
I'd like to upgrade my laptop to a Pentium based system, but hell, I just got my first active-matrix color laptop (Toshiba 486) with a built in CD drive in December.
Well, as long as that two-column table can contain links to multimedia content based on open standards, yes.
There is a huge gap between the information content of many web pages and the 'filler' content. A picture is NOT worth a thousand words when the picture is a jpeg of the several words of the title for a page 'because the designer wanted a specific font to display,' or worse yet, a jpeg that's a single letter as the first char on the lead word of a paragraph. (why do they DO that?!?)
I guess it's grumpy to be literacy-oriented. Maybe it's not fair to the illiterate to feel that 'stab at pretty picture' websites are a dumbing down of the Web. But that's the way it goes.
Okay, the memo that gave Raymond his franchise has some credibility.
He's spun a whole lot out of that single memo.
Too bad you forgot to hit "Post Anonymously" this time, huh?
Why did you?
And why did you reply without providing a single nit of additional evidence?
The identity of the person is important, in fact it's of paramount importance. It could just be some zealot who made it up. Without some credibility behind the source, it makes the 'Linux community' look even more like a bunch of damned fools who will hoot and holler and rail against Microsoft whenever given the opportunity.
Frankly, people should have better things to do with their time.
About your sig:
I own both a chainsaw and a pen knife.
I don't make use of either of them because they're 'fun' to use, except occasionally. I'm not crazy enough to cut up the big branches that the wind blows out of the ancient maple trees in my yard with the pen knife, though it probably is theoretically possible.
And I don't cut the skin off oranges I want to eat with the chainsaw, though I suppose that is theoretically possible as well.
What was your point in the sig?
Microsoft was branded a Monopoly four years ago. IBM was branded a Monopoly some time before that.
Neither is a Monopoly now in the way they were charged with in their respective cases.
But you cheer on IBM and villify Microsoft.
It doesn't really add up.
Yes, but both the Linux and the Apple fanboys have to like IBM now, because the company has done so much to give their chosen platform credibility.
When you accept payment in the coin of the realm, you by necessity support said realm. Especially if it's clad coinage and/or printed paper currency.
Netcraft will never prove anything except how many vanity pages are hosted on Free software web servers and OSes on the public-facing Internet.
It's worthless information to companies determining what to run on their internal business servers.
Really, the Linux community discredits themselves, and show themselves up as being web-monkeys with no clue about Business Operations when they quote Netcraft stats as proof of Linux 'market share.'
How far back does Microsoft's involvement go?
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
Eric S. Raymond lose his job?
Are you kidding????
Where have any of the previous 'leaked memos' been confirmed?
A hyperlink or two would be a good starting point, though even that's dubious, given the zeal of the people involved.
I'm quite sure they honestly believe that having everyone using Microsoft software - to the exclusion of all alternatives - is a good thing. Much like Hitler was probably sure that eliminating the Jews and annexing Poland and Austria was a good thing for Germans.
The same sort of immoderate view expressed by people who wholeheartedly (and sincerely) belive in the GNU philosophy is just as frightening.
Any time a belief system becomes that deep a part of somebody's motivation, it's unhealthy.
"But wait! Wait! We're the good guys and we . . . "
They cut the scenes where the older long-term 'geeks on campus' initiate young new Linux enthusiasts in the 'private meeting room' after the campus LUG meeting.
"Ooooh, he's got a hacker's beard and he doesn't appear to have 'sold out' like most of the other people his age" says the impressionable College Freshman. And so the cycle goes.